NY Times "Cracker" Vacation Experience

[Donna]

Sorry that I first posted this on another thread..didn't mean to crowd you. Didja see the front page of today's NY Times, the article about St. Joe Co. creating a neo-"Cracker" community in eastern Bay County? I'm not kidding, folks. It's an opportunity for people who never lived on a farm or at a fish camp, who want the backwater experience of fishing, sitting on a porch with a flappin' screen, and plowing the earth. Prices average $352,900 for the land alone on the first project underway, RiverCamps. I can't wait to tell my brother in DeFuniak that he should throw some millet on the pond at his Euchee Valley farm and wait for the "Cracker" wannabes to follow the new trend and make him a gazillionaire. Will each home be sold with an old pickup truck that features primer coat on one or more of its doors and a Bose sound system inside? And what will happen when the new homeowners discover mosquitos the size of helicopters, critters that take advantage of torn screens (including the two-legged species), and that plow mules kick hard?

Aside from this being mildly condescending (as perceived by this native "Cracker"), it borders on the surreal. Does anyone else think this kind of real estate speculation is in need of a reality check? Quote from the article, a lawyer trading her Rosemary Beach home for a RiverCamps lot:

"I don't want to use the word 'backwater,' as that sounds too negative, but RiverCamps has this whole underpinning of past Florida---a rural history." She wants to emulate the early Florida rural settlers known as "Crackers," because they "...lived among the pines, raised a few hogs and cows, grew a little patch of corn, and just barely survived. Absolutely, I want that privacy and those woods. Yet at the same time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."

Lord love a duck. :laughing1

[kurt]

I guess I am a cracker. I've lived in the South without AC or heat. I like a deep, wide porch with or without screen. Skeeters, gators, and snakes don't bother me. I'd like a little room to roam with a few animals, including 6 or 8 dogs.


What I want though is the farm in the valley with a pond. Does your brother have any room?

[kurt]

WEST BAY, Fla. - What is a striving Florida developer to do when most of its
vast holdings are not beach chic but rural, remote and mosquitoey?

The St. Joe Company, which owns 800,000 mostly inland acres here in the
scrubby pine forests of the Panhandle, is invoking Thoreau.

The company, Florida's largest private landowner, is pushing "new ruralism,"
a concept it hopes will entice city and suburban dwellers who are weary of
civilization and long to own a tractor, a pickup truck, or at least a kayak
and a few large dogs.

At developments called RiverCamps, where homes in a design proudly called
"Cracker Modern" will sit on lots of up to four acres lots near marshes,
creeks and conservation areas, "camp masters" will tutor residents in bird
watching and flats fishing and organize "owl prowls" and "star parties." At
WhiteFence Farms, on 5- to 20-acre lots near fields and ponds, "farmhands"
will gas up an owner's tractor and help mow the meadow. A third category,
Florida Ranches, will have up to 150 acres and cater to hunters.

Recent sales of RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, the first project under way,
average $342,900 for the land alone. Projects farther inland will most
likely cost far less per acre.

The idea is a corporate reinvention of new urbanism, an antisprawl movement
that advocates compact, old-fashioned towns where residents can commune in parks, shops and restaurants within walking distance of their homes. Instead of connecting with neighbors, new ruralism promotes connecting with the land - though these cabins in the woods come with wireless Internet access and porches with screens that unfurl by remote control.

The target market is people 42 to 60 who, tired of coastal hurricane threats
or the beach scene in general, want something more like Walden Pond or
Walton's Mountain. Most are expected to use these ranches, camps and farms
as second homes, though a surprising number of prospective buyers want
full-time rusticity, St. Joe executives said.

Brainstorming sessions at St. Joe's headquarters in Jacksonville produced
scraps of paper scrawled with phrases like "wind in the trees," "stars, no
lights," and "slamming, squeaking screen doors." In June, the company
published a white paper quoting Thoreau ("I went to the woods because I
wished to live deliberately") and defining new ruralism - a concept that
developers elsewhere have also seized on - as rising with the sun, fishing
with the tides and resting with the moon.

