Urban life

Okay…that was interesting… Just got back from the planned Costco run we contemplated a couple of hours ago. And yea verily, I picked up a $25 cash card and tooled over to the gas pumps, there (I thought) to fill up the Dog Chariot.

Well. Not so much.

Miraculously, a line is empty so I drive right in and jump out of the car. Before I can stick the new cash card into the pump, I hear someone screaming.

Some guy is making a ruckus on the street that runs south of the Costco gas pumps, and he is completely, BATSH!T rabid. He’s yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs, in a total rage, flailing his fists in the air and jumping up and down. The guy defines Batsh!t. He’s either having a psychotic break or enjoying a bad trip on meth. Or maybe a little of both.

This Costco stands on the north side of Montebello Road, which borders, just to the south, a pretty bad neighborhood. Despite the deceptively inviting park, the neighborhood is a dangerous slum. A friend of SDXB’s and mine lived in one of the apartment buildings there. He was a retired reporter, an old man with a gimpy leg who needed a cane to walk. He was murdered in the apartment parking lot by a couple of sh!theads who beat him unconscious (we hope) and then drove their stolen car back and forth over him twice.

That’s the kind of place it is.

The crazed guy was on the other side of the street, but I tend to lean toward the better part of valor, especially when I’m not armed. I don’t carry a pistol in the car, because I think there’s too much risk of having it stolen. Maybe I should, though…

So I put the gas cap back on, jumped into the car, locked the door, and drove off.

And was glad I did: by the time I pulled away from the gas pump, he had crossed the street and was jumping the wall into the Costco parking lot.

Now he climbs a paloverde tree next to the wall and tries to wrench one of its limbs off. He’s wrestling and thrashing and yanking at it. What happened after that, I do not know, because I got away from him. Presumably he wanted a tree branch to use as a weapon. Lucky for all of us he didn’t have a gun or a knife.

The car didn’t have enough gas to make it to tomorrow’s art lesson, which is on the near side of Scottsdale. So I drove up to the QT in our area — also not at all in what you’d call a “good neighborhood” — where I bought six gallons at $1.88. Didn’t notice how much Costco was charging, but I’ll betcha it wasn’t any less than that.

One reason I prefer Costco’s gas pumps to QT’s is that there’s always an attendant outside — a big, husky male attendant. At QT, the employees huddle inside an air-conditioned building with bullet-proof plastic between them and the hoi polloi. I didn’t see a Costco guy today, but didn’t look — he may have been inside his kiosk calling the cops. Who knows?

Today’s junket may turn out to be my last Costco trip. Trying to buy there without a credit card is just too, too damn much hassle.

I’d written out a check before I entered the store, so as to speed checkout. But just as I wrote in the amount, I realized damn! I forgot to buy the cash card. So I tell the cashier I’ll need to buy a cash card.

He now insists on adding the cash card into the amount already entered in his register, meaning I have to void the check I’ve already written and write a whole new check. This entails a lot of figuring out about how much $25 + the purchase + the cash back I’ve asked for will come to. I’m now getting flustered, because I don’t understand why he can’t just enter a second transaction and because the bitch standing in line behind me is clucking her tongue and tsking and groaning out loud, so this slows me down even more.

Can’t blame the bitch: Costco only has three lines open, so even though there aren’t many people in the store, the lines still go halfway back to the meat counter. This is a particularly infuriating trick that Costco likes to pull on Monday mornings. So I don’t fault her for being pissed. But she could, at least, keep her yap shut.

So that was my Costco adventure. It was discouraging enough that I believe I don’t want to shop there any more. I’m sure my son will pick up the packages of meat I need for the dogs. Otherwise…really, everything else I buy there can be had, in far less cost-inducing volume, somewhere else.

Costco dudes and dudettes: listen up! If you make it aversive to shop in your stores, it won’t be long before your stores go the way of Macy’s.

Spotted two BoBs yesterday morning, along about 5:30. BoB: that’s Burglar on Bike. 😀

We learned that bit of jargon from the Block Watch cops.

Two of them — weaselly little gringos with that “up to no good” look on their faces, one of them wearing a red backpack about the right size to hold a few tools — were cruising back and forth through the more upscale part of the ‘hood just to the south of my area, not even bothering to hide the fact that they were peering  intently at each house they passed. One guy stood up on his bike’s pedals so he could look over the wall into a back yard.

Charming.

There’s a long, curving cul-de-sac in that neighborhood where I like to take the dogs. A stroll up and back that thing and then around through the “new” houses at the other end of the main street makes a doggy-walk of exactly one mile. Trouble is, at the very far end of that cul-de-sac lives a gent who lets his two big, aggressive dogs run around loose. Sometimes. Sometimes not.

