I grew up in Downers Grove, Illinois. My family moved here in 1969 or 1970 and had a little two bedroom cottage on Wilcox Avenue. Around 1972 we moved to a house in Naperville, IL but returned to Downers Grove again in 1976 after a detour through Culver City, CA, Yorktown, IL and Lisle, IL.

I lived here at the house for about ten years, moving in in the winter of 1976 and basically moving out when I went to Allegheny College in Meadville, PA in 1985.

The town has changed dramatically since 1985, and certainly since 1976. DG used to be a largish small town, with a decent downtown (we had a Sears and a Montgomery Wards right in town). In the 1980s the town (well, village) government focussed on growth and the population grew quite rapidly. Development occurred at the then-edges of the town where the farms and orchards had been. New subdivisions sprung up out of nowhere in the former farmlands, new shopping malls sprouted at the intersections of major roads.

The town grew, but the net effect seemed to be to gut the center of the town.
Downtown Downers Grove (made famous for a brief 15 seconds by Emo Phillips is now kind of recovering but still looks like an empty shell. The stores are little ticky-tacky stores, though there's more restaurants than there ever was. They are building a humongous parking garage (yeah, that's the ticket).

I really don't like the way the town has changed. It's become another suburban clone. All of the people who fled Chicago for here have set up their little castles on .025 acres of land. You have to get in the car to get the paper or a coffee. The closest store of any consequence is a half mile away (and to walk there would put another Costello into the hospital...pedestrians are not welcome here).

I like living in Brooklyn. I like living in a place where I can get up in the morning and walk about a block to get a paper. Where I'm not taking my life in my hands simply by attempting to cross the street.

I don't miss cutting grass, or shovelling a long driveway in the winter. People here seem to have a scrunched up snarly growl to their faces. They zip along the street eager to avoid any contact with anyone else.

Heaven forbid you should say good morning.

I'm not sure what the attraction is, the taxes are high, the streets are a mess, you need a car to do anything. The schools are mediocre.

What is the point of moving to and living in suburbia if you drag along all the problems of the city? Oh, except now they're worse because now you have to rebuild all of the systems and infrastructure you took for granted in the city but you expect to exist in the formerly quiet cow pasture you're now calling home.

I don't get it, I'm going back home, to Brooklyn.