"People are trying to get back to a time they remember," said Peter S.
Rummell, St. Joe's chairman and chief executive, who grew up in rural
upstate New York and oversaw theme parks for the Walt Disney Company before moving to St. Joe in 1997. "A moderated ruralism seems pretty attractive."

It had better, if St. Joe is to succeed in the real estate business. The
company's founder, Alfred I. duPont, bought huge tracts of land in the
Panhandle in the 1930's, after which the company became a paper maker with
banking and railroad interests. But the land was strictly for timber farming
until the 1990's, when St. Joe sought to reinvigorate by switching to land
development.

Though the company has been developing property ever since, about 99 percent of its holdings - as much as all the developed land between Miami and Fort Pierce - remain wild. It first focused on its 30 miles of Gulf of Mexico
coastline, creating resort towns like WaterColor and SummerCamp with
multimillion-dollar vacation homes. Making inland holdings attractive is far
more complicated, requiring not just market research but also a tricky
makeover for land that has long been inhospitable.

"A big, thick pine forest with a lot of undergrowth is a pretty forbidding
place," Mr. Rummell said. "It scares a lot of people."

At RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, which is near Panama City Beach and offers
two-acre lots for up to $1 million, the overhaul involved thinning the
forest and burning the thick underbrush so that softer, greener grasses
would emerge. With the land reworked, a landscape architect identified 54
"environmental jewels" - Spider Lily Marsh and the like - and mapped them
out for prospective buyers. Brochures promise homes in the "Cracker Modern"
style: lots of wood, metal roofs, broad roof overhangs to block the sun and
screened porches.

With construction yet to begin, 145 buyers, mostly from Florida, Georgia,
Alabama, Tennessee and Texas, have closed on plots at RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, the first of three such developments.

"We honestly asked ourselves, 'Will people live in this environment?' " said
Kevin Fox, the St. Joe executive overseeing RiverCamps. "We've got critters,
we've got heat, we've got humidity."

More problematic is the isolation of St. Joe's land, most of which lies in
the barely traveled region between Tallahassee and Panama City Beach. Gulf
County, where St. Joe owns 230,000 acres, has but 15,200 residents, and
Liberty County, where it owns 112,000 acres, has 7,300. A lot of St. Joe
land surrounds the swampy Apalachicola National Forest and Tate's Hell State
Forest, where a farmer named Tate supposedly was lost for days and emerged
snakebitten and delirious. The company is lobbying to move and expand the
small Panama City airport, while moving sections of a coastal highway
inland, widening other roads and donating land for a new hospital.

Though St. Joe has worked to win over the counties its land is in, some
residents and environmental advocates worry about the scope of its ambition
and have fought some of its projects. Charles Pattison, executive director
of 1000 Friends of Florida, a nonprofit environmental group, said St. Joe's
latest plan "could be positive" but that the company must take pains not to
force wildlife off the land and to add enough infrastructure.

"This is an area of the state that typically has one of the lowest
population densities," Mr. Pattison said. "Issues like protection of
habitat, hurricane evacuation routes and service provisions have got to be
addressed."

At the first WhiteFence Farms site, southeast of Tallahassee, St. Joe is
preparing 373 acres of former watermelon and peanut fields for "people who
have always wanted to live on a farm but don't see themselves as farmers,"
Mr. Fox said. They must also be willing to pay $20,000 to $45,000 an acre
for the land alone. The company is digging ponds and smoothing pastures for
buyers it imagines dabbling in horse riding, beekeeping, wildflower growing
and field plowing.

Deborah Dudley, a lawyer who is trading her home in nearby Rosemary Beach
for one here at RiverCamps on Crooked Creek, said beach towns had grown too crowded with commercial distractions.

"You lose the whole basic feel of the land," Ms. Dudley said. "I don't want
to use the word 'backwater,' that sounds too negative, but RiverCamps has
this whole underpinning of past Florida - a rural history."

Ms. Dudley said she wanted to emulate Florida's early rural settlers, known
as crackers, who, wrote a British traveler in 1857, "lived among the pines,
raised a few hogs and cows, grew a little patch of corn, and just barely
survived." Yet Ms. Dudley said she also expected the comforts that cracker
settlers sorely lacked.

