A question for UK listers

[pynchonoid]

> Middle class people live in working class
> neighborhoods??

I guess it's the other way around here in parts of the
SF Bay area, where somebody who was able to buy a
house back in the '50s or 60s, when they were clearly
middle or lower-middle class or blue-collar, now finds
herself living in a house worth a million bucks -
"house rich, cash poor" we say around here.  Lots of
couples who were just barely able to scrape together a
downpayment and qualify for a mortgage back in the
'70s and '80s in the same situation, too, although I'd
put most of them middle-middle to upper-middle income
group.  I think the median price for a single-family
house in the greater SF Bay Area now is over $500,000
and while the market may have cooled a bit in recent
months, it's hard to tell in some place, a house down
the street got 10 bids from potential buyers recently,
and it was no bargain.

It can lead to some funny situations - Italian
scooter-riding gen-x hipsters complaining about their
old SUV and pickup truck-driving neighbors or their
redneck kids for a variety of mutually unintelligible
reasons.






----Not so much 
> in my experience on the U.S. West Coast--I applaud
> David Gentle in his 
> quest to get this right--it is so important for a
> character to read 
> right--may I suggest Black Swan Green--the father in
> this story would be 
> late 70s and the protagonist a little young---but
> the milieu--the subtle 
> and not so subtle differences between working class
> and middle class, 
> between "new" and old...or perhaps a suggestion is
> the Flashman 
> example--find a character with an established 
> background in an existing 
> story  and "age" your character forward to include
> him in your novel....
> 
> A.
> 
> 
> Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> >
> > On Oct 16, 2006, at 3:14 AM, Mike Weaver wrote:
> >
> >> To add to Paul's comments:
> >> David Gentle is correct to ask what class you
> have in mind Dave,  
> >> though I think he's a tad mechanical in his
> description of class  
> >> differences. Remember economic and cultural class
> differences are  
> >> not the same thing. Plenty of people come from
> and are, culturally,  
> >> of one class while their economic situation and
> outlook is of another.
> >> To be realistic you would need to decide what
> situation this  
> >> character was born into - class origins, the
> economic fortunes of  
> >> his parents throughout his childhood - rising,
> falling or stable -   
> >> Then there is where in the UK he grew up - I'd
> say there are big  
> >> regional differences in working class culture,
> less in middle class  
> >> and less again in upper class. However the local
> dominance of  
> >> particular class cultures are a variant cross
> current acting on the  
> >> regional differences.
> >>
> >
> > In the U.S. the idea of "class" or other ways of
> ranking economic  
> > status seems to apply mostly to  neighborhoods.
> >
> > The newspapers will speak of "working class
> suburbs" "blue collar  
> > subdivisions" "areas of modest homes" "prosperous
> neighborhoods"  
> > "leafy neighborhoods West of the Park" etc. etc.
> >
> > There don't seem to be any "middle class"
> neighborhoods.
> >
> > "Middle class" as applied to people seems to be
> very broadly defined-- 
> > not on welfare but unable to pay Harvard level
> tuition for their kids.
> >
> > Middle class people  mostly live in working class
> neighborhoods I  
> > rather imagine.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 


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