Get out of your car and onto the streets

I live in Houston, TX. A city known for its highways and sprawl. When I moved to Houston, I knew I did not want to live within the sprawl. At 12, I had a meltdown when my family moved to the NW suburbs of Baltimore because it was “too quiet.” After graduating college, I moved into Baltimore and lived directly behind a JHU frat house on a major cycle track connector. It was never quiet. I ran into people on the street all the time. Once I walked outside and a stranger said “oh my goodness you’re Shawn’s daughter! We used to go to church together!” I was stoned, living with my girlfriend at the time, and just thought “oh my god do I have to come out to her now?”

When I ran into people, I felt exposed and on display. I worried that their unspoken expectations would crush the spontaneity. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to extricate myself from the conversation. I felt best running into someone while I was on a bike. I love a quick glance of recognition. Sometimes, if the feeling was right, I’d dismount and lean one foot onto the ground for a chat. Most times I smiled, waved and kept pedaling.

Now, I have built my life for multimodal transit. I don’t drive to work. I don’t need to drive to the grocery store; I can fit a lot on the back of my bike. I’m never the only bike there. One of the men who maintains the club on my block, chats with me while I wait for my bus to work in the summer. Elderly folks at the senior home wave at me as I bike to work in the Fall but especially love it when I’m with my dog. Manny is very popular. If I take a different route with him, people notice and ask where we been. Once my neighbor, Trent, laughed at me walking from the bus saying “I see you on the bike, in the car and walking! I never know when I’ll see you!” This week, he apologized for almost hitting me with his car while biking.

When I started this draft, I was mostly just annoyed by how difficult it feels to live in a car city. I have met great friends; started to have more intimate connections with nature in my neighborhood yet Houston still feels hostile. Now, as I am writing this, we are in the midst of another war for oil. It feels like the personal automobile is a frontline to fight against perpetual war. It feels like the only way that we can actually work with our neighbors without surveillance is by meeting with them in person.

I feel like I know all my neighbors. The houseless neighbors, too. I see Mr. Kelvin on his bike everyday as he figures out where to lay his head. Denise says that my dog can tell when her deceased husband is haunting her or when her energy is off. I was riding my bike when I noticed that it was not a birthday party for my neighbor, Craig, but a funeral. Craig taught me the 1 mile loop where he walked his dogs in our neighborhood. He texted me information for his mechanic cousin and once asked me to zip his wife’s dress while he was out of the house (I declined). When I wrote his wife a card, she was overwhelmed with emotion. She chose to flag me down on my walk to chat with me instead of texting the number I included in the card.

When I first moved to Houston, several events I attended claimed that “y’all don’t know your neighbors.” And it’s hard when your neighbor’s car is in their garage and they drive directly in/out of their home everyday. It’s hard when you are not seeing them outside of the 2 ton metal box that we have all been doomed to use in America despite it being an albatross on our budgets.

But me? I know my neighbors.