17 March 2007

The Natives Are Restless

The other day I posted about all the neighbors coming out of hibernation and carrying on in the streets. Well, I didn't find out until two days later, but that night there was a shooting in the next block. Probably involved some of those baggy pantsed persons I saw all over the street. I was not at home at the time or would probably have heard the shot.

Today I was reading in the kitchen and heard a bullhorn. I started looking out windows and saw police vans and cars parked all over the next block, where the shooting had been. They hauled someone off. It's going to be a noisy summer.

One of the problems with my urban neighborhood is constantly revolving renters. For a few months it will be quiet, then the bad ones move in and bring all their friends and it's a constant parade of noise and litter until they get evicted for non-payment. In the houses that I can see from my corner lot, probably only 5 of them are owner-occupied.

I'll be keeping the police number by the phone.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

We have a lot of that here in Jackson, or should I say Rentopolis. Mainly in the big Victorians downtown there seems to be a really rotten nomadic core that inhabits about five square blocks. Someone is always getting picked-off in that area during summer at 2 in the morning, usually related to drugs.

Anonymous said...

The genealogy study that you did for Greg over at Petch House was wonderful. My brother-in-law’s brother in law, William Philby, was really into genealogy . I have always been more interested in where I’m going and not where I came from. Although it is kind of fun that my great grandmother’s first cousin was Edwin Booth, the actor. According to my mother, she never acknowledged her other cousin, John Wilkes. I did once try to find information on the Booth family and found that they came from England and all the children (I think it was four boys) were illegitimate.

Marilyn said...

Kathy:
You don't throw down a challenge like that in front of a genealogist! I found some good sites on the Booth family. First off, go to Wikipedia. There are a lot of links at the bottom of the pages on The Booth Family, or any one of the famous children. Here ia the genealogy: http://www.tribalpages.com/tribes/colacola
Some nice pictures, there, too. Seems old Junius left England and a wife and two children with his pregnant mistress for Baltimore. He married her in 1851, a year before he died--probably for legal reasons. BUT--looks like his wife followed him over and died in Baltimore in 1858!! So he was a bigamist, too. I managed to find the family in 1860 in Philadelphia and Edwin and John are listed as "Tradegians".

Marilyn said...

Patricia:
Here on the West Side we have people that circulate from house to house, living with friends and getting kicked out for non-payment. Some of them are harmless, but I'm glad I'm not a landlord.

Anonymous said...

Marilyn,
Thanks for the info. My mother's father was named Edwin (after his mother's cousin). Sadly I never met him, he died of a sinus infection that went to his brain in 1934 (before penicillin was available) when my mother was 12. My mother has only one picture of her father, I'm going to see if I can borrow it and compare it to some of his cousins!

Brooklyn Row House said...

It goes with life in the city, I'm afraid. I don't know if it hit the national media yesterday but two rookie cops were killed by a gunman on Bleecker Street in Manhattan yesterday. That was two blocks from where I lived before moving here.

In contrast, this neighborhood is like living in Copville. Brooklyn SWAT (ESU) is stationed three blocks from here, as is the NYPD heliport, as is NYPD K9, as is Brooklyn South Major Crimes, as is the 68th Precinct house. The neighborhood is used to train undercovers. Police turn-out for even relatively minor incidents is pretty stunning.

Maybe I'll post a story about something that happened on the next block last year. Police response was stunning, to say the least.

Anonymous said...

Clicking through from blog to blog I came upon your slice of the Internet and read your post about some of the activity going on in your neighborhood. We have that here too in Oakland, CA (probably not surprising given Oakland's reputation); the only difference is, it's the grandkids of people who have lived here forever. All the grannies have the biggest thug grandkids.