In Defense of The Suburbs

If you've ever spoken to me for more than ten minutes, you'll know that I generally hate suburbs. This is partly for all the reasons that it's currently en vogue to be anti-suburb — their spatial inefficiency, their whiteness, their terrible houses — and partly because I'm such a bad driver that my body basically shuts down if I spend too much time away from public transit.

Today, though, I am not here to complain about suburbs. Nay; for once in my life, I'm here to praise.

Because sometimes, friends, you need a suburb. Sometimes, you just have to turn off your pandemic-atrophied walking legs and have someone shuttle you around to malls, Top Golfs, and chain restaurants. 

I was reminded of this recently on one of the semi-annual jaunts that my boyfriend and I take to the suburbs, living as we do near the northern edge of the city. On this particular journey, we got exotic by suburban standards and had K-BBQ for dinner — not exactly the Red Lobster and Cheesecake Factory fare we usually go for, but still satisfyingly suburban given that this meal cost $29 per person for a literal all-you-can-eat meat feast. The city limits of Chicago contain many wonderful things, but bottomless bulgogi for under $30 is typically not among them. 

You know what else the city of Chicago barely has? Bath and Body Works. Freakin' Old Navy. Listen, I lurrrve my little walkable neighborhoods packed with small businesses, but sometimes you need a bottle of Peach Bellini hand soap and a pair of shorts that cost $15. Did I, just yesterday, take a 30-minute round-trip walk because I wanted to buy the new hot romance book from my local bookseller instead of the chain store I had literally seen it in hours before? Yes, I did. But that does not make me immune to the charms of rolling up to a shopping mall and knowing that, within 200 feet, you can find novels, nail polish, sporting goods, parkas, and pet supplies from a series of chain stores whose inventory you've had memorized since the Bush administration. 

Another perk of the suburbs are the kinds of giant, flourescent-lit businesses you can only fit into a town with irresponsibly low population density. Do you think they could fit a Medieval Times into midtown Manhattan? Could downtown LA support 300,000 square feet of IKEA? The answer (until urban planners in this country get far more creative) is no — and that's a key consideration one must make before declaring that suburbs should be yeeted off the planet. 

The reason that Patrick and I found ourselves in the 'burbs last week was just such a weird, giant business. The suburbs of Chicago, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis have one chain that is frankly unlike anything else I've ever encountered. It's called Sybaris, and — avert your eyes now, relatives and colleagues who know the place by its seedy reputation — we are obsessed with it. 

Sybaris Pool Suites is, to put it euphemestically, a couples' hotel. It's there for sex. But that is not why we've gone there three times in the last four years. We go for the pools. This place is a hotel where every room has a private pool in it.* Some of them have waterslides. Do you know how bananas that is as a concept? Do you know how much space that requires? A hotel like that could only exist in the suburbs, and because of that, Patrick and I will always have at least one reason to schlep ourselves to Northbrook. 

[*Note: Technically, some rooms only have hot tubs, but if you're booking those, you're a deviant. Truly why are you choosing this place if not for the pools?!]

If you need more convincing on the merits of Sybaris, then hey, twist my arm, I'll give it to you. The rooms also have massage chairs. The decor is three parts wood paneling and one part screenprinted palm-tree mural. There are no windows. The place gives 1970s basement in every way, yet it is also consistently the best-cleaned hotel I've ever stayed in.

I should really be on Sybaris' payroll at this point for the number of friends I've recommended the place to (now including you, I guess, dear reader who did not ask for this). But Sybaris should be on the payroll of these suburbs, for reminding us all that you don't need culture to have a good time; you just need a big, dumb swimming pool in a town a few miles up the highway.

Domerberry Album Review: The Tortured Poets Department

Hello, friends. Did you miss me? 

It's been a while since I fired up the ol' Domerberry, but you and I both know why I'm here today. Taylor has a new album, and as I am beholden to my twelve-year-old Swiftian bargain, I simply must review it. 

I'll tell you, folks — I was excited for this one in a way that the album didn't entirely live up to. The "tortured poetry" idea intrigued me, as a former emo kid currently embroiled in what I think Satan himself would call a tortured era. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, please ask around among our mutual friends until you get there. IT WILL BECOME OBVIOUS ONCE YOU KNOW.) But this album...didn't give me much torture! 

