Tales from the 'Hood

I think I've alluded to the fact before that we live in, shall we say, a transitional neighborhood in Charlotte.  Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful neighborhood for the most part on the fringe of Cotswold.  Only 5 miles from Uptown (downtown), lots of beautiful old oak trees (we have 35 on our .4 acre lot) and nice solid, 1960's ranch homes.  And you can't beat the value for your money anywhere else this close to town.  Most of our neighbors are great and we see a trend of houses being fixed up and professional people moving in.  However, it's got it's share of questionable characters.  Now we don't have gang warfare or drug deals on the sidewalk or anything, but there's likely some illegal activity in the park across the street, and a few blocks away there is some cheap housing that should be firebombed.  I'm just sayin'...

To explain my desire for Rambo to show up with a flamethrower, let me describe things further.  Our street?  Just fine for the most part.  The street around the bend?  Even better.  The short block between us and the nice neighborhood around the bend?  Not so good.  There are (or were actually, I'll get to that) 5 crappy rental houses that have a variety of short-term occupants.  Envision dogs chained up in yard, big wal-mart 4 foot by 12 foot plastic pool in the side yard, which is also adorned with laundry hanging from anything that doesn't move.  Lots of random furniture, outdoor and indoor, littering the front.  You get my drift.

Next to these houses are the Pink Apartments.  Well, there's not actually pink anymore because they painted them beige but didn't use primer so they are a pinkish beige now.  We still lovingly refer to them as the Pink Apartments.  We got all excited last year because they put up a tall chain link fence and we thought surely this meant they were tearing them down.  Oh no.  They just decided to put up the fence to keep the riff-raff out  (or maybe in?)  Lovely.  The apartments across the street do not have much better of a clientele but they are brick so they look decent, at least, except for the pants-on-the-ground hood rats hanging out on the front porch with their gold teeth and hats cocked to the side.  We'll call these the Crappy Brick Apartments for simplicity's sake.  I firmly believe that if we could rid ourselves of these few dwellings, our neighborhood would improve tenfold.

Ok, now that you know the lay of the land, let's play a little game called Good Sign/Bad Sign.  Kurt and I play it all the time, wondering if a given incident in the area means an increase in our property value or a decrease.  The first few are easy.  Jury's still out on the third.

Good Sign  :)

The other day I drove through the Ghetto on the Bend heading to the grocery store.  They were paving part of the street which was annoying but nothing else out of the ordinary.   An hour later, heading home I was shocked to see one of the dreaded rental homes had been completely demolished!  There was nothing but a pile of sticks and a proud yellow bulldozer sifting through the heap.  This has got to be a Good Sign right?  I only wish I had gotten to see the destruction firsthand. 

Bad Sign  :(

You know it's going to be a bad Friday night in the 'hood when your backyard is being lit up by a Police helicopter spotlight.  That's right, as I was baking toll house cookies in our cozy home, I watched the ghetto bird circle our house for 45 minutes.  It got even more exciting as the police stopped a guy walking down the street right in front of our house and had 4 police cars, lights flashing, parked out there for over an hour.  Normally our street is fairly quiet but this made us want to stick a for sale sign in the yard ASAP.  Apparently there was some sort of armed robbery a few blocks down the street.  The suspects were not caught.  Awesome. Oh and good luck finding this in the news anywhere.  Not a peep.  If a police helicopter lit up Queens Road I bet it would end up front page of the Charlotte Observer.

TBD ?

Here's a puzzling one.  We drove through the 'hood this morning on our way to the park and noticed big red "A"s painted on the doors of several of the Crappy Brick Apartments.  What the heck is that about?   Is this a new gang sign?  Adulterers?  Anarchy?  We're stumped.  Any guesses?