It's that bad

You're near me! I tell you, I'm not sure why I left the city. Oh yeah, poverty and then jobs kept me here.

I'm no longer in Oswego, but Oswego is where I grew up, graduated from highschool etc. I moved there circa 1988 and it was a town of about 3,000 just outside of the urban sprawl. The attitude was generally a glorified "small town livin'" pomposity.

Not twenty years later it is amazingly about 25,000 douchebags strong.

Build the Field of Franchises and they will come. No really, I mean REALLY it is a cornfield expanse of franchises. Where there were cornfields five years ago there are Panera Breads and Home Depots and Best Buys and tons of stip malls jam-packed with franchises.

And then there's the fields that have turned into cheaply-constructed prison-like row houses.

And if you want to see 2/3 of my graduating class, go into a bar called Garcia's located in a strip mall on the main drag of Route 34/Ogden.

It's good if you want to guzzle Miller Lite and score some coke whilst watchin' sum sports.

Also, where have you lived/traveled to all your life that you've never seen the suburbs before?

Yeah, what really struck me was how rawly scrubbed everything was. And the great preponderance of all that forced landscaping. Everything is either under construction or you can still smell the fresh paint. And Meier next to Target next to (coming soon!) Walmart.

Originally I read your final question as referring only to Chicago suburbs but then I reread it and thought about it and realized I've had limited exposure to any kind of town that I would consider to be a suburb. I lived in Tampa, FL, which claims to be a city, until I was 15. Then I actually did live in a suburb of Tampa until I graduated high school. But this particular suburb didn't have quite the same feel with the McMansions and the big box stores springing up all over. That didn't actually happen until about 5 years ago in that particular area. What I saw was strip malls and doctor's offices and subdivisions but it had more of a lazy, crumbly redneck feel. And there were still working farms around which contributed to it just feeling rural. Sounds ilke it was a lot like the Oswego of your youth.

After that I lived in two college towns (which I think have a different vibe than a suburb) and then Chicago. So yeah, suburbs aren't too much in my realm of experience.