A room by room look at the McMansion on The Sopranos

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My study of what the term McMansions means included several newspaper references to the McMansion owned by the Soprano family on the HBO show. The Chicago Tribune story about my study included a large picture of the Sopranos eating a meal in their large dining room. Here is the house from the front:

SopranosMcMansion

Here is my look at the individual parts of the house to assess whether it contributes to the McMansion nature of the home.

1. The front exterior. I don’t know that the front looks that garish. There is certainly a large entryway with a double door and little vestibule but it has a two car garage, the proportions aren’t too bad, and roof has a smaller number of gables. Interestingly, the first season includes several long shots of the house from a distance (including prominent floodlights on the house/driveway) but later seasons include more views from the house down to the street and it appears much closer to the other homes and interlopers, like federal agents, pull into this shorter driveway multiple times. McMansion rating: looks like a big house but not too garish.

2. Foyer. McMansions often have expansive foyers. The Soprano’s house has two sets of doors, one to the outside and then another set into the room. It is a fairly big space with the main staircase to the house to the left when you enter. The foyer also has two columns which we see in later scenes have guns stored inside (they are locked up). McMansion rating: pretty big space.

3. Dining room. The family seems to be shown eating here more than they do in the eating area just off the kitchen. These meals include family members as well as “family” members. It is a big table but not too large. McMansion rating: not really.

4. Kitchen. The room is decorated in a more country style with lighter colored cabinets and floral patterns. The kitchen also has a large island that faces out to the foyer, eating area, and family room. The usable kitchen space itself is decently large but there is a lot of open space just beyond the large island. McMansion rating: no stainless steel, dark wood cabinets, or granite countertops but plenty big.

5. Family room. This room involves one large couch, some other seating, and a decent-sized TV (though nowhere near the common large flat-screen TVs of today). McMansion rating: big but not too ostentatious.

6. Garage. While it is only a two-car garage, it is quite deep. The show doesn’t have too many scenes in the garage but it seems to have lots of space. Also, it is pretty clean. McMansion rating: plenty big.

7. Upstairs. The kids’ rooms aren’t too large but the master suite is pretty  big and also has an ensuite bathroom. A pretty dark room, particularly when Tony is depressed and the curtains are drawn. McMansion rating: plenty big.

8. Basement. This unfinished space is where Tony often carries out face-to-face work conversations while in the house. It is used for some storage and for laundry. It has some decent light next to the laundry area. It is a little strange that the family owns a pricey house and hasn’t finished off the basement. McMansion rating: nope.

9. Pool and pool house. There is a large in-ground pool in the backyard and some important scenes, including Tony’s fascination with ducks in Season One and AJ’s attempted suicide in Season 6, take place there. Tony seems to use the space more than anyone else; we never see Carmela out there alone and the kids aren’t playing in it regularly on the show. There is a pool house which acts as a theater space. This is a definite luxury point in the home. McMansion rating: large luxury items.

10. Backyard. This is pretty large as there is space for a pool, pool house, areas for Tony to hide cash, and it is a little hike to the back fence to interact with neighbors. McMansion rating: plenty of space.

Areas of the house not examined: the more formal living room (rarely used), the eating area just off the kitchen (a small table with four chairs fills the space), the bathrooms (not portrayed much).

Overall, this home fits the general McMansion definition of a large house. It is hard to estimate from watching on the screen but the home is at least 3,000 square feet. Unlike some other McMansions, it is on a large lot – a mobster can’t live in a large house where the next door neighbors are peering in the windows just a few feet away. The architecture and design doesn’t seem too jumbled though there is a clear emphasis on space. And, the home is clearly a reminder of the suburban nature of the Sopranos: the house is the setting for both “normal” suburban life as well as the unusual family life that made Tony’s purchase of the home all possible in the first place. Such a home is intended for the boss, whether it is Tony or John Sacrimoni, as the guys below the boss tend to live in denser suburban settings.