It was torturously long, of course. On no planet did we need 31 songs of this. But, apart from the length, the torture I detected was spotty — visible at times, especially in the back half, but interspersed with a lot of things that read more as just slightly sadder Midnights songs or numbers that displayed not so much torture in the writer's mind as a desire to torture M*tty H*aly. 

(Footnote on Matty, by the way: I had genuinely forgotten that Taylor dated this man until people started talking about him after this album leaked. Not a great sign for how engaged I'd be with this content!) 

I've only gotten through this five-day-long album a couple times so far, so I think I'll need more listens and more brain space to truly make a judgment on something this sprawling. But, as always, there's no need to let the half-formed nature of my opinion stop me from sharing it loudly and firmly on the internet. So let us begin! 

The Tortured Poets Department: “We declared Charlie Puth should be a bigger artist" is the strangest lyric she's ever written, even if it is a joke. No further comment.

Down Bad: Yes to this! I've addressed before on this blog the way I cringe when Taylor Swift swears, given how false it tends to sound coming from her terminally wholesome face. But, on this one — where, mama, she is SWEARING — it worked for me. To go briefly into Uncharacteristically Earnest Confession Mode, I am myself down bad for my partner, and given the large, biological villain threatening to ruin that for us at the moment, I really resonated with the anger behind this one. As Spring Awakening taught us years ago, sometimes you just need to toss out eighteen F-bombs in one song.

So Long, London: Congratulations to every college kid currently studying abroad in London for the weeks of pensive window-gazing they'll get out of this as their semester winds to a close next month.

But Daddy I Love Him: She really dragged us to hell with the chorus on this one. On first listen, no exaggeration, my jaw FELL when I heard, "I'm having his baby" — and then the woman says, "No I'm not, but you should see your faces"?!?! You got me there, gal. This one in general is quite good, though it has to be said: "sanctimoniously performing soliloquies" has the exact superfluous-big-words energy of "frozen fractals all around,” and girl that is not the Disney song you were trying to reference here.

Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine): Early contender for my favorite on the album, which is the first time the words "favorite" and "Florida" have ever coincided in my world. My explanation here is vibes-based and simple: This really just sounds like a Florence song, and Florence is great! I love this one, even if it does have the people of Destin catching strays over seemingly nothing.

loml: Listen, is this a bad song? No. But, with that simple little piano part and the eye-rolling mic drop of the final line, is it the song I would absolutely have chosen to perform at my high school talent show? Yes. 

I Can Do It With a Broken Heart: Hoooooooooooooo baby. It is wildly unoriginal for me to say I saw myself in this one — me and every other girl on Twitter, right? — but I most assuredly did. As with "Down Bad," I have a slightly different reason to identify with it than what Taylor was writing about, but there is little better metaphor for my last six months than a half-manic woman metronomically hitting her marks on stage while her life burns down in the background. Writing both your grandmothers' obituaries in one week while at your boyfriend's hospital bedside? Baking cookies for chemo nurses while working two jobs? 🎶🪩 I cry a lot, but I am so productive! 🪩🎶

The Black Dog: Taylor Swift has been to Logansport, confirmed.

So High School: A lot has been said about the truly horrific lyric, "you know how to ball / I know Aristotle," but I need to draw everyone's attention to the next one, which is, "touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto." [stares directly into camera] Please don't, actually! 

The Albatross / I Look in People's Windows / Peter / The Bolter: Listen — a lot of this back half blurs together for me. My bedtime is 9 p.m., and Taylor made me stay up far past that on two consecutive nights to get listens in on this album around my work schedule. However, my hazy memory recalls these four as especially good tracks from the Folklorish indie genre I rarely want from Taylor but like having an emergency playlist of anyway, just in case it rains and I want to be sad. So thank you Aaron Dessner and sometimes Jack Antonoff for producing that; you may now, please, PLEASE, both leave so the next album can reflect the producing interests of literally anyone else.

Thanks for reading, friends and enemies! If you need me in the next month, I’ll be in my house, listening to this album I just roasted on nonstop rotation.