"Absolutely I want that privacy and those woods," she said. "Yet at the same
time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I
want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."

[Beach Runner]

It's hard to believe that they're using the "cracker" word. To me, that's as bad as using the "n-word." Shame on them!

My daughter's roommate is from Laguna Beach, CA. She remarked at the difference in the architecture between SoWal and CA - she referred to it as "cracker chic," versus the more upscale architecture in CA. I understand - I've been there, as well as the Med, Maui, etc. We have good friends with a place in Menorca, off the coast of Spain - a totally different atmosphere. But the beaches of SoWal are so much better, despite the hurricane damage. The sugar sand, the emerald waters, ...

New Yorkers love to put down The South. That's why my daughter turned down Columbia University - they insulted us by saying that anything outside NYC (including ATLANTA) was "the country." I was so ticked off at the Columbia recruiter that I asked the cab driver to run him down as we left the restaurant where he was trying to sell Columbia to my daughter.

Some of my daughter's classmates at MIT actually asked her if all Southerners lived on a farm and had an outhouse. They were speaking to my Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Prada, etc., attired, world-traveled, spoiled child. She calmly responded by asking them if all Northerners are devoid of manners.

Don't diss the South - don't diss Atlanta - don't diss the Panhandle. I'm ranting. Sorry.

[Mermaid]

Amen, Beach Runner. And I'm talking as a native New Yorker who lived ten years in Atlanta and fell in love with it before moving to the Midwest (which I also now love)! Though you need to hear the way Midwest gets knocked down, if you think the South gets a job done on it. Or maybe it's about equal: Southerners are rednecks and Midwesterners are local yokel farmers. :idontno:

[Beach Runner]

Amen, Beach Runner. And I'm talking as a native New Yorker who lived ten years in Atlanta and fell in love with it before moving to the Midwest (which I also now love)! Though you need to hear the way Midwest gets knocked down, if you think the South gets a job done on it. Or maybe it's about equal: Southerners are rednecks and Midwesterners are local yokel farmers. :idontno:
Yup, I know. My husband is from Wisconsin.

[Cil]

Beach Runner
Your remarks about the roomie from Laguna Beach amused me. We have a lot of SoCal relatives (including Laguna Beach) and have spent quite a bit of time down there. One thing that always throws us is the general blah-ness of the architecture down there. Other than distinctive Mission style and Craftsman houses we saw, we've been severely underwhelmed every time we've been.
(NorCal is another story, another part of the state.)

RiverCamps might be the most we could afford, and it might work for us.
I have been living in a really dense, tight, urban area for a good 25 years now, and I am ready to downsize, mosquitoes and all.

"Absolutely I want that privacy and those woods," she said. "Yet at the same
time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I
want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."
This cracks me up, too! I can live without the Sub-Zero refrigerator, but I like the idea of being out in the woods (camping in a house) with the neighbors and a glass of wine. I've read my share of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and I can be quite a sucker for marketing. :D

Is Cracker really a bad word? I've seen it used in literature. Can someone educate me? Perhaps it is merely the intent behind that makes it bad or good?

[Beach Runner]

Beach Runner
Your remarks about the roomie from Laguna Beach amused me. We have a lot of SoCal relatives (including Laguna Beach) and have spent quite a bit of time down there. One thing that always throws us is the general blah-ness of the architecture down there. Other than distinctive Mission style and Craftsman houses we saw, we've been severely underwhelmed every time we've been.
(NorCal is another story, another part of the state.)

RiverCamps might be the most we could afford, and it might work for us.
I have been living in a really dense, tight, urban area for a good 25 years now, and I am ready to downsize, mosquitoes and all.

"Absolutely I want that privacy and those woods," she said. "Yet at the same
time, I want to be able to invite a neighbor over for a glass of wine and I
want a nice kitchen with a Sub-Zero refrigerator."
This cracks me up, too! I can live without the Sub-Zero refrigerator, but I like the idea of being out in the woods (camping in a house) with the neighbors and a glass of wine. I've read my share of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and I can be quite a sucker for marketing. :D

Is Cracker really a bad word? I've seen it used in literature. Can someone educate me? Perhaps it is merely the intent behind that makes it bad or good?
From dictionary.com:
"Cracker.
Offensive.
Used as a disparaging term for a poor white person of the rural, especially southeast United States.
Used as a disparaging term for a white person."