Interstate highways are not intended to be military airfields in times of crisis

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This story about a plane landing on a North Carolina highway reminded me of a myth about the U.S. Interstate system: the idea that they could be used by military aircraft in times of crisis.

Numerous folks swear Interstate highways in the United States must be designed so that one mile in every five is perfectly straight and flat. According to this whispered bit of facetious lore, if the U.S. ever comes under attack, those straight, flat stretches will be used as landing strips.

Belief in this crazy idea should fail anyone’s logic test. It makes no sense to render inoperable the Interstate highway system during times of domestic crisis — moving troops and supplies on the ground would be too important an activity to curtail just to land planes. The U.S. is riddled with any number of small, private airfields that could be pressed into service if the need arose, with that need being dependent on some foreign power having first knocked out an almost uncountable number of major airports plus those airstrips on military bases, not to mention the American fleet of aircraft carriers. Folks who commit to believing this crazy notion of highways doubling by design as airstrips are letting the romance of a “cool fact” blind them to what their common sense should be blinking at them in bright neon letters.

Richard Weingroff, information liaison specialist for the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Infrastructure and the FHA’s unofficial historian, says the closest any of this came to touching base with reality was in 1944, when Congress briefly considered the possibility of including funding for emergency landing strips in the Federal Highway-Aid Act (the law that authorized designation of a “National System of Interstate Highways”). At no point was the idea kited of using highways or other roads to land planes on; the proposed landing strips would have been built alongside major highways, with the highways serving to handle ground transportation access to and from these strips. The proposal was quickly dropped, and no more was ever heard of it. (A few countries do use some of their roads as military air strips, however.)

Some references to the one-mile-in-five assertion claim it’s part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. This piece of legislation committed the federal government to build what became the 42,800-mile Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, which makes it the logical item to cite concerning regulations about how the interstate highway system was to be laid out. The act did not, however, contain any “one-in-five” requirement, nor did it even suggest the use of stretches of the interstate system as emergency landing strips. The one-out-of-five rule was not part of any later legislation either.

This myth could be countered without suggesting that this is such a crazy idea. Small, private airfields would not likely have the length for modern jets nor be able to stand the weight of larger aircraft, particularly bombers. Additionally, the federal government spent large sums of money on interstate highways; wouldn’t they have wanted to get more out of their outlay?

Another way to counter this myth would be to make a larger argument that yes, Americans considered driving so important that the government was willing to subsidize the construction of interstates. In other words, the highways are more about our love for and reliance on cars and trucks than a nefarious Eisenhowerian plan benefiting the military-industrial complex.

The Federal Highway Administration has an official myth-busting page. Here is their answer to two questions of whether interstates were built with defense purposes in mind:

President Eisenhower supported the Interstate System because he wanted a way of evacuating cities if the United States was attacked by an atomic bomb.

President Eisenhower’s support was based largely on civilian needs—support for economic development, improved highway safety, and congestion relief, as well as reduction of motor vehicle-related lawsuits.  He understood the military value of the Interstate System, as well as its use in evacuations, but they were only part of the reason for his support.

Defense was the primary reason for the Interstate System.

The primary justifications for the Interstate System were civilian in nature.  In the midst of the Cold War, the Department of Defense supported the Interstate System and Congress added the words “and Defense” to its official name in 1956 (“National System of Interstate and Defense Highways”).  However, the program was so popular for its civilian benefits that the legislation would have passed even if defense had not been a factor.

Interesting that the federal government hosts such a page…

North Dakota: “Little Housing Boom on the Prairie”

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A booming oil industry in North Dakota has contributed to the state leading the United States in housing growth in 2012:

According to recently released Census data, North Dakota led the nation in housing growth in 2012, increasing its supply of housing by 2.3% in just one year. Overall national growth was 0.3%.

