Hoodtastic

Holla,

Not much going on today in the unemployment line. I have written a couple of articles for a ongoing freelance gig that I got a couple of weeks ago, sent a couple of emails for new jobs, and spent the majority of my time searching around the internets and checking my gmail account. I managed to stay alive this weekend, even with all of the hoodtastic activities that were surrounding my apartment. To recap the weekend in my neighborhood:

-Two men held up a coin shop on Friday morning. The owner of the shop shot and killed one of the men, while the other managed to get away. The runner stripped off his clothes, and is presumbably still at large, and probably naked.

-A man was stabbed three times about five blocks from my home on Sunday night.

-A gang member shot at an undercover police officer four times on Monday night. This incident took place about a five minute drive from me.

To add to this, I took out the garbage this morning and there was a homeless man digging through the dumpster of my apartment. I stood there for a moment staring directly at him, hoping that he would notice me and move on. He looked at me, then looked at the garbage bag that I was holding, and continued to dig. After a minute or so, I approached him and threw the garbage bag into the other side of the dumpster. I stood there for a moment and he turned to look at me. I wanted to say something like, "Can you at least pretend that you aren't sifting through my garbage," but I was intimidated by his stare and decided to move along. He turned away from me and proceeded to open the bag that I had just thrown in. I watched as he sorted through my garbage, trying to make some use of the chicken bones and doritos packages that were contained in it.

This is my neighborhood. There are shootings, stabbings, and bums, yet I've never felt particularly uncomfortable here. The thing is, the longer that I travel through the unemployment line, the closer I come to these unsavory elements. I might be the homeless man, digging for treasure in the dumpster sooner rather than later. Instead of trying to shoo him away, I should be asking him for advice. Which plastic bags work best? How do you clean yourself? What kind of glue can I huff? It will be like watching Survivorman for the streets of San Diego.

Anyway, the pursuit continues. More updates to come...

North Park

Holla,

The saga of Fat Joe will continue at a later date. I was going to continue the blog today, but something extraordinary has happened in my neighborhood. I live in North Park, San Diego. It is a fairly eclectic area of the city. There are homeless people, young professionals, obvious crackheads, families, gang members, and everything other type of person that you can imagine. The major street that runs through North Park is El Cajon Boulevard. It seems that the shadiest activities in the neighborhood occur on El Cajon. You can find nicer homes, stores, and restaurants with each block that you move away from this street.

I live about 5 steps from El Cajon, so I'm in a constant melting pot of shadiness. If I walk down the street to the gas station, I can say hello to our neighbors (a very nice family), give change to a homeless man in the alley, or watch as a drug deal goes down. It makes things very interesting.

So today, I'm sitting in my room with my window open. I can hear the shopping carts of the homeless people pass by my window every couple of hours and the random car alarms going off down the street. Then, in the last hour or so, I've heard a vehicle pass by a couple of times, with someone on a public address system. I can't quite make out what the speaker is saying, but it sounds very official.

In the last couple of minutes, I've heard a helicopter flying overhead, and the PA vehicle drive past again. This is more shady activity than normal, and I started investigating what was happening in the hood. I received an update from my friend that lives a couple of blocks away.

So Greg and I are working from home right now and the cops are going nuts through the hood with the ghetto bird and loud speaker looking for "an armed man in a grey sweatshirt."

The cops are EVERYWHERE....it appears the perimeter includes our block in front of our house....a cop goes by every 30 seconds.

We immediately started firing emails back and forth. There was this report from a San Diego website.

February 13, 2009

Person shot in University Heights

San Diego police are responding to reports of a shooting where at least one person has been wounded in University Heights. The call came in at 9:16 a.m. that a person was shot on El Cajon Boulevard near Texas Street, San Diego police said.

Things were getting crazy. I have been in southern California for almost five months, and I hadn't experienced any shootings. It was about time. Give me a drive-by at least. My friend informed me that there was a collection of 10 policemen with dogs that were searching through the backyard of the house across the street from them. She sent another email.

Well, the cops with canine just came to our house.

Here's the deal....

the coin shop down the street got robbed (armed robbery)...the owner of the shop shot one of the robbers and the other one ran. He jumped into the yard behind the apartment/house complex across the street and dumped his gun/clothes/everything. They are still searching for him...

Armed robbery? Yes! There's money in coin shops. Imagine all of the coins you could steal. they would be worth, like, 8 dollars. Holla! I have a visual of the robbers running away from the coin shop with large bags full of change. They are probably headed to one of those change cashing machines at the bank. That's where the cops should look for them.

Also, the cops apparently found the clothes and gun of the one guy that got away from the shop owner, so now we have a naked coin robber running through the neighborhood somewhere.

I have locked the door to my apartment, but I kind of want to see all of the action. If this is the last post ever, you will know what happened.

Hood out

-Micah