BTW you don't want a Sub-Zero. I have had an average of two service calls per year on it, ever since it was new. There's still a problem (an unexplained stalactite sort of thing) that hangs down in the freezer that they can't seem to fix.

I haven't been to Laguna Beach - just La Jolla and Carmel, as well as the San Francisco area. What I've seen on the CA coast is all upscale.

[Donna]

This article is, indeed offensive and uses terms the self professed "politically correct" NY Times would not condone if in another context. All goes to show how little outsiders really understand about the South. There is the assumption that we are less intelligent than people living in other regions and that we are all racists to some degree. And this attitude is universal. When I lived in CO in the 1970s, a co-worker asked if we gave the family name to our maid. (In those days, you either had a maid or you were a maid...people had to eat.) When I moved to CA, people assumed I was a racist because of the Southern accent (which I'm proud to still have after 30+ years away) and would say the most outrageous things to me in seeming agreement. Never mind that CA used migrant laborers everywhere, paying them far below minimum wage with no benefits and looking the other way while they literally had families living in cardboard boxes! And the New England states are the worst offenders in this regard. Many of them enjoy making fun of Southerners when they have never been there and know nothing about the region. Meanwhile, we have seen some of the highest illteracy rates in the country in some NE states and the worst race riots of the century in South Boston. The best example of this New England lack of understanding was the 2004 Presidential election, when Kerry chose his running mate on the basis of boyish good looks and a Southern accent...and this perfectly nice fella, it was known then, would not even carry his own home state. (Duhhh...can you say "Vice President Bob Graham?")

[kurt]

Is Cracker really a bad word? I've seen it used in literature. Can someone educate me? Perhaps it is merely the intent behind that makes it bad or good?

That's the thing about language - it's the mind of the sender or receiver that makes a word good or bad.

Cracker was a term used to describe southern pioneers who used a whip to "crack" when urging on the beasts of burden that pulled their wagons or plows.

It has only recently been used disparagingly. In general use it is not considered offensive, such as cracker architecture, etc.

Other times it is used to describe an ignorant southerner. Sometimes the shoe fits.

[Beach Runner]

That's the thing about language - it's the mind of the sender or receiver that makes a word good or bad.

Cracker was a term used to describe southern pioneers who used a whip to "crack" when urging on the beasts of burden that pulled their wagons or plows.

It has only recently been used disparagingly. In general use it is not considered offensive, such as cracker architecture, etc.

Other times it is used to describe an ignorant southerner. Sometimes the shoe fits.
As a native Atlantan, I know that the term "cracker" has been a disparaging term for at least since the Atlanta Crackers were disbanded.

[newyorker]

yipes....
Having moved from the south to upstate NY (I'm an academic dean--academics move to move up), I can attest that northerners, esp New Yorkers, do hold the stereotypical views expressed earlier. But I was born in Vermont--I think that the rural stereotypes (ie yokel) still hold. Interestingly, the poverty I saw in rural Alabama was little different from the poverty that is hidden in rural Vermont....
Class issues are the key here, not regional ones. The NY Times is laughable in its treatment of the south--to use lit crit terms, the "south is other". (ie, not mainstream). But this article addresses issues of class, not region--similar articles have covered New York city types moving to Vermont or now upstate NY to "become rural"--(they've bought up prime farmland for 2nd homes). there's a fascination w. an imagined American ideal of "rural" and both today's article and others play into this imagined ideal. But in reality, there is no understanding of what being rural and poor is all about.
Don't take offense (tho the southern issues are real--I grit my teeth often when folks at my college ask me why on earth I'd go south for my vacation). The amusing thing is to think that people would want to emulate the poverty of the past--and yet the reality is that it takes a subzero frig to "create harmony in the woods." Its just like those who moved to Vermont to discover themselves amongst the "simple people and the maple trees"--they had no idea about how real Vermonters lived.

[GVM]

The Atlanta Crackers was the name of a 40's and 50's baseball team, by the way.