While much of this growth has been focused on the oil patch, the entire state has seen strong economic growth, job creation, and accompanying strength in the housing market. Cities located hours outside the oilfield are reporting shortages of housing and tight markets for existing housing. Shortages of housing have also been reported in small towns throughout the state, as job-seekers move to the region looking to find work in the state’s growing oil and ag industries. A review of the new Census data bears out such reports. North Dakota is home to 8 of the top 100 counties nationwide for housing growth, including 4 of the top 10. Williams and McKenzie County, in the heart of the Bakken development, placed number one and two nationally, respectively, but counties far outside the oil patch also showed strong rates of growth.

The new shift towards more permanent housing construction will probably come as a relief to communities and officials throughout the state, who have been scrambling to find solutions to shortages. While temporary housing for oil workers has boomed throughout the oilfield, local officials have begun to explore limits on such “man camps”, citing their negative effects on local communities, impact on permanent development, strain on infrastructure, and safety concerns. The state has also seen rising rates of homelessness, and faced challenges finding enough workers to fill job openings- often due to lack of places for those interested in moving to the region to work. As estimates of the amount of recoverable oil in the Bakken continue to climb, larger, out of state developers have begun to enter the region, looking to take advantage of what may be a longer, more sustained expansion. With 21,000 job openings currently unfilled statewide and the potential for tens of thousands of wells remaining to be drilled over the next three decades, the pressure for more housing growth to meet the needs of expanding businesses is likely to continue.

It makes sense that housing is following the people and money to North Dakota. But, it is unclear what this means in the bigger picture:

1. Is this housing meant to last, meaning that it is intended to be there 50 years from now when the oil boom may or may not be there? What happens in these communities if these new subdivisions are ghost towns in ten years?

2. Are there any sort of housing innovations in North Dakota? Since this is a unique situation, it seems like a ripe opportunity for some new ideas.

3. Is this housing industry money (real estate, builders, construction jobs) benefiting people in North Dakota or does this involve a lot of out-of-town/state businesses? Growth may often be viewed as solely a good thing but we can also ask who is benefiting from the housing boom.

“Have You Noticed How Adam Sandler Characters Always Live in Giant Mansions?”

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This level of commentary is not usually associated with Adam Sandler movies but this is an interesting question: “Have you noticed how Adam Sandler characters always live in giant mansions?”

Ostentatious displays of wealth are a tricky thing onscreen: Movies are meant to be aspirational, but if the main characters live in over-the-top splendor, not many audience members will be able to relate. No one has passed this note to Adam Sandler though; his characters, more than those of any other modern movie star, tend to live in gigantic, multi-million-dollar megamansions. How does Sandler so often manage to luxuriate in his own wealth without alienating his less fortunate fan base? It probably helps that as his characters’ homes grow ever grander, Sandler’s clothes remain eternally grubby. (Hey, you don’t have much money left over for new duds when the mortgages are this high!) Join us now on a tour of Sandler’s biggest screen houses, accompanied by a look at his wardrobe in each corresponding film. Get ready for some sticker shock!

I have seen two of these seven movies but I have a few ideas about why these characters might live in such homes.

First, the big home represents the pinnacle of success but ends up contrasting with characters who find they need more than money to enjoy life. Big homes are shown as lonely places – there is a lot of room for fun activities but it might take you a while to find other people or have regular interactions with others in the house. Thus, we see the big homes early in the movies as supposed success but we are meant to leave with the idea that one can be house rich and love poor. This is a theme of a lot of movies, not just Adam Sandler films.

Second, big homes (and other garish displays of wealth) are associated with bad people. In other words, movie-goers are intended to see the unnecessarily large home and quickly make the association that the characters living in it are not nice people. The big home is then a shorthand image intended to reveal more about the character of those living there.

This requires more analysis for a definitive answer but these big homes are certainly plot devices. Given the relatively short amount of time in a movie (particularly compared to longer novels or multiple seasons of a television show), these large homes are likely the product of careful decisions.

Home swapping about community life, sustainability

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A new study about people who swap homes are motivated by several factors:

‘My House is Yours’ is the first in-depth study of people using home exchange to travel the world. It was carried out by the University of Bergamo and based on a survey of 7,000 members of the HomeExchange.com website…

Researchers Francesca Forno, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Sociology of Consumption, and Roberta Garibaldi, Assistant Professor of Marketing and Tourism Marketing concluded that “people are turning more and more to models of consumption that emphasise community over selfishness”, and that home exchange “may help to make our societies work better towards a sustainable future”.

