In the Ghetto.....late post
I live on the edge of a ghetto. Usually I get the pleasure of hearing shitty rap music blaring too loud. Every couple of days I get to hear people yelling at their kids. Last Sunday I experienced a new little joy...violence. Jade and I were watching tv when a loud car stopped in front of our house. Trailing the car were three people yelling...two guys and a girl. They are shouting at the people in the car. The driver gets out of the car wielding a +4 baseball bat of smashing and starts shouting "what's up? whatchoo gonna do?, etc" The other 3 people back off a bit, but continue yelling. The driver gets back in the car and the two other guys start kicking it as it lays rubber up the road. I think that's it, but oh no...not even close. The guy turns around up the street and tears back down the road about 50 miles an hour or so. When they get in front of the house he slams on the brakes and SWERVES TO HIT THE GIRL. Now, in retrospect, I believe it was posturing. But shit, he came within a foot or two of hitting her. More shouting occurs, the driver turns up the next street and gets out of his car and starts swinging his baseball bat around. At this point I decide to do something I've never done before....I called the cops. I thought about just letting them go at it (after all, what business is it of mine), but I was afraid someone was going to get seriously hurt. I couldn't find the number for the cops in the front of the phone book (kinda surprising), so I had to call 911. Turns out somebody else had already called about the same disturbance. By this point they had moved up the next street. I could still here them shouting but couldn't see what was happening. 3 cops cars came and that was the last I heard of it. Gotta love the ghetto, always something exciting going on. On that note, it's time to get some home protection for myself. You never know when you need to defend yourself and I don't even have a baseball bat.
posted by jason @ 3:59 PM
16 comments
16 Comments:
We don't even live on the edge, we live amid the violence - the gun kind. I don't find it exciting. In fact, that was the underlying reason I adopted a dog shortly after we bought this house. We have gangs, anarchists and general hoodlum types. I got to meetings every month wherein we meet with cops who patrol our neighborhood and the aldermen. We are a neighborhood they are trying to clean hope. I hope that you don't have anymore violence. It sucks.
It felt wierd to actually call the cops, didn't it?
Jason, remind yourself that the violence you see is just a bunch of stupid people threatening action. I'd be willing to bet that worse shit happens every day on Amber's block. Doesn't that make you want to move to a downtown neighborhood in a big city?
You should have said 'white woman in trouble'. The cops would've been there pronto.
If I were to call the cops:
911 operator, what's your emergency?
Ya, there are some crazy fuckers out here trying to hurt themselves, and they might destroy my property. Could you send some fucking pi... uh, officers over as soon as possible.
yeah, calling cops is weird, but I am beginning to feel a twinge of happiness when I see them in our neighborhood. I do believe within five years things are going to be MUCH better. Most of the neighborhoods surrounding us are worlds apart and they used to be like ours. I believe that attitude "don't go in the city, it's dangerous" is one of the contributing factors to cities becoming so messed up, and neglected. I am a huge supporter of taking the city back and making it a great place to live with beautiful buildings and real history - unlike the cookie cutter houses of the 'burbs. One other thing - violence can be anywhere, not just in the city.
agreed.
the urban renewal projects here in Denver are HUGE compaired to the boom in suburbs 10 years ago. There are countless neighborhoods with McMansions (when someone buys an old bungalow home, tears it down, and builds a brand new house that takes up the entire SF of the lot - with no yard left to spare!) and redeveloped area where abandoned strip malls, k-marts, and airports used to be.
the pros are great - the cons are that it gets more expensive for old city residents to exist in their neighborhoods - mainly the poor and elderly. pretty soon - they'll all be moving to the suburbs because it's more affordable. THEN where will the violence be?
but you're right, A - violence can be anywhere.
I don't feel near as threatened in our neighborhood as I did in the old ghetto apartments, where I heard all kinds of shit going on and there were always thugs congregating in the parking lot. Or, the ghetto apartment in Carbondale, where there was a crack house across the alley from my window and a shotgun went off that two guys were fighting over. That freaked me out for a long time, because I lived by myself. And, I did call the police about that.
We're kind of "cushioned" in that there are safe people on both sides of us and the rental ghetto places are really around the corner. The problem is the traffic back and forth. I wish they didn't have to drive down our street to get there.
~Jade
You guys are right, violence CAN be anywhere. BUT, there are some places where it happens more often than others.
The people who live in the city now are there for a reason. They live in low-rent neighborhoods because that's where they want to live.
I can't believe either of you would tell me that it's just as safe to live in a neighborhood that has a long history of violence as it would be to live in one that has no history of violence.