[Donna]

The Majorie Rawlings experience living in the swamps is a good reminder, although she had an ice box, not a Sub-Zero. And I guess that "Cracker" no longer seems disparaging to me as a Florida native, but I am guilty of some self deprecating humor involving that term. One holiday season, we made a banana pudding for some friends visiting from Boston and called it "Cracker Trifle." (They made fun of it, but then ate the entire bowl of leftovers from the fridge in the middle of the night!) No better midnight snack than to "git me some cold 'nanner pudding with that meringue all mashed into it." Can you dig it? :wub:

[Beach Runner]

The Atlanta Crackers was the name of a 40's and 50's baseball team, by the way.
BTW I saw on the Internet that there was also an Atlanta Black Crackers team. I did not know that. Can we say oxymoron?

[whiteyfunn]

Okay...I'll admit that I like the show Laguna Beach on MTV. That's all I'm saying.

[Miss Kitty]

Okay...I'll admit that I like the show Laguna Beach on MTV. That's all I'm saying.

Yep, that's one guilty pleasure there. Liked last year better though. Kristen...NO LC...YES!

[SlowMovin]

The NY Times is laughable...
You coulda just stopped right there.

[kurt]

Cracker Chic - St. Pete Times - 4/6/03
http://www.sptimes.com/2003/04/06/Floridian/Call_it_Cracker_chic.shtml

But the most popular homes reflect Florida's Cracker heritage. Heat and humidity dictated deep eaves on porches, transoms, ceiling fans, cross ventilation and remote outbuildings. The material was local wood and eventually metal roofs. The craftsmanship was honest, the decoration plain and the form a poor man's Palladian.

[kurt]

"Cracker chic," or the faux-distressed look of poor folks' homes, is all the rage in Florida according to an article by Queena Sook Kim (I met her when she was researching the article at WaterColor) in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, so the gist is quoted below):

Architect Jim Strickland bought a 40-by-80-foot lot in a posh Gulf Coast resort community. On it, he's building a poor man's home.
With a corrugated-metal roof, a screened-in porch and clapboard siding, Mr. Strickland's new house has many of the same features as the shacks built by some of Florida's early settlers. The style reminds the 60-year-old Atlanta native of a "less formal, and less affected" time.

[…]

Now, several upscale developers and homeowners are embracing the down-at-heels look -- right down to the outhouse, although all these designer projects have plumbing. The trend has even attracted its own, somewhat controversial name: cracker style.
Folksy style: New houses with corrugated-metal roofs and wrap-around porches aim to evoke old Florida shacks.

[…]

"Crackers lived close to nature," says Mike Reininger, a former executive at Walt Disney Co.'s hospitality development group, who is the creative force behind WaterColor, the development where Mr. Strickland is building his home. "The style has a down-home feel." Including lots, houses in the development range from $750,000 to $3 million.

Local folklore has it that the term "cracker" alludes to the sounds of a whip cracking over the wild cattle that early Floridians hunted. Shakespeare used it as a derogatory term to describe boastful ruffians, and British colonizers later adopted it to refer to backwoods settlers throughout the Southeast. According to Dana Ste. Claire, author of the book "Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History," the first significant wave of crackers entered Florida in the 1800s, when the state passed into American hands.

In the early 20th century, crackers were lauded as craftsmen and embraced by some Southerners as a sort of unsung hero akin to the cowboy. But during the civil-rights movement, Malcolm X famously used the term to deride white racists.

Some older Floridians shake their heads at the recent evolution of cracker from a slur to a symbol of architectural chic. Others are bewildered that people would pay big bucks to live in a fancy version of the kind of house that many were happy to leave behind.

"If you have ever been in a cracker home during a thunderstorm," says Curtis Law, a retired Pasco County commissioner who is a fifth-generation Floridian, "you wouldn't want to get back in one."

[…]

At WaterColor, 30 miles outside Panama City in the Florida Panhandle, developers are going beyond architecture to offer the "cracker experience," says Mr. Reininger. Instead of a golf course within the subdivision, WaterColor has fishing pros at a 220-acre natural lake to teach how to bait a hook and reel in a line. Every year, 15,000 bales of pine needles are brought in to hide the white sand and provide a backwoods feel. Large chunks of weathered tree branches are carefully strewn along trails so "it looks like they just fell out of a tree," says head gardener Snookie Parrish.