“Swapping houses is one of the most significant boundaries of modern tourism, because it incorporates some of the dynamics that characterise the tourist of the new millennium: the increasingly felt desire to travel several times a year, even with limited budgets, the need to organise tailor-made trips as personalised as possible and the desire to make the trip an authentic experience … not only to know a new country with all its attractions, but also to immerse yourself in a new culture,” they said.

The tourist of the new millennium also has a home to swap in the first place.

Additionally, it sounds a like more “ethical tourism” where the tourist seeks to not contribute to the inauthenticity of a place (tourist traps/hotels/resorts, menial jobs, etc.) and would rather move in and out unobtrusively. The 21st century tourist wants to soak up an authentic location and leave it the same or better than when they came. This could have quite an impact on places with lots of tourists, possibly aiding a resistance to a globalized/Westernized set of tourist experiences.

It’s too bad we don’t have a reaction from the tourism industry in this article. Are hotel chains worried or is this something that be marketed and commoditized?

The BBC on why many think the suburbs are boring

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A sociologist suggests British suburbs are not quite as boring as some might think:

Unlike the usual presumption of suburbs as quiet, featureless places “where nothing ever happens”, recent years have seen dramatic happenings in suburbs, not least the riots of 2011 in places like Ealing and Croydon in London.

In many ways the 21st Century suburb faces some thoroughly modern problems. There is crumbling infrastructure, with hollowed out High Streets. There is pressure on public services prompted by population increases, as witnessed in the annual scramble for school places…

But far from being cultural deserts, suburbs have been a fertile breeding ground for artistic movements. It is from the nation’s Acacia Avenues that almost all post-war pop has emerged, even if its artists would rather make out that they hailed from high-rise hell and so be more “edgy”…

Suburbia has shifted to become a place of dynamism housing ethnically mixed populations, as illustrated by the 2011 Census figures, in contrast to the assumptions of uniformity.

This description could also fit some of the changes in American suburbs in recent decades. Inner-ring suburbs, adjacent to big cities, face big city problems. A number of suburbs are looking for revenue due to cuts in federal and state aid. Suburbs are often marked by single-family homes. More suburbs are seeking out cultural and entertainment opportunities, at least to provide increased tax revenues. Increasing numbers of non-whites and poorer residents now live in suburbs. In fact, the final paragraph of the op-ed seems to suggest American and British suburbs are not so different:

We should smash the stereotypes of nondescript suburbia and rather than being embarrassed by them, celebrate those places on the edges of our cities that give our nation its essential character.

The essential character of Britain is in its suburbs?

With these changes afoot, it then is interesting to consider why suburbs consider to have this image as boring. As the op-ed says, some of this is due to media portrayals of banal suburban life, whether through television sitcoms or songs by musicians railing against their suburban upbringings. It is also due to academics and other socially influential people arguing against suburbs. When I think about it, I don’t know if I would say these portrayals suggest suburbs are boring; these critiques are often more negative. Boring implies there isn’t much going on but the criticisms of suburbs range from invoking individualism, racism, materialism, classism, and other social ills.

Wired’s five tips for “p-hacking” your way to a positive study result

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As part of its “Cheat Code to Life,” Wired includes four tips for researchers to obtain positive results in their studies:

Many a budding scientist has found themself one awesome result from tenure and unable to achieve that all-important statistical significance. Don’t let such setbacks deter you from a life of discovery. In a recent paper, Joseph Simmons, Leif Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn describe “p-hacking”—common tricks that researchers use to fish for positive results. Just promise us you’ll be more responsible when you’re a full professor. —MATTHEW HUTSON

Create Options. Let’s say you want to prove that listening to dubstep boosts IQ (aka the Skrillex effect). The key is to avoid predefining what exactly the study measures—then bury the failed attempts. So use two different IQ tests; if only one shows a pattern, toss the other.

