Photo By John HoffSo a couple weeks ago, all four of my car tires got "poked."
I won't say they were "slashed." They were merely "poked" in a pathetic and weak-wristed kind of way.
This has happened before and, I strongly suspect, it will happen again. If you call 911, 311, blog about crime in the neighborhood, sit on neighborhood committees, pal around with the police, if you do everything possible to clear the criminal underbrush so decent people want to buy up vacant houses and live in this neighborhood, even if they're not into the same level of adventurous activism, well...
If you do THAT kind of stuff, sooner or later some of your positive energy blows back as negative energy. Poked tires are very minor compared to the stupid doomsday predictions I had to endure when I first started blogging about the colorful battle for neighborhood revitalization in NoMi.
Where are the doomsday critics NOW? This blogger is still alive. So let's examine the score, shall we?
Regular readers know I wrote before about the time four of my tires were slashed, and I carefully drove to Highland Auto Tire (just a few blocks away) on flat, wobbly rubber.
Then there was the time I was off truckin', and...
...I had two tires "poked," one passenger window busted.
Now all four of my tires were "poked." Again. Thank goodness my friend Jeff Skrenes, Hawthorne Housing Director, lent me a tire iron--turns out I didn't have one in this vehicle--and the good guys at Highland Auto Tire loaned me another jack, because I really NEEDED two jacks.
(Unlike the Jordan Neighborhood. Get it? Two jacks? JACCs? Never mind...)
In this incident, the car was also "keyed." What's so FUNNY about that is the car's paint job is SPRAY PAINT. The paint was worn off down to the metal, so I touched it up with paint that was pretty close, but not EXACT. And yet the side of my car with the spray paint paint job was KEYED.
How STUPID is that? Like, oh gee, do you think I don't have ANOTHER can of spray paint or even the leftovers from the original paint job?
So...
Two things to address: PROGRESS and FEELINGS.
As far as progress, the stuff with the slashed tires is minor compared to all the things I've managed to do in the neighborhood, whether by blogging or shoes-on-the-sidewalk stuff. I consider slashed tires merely my "cost of doing business," like when a restaurant has to buy toilet paper. Sooner or later, you have to deal with some....
NEVER MIND.
Second, how does this make me feel? Let us sit around, then, and talk about my sensitive, delicate, precious (expletive) FEELINGS. Here is how I feel:
Jealous. I am jealous of Peter Teachout and his eternal glory, because his truck was torched on the Fourth of July last year, and yet he's all, like, "I'm not selling my house. I'm not leaving. I'm going to turn this neighborhood around" and his statement is, like, in the Adventures Of Johnny Northside movie project.
I won't say they were "slashed." They were merely "poked" in a pathetic and weak-wristed kind of way.
This has happened before and, I strongly suspect, it will happen again. If you call 911, 311, blog about crime in the neighborhood, sit on neighborhood committees, pal around with the police, if you do everything possible to clear the criminal underbrush so decent people want to buy up vacant houses and live in this neighborhood, even if they're not into the same level of adventurous activism, well...
If you do THAT kind of stuff, sooner or later some of your positive energy blows back as negative energy. Poked tires are very minor compared to the stupid doomsday predictions I had to endure when I first started blogging about the colorful battle for neighborhood revitalization in NoMi.
Where are the doomsday critics NOW? This blogger is still alive. So let's examine the score, shall we?
Regular readers know I wrote before about the time four of my tires were slashed, and I carefully drove to Highland Auto Tire (just a few blocks away) on flat, wobbly rubber.
Then there was the time I was off truckin', and...
...I had two tires "poked," one passenger window busted.
Now all four of my tires were "poked." Again. Thank goodness my friend Jeff Skrenes, Hawthorne Housing Director, lent me a tire iron--turns out I didn't have one in this vehicle--and the good guys at Highland Auto Tire loaned me another jack, because I really NEEDED two jacks.
(Unlike the Jordan Neighborhood. Get it? Two jacks? JACCs? Never mind...)