The desire to get "back to the basics" is what drew Fort Worth native Michelle Coslik and her husband Steve to a two-story, $1 million vacation home in WaterColor, which is being developed by the homebuilding subsidiary of Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co.

Ms. Coslik's home features 1,000 square feet of screened-in porch. The screen door is made of mahogany and fitted with hinges that mute the slam into a sort of soft thud that one WaterColor marketing executive describes as "the sound of growing up in the South." The cost of the door, including handle, is $700.

Ms. Coslik, 36, isn't using her porch to escape the heat as the early settlers once did. She has air conditioning for that. For her, the porch is a place to meditate and practice Yoga. "When I think cracker," she says, "I think of getting back to the essence and away from material aspects of life."

[kurt]

What is Cracker architecture?

http://www.oldhouseweb.com/stories/Detailed/12106.shtml


In its simplest form, a Cracker house is a wooden shelter built by the early Florida and Georgia settlers. Lured to Florida by cheap and plentiful land, these pioneers arrived with few provisions and needed to erect shelter quickly and cheaply. The brush provided abundant supplies of cedar and cypress. Rocks or bricks made of oyster shell and lime served as pilings to keep the shelters off the ground. A wide shade porch wasn't just an embellishment. In pre-air-conditioned Florida, the porches provided relief from the relentless sun.

[Cil]

BTW you don't want a Sub-Zero. I have had an average of two service calls per year on it, ever since it was new. There's still a problem (an unexplained stalactite sort of thing) that hangs down in the freezer that they can't seem to fix.

I haven't been to Laguna Beach - just La Jolla and Carmel, as well as the San Francisco area. What I've seen on the CA coast is all upscale.

No, I don't want a Sub-Zero--Consumer Reports steered me clear of them when I read the repair reports, and I don't like stainless steel anyway.

I suppose, as we see looking at the different inferences found in language, upscale is all in the eye of the beholder. I really appreciate the Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced architecture I've seen in both northern and southern California, but the upscale stuff I saw seemed awfully McMansionish.
But then I'm not into five car garages.
Some folks have more money than taste.
And yes, the whole thing is at the very least mildly condescending and I can understand why people who know the real deal might scoff, or feel insulted.

[Miss Kitty]

No, I don't want a Sub-Zero--Consumer Reports steered me clear of them when I read the repair reports, and I don't like stainless steel anyway.

I suppose, as we see looking at the different inferences found in language, upscale is all in the eye of the beholder. I really appreciate the Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced architecture I've seen in both northern and southern California, but the upscale stuff I saw seemed awfully McMansionish.
But then I'm not into five car garages.
Some folks have more money than taste.
And yes, the whole thing is at the very least mildly condescending and I can understand why people who know the real deal might scoff, or feel insulted.

Amen!!! I moved "down" 5 years ago from a large older home to a smaller older home in Dallas. I am surrounded by the McMansions front and side, but luckily not in the back...we still have our privacy there! Next door, the people bought an empty lot that had been scraped a while back. On the day we moved in, there builder arrived with workers to CUT DOWN two beautiful elm trees just on their property that created a wonderful canopy over my driveway. I turned into a madwoman and ran out to try and stop them!! I was told they needed the room to accomodate their FOUR car garage!! I have mourned the loss of those trees everyday. Those people now say OUTLOUD...we should have thought twice about building such a BIG place...our kids will be out of here so soon!! More money than taste or sense!!! Thanks for letting me blow off some steam. Simplify.