The weasels pass me and the corgis, then turn up this street. I follow them, figuring if the dogs are out I’ll know it, because the boys will come shooting out of there like rockets.

They see me following them and look a little perturbed. They probably figure I’ve got CrimeStop on my cell phone. I don’t, of course, because I don’t have a cell. Nor would I call CrimeStop anyway, for reasons we’ll address in a moment.

They circle back into the cul-de-sac and then, as I round the bend, cruise back out. One of them asks me where Feeder Street NS is. I think this obvious ruse is hilarious, but pretend to take them seriously. Then I ask them if they’ve seen the neighbor’s damn dogs, and they assure me there are no dogs down there. I thank them and mention that the dogs are chasers. They go on their way.

So, this is an amusing moment.

The pooches and I proceed on our stroll, and before long we come across our friend Lady Chattley and her nondescript, amiable dog. Naturally, we take up with her, as we always do. In the course of yakking, I mention to Lady Chattley that I’d seen my two new acquaintances casing the neighborhood.

She asks why I didn’t call CrimeStop on my cell. I fail to mention that I can’t afford a cell phone, for godsake. I say I don’t have one with me, and even if I did, I wouldn’t think of calling CrimeStop again.

Gasp! says she. Why not?

Well, the reason (say I) is that the last time I saw some sh!thead prowling the alley, obviously looking for a likely mark, the CrimeStop officer gave me the third degree. She asked repeatedly what I thought was so strange about the guy and why they should bother to send an officer around to check on it. I was made to feel like I was some crazy old lady who had nothing better to do than call the cops on every vagrant who stumbles past.

So: that is why I do not call CrimeStop anymore.

She says she calls them all the time and never gets that kind of response. She calls CrimeStop so often that the dispatcher now recognizes her voice and greets her by name. I privately reflect, And there’s why they think old women who call CrimeStop are cranks with nothing better to do…

There are a lot of good reasons to ask the police to check on creepy-looking strangers in this neighborhood: every one of those reasons is a creepy-looking stranger. So I imagine the cops feel pretty inundated with those kinds of calls, to the point where they’ve no doubt become a nuisance.

But if that’s the case, then the Block Watch guys need to stop telling neighbors to call Crime Stop whenever they have even the slightest question. Obviously, that’s not desirable.

And you know what? That is why I’m glad I have a pistol and why I am not about to relinquish it. That and episodes like the Great Garage Invasion. Truth to tell, folks, we’re pretty much on our own out here.

Chapo
Human wants GerShep…

Bob off Bike: Depositphotos, © Eddiephotograph

So word came down this morning that the rumored scheme to convert a house in our ‘hood into a homeless shelter is not true. No.

They want to turn it into a church.

This news came ahead of an email from the lady who does the homeowner’s association newsletter. My nose has been glued to the grindstone all day — read another 80 pages of copy on five hours of sleep — and so I haven’t had time to open that message. But I believe she sent something similar to the missal from the person who passed the report along.

So that’s s-o-r-t of good…a makeshift church is better than a homeless shelter. I guess.

Still, there’s no question the ‘hood is up in arms about it. And you have to say: taking a private residence, ripping out the landscaping to surround it with a parking lot, and sticking an Assembly of God sign on it is not especially desirable.

In the first place, it’s tacky. No population is more sensitive to tacky than the residents of North Central. 😉

And more to the point: we really don’t need another church so badly that it’s necessary to convert a private home into one. There’s a church directly across the street from the targeted house. There’s another church about a block to the west. There’s another church half a mile across Feeder Street EW. There’s yet another church about a mile up Conduit of Blight, and yea verily, another one a quarter-mile north of that. There’s another church about a mile south down Main Drag NS. And still another church on Main Drag NS, northerly about a half-mile from my house. If Americans were just slightly less fat and lazy, as a group, all seven of these would be considered within walking distance.

Plus this particular denomination has at least 21 churches in the Valley. How many churches are enough, already?

Meanwhile, speaking of our very vibrant Homeowner’s Club, the group engineered the coolest thing: a big neighborhood party in the park! They’ve got food trucks and a bandstand and live music and all sorts of stuff going on.

The pooches and I walked over there after I finished the 80-page editorial project of the day. Wish I could’ve taken a camera…but one wouldn’t be comfortable posting an image that might have someone’s kid identifiable. And there were kids — galore! What a hoot! Parents with their lawn chairs and coolers and 87 gerjillion little cuties running or bicycling around. Three young boys were trying to launch a kite shaped like an F-16….alas, the air is dead still this afternoon, so the only way they could get it into the air was to run like the wind themselves.

