Fuck the burbs.

Now that I’m on the fringes of the hood, paradoxically, my car hasn’t been bothered once. Part of that is being on a dead-end street, part of it is the fact that the block I live on is home to at least three houses full of badass Mara Salvatrucha gangstas. These guys are hardcore – muscled like bulls, covered with tats and ready to rock&roll at a moment’s notice. A homeless guy tried to catch a nap under a shade tree on one of their front lawns a while back. One of the Maras (shaved head, white t-shirt, shades) came out to tell him to get lost. I heard the homeless dude slur back “Hey, fuck you.”

The Mara nodded, went back into the house and came out with a couple of his homies. And a jug of Kingsford lighter fluid.

Since then, word seems to have gotten around to steer clear of this area. The little homies don’t even come down to try to tag fences and walls.

Otherwise never mind.

I never go to that ATM anymore.

And Brad, sorry to hear that your car has been victimized. That’s one problem with old-fashioned, walkable, urban living areas… no reliable, secure parking. When we were house-hunting in the working-class suburbs north of Boston, it became clear that builders considered garages a “frill” until sometime in the 1960s. My partner grew up in northern Michigan, where some houses had attached garages before they had reliable electric service. (Or possibly indoor plumbing.) There’s just too much of modern America, from the “inner cities” to the exurbs to the boonies, where it’s somewhere between incredibly difficult and totally impossible to survive without a car of your own, dammit.

Hey Dok. Good idea. But I had to think “damn, if I drove one of those, I’d pretty much have to ALWAYS wear pants”.

Of course, there’s a downside to everything…

mikey

I always leave my doors unlocked. Not to prevent thieves from breaking my windows, but because my key won’t unlock the driver’s side door, and crawling across from the passenger side is too much hassle to protect the nothing of value I keep in the car.

The car got rifled through the other night, in fact. The jackass(es) left all the valuables, which were a 97 cent pair of earbuds and a half empty jug of detergeant. I did lose a case of CDs awhile back, but I guess you can call that karma since most of the CDs were burns from pirated mp3s. Bastards got my copy of Meddle, though. You pick the place and I’ll choose the time, jerky.

…it could be raining.