I have got to stop reading Duke City Fix. While it's more than okay for happenings around the city, the sacrasam-and-hatred drenched posts about the West Side sends my blood pressure sky high. Some of the posters are just evil to anyone identified as a West Sider. For a bunch of seemingly open-minded/progressive people, the Duke City Fix posters don't seem to realize fellow Homo Sapien Sapiens live on the west side of the Rio Grande.

I call it the Robot Republican phenomenon. The West Side's home to the housing boom because Albuquerque doesn't have any direction to grow but west. And boy howdy, has it grown. Development runs rampant and seemingly unchecked; the schools are overcrowded and the infastructure can't meet the sudden rise in traffic. Most of the geeks interest in civic development are appalled at the big-box-and-SUV development mentality and automatically seethe at the concept of the west side.

Here's where the Robot Republicans come in.

Some folks -- those who can't imagine moving out of their postwar rambling stucco-and-hard-wood floor homes -- cannot fathom any other rational person would shun the heart of the city for new construction out on the mesa. This manifests as "what are you, a Republican?" in polite conversation. Sometimes followed by "well, are you a robot or something? I mean, Jesus, the West Side?"

This has actually happened. New Years' Eve.

Awesome party.

Anyway, until city leaders and civic wonks and average citizens decide to heal the rift between east and west, it's going to remain ugly. And really, if everyone west of the river decided to up and sell and move back, there'd still be ugliness. And really, the ugliness can come from so many different angles: if a person doesn't have a problem with big development per se, they can worry over our lack of water (which is one of my concerns). If water doesn't float their boat, they can rail against a lack of foresight in infastructure planning, or impact fees or the rocketing home prices friggin' with everyone's property taxes.

It's absurd, our city and the way we so rip at each other. Somtimes I can't help but laugh. Laugh at the irony of people railing against the developments in one breath while deriding the high-density, zero-lot-lines in the next. Laugh at the Robot Republican questions. Laugh at the mindset of people who moved to our neighborhod because it was "safe" when there are condemned houses and meth houses and registered sex offenders just as there are in every other part of the Duke City.

I don't see a solution to healing. This isn't a blue-bandana-red-bandana kind of rift. I don't even see a suggestion of a solution.

But all this anti-West Side sentiments does spur one bit of my soul. I want throw a party. I'd call it "Slumming it in the Suburbs" and open our house to everyone we know. I figure all of our hip, child-free, downtown livin'-and-lovin' friends will scare the neighbors while maybe underlining how so far removed the 'burbs aren't. Or maybe everyone will just get a hangover and ignore the bigger issue of comprehensive city planning.

I don't care. I'd be happy either way.