Ruby and Cassie, of course, are Kid Bait. They all come over and ask if they can pet your dog. And they both dote on children…they just think that’s the best thing that ever happened.

So we hung around awhile until Cassie started to tire — she’s showing her age these days. Then came back so the hounds could chow down. Now I’m about to finish off the current job and maybe send it to the client this evening. Really, I should probably sift through it one more time. But I’m tired. I’ve already read it four or five times. I think I may let it rest overnight and then give it a glance in the morning.

In the wake of the homeless shelter rumor, I learned that a Realtor friend is planning to put her house on the market this summer — for less than she thinks she could get for mine. It is a good long distance from Conduit of Blight and the Meth Habitat, and it is in North Central. It’s to the east of both the north-south main drags that have reverse lanes, so if you live there, you can turn east to Scottsdale without a problem. From my house, I have to make my way through not one, not two, but three neighborhoods to reach an arterial that will let me turn east during the rush hour. But is that enough of a PITA to cause one to sell one’s house?

Her house is older — probably built in the 50s, I’d guess; maybe the early 60s. It has good bones, and she did a LOT of fix-up on it. And it’s smack-dab in the middle of one of the fastest-trendifying districts in the central city. That whole area is going berserk. Property values likely will continue to rise, probably faster than they will here in the ’hood because no serious blight is nearby. On the other hand, I have seen panhandlers in that area.

It has no pool (which could be good, could be bad, depending on your attitude toward pools and pool care). But it does have irrigation! And that means one could have lawns front and back for very, very cheap.

In neighborhoods where irrigation is grandfathered in, the Salt River Project pumps in untreated water — this area was all farmland and citrus orchards until late 50s and early 60s. It was way out in the country! So you get very, very cheap water to throw on the ground around your house.

On the other hand, power was also very cheap in those days, so houses built in that era are very expensive to air-condition. In the summer, my son pays over $300 a month to (barely!) air-condition 1300 square feet. My house is almost 1700 square feet and it has a pool, and I never pay anything like that. while I don’t overcool my house, I sure don’t let it get as hot as he does…plus I have a pool pump to operate. So I’m afraid if I traded over to her place, whatever I’d save on the water bill would be eaten up by the electric bill.

Speaking of real estate, check out these 50 fab studio apartment interiors. Gosh, they’re cool! And gee, I’m glad I don’t have to live in any of them!

It absolutely is a case of NIMBY. And it must be said that Not-In-My-Backyardism can indeed be seen as not very nice. Socially irresponsible. Elitist. Selfish. Racist. Classist. Agnostic to the Great God of Free Enterprise. But…

The situation is a little more nuanced than that.

Here’s the Situation as I understand it — and bear in mind that none of this has been confirmed. So far, I’ve heard it by word of mouth. Tomorrow, if I can get to the evening meeting at which the Situation will be explained, I’ll have the details from the mouth of one of the horses.

A house at the corner of Main Drag South and Feeder Street NW has been purchased by a nonprofit. Said property has been a problem house for about as long as I’ve lived here. Main Drag South is one of the most heavily traveled surface streets in the city; in fact, at one point the city planned to widen it (it’s already 7 lanes!), saying that it carried the most traffic of any of the city’s surface roads. The house fronts on Main Drag South. The noise and dirt from a street like that, needless to say, are ferocious. It’s not a place anyone would choose to live, if they could afford better.

It was a bit of a wreck for quite a while; I think it was probably a rental. Then came the Bubble. As prices were climbing, somebody bought the house, fixed it up, and lived in it for awhile. They sold it to someone who apparently figured out its drawbacks after the fact. They noticed, for example, that people trying to turn right at the interminable signal at Main Drag and Feeder would drive up on the lawn to get around cars stacked in front of them.

So they built a pony wall around the lot’s perimeter, which they stuccoed. They stuccoed the house, too, and painted both to match: in a hideous shade of mustard brit-shindle. Proudly, they installed a lawn and a semi-circular driveway. Except for the ugly color, the house looked pretty nice.

Then it rained.

They had neglected to install drain holes in their wall. And apparently they’d never heard of caliche.

The front yard turned into a lake. It filled high enough to flood the house. And…the water  just sat there.

And sat there.

And sat there.

Eventually they had it pumped out. Somebody came in did some work, presumably repairing the damage. And the proud owners moved on.

Since then the mustard brit-shindle house has gotten a little shabby around the seams but otherwise has been inoffensive.

Now we’re told that the people who recently bought the place want to turn it into a homeless shelter.

Yeah. In our neighborhood. Right at the entryway to our neighborhood.

