LONELY IS AN EYESORE
Aug. 4th, 2009 03:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogITEM [via BoingBoing]: Here’s the Oasis Tower One in Fort Myers, FLA. It’s a 32-floor condo high-rise ... with only one tenant.
The development company has offered to move the family to another tower at no cost while they figure out a solution, but the family declined because they’d still be paying their mortgage on the original condo. They want someone to buy them out – only who’s going to make an offer?
I confess, my first thought was: “Cool, where do I sign up for that deal?”
Then I started thinking about that scene in 28 Days Later where Brendan Gleeson and his daughter are living in that high-rise by themselves.
It wouldn’t be that extreme, of course. But it does get me thinking about the nature of voluntary isolation. Plenty of people want to get away from it all. But they move to environments conducive to isolation: farms, mountain cabins, desert shacks, etc. In other words, places where there aren’t supposed to be other people.
Unlike condo high-rises, which are supposed to be well-populated.
There’s something about unoccupied buildings, isn’t there? When I was a lad traipsing through the Tennessee woodlands, I’d occasionally come across some old house built anywhere from 50 to a hundred years ago and long since abandoned. There was something sad yet fascinatingly eerie about seeing a place intended for human residence left to decay, as if traces of past lives were haunting yr peripheral vision just out of sight. I used to get the same feeling prowling around auto graveyards looking at rusting beat-up cars. I imagine shipwreck sites must evoke a similar experience.
To say nothing of abandoned amusement parks, schools and swimming pools.
So, upon reflection, I wouldn’t want to live there. I may play a misanthrope on the web, but I know from personal experience that solipsism only gets me so far through the day.
There is a light that never goes out,
This is dF
The development company has offered to move the family to another tower at no cost while they figure out a solution, but the family declined because they’d still be paying their mortgage on the original condo. They want someone to buy them out – only who’s going to make an offer?
I confess, my first thought was: “Cool, where do I sign up for that deal?”
Then I started thinking about that scene in 28 Days Later where Brendan Gleeson and his daughter are living in that high-rise by themselves.
It wouldn’t be that extreme, of course. But it does get me thinking about the nature of voluntary isolation. Plenty of people want to get away from it all. But they move to environments conducive to isolation: farms, mountain cabins, desert shacks, etc. In other words, places where there aren’t supposed to be other people.
Unlike condo high-rises, which are supposed to be well-populated.
There’s something about unoccupied buildings, isn’t there? When I was a lad traipsing through the Tennessee woodlands, I’d occasionally come across some old house built anywhere from 50 to a hundred years ago and long since abandoned. There was something sad yet fascinatingly eerie about seeing a place intended for human residence left to decay, as if traces of past lives were haunting yr peripheral vision just out of sight. I used to get the same feeling prowling around auto graveyards looking at rusting beat-up cars. I imagine shipwreck sites must evoke a similar experience.
To say nothing of abandoned amusement parks, schools and swimming pools.
So, upon reflection, I wouldn’t want to live there. I may play a misanthrope on the web, but I know from personal experience that solipsism only gets me so far through the day.
There is a light that never goes out,
This is dF