People have opinions about the city for a reason, it's not like they just woke up one day and decided the city wasn't a safe place to live. The city has NEVER been a safe place to live when compared to other places.
I disagree, as usual, the neighborhood I live in does NOT have a long history of violence. Quite the contrary in the whole scheme of things. I've talked to people from St. Louis who grew up in or around my neighborhood in the late 1970s and it was not violent, it began it decline less than 30 years ago and probably reached it's peak in the past 15 years. It's a misconception at that because when people flee to the suburbs they leave the city to decay and THAT is when the unwanted/unused properties are bought up, turned into low-income rental properties that slum lords let rot. That is exactly what my neighborhood is fighting right now. blahblahblah. No matter where you go you're still going to have violent/ignorant people.
Amber, you should relax. You're going to have a heart attack if you always think i'm picking on you. I never said your neighborhood had a long history of violence, but you just did. 30 years sounds like a long history to me.
What do you think made the people move out of the city in the first place?
` I did live in a ghetto before. I heard gunshots all the time!! Thankfully, my worst attack so far in my new semi-ghetto has been a car-egging.
Spoony...gotta watch out for those wicked car eggers...they're evil to the core! More importantly, watch out for the hooligans that steal hood ornaments...I knew a few when I ran with the "rough crowd" as a youth. I think they were in a gang called "the jets". When your a jet, you're a jet, etc.
Yeah, it did feel weird to call the cops. All my life they have been a hassle to me more than anything. The funny thing is I knew it probably wouldn't make a difference. After I called it took about 10 minutes for them to show up, by that time somebody could already be dead. I thought about that before I even called them, thinking the situation would dissipate. The reason I called was just in case in didn't dissipate. In that rare instance they may actually have been able to do something. Unfortunately, I figure 90% of the time the cops are just there to take statements...the problem is that whatever is going to happen will have already happened by the time they get there.
On another point, I actually would like to live in a downtown neighborhood of a big city. When I lived in KC I always wanted to live in the Westport area, over where my friend Meg lived. Sure, there were crackheads around. However, there were also a lot of cool people in that area as well and spending time there always made me feel alive. Other than the crazies, there is actually a tight knit community....that's the part that I would enjoy, even with the risk. I find that the suburbs offer little in the way of interaction with your neighbors. Everyone is off in their own little world. That's the story in my neighborhood. You won't ever see a block party or bbq. I do love Columbia though. It's a small enough town that you run into people you know often when you go downtown. Tonight we went to an art gallery crawl and I ran into 3 different people I know at different places. I like that feeling.
Going back to the first post, when I said there was always something exciting to see I was being sarcastic. I absolutetely abhore violence and I don't like the way it makes me feel. When this situation went down, my adrenaline was through the roof, and I wasn't even involved! I'm much more the peace and chicken grease kinda guy.
Desegregation - also known as the "Great White Flight".
These people couldn't deal with the even the idea that their pure white children would be educated with let alone have to go bathroom with non-whites. You don't believe me? Look around on the internet, look at the history of KC, it's a fine example of what happened.
As for 30 or less years being a long time, look at the violence in the Gaza Strip, the Middle East, India, Bosnia, hell anywhere that USED to be Yugoslavia. Thirty years is nothing for these people, we're talking generations here.
I'm not having a heart attack, I'm just trying to keep things in perspective, seriously.
Amber, you're more racist than I thought. Every issue boils down to race today, doesn't it? Don't you think that there were other contributing factors? Maybe poverty and violence?
We live in America which doesn't have such a long recorded history, but has a much longer history of violent behavior. If you think about it, this land has just as long a history of violence as any other.
The fact is, there are good and bad neighborhoods in the city and in the suburbs. The difference is that the bad neighborhoods in the city are on the same blocks or across the street from the good neighborhoods.
Jason - You never knew any of your neighbors when you lived in Fox. Why do you think you'd get to know your neighbors better if you lived in westport?
I already knew several people that lived down there through Meg. Also, that location is more conducive to socializing (bars, restaurants, street art fairs, etc)
shit i loved living in the ghetto when i first moved to denver. I was like an odity because there were no other white people around and the neighbors would just at me like i was out of my mind for even being anywhere close to this area. the funny thing is that i never had one problem the entire time i lived there. there was even footage that aired on cops that was filmed a block away. i couldnt even get a pizza delivered to my house, However i do have a new appriciation for sitting on the front porch sippin a fotey yo !!
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` Oo! Sounds exotic!
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