I wrote this a couple of years ago, as a journal, when I was living in a crappy neighborhood. I does touch on issues of what we attract into our lives, but it's mostly just a rant.
There is this belief that when a certain type of person--a "bad element"--moves into a neighborhood, they bring the property values down and quality of life diminishes.
Some of that thinking is the basis of "White Flight" out of urban and semi-urban areas.
Usually said "bad element" are Black, Poor and from "The Projects".
I used to believe that was entirely bad thinking until I met my neighbors.
And not just the ones next door. The ones across the street, and two houses down, and two houses up and over THERE and... about half the damn street actually.
Apparently, a lot of my neighbors are either:
a) related to each other; or
b) really good friends
Because they all party together ALL THE TIME.
Ok, so maybe ALL THE TIME is exaggerating a bit, how about A LOT.
They have what I can only describe as Block parties. Several houses participate, playing loud music into the streets at all hours, blocking driveways, wandering the street intoxicated...
I mean, when you have ONE anoying neighbor, that's bad enough but when it's most of the street? What do you do? Move? Put the cops on Speed Dial? Learn to live with it? Become a sniper? What?
I could say that it would be different if I were invited to their little soirees but, that's not true. I don't want to hang out with these people. They annoy me with their inability to shut the fuck up and their letting their dogs roam free and their loud-assed music and their public drunkeness and their I-Live-Here-So-I-Own-The-Whole-Damn-Street attitudes...
I just want peace, quiet, an obstruction-free driveway and a beer can free lawn. I just want them to shut the hell up and respect that there are SOME people on the street who don't want to have to deal with that shit.
I want them to realize that they are living on a RESIDENTIAL STREET and not the damn projects.
And, yeah, that was a classist thing to say. I freely admit it.
I'm black, my neighbors are black--African American if you prefer--but that's where the similarities end. I didn't grow up in an area where stuff like this happened.
To be clear, I did NOT grow up in Happy View Hills Lane Place with stately McMansions and white picket fences. And I did NOT grow up rich… or even comfortably middle class.
As a matter of fact, I grew up in a neighborhood much like this--working class and preredominantly black. But, when I was growing up, the street I grew up on was quiet. People didn't pull this shit. Although 98 percent the neighborhood was Black, they owned their homes and cared about having a nice, quiet place to live. They respected each other and they respected the concept of Private Property and Public PEACE.
And I will admit that my comment about the projects is not entirely right. There's more to being an inconsiderate asshole than coming from "The Projects". Go up to "Frat Row" near the university and you encounter the same shit. And most of those people are NOT from the projects.
It all boils down to a wanton disregard for other people, no matter how you color it.
I know this.
But I also know that a lot of the people in my neighborhood (and other semi-urban neighborhoods in my city) ARE from "The Projects". After City Council decided it would be great to tear them all down to make way for high-priced Yuppie condos, they had to go somewhere.
But there is more to it than that. For some reason, there are people in this world who, when presented with something nice, have to turn it to shit. Maybe because shit is all they know. Maybe because they think they are ENTITLED to turn it to shit.
Again with the wanton disregard for other people.
So, they party in the street and toss their empties anywhere and generally trash the place. After all, someone else will clean it up, and if it doesn't get cleaned up, that's ok too. They don't care either way.
Some people just can't have nice things. The problem is, they tend to make it hard for other people to have nice things too.
And once it starts, it's hard to stop it. When the street I grew up on changed, my mother moved. She put up with it for a while then put her house up for sale. There were other reasons but the quality of life in her old neighborhood was a huge factor. Other neighbors moved as well, and some stayed and put up with it through gritted teeth.
That's not right. We shouldn't have to put up with it through gritted teeth. We shouldn't have to put up with it at all. And we shouldn't have to move either.
But what we DON'T do is band together and show a unified front. We don't form our own group and make it clear that that shit won't fly. We suffer, individually, in silence. We don't even bother calling the cops anymore because that just makes it worse. They get LOUDER in defiance the minute the cops leave. I've called the cops FIVE times in one night before, a WEEK NIGHT. At 4:30AM I gave up. I'd start a neighborhood group if I even had the first idea of where the "troubled" end and the "troublemakers" begin.
Some may say, "Hey, that's what you get for buying a house in a ‘bad’ neighborhood." But No. That's NOT what I deserve. That's not what anyone deserves. There are noise ordinances and public drunkeness laws and leash laws for a reason, because no one deserves having their peace disturbed on a regular basis.
Because everyone deserves a nice place to live and home should not be a source of stress and discomfort.
At least, my home shouldn't. My home is my refuge from the world, my sanctuary, my Elysium. Hard to achieve when the world keeps intruding. I have no air conditioning, I shouldn't have to keep my windows closed for a little peace and quiet.
I think the thing that bugs me the most is that, I firmly believe in The Golden Rule. That I, personally, should not do anything to anyone that I would not want someone to do to me.
So, I don't have loud parties in the street. I don't throw my trash in my neighbor's yard. I don't block their driveways. I don't drive my car down the street with the volume on ELEVEN. I don't sit in front of people's houses in my car with said volume at ELEVEN. I don't block traffic both ways to have a conversation with my homies. I don't stand in the street having screaming arguments with my "baby daddy". I don't stand in the street and yell incoherently because I can. I don't let my dog roam the neighborhood without a leash.
I don't, in short, act like an inconsiderate Fuckwad raised by rabid dingoes. I CAN'T, (even though my neighbors deserve a healthy blast of NIN at 6AM - when they are sleeping off the drunk), because that goes against my basic nature. It's just WRONG.
I keep to myself and "don't bother nobody" and expect others to do the same.
It's like living with a slovenly roommate who is perfectly happy to wallow in his own shit and trash your living space. Except, you can't kick this "roommate" out.
But when I find myself looking forward, with trepidation, to a long night of: drunken incoherent screaming; loud music; intrusion upon my property; the sounds of beer bottles hitting pavement; and the occasional gunshots…
When I wake up in the morning (if I've slept at all) with my yard glittering in the morning light with shards of broken beer and liquor bottles and soggy clothes (the fuck?) and empty food containers strewn about
I find myself thinking maybe the whites had the right idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment