Using Your Car as your own Personal Fish Bowl
When I go running in my neighborhood, I see a lot of interesting things. Most of my neighbors think I'm crazy for running (and routinely tell me so), but I think they are crazy too-so we're even. There are these people in my neighborhood who sit in their car and smoke massive amounts of weed. In broad daylight. On a public street. They aren't fooling anyone. When I run by their car it's all smoked up and I get a contact high from running by. I'm not sure if they do this so their house doesn't smell like weed, or for the added bonus of smoking pot in an enclosed space, but either way there is a TON of public pot smoking going on in the 'hood.
The Man in the Basement
Every apartment in our building has a storage unit in the basement. This is where we keep things like out of season clothes, the kids' bikes, and a random assortment of junk that is still in the box from our last move 8 years ago. Apparently one of my neighbors thought this space would also be a good way to make a quick buck by using it as a rental property.
One morning, the hubs went downstairs to grab some warmer jackets for the kids, when the door of another storage unit opened. A guy came out, stretching and yawning like he had just woken up and asked Joe what time it was. When Joe peeked inside that unit, he noticed that instead of the usual assortment of boxes and bins, there was a mattress and a crate that was being used as a nightstand. Yup. This guy was living down here. Further Nancy Drewing taught us that our across the hall neighbor was letting her friend "stay over." Nice of her to give him a place to stay, but super scary if a man pops out of a place in the basement where you don't expect a person to be!
The Hooker Photo Shoot
When Liija was a baby, we had a period of intense crazy in the 'hood. My downstairs neighbors were a housekeeper and a DJ. (She was supposed to clean the common spaces in the building in return for lower rent. She never, ever cleaned the common spaces.) He would set up his equipment in the parking lot, taking up valuable parking spaces, and blast his music-extension cords snaking into the building. Always while my kids were sleeping. Always. (My sister got into a pretty spectacular argument with them over this once when their DJ booth was set up in her parking space.) There was a drug dealer/user living upstairs who had a friend overdose in his apartment while he ran around the building, pounding on doors in a drug induced freak out. The people across the hall (the ones with the tenant in the basement) liked to stand outside of our door and smoke. This way, the smoke didn't like get in their apartment. It got in ours instead. Like I said, it was a period of crazy in the 'hood.
Joe worked nights then, so I was always the only one home with the kids at night. Around this time, I heard a ruckus outside of our window one evening. Imagine my surprise when I looked out of the window and discovered what appeared to be a hooker photo shoot.
What is going on here?! We have these women dressed in teeny, tiny tight black dresses. We have the dudes in white Hanes t-shirts masquerading as photographers and photography assistants with a point and click digital camera. These women are posing seductively against an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. Yup. A place where kids go to learn every day was the backdrop of the hooker photo shoot. And why were they doing this? Were they making a "hooker of the month" calendar? Hoping to make it big in the modeling/fashion industry? Taking glamour shots for their boyfriends? I still don't know what this was all about, but it went on until it got too dark that night.
Seriously. I can't make this stuff up. Never a dull moment. It's like watching tv-right outside my window.
Oh-and one more thing. This wasn't outside my window, but it was on my computer and it is from Worcester, so I think it counts.
This.
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