Expand the Pool. Test 20 dubstep subjects and 20 control subjects. If the findings reach significance, publish. If not, run 10 more subjects in each group and give the stats another whirl. Those extra data points might randomly support the hypothesis.

Get Inessential. Measure an extraneous variable like gender. If there’s no pattern in the group at large, look for one in just men or women.

Run Three Groups. Have some people listen for zero hours, some for one, and some for 10. Now test for differences between groups A and B, B and C, and A and C. If all compar­isons show significance, great. If only one does, then forget about the existence of the p-value poopers.

Wait for the NSF Grant. Use all four of these fudges and, even if your theory is flat wrong, you’re more likely than not to confirm it—with the necessary 95 percent confidence.

This might be summed up as “things that are done but would never be explicitly taught in a research methods course.” Several quick thoughts:

1. This is a reminder of how important 95% significant is in the world of science. My students often ask why the cut-point is 95% – why do we accept 5% error and not 10% (which people sometimes “get away with” in some studies) or 1% (wouldn’t we be more sure of our results?).

2. Even if significance is important and scientists hack their way to more positive results, they can still have a humility about their findings. Reaching 95% significance still means there is a 5% chance of error. Problems arise when findings are countered or disproven but we should expect this to happen occasionally. Additionally, results can be statistically significant but have little substantive significance. All together, having a significant finding is not the end of the process for the scientist: it still needs to be interpreted and then tested again.

3. This is also tied to the pressure of needing to find positive results. In other words, publishing an academic study is more likely if you disprove the null hypothesis. At the same time, not disproving the hypothesis is still useful knowledge and such studies should also be published. Think of the example of Edison’s quest to find the proper material for a lightbulb filament. The story is often told in such a way to suggest that he went through a lot of work to finally find the right answer. But, this is often how science works: you go through a lot of ideas and data before the right answer emerges.

The cold infrastructure behind America’s food supply

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Alexis Madrigal provides an overview of the cold storage that makes modern America’s food supply possible:

At least 70 percent of the food we eat each year passes through or is entirely dependent on the cold chain for its journey from farm to fork, including foods that, on the surface, seem unlikely candidates for refrigeration,” Twilley writes in introducing her show…

These systems, by design and necessity, exist away from the cities, and even when they’re within cities, away from where the people are. You don’t see them unless you work there, and if you work there, you generally don’t get to tell the stories of the landscape in the popular press.

To venture into infrastructural space is not just to leave the Beltway or the New York media world behind, but to come to know entirely different networks. The nodes on the map are different: Oakland and Richmond, not San Francisco; Long Beach and Hueneme, not LA; Newark and Wilmington, not New York.

In these geographies, the physical reasons people have long chosen certain locations retain their purchase: proximity to resources and markets, water access, transportation access, grid access. Take Allentown, Pennsylvania. It features a logistics hub “where U.S. Foods, Americold, Millard Refrigerated Services, Kraft, Ocean Spray, and others all maintain facilities,” thanks to its “location at the intersection of I-78, I-476, and several East Coast railway lines. It is also close to major urban markets in the north-east corridor–but not so close that the land is expensive.”…

My point here is that this is another America. And it’s neither the pastoral, wholesome family farm of Iowa political campaigns and Wendell Berry poems nor the dense Creative Class preserves where the nation’s bloggers and TV producers live. Almost no one tells the stories of these places.

It sounds like our current food supply is very dependent on several factors that get little attention. A distribution network that efficiently gets food from source to shelves. A transportation system, primarily trucks and railroad, that links this all together. An army of workers in both blue-collar and white-collar jobs that make this all possible. A geographic system/map that doesn’t line up with the global cities of the United States.

Another question to ask is whether it matters much if Americans know this tale of where their food travels. Some have powerfully argued yes in recent years, suggesting knowing this information and being able to make choices based on it is linked to sustainability and enjoyment. On the other hand, many Americans seem happily ignorant of the infrastructure that makes much of their food possible and only care if something goes wrong.

