Alleys

[radhead]

Did anyone here ever live in a house with an alley? I get the feeling that neighborhoods with alleys are becoming less and less common. Perhaps some ritzy neighborhoods, or those with garden-style homes (no driveway, garage in back).

I grew up with one. So I always considered them normal to have. They are mainly used for garbage collection, or for some people who have garages with rear entrances. They are nice for walking in if you don't want to deal with automobiles invading your "space."

I lived in a neighborhood briefly that didn't have any. It sort of made sense. They seem like they would be safer. No place for bad guys to hide at night. That made it difficult for me to go on long walks while I lived there, though. I had to be careful not to drink anything for a long time before, or I might have trouble making it home in time (if you know what I mean). That was a great convenience with alleys.

I can't believe all the strange places I used to go walking at night. It was never scary at the time, but thinking about it now really creeps me out!

By the way, I just had a dream that featured alleys and walking in them, which I posted in the Dream section, for anyone to enjoy free of charge. You're welcome, don't mention it.

 

[SmileAndAHandshake]

We have them here, though they are less the "Dark dank places of crime" that you see in the movies about big metropolitan American cities, and more like quaint little places to face your driveway and put your garbage and chase away racoons from, but I've never been "scared" to walk down an alley here

So the neighborhoods will have a street where two rows of houses face in (no driveways, usually not much of a yard), and the next street over will be the alley which is where your driveway would be (for two rows of houses [one from the above-mentioned street and one from the street next door], driveways facing each other, sometimes a yard but usually a back deck instead and a garage, and you put your garbage out there typically), and then the next street over would be a street again. It's fairly common in some areas.

But when I grew up? Alleys didn't exist. Everyone had a driveway that faced the street and big front yards and what not. I had no idea about real life alleys until I moved out west.

 

[radhead]

I was referring to residential alleys, too. They aren't scary places, true. But you never know what could be lurking there at night.

 

[BRISH]

Wow...didn't know there wasn't one in between every street in America. How odd...

 

[Dzhessika]

Yep , before I moved here we had an alley behind our house kept the garbage back there and our garden was accessible from the alley also had some really great neighbours behind us

 

[LoneSheep]

We had a couple of alleys in my old neighborhood. One was a place where people had basketball hoops and kids played there to get out of the street. The other was sort of grown in and hosted a bunch of stray animals

 

[alfrodull]

I've lived in a couple neighborhoods that had them. I always hated it, since my night vision is terrible and one of the places was semi-sketchy. No voluntarily walking out there after dark for me, unless I had trash that absolutely had to go out right then.

 

[BarelyBreathing]

We have alleys here............. but not like the city alleys, tucked behind buildings and dark and scary like. I live out in a small town rural area. People here rarely even have privacy fences like you see in cities all over the south. Our alleys are for trash collection. We all have big dumpsters out back in the alleys. Some people have their driveway/garage in the back and they drive the alley to get to their house. Of course, our neighborhoods are not new either. This house is 100 years old.

 

[radhead]

My grandparents used to live in a really small town. They would actually burn their trash in a metal container, then close a metal lid. Apparently, a truck would come by occasionally and collect the ashes. It was so infrequent, though, that I never saw it happen once, even though I would visit sometimes for weeks at a time.

I've always wondered if that would be better for the environment, if everyone burnt their garbage first, and then the ashes were collected instead.

 

[BRISH]

~sigh~

Gotta love small town America.


(Trash burning in town?! That would be an automatic citation from Barney Fife here, for burnin inside the city limits!

 

[LoneSheep]

The one eldery woman used to tell me she would buy chickens at the market and pluck them in the alley behind her house. She even had my dad help when he was a child.

Ah yes, the old days lol

 

[lostaquarium]

Unfortunately, I find alleys scary It goes back to when we lived in inner-city Manchester (in the UK) - it was a really bad area, and my parents were poor, young, foreign, and paranoid. They instilled all sorts of fear in me about walking in dark lonely places

I guess in some areas they might be a nice place to walk in. Though I'd prefer not to.