-I managed to live IN a crack house.
- My house was robbed and I had every single item of value stolen out of my apartment while I was in class. A week after my apt. was robbed, the thief returned and robbed the crackhead upstairs at knifepoint. I also once saw the same crackhead having sex with a hooker in the entry vestibule (through the peep hole).
-I lived three blocks from the largest heroin scoring location in California (19th and Misson in SF). I also saw a 16 year old girl get stabbed with someone elses heroin needle in the McDonalds there.
-I lived in the middle of a gang territory war (19th and mission again)* where a gang member was shot on my front door step. That apartment also burned down shortly after I moved out.
-Then we moved back to SF’s outer mission and lived across the street from Kentucky Fried Chicken (ok, that one doesn’t sound so bad until all your things end up smelling like fried chicken from the ubiquitous wafting grease). At that apartment, someone hit my car and ran, causing over $5,000 in damage.
-Then we moved to Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood where our next door neighbors were drug dealers who kept fighting dogs (barely) tied up in their yards. These neighbors also like to shoot guns off at random, for no reason.
-When we moved back to SF, we found a nice place in a “nicer” neighborhood where we witnessed This Incident of gang/large group violence down the street from our house. We were the first on the scene and called the cops/ambulance to come help the unconscious victim.**
-When we moved here we moved across the street from the neighborhood crack house, which conveniently also was home to a number of violent registered sex offenders.
When we finally abandoned our gentrifying ways, we bought a house in Leave It To Beaver land in the suburbs and thought we would have no problems. Apparently, in the three months since we moved to the suburbs, we have gone soft. We haven’t been locking the house doors when we are at home. We never lock our car doors. Heck, I don’t even know if we have a key for the back door. Well, we got what was coming to us today.
This morning A woke up at some ungodly early hour to go swimming at the gym. When he went out to his (unlocked) car, someone had stolen all his change and rifled through the glovebox. Then he noticed that the garage door was open and his garage door opener was missing. Strangely the didn’t take anything from the garage.
Because they took the garage door opener, we decided to call the cops and file a report. Just in case they would decide to come back and steal the bigger, more valuable junk tools or bikes or whatever the could find in there (not much). It took forever to fill out the report. We totally suspected it was just some kids screwing around, but given our past luck with crime, we thought we would rather be safe than sorry. Just as the cop was leaving, our next door neighbor found our garage door opener in the street next to his car. So most likely it was just some kids, rather than a hardened criminal staking out our house for a future burglery.
Really, though. I ask you what I could have done to make my karma so screwy. Could we please have one just ONE drama-free week around here?
*Oblivious Midwestern girl that I am I thought “Huh, yesterday the graffiti on my building was red. Today it is all crossed out and replaced with blue. Strange…”
**This apartment was also where I had my biggest neighbor war with the older Chinese guy across the street who liked to block my parking spot. The pinnacle of that feud resulted in an 8 months pregnant me screaming “FUCK YOU!” multiple times at the guy and almost having the police called. What can I say, I was hormonal and he was in my parking spot.