Using suburban homes for film shoots

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The Daily Herald describes what happens when suburban homes are chosen for film shoots:

Directors of Hollywood movies, TV shows, commercials and national print ads regularly use suburban homes as locations for filming and photo shoots. Just a few weeks ago, scenes from the movie “Precious Mettle,” starring Paul Sorvino and Fiona Dourif, were shot at homes in Naperville and Aurora…They will add the photos to their online database and show them to prospective directors. Because they have thousands of homes in their database, the odds of being chosen are slim. But you never know what a director is looking for, and there’s growing demand for suburban-styled homes, said longtime location scout Oryna Schiffman, based in Elmhurst.

“Since the recession started, I’ve been getting less and less requests for your typical North Shore mansions. They say, ‘I want real people who live in real houses,'” said Schiffman, who accepts photos at oryna@me.com. “You never know what they’re going to ask for next.”…

However, there is a downside to offering up your home. Filming and photo shoots can disrupt your routine, your sleep, and possibly your neighborhood. Movie crews, especially, tend to completely take over an area with trailers and equipment. Homeowners usually get short notice about the shoots and need to hastily sign off on the legal paperwork.

While most film crews are respectful of people’s property (and often contractually obligated to return it to its original condition), paint sometimes gets chipped and things get broken or banged up. That’s why it’s important to get things in writing before the filming begins.

Of course, the article starts with a story of a family who was paid $12,000 for giving up their home for six days for a print advertisement shoot. There may be quite a few suburbanites who would relish such an opportunity.

The quote that directors are looking for “real homes” is interesting. The suggestion here is that with tighter economic times, people want to see more normal homes while during more economic prosperous times people like seeing bigger homes. When they arrive at a home, how much do they take the home as is or they change it up to suit their filming needs? Plus, how often is the tone of the commercial, TV show, film, or advertisement that the suburban home needs improving or there is something to critique? On one hand, there are a lot of critics of suburban tract homes but they are apparently useful for marketing and some artistic purposes.

Keeping chickens at McMansions

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Here is an explanation of recent efforts to allow raising chickens in Stonington, Connecticut, an area known for things like McMansions:

Having chickens in the back yard was fairly common when I was growing up in the ‘50s in Westport, Conn.

We kept a flock and so did our neighbors, who eventually had nine children. At the time, chicken feed came in cloth sacks with calico print patterns and we girls often wore summery skirts my mother made us all from the repurposed material.

Westport has changed a lot. Most people equate it now with movie stars, Martha Stewart and McMansions. What hasn’t altered is its acceptance of backyard chickens…

In Stonington, it takes three acres – to have two chickens. Legally.

Certainly, there are many chickens living under the radar here. But why not make them legal? And why not let more people “share the joys of chicken keeping?”…

Like Westporters – and in a growing number of communities around the country — those who wished could gather the freshest possible eggs from a backyard coop, use the poop for fertilizer, reduce the number of ticks and other insects in their yards, feed their flocks kitchen scraps and add another piece of self-sufficiency to their lives.

This discussion about raising chickens has occurred in numerous American communities in recent years, particularly with more people interested in knowing where their food came from as well as cutting costs in light of the recession. But, can chickens and McMansions go together?

1. McMansions are generally associated with wealth and higher property values. Chickens might eat into the image.

2. McMansions are sometimes associated with big houses on smaller lots. This doesn’t necessarily leave much room for keeping animals or having large gardens or doing much at all with the yard.

3. Allowing chickens might help improve the image of McMansions with critics. One big criticism of the homes is that they are not environmentally friendly. Imagine big homes making space for free range chickens, having green roofs, being powered by solar panels or geothermal sources, or being very energy efficient (passive homes or net zero energy homes). Perhaps chickens (and other livestock?) could help McMansions be more green.

In the end, fighting over allowing homeowners to keep chickens mirrors the debate over McMansions themselves: how much latitude should individual homeowners have with their own property?