The Neighborhood Homeowner’s Private Club is up in arms. They’re urging everyone to show up at the zoning commission hearing to oppose the new owner’s scheme, which involves getting a variance so they can bulldoze the yard for a parking lot and erect an eleven-foot wall. The owners are holding a meeting with the neighbors tomorrow, presumably to plead their case for the poor.

Now, it has to be said that there are plenty of homeless people around here. Why, just last week, one or two of them revisited their favorite flophouse, the trash-can alcove outside my back gate, tossed their beer and liquor bottles around the alley, and left a great stinking mound of shit next to the gate, decorated with gummy toilet paper.

That’s our fellow humanity.

Central-city neighborhoods are always under a great deal of pressure. The city government itself, often (as ours is) owned by developers, invariably comes up with a scheme like a train or a double-decker freeway or whatnot that will enrich some One-Percenter at the expense of the people who live there. And centrally located middle-class neighborhoods are often bordered by dangerous slums — as this one happens to be.

I’ve been through this before. My ex- and I bought in the Encanto neighborhood just as it was starting to gentrify. It’s now one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in the Valley; what was then down-at-the-heels commerce around it has evolved into trendy shopping, business, and arts districts. At the time, we also had plenty of homeless folks living in the area, pushed out of downtown by the city’s enthusiastic redevelopment there.

None of these people were hapless victims of an economic crash. They were drug users and alcoholics. Not a few were seriously mentally ill men and women abandoned by closure of institutions that, whatever their failings, at least kept a roof over the heads of those incapable of caring for themselves. Some of these mentally ill folks, like some allegedly sane folks, were dangerous: one guy, for example, walked into a dirty-shirt law office on McDowell Road, where an early-bird admin assistant was making coffee for other staff who hadn’t shown up yet, and killed her for the fun of it. Others were just pests, the sort who would shit in your yard and climb into any unlocked car to take a nap.

Down the road, there was a homeless shelter. It would take people in at night, bed them down, and then at dawn would toss them back out on the street. With no place to go, the residents would ride the buses or hang out in the library all day, to keep cool or warm. Or they would wander up and down the streets of our neighborhood, all day long, until they could get back into the flophouse. There were always bums stumbling up and down our street, every day.

We could not let our son play outdoors without constant supervision. When he played outside with his little buddy who lived up the street, either I had to stand outside and watch them every minute, or our neighbor’s housekeeper had to do it. If I took him to the park — Encanto Park is a lovely, shady park in the middle of a historic neighborhood, with a pond and boats and playgrounds and a merry-go-round and it’s really very pleasant — yes, when I would go to the park with him, I would have to take our German shepherd. And yes, twice on those jaunts that German shepherd did her job. If I walked around the neighborhood alone, I would take the shepherd with me. And yes, several times she repelled attempted boarders.

Well, when you’re a boy child, you do reach a point in life where you don’t want your mommy or your nanny peering over your shoulder every living, breathing minute. That was why we moved out of the neighborhood.

So, as you can imagine, I feel a certain degree of empathy with the folks who don’t want this outfit to plop a homeless shelter in our neighborhood.

And I also feel some concern: all these young couples moving in here with their kids, fixing up the homes and making the neighborhood so much nicer and pushing up the property values are going to fly out of here like a flock of migrating ducks as soon as they discover they can’t let the kids play in the front yard for fear of some stoned, unwashed fright harassing them.

I like these young people. And I don’t want them scared out of here by a thoughtless scheme like this. If that’s NIMBY, then so be it.

As a practical  matter, this area probably does need a homeless shelter: but not in the middle of an established, upwardly mobile neighborhood. The shelter needs to go in where the homeless people live, for godsake! That’s over on the other side of Conduit of Blight.

Conduit of Blight marks the eastern border of a swath of old, blighted cheaply built housing tracts that flanks the I-17 freeway and spreads westward for miles. (Yes, Virginia: right-to-work laws do foster the growth of poverty and slums.)

The canal about a half-mile to the north marks the southern border of a habitat for meth gangs.

Either district would benefit from a social service provider like this.

Put the thing in here, though, and what you’ll do is call the drug users, the wrecked alcoholics, and the impoverished mentally ill into our neighborhood: into our park, into our yards, into our alleys, and into our homes. (If you don’t think they burgle, you mis-think.)

So it would indeed make sense to buy a house and turn it into a homeless shelter. But for godsake, put it in an area where the people who need it already hang out.

That’s where we are right now. It’s NIMBY, all right. No, I do not want the homeless set in my backyard…again.

Image: By Josh Swieringa – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3270773

From a cashier at a local hardware store:

A couple of teenaged car thieves broke into a vehicle. Then they found they couldn’t drive off in it because they didn’t know how to work a stick shift…

🙂

Not at Snopes. Yet.