[seagrovelover]

Amen, Beach Runner. And I'm talking as a native New Yorker who lived ten years in Atlanta and fell in love with it before moving to the Midwest (which I also now love)! Though you need to hear the way Midwest gets knocked down, if you think the South gets a job done on it. Or maybe it's about equal: Southerners are rednecks and Midwesterners are local yokel farmers. :idontno: This is so true, we have had many people assume that we live on a farm or have cattle because we are from missouri!!!! ( not that there's anything wrong with that!!) SEINFELD QUOTE.......I had to laugh when I read you'r post, I think most folks just generalize and group people together way too much these days :roll:

[Miss Kitty]

This is so true, we have had many people assume that we live on a farm or have cattle because we are from missouri!!!! ( not that there's anything wrong with that!!) SEINFELD QUOTE.......I had to laugh when I read you'r post, I think most folks just generalize and group people together way too much these days :roll:

And here in Texas, we all wear boots, ride horses to school and have BIG hair!!! I wish!

[Beach Runner]

Amen!!! I moved "down" 5 years ago from a large older home to a smaller older home in Dallas. I am surrounded by the McMansions front and side, but luckily not in the back...we still have our privacy there! Next door, the people bought an empty lot that had been scraped a while back. On the day we moved in, there builder arrived with workers to CUT DOWN two beautiful elm trees just on their property that created a wonderful canopy over my driveway. I turned into a madwoman and ran out to try and stop them!! I was told they needed the room to accomodate their FOUR car garage!! I have mourned the loss of those trees everyday. Those people now say OUTLOUD...we should have thought twice about building such a BIG place...our kids will be out of here so soon!! More money than taste or sense!!! Thanks for letting me blow off some steam. Simplify.
OMG I know exactly what you mean by the McMansions in Dallas (Atlanta is getting overrun with them, too.) They're huge with gigantic foyers and hallways wide enough to drive a car through, yet on postage-stamp-sized lots. They have every amenitiy you could think of, but they all look alike. Yuck!

[Donna]

The monster house syndrome has been universally resurrected, it seems. We had people building 25,000 to even 40,000-sq. ft. homes in the hills around here and these were second, third, or fourth homes seldom occupied. Some were tastefully done and screened from view; others were garish and a scar on the hillsides. We finally developed a Viewshed Ordinance to control what could be built in scenic areas (practically everywhere here) and we also require a use permit and environmental review on houses that are larger than 5,000 sq. ft. Maybe "too little, too late," but a message was broadcast.

There is a monster house ordinance now in Grayton that controls the size of houses built now by height limitations and parking requirements that are tied to size of the house.

I like some of the so-called "Cracker" architecture. These emulated designs have a tendency to get rather contrived in the translation, however and then it seems ridiculous. "The Truman Show" is a good demonstration of this...good intentions that translate into a somewhat contrived environment. Who would argue that front porches shouldn't see a revival? My concern about RiverCamps is the conversion of all those natural areas to urbanized uses. Where will all the critters live? And I have to wonder if those architects have ever tried to extract palmetto roots? Stay tuned...

[Miss Kitty]

Hopefully, the critters will find a way to stay and make the "simple life" HELL for those people!!! I know that's a bit rude, but there you go.

[Smiling JOe]

The monster house syndrome has been universally resurrected, it seems. We had people building 25,000 to even 40,000-sq. ft. ...
Just wait until the majority of the US population is elderly and living in FL. The monster beach homes around here will be converted into 1-level condos with elevators to access your condo. We tend to think short term only when building these days. :( If your 6,000sf home is not converted into condos, you will probably be confined to a few rooms on the ground floor when you are no longer able to get around.

[FoX]

Hopefully, the critters will find a way to stay and make the "simple life" HELL for those people!!! I know that's a bit rude, but there you go.

The critters will do what they were born to do. If that makes someone feel like they are in hell too bad - but why would you wish that on anyone?

[FoX]

Dog had a sign in front of his condo in Grayton -


"Monster Houses Suck". :laughing1

[jdarg]

I have a question about these "monster" houses at the beach. Are they rented as many weeks as the "normal" houses? We saw a few empty ones in Grayton, and looking at rental company websites, it seems there are always a few that are vacant any given week. Do that many people have huge family reunions? Or pack that many families into a house? :idontno:

Every year it seems to be harder and harder to find a regular old house to rent, and even harder to get one without a pool- we come to the beach to hang out and swim in the ocean! We ended up with a pool this year (waited too late to book and were stuck), and my 3 year old actually cried when she found out about the pool because she thought she wasn't going to the beach!
:(

