Kitsch and culture on Dream Street IN COQUITLAM, Our Man Stanley recently paid $7.50 to be allowed to see some houses that are for sale. So did about 6,000 other Lower Mainland people on that day. Stanley took the free bus ride up the mountainside expecting that the house-sellers were going to pay him to look at their pro- ducts. After all, he is old enough to remember paying exactly twice that amount, $15, to buy a workable, licensed automobile which he drove for more than a year. He was forced to the unoriginal thought that times have changed as he parted with $7.50, which wouid once have brought him seven good steak dinners, and joined the other 5,999 of the Sun- day crowd walking the Street of Dreams. There were seven large houses ~ on seven small lots to be visited. At the first, the man at the door said the price was one one. That’s . the way he said it. One one. Stanley rigorously excluded thoughts of a thousand one hun- _ dred or a hundred and 10 thou- sand and leapt to the accurate conclusion that the price was one million, one hundred thousand dollars with the fridge thrown in but not most of the other fur- niture. For three hours, our man was powerfully educated not only about new houses but about the new society in which the status - - symbol is a movie theatre in your home, together with 50-inch TV - screens in the kids’ rooms. | The houses on the Street of -" Dreams ranged in price from $750,000 (three-quarters, as we say) to $1,288,000. They are, he had to assumé, the _dream houses of Yuppiedom, and ‘they were not going to de bought by that. rather loud lady in the ‘. cheap dress who said that you a bh What social comment was being made by the — architect who piit a wet bar in the foyer... 99 i jhouldn’t have to close a kitchen . ‘+ supboard in order te open a : fridge door. .. , Dreaming was not for her. Although he had no way of . : testing, Stanley felt assured that " these were better built houses than he knew in his youth. Better in- ~ °. gulation, sounder construction and -- building inspectors around them , like flies cn a honey pot. {t was other aspects of houses on the Street of Dreams that left . kim impressed, sometimes aghast .and almost always surprised. Surprise: The main purpose of . buying a million-dollar house is to let the world know that you can - afford it. ’ If nobody ever carne to look ' . with envy, you might never buy in the first place. Yet not one house on the Street of Dreams had a swimming pool, the status symbol of generations. Surprise: The homes were stuff- ed with art works, some of them appallingly ugly but most at least Paul St. Pierre PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES costly. Yet oniy one house doasted of burglar alarms and most look- ed as easy to Open as a Brunswick sardine can. Surprise: Although built on a mountainside overlooking the Fraser River and Gulf of Georgia, few rooms had views. Most win- dows overlooked the neighbors’ roofs. As with all things architectural, there is always a bit of humbug. The brochure for one of the houses boasted that the house has “elaborate dental details.” “That means all the details,"’ said the man at the door. **But dental refers to teeth.’ “Not when they use it. They mean all the elaborate details.”’ (Stanley later learned from his wife that it means gingerbread woodwork resembling teeth.) But Street of Dreams was for young men such as this one, who might never crack a book before making his first million. Of the seven houses displayed, five offered no space whatever for books. One had a library with a _ nice, brassbound sliding ladder, but the shelves couldn’t have con- tained more than 50 or 100 books. Equally distressing to our man ° was the juxtaposition of quality and kitsch in the same structure. Why did the builder who could afford good marble in the hallway put imitation tile on the front en- trance? It’s like finding battleship linoleum on the floor at a state dinner in Buckingham Palace. And why did another home called opulent have a pay tele- phone booth? Also what social comment was being made by the architect who put a wet bar in the foyer of another house? The living room, Stanley learn- ed, has followed the parlor into extinction. Most dream houses had living rooms smaller than the master- bedroom master-bathroom com- binations or the TV roomis. There were lots of bathrooms. One four-bedroom house had seven. But there was not a single work room in a basement or a : mudroom for kids to kick off dir- ty boots. , Perhaps there will be no dirty boots. Perhaps no kids. Perhaps no hobbies, only TV and sta- tionary bicycles to pedal in the games room. . 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