In this incident, the car was also "keyed." What's so FUNNY about that is the car's paint job is SPRAY PAINT. The paint was worn off down to the metal, so I touched it up with paint that was pretty close, but not EXACT. And yet the side of my car with the spray paint paint job was KEYED.
How STUPID is that? Like, oh gee, do you think I don't have ANOTHER can of spray paint or even the leftovers from the original paint job?
So...
Two things to address: PROGRESS and FEELINGS.
As far as progress, the stuff with the slashed tires is minor compared to all the things I've managed to do in the neighborhood, whether by blogging or shoes-on-the-sidewalk stuff. I consider slashed tires merely my "cost of doing business," like when a restaurant has to buy toilet paper. Sooner or later, you have to deal with some....
NEVER MIND.
Second, how does this make me feel? Let us sit around, then, and talk about my sensitive, delicate, precious (expletive) FEELINGS. Here is how I feel:
Jealous. I am jealous of Peter Teachout and his eternal glory, because his truck was torched on the Fourth of July last year, and yet he's all, like, "I'm not selling my house. I'm not leaving. I'm going to turn this neighborhood around" and his statement is, like, in the Adventures Of Johnny Northside movie project.
(See bottom of my blog roll for clips and more info)
So my score: Ten tires. One window. One paint job.
Peter's score: ONE TORCHED TRUCK. By my reckoning, Peter is still ahead.
But, hey, is this the cost of blogging about neighborhood revitalization?
Cheap at twice the price.
HOWEVER, and please take note of this: I did not make a police report. The car is a loaner from a friend or relative, who didn't want their name on an official report associated with me and my activist efforts. (Though it's apparently fine for me to blog about it. Strange. What can I say? I have strange friends and/or relatives)
I am obedient to the law, but I have blood oath loyalty to my friends and/or relatives. So I just had to endure the incident rather than waste the time of a police officer, taking down a report on a minor crime that will never be solved. It's on this blog. There is a record of it. It's public enough.
Incidents like this are what make me realize crime stats don't tell the whole story. There are many incidents which, for one reason or another, go unreported. There are undoubtedly people who are wounded with bullets and drag themselves home, where friends perform surgery with whatever is handy. At some level, I almost have to admire that. When thugs are virtually extinct in NoMi (North Minneapolis) will we get nostalgic for them?
I hope we have the opportunity to find out. I BELIEVE we will have the opportunity to find out. Because I'm not breaking off, I'm not backing down, I've put down roots and I'm staying. FOREVER.
ADDENDUM: Forgot to count a broken window from the time my van was stolen. So TWO broken windows.
So my score: Ten tires. One window. One paint job.
Peter's score: ONE TORCHED TRUCK. By my reckoning, Peter is still ahead.
But, hey, is this the cost of blogging about neighborhood revitalization?
Cheap at twice the price.
HOWEVER, and please take note of this: I did not make a police report. The car is a loaner from a friend or relative, who didn't want their name on an official report associated with me and my activist efforts. (Though it's apparently fine for me to blog about it. Strange. What can I say? I have strange friends and/or relatives)
I am obedient to the law, but I have blood oath loyalty to my friends and/or relatives. So I just had to endure the incident rather than waste the time of a police officer, taking down a report on a minor crime that will never be solved. It's on this blog. There is a record of it. It's public enough.
Incidents like this are what make me realize crime stats don't tell the whole story. There are many incidents which, for one reason or another, go unreported. There are undoubtedly people who are wounded with bullets and drag themselves home, where friends perform surgery with whatever is handy. At some level, I almost have to admire that. When thugs are virtually extinct in NoMi (North Minneapolis) will we get nostalgic for them?
I hope we have the opportunity to find out. I BELIEVE we will have the opportunity to find out. Because I'm not breaking off, I'm not backing down, I've put down roots and I'm staying. FOREVER.
ADDENDUM: Forgot to count a broken window from the time my van was stolen. So TWO broken windows.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar