Nice Work If You Can Get It

You know about staging a house you're trying to sell, right? Reduce clutter, bake bread, clean the toilets. Here's a new one: staged neighborhood.

Say the homes in a particular new development aren't selling. Economy in freefall, foreclosures rampant, you get the drift. In an attempt to pump up sales and entice prospective new home-buyers -- who might, understandably, be reluctant to move into a ghost town -- the entire neighborhood is "staged."

Temporary landscaping is trucked in, empty houses are filled with signs of life (furniture, plants, food in the cupboards, bread in the oven), and -- here's the best part -- actors are hired to impersonate nearby homeowners and neighbors.

Did you miss that? Actors are hired to impersonate actual people.

Try wrapping your brain around it: a prospective buyer is brought in for a walk-through, and all around them actors are seen mowing lawns, walking dogs, barbecuing, jogging. Some are engaged in drive-bys: errand-running, leaving-for-or-returning-from-working, soccer-momming. Child actors are employed to impersonate children playing, and their older counterparts, presumably, to impersonate teenagers making all the other actors around them feel like shit.

Do you suppose the dogs are also considered professionals, likewise the potted plants?

In some extreme cases -- and this is the biggest mindfuck of all -- house-hunting clients are invited to attend block parties (all actors), local church services (completely fictitious, but don't get me started on that one) and organized ball games (again, entirely staged).

All to create the illusion of an active, vibrant community. Move over, Rod Serling.

The obvious question is how, precisely, this...let's call it "situation"...differs from any other suburban development in the good ol' US of A. I mean, do you really think those are actual people living out there in all that sprawl? Who in their right mind would want to live like that? At least the actors in a staged neighborhood can go home at the end of the day. Home being, one assumes, elsewhere.

But what's really fucking with my psyche is this: how do I know that my own life isn't being staged? Are these really my neighbors? Is the pizza delivery guy actually some ingenue from central casting? After all, it's a different guy every time. And what about that person behind the counter at the liquor store? Or the mail carrier? Is this my actual mail? Who's that dog barking? Are those real birds? And how much would you have to pay a baby actor to scream like that?

The fact that my life has been staged would explain alot. For instance, why am I such a deadbeat? a hasbeen? a slacker? It's all staging! My lack of success has been written into the script! Every neighborhood needs a character like me...so here I am! Fulfilling my civic duty.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just here in a supporting role for the broad next door. Or those jerks across the alley who cut down the trees so they could grow asparagus and then moved to Canada. Half of Vancouver probably turned up for that casting call. Or maybe we're all just here for the dogs. Maybe it's their show. I mean, somebody has to pick up the shit and fill the water bowls.

The good news is that the practice of staging entire neighborhoods isn't exactly an epidemic. Mostly it happens in California and Florida. Oh really? Nothing odd ever happens in those places. Still, wouldn't you love to impersonate a fly on the wall when one of those new home-buyers wakes up in her new tomb of a neighborhood the next morning? Talk about blackout.

"Er, honey...exactly how much champagne did we have last night?"

It's hard to believe something as surreal as staged neighborhoods actually exists. At first I didn't believe it. But I live in the USA (also I heard it on NPR) so it must be true.