Houses Painted Black

Dear editor:

An open appeal to my fellow denizens of this lovely mountain village: Please stop painting your houses black. I suspect that this all started as a prank, a macabre jest to rattle the neighbors, right? But the joke has gotten seriously out of hand when every third house on the street is decked out in shades of doom.

I mean, no culture on earth has ever considered black an appealing residential color. (Yes, the tint is technically “charcoal gray”; technically, however, “charcoal gray” is just another term for “black.”) Black — it feels weird to have to say it — is not an upbeat hue. It is, on one hand, the color of menace, the sartorial choice of B-movie badmen and Halloween beasties. On the other hand, black conveys melancholy. It is the color of failed hopes and despondency.

Around the corner from me an entire complex of buildings, formerly dipped in a cheerful shade of red, has now been thoroughly submerged in tar-like blackness. It stands out as a swath of despair on Fern Valley Road.

Of course, the “charcoal gray” craze is not a joke but rather a hipster trend, much as puka shell necklaces and perms for men were when I was a kid. But here’s the news: Hip trends flourish for a year or two and then begin to look a bit silly. Before long, we’ll all be scoffing, “Black? That is so 2023!”

What do you say, dear Idyllwilders? Let’s put down those paint sprayers and find ourselves a new fad, one that doesn’t dress our neighborhoods in mourning. Perhaps we could bring back rollerblading or something.

Christopher Morse

Fern Valley