5 Reasons Why Coming From Suburbia Is Really Lame

I come from Gravesend. As you may have observed in previous posts, it's a relatively bleak suburban town in North Kent. Pretty much everyone from my University is from London, and if they're not, they pretend to be. There's a common misconception that coming from London is really cool.

I guess it kind of is, but judging someone on where they come from is the most fickle bullshit thing imaginable.

So yeh,

Here it goes:

5. Transport

Lets face it, the word suburbia implies that the province or district in question is distinctly distanced from any form of 'proper' life. It takes me 45 minutes to walk into Gravesend Town Centre from my house, and 15 minutes to drive. You can walk it without seeing another person, and if you do they are probably cutting the grass or doing something equally as gay. Buses in Gravesend are ironically fairly frequent, however for some reason really quite expensive, and unfortunately paying £3.10 for an aggressively nihilistic alcoholic to drive me into Kent's answer to Grozny renders all of my morals completely obsolete.

4. There are loads of old people

No matter how much anyone wishes to deny it, suburbia is full of old people. Old people generally aren't that cool. Driving around some of Gravesend's more tranquil housing estates on pension day mirrors the opening scene of Ali G Inda House, you know when Sasha is driving to the Jon NIke Leisure Centre in his hideously pimped out Renault 5 listening to Jungle? Yep. That's the one.

3. Shit Music

Music always reaches suburbia way too late. It's hard for a scene to develop in a place that's built purely for the purpose of people getting up, going to work and then going to sleep, or carrying out other pointlessly menial routines. The indie scene touched on Gravesend very briefly around 2006, with one alternative night at a gypsy run nightclub every Sunday providing some refreshment.

It gave some local bands a decent gig and they let underage people in to get battered on loads of cheap booze, however local culture seemed to prevail in putting an end to this remote form of alternative creativity. 'Love, Peace and Dirty Sheets', as the night was called, met its tragic demise when the bouncers of the place, who were probably all related in some way, decided to commit grievous bodily harm on the lead singer of one of the bands, after he very kindly asked to go to the back room and collect his equipment. Further questions of the premises were asked following a police raid and it was eventually shut down. Sigh.

2. Chavs



Yes, they do still exist. Suburbia has been breeding chavs since my time as a teenager and it's really not looking like it's going to let up anytime soon, in Gravesend at least. It is rumored that the word 'Chav' actually originated from Chatham, a disgustingly backward town around 20 minutes from me, which would explain a lot about the local area to be honest. But yeh, I guess a lack of contrasting cultures in a relatively small environment has bred this race of people, who generally go around doing most of or all of the following things:

- Listening to Drum n bass. And by Drum n bass I don't mean good Drum n bass I mean shit Drum n bass with chavvy white MC's who smoke too much weed and talk about drinking WKD in parks over really shit horrible beats that all sound like they were produced in 1999.

- Daring each other to punch people for the way they look/dress.

- Leading irresponsible sex lives, resulting in Jeremy Kyle-esque pro-creation, STD's and further stretching of the benefit system.

- Wearing chavvy sportswear that wasn't even cool when chavvy sportswear was remotely cool in like 2002. This includes stuff like Carbrini, Lonsdale, Diadora, Voi Jeans and these really lame Nike hats that your Grandad would wear to walk the dog if only he himself didn't want to be labelled:



It's 2010 guys, come on. Get over it. Garage is dead.

So yeh, my last point is:

No matter how much you try to pretend: SUBURBIA = NOT GHETTO!



This one is the biggest sell-out. I spent a large part of my childhood running away from kids who were bigger than me and wanted to either steal my phone, hurt me for going to Grammar School and being a geek, or remove me of the £1 coin that my Mum gave me to go and buy a paper.

There are loads of suburban towns all over the UK that are shit-fucking rough just like the one where I'm from, but at the end of the day, there aren't enough black kids, high-rise buildings or police sirens to be able to sit in your room fully justified, smoking a spliff and listening to N.W.A and say:

"Yeh man! I can really relate to this shit!"

Oh well.