[kurt]

I have a question about these "monster" houses at the beach. Are they rented as many weeks as the "normal" houses? We saw a few empty ones in Grayton, and looking at rental company websites, it seems there are always a few that are vacant any given week. Do that many people have huge family reunions? Or pack that many families into a house? :idontno:

Every year it seems to be harder and harder to find a regular old house to rent, and even harder to get one without a pool- we come to the beach to hang out and swim in the ocean! We ended up with a pool this year (waited too late to book and were stuck), and my 3 year old actually cried when she found out about the pool because she thought she wasn't going to the beach!
:(

Some of the big ones are not rentals and some are. They do get filled up pretty good with big groups. For small places without pools -
http://www.sowal.com/rentals.html

[Beach Runner]

You are getting off the theme of this thread. You need to start a new thread regarding your distaste for monster houses. The posts in this thread should only deal with responses to the NY Times article.

Just pulling your chain. :floor:

But while I'm being tangential, what's the problem with a non-monster house with a pool? We intentionally didn't put sofa beds in our living areas to reduce the maximum occupancy of our house. The more people there are, the less accountable each family staying in the home is for damage (by our way of thinking). But why not have a pool so that you can swim in January? Why is that not politically correct? :idontno:

[Rita]

My concern about RiverCamps is the conversion of all those natural areas to urbanized uses. Where will all the critters live? And I have to wonder if those architects have ever tried to extract palmetto roots? Stay tuned...

Shoot, they can put the houses on piers so the palmetto doesn't have to be dug and the critters can live underneath the house with their coon dogs. :idontno:

Don't read me wrong, coon dogs are cool - I'm a beagle lover myself!

[jdarg]

You are getting off the theme of this thread. You need to start a new thread regarding your distaste for monster houses. The posts in this thread should only deal with responses to the NY Times article.

Just pulling your chain. :floor:

But while I'm being tangential, what's the problem with a non-monster house with a pool? We intentionally didn't put sofa beds in our living areas to reduce the maximum occupancy of our house. The more people there are, the less accountable each family staying in the home is for damage (by our way of thinking). But why not have a pool so that you can swim in January? Why is that not politically correct? :idontno:

Oh Beachrunner, it's just sour grapes since we rent in the summer, and don't like spending money for a feature we could live without. Maybe if we were able to come down in the winter we would want a pool. But in the summer, we swim in pools at home, and don't really care about one at the beach. The other family staying with us this year have a 1 year old, and didn't understand that it was OK for the kid to spend the whole day at the beach (take a nap under an umbrella!). So they used the pool. The rest of the kids dove in to rinse off after riding bikes home from the beach, but that was it. Honestly, the pool water was so hot, it was not refreshing. I will just plan earlier this year...and find a house with the perfect outdoor shower- now that is something we definitely don't do at home!

[Smiling JOe]

...

Don't read me wrong, coon dogs are cool
I am sure that at least one dog in my house would agree with you on that note.

[Beach Runner]

Hey, jdarg, you're right - the pool is TOO hot in the summer (but awesome October through May). But we do have a few really sexy showers at our beach house. SWEET!

OOPS! Another tangent! :wub:

[SlowMovin]

Pools are popular because so many tourists are scared of the sharks (which fishermen put in the water before they start fishing).

While tongue-in-cheek, I'm actually not kidding. Houses with pools rent WAAAY better than those without...and fear of sharks (even before the recent two attacks) is frequently cited as the reason.

[kurt]

Pools are popular because so many tourists are scared of the sharks (which fishermen put in the water before they start fishing).

While tongue-in-cheek, I'm actually not kidding. Houses with pools rent WAAAY better than those without...and fear of sharks (even before the recent two attacks) is frequently cited as the reason.

You are correct about the demand, and sharks may have been a hot topic lately, but in the past it has been more about rough water, seaweed, red tide, flies, etc.

People like to have something for the kiddos to do if the beach is out for any reason.

I was on the Gulf in Destin today in some high rises for a few hours and didn't see any sharks - imagine that. I guess they decided they don't like our beaches after all. And we were all told they were moving in to feed exclusively on humans. :roll: