The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I sat down to write a post about the good, the bad, and the ugly things about living in the 'hood. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was mostly good stuff?! I mean sure there was that little incident last year where some crackheads burned a body at the end of my road, but come on-we also have a Dunkin' Donuts RIGHT NEXT DOOR! You can't beat that!! I think easy access to Dunk's trumps burnt crackhead any day!

So here goes...the good, the bad, and the ugly of living in the 'hood. 

The Good

There is a surprising amount of good stuff in the 'hood. Yes, my neighbors are generally nice to one another. (We look out for our own.) Yes, we can easily walk to about 3 different convenience stores. (We will never run out of milk or bread during a blizzard.) And amidst all of this awesomeness, we also have this...

Behold!! Preggo Barbie! My kids made her. And I found her in the backseat of my car. (How appropriate!) This just begs the question, Is the 'hood responsible for my kids making Preggo Barbie or would it have happened even if we lived in a fancy town??

Our View

You can't beat our view. Worcester looks beautiful at night when it's all lit up. And we have an awesome view of the city during the day too. Good stuff. 

Our Beer Garden

While we are enjoying this view, we like to relax in our very own urban beer garden. (Biergarten?? I took German for 5 years. Gotta use that somehow.) We can sit here, drink the Pumpkinhead that I've stashed away since it was in season, and listen to the sound of the traffic, which is a rather pleasing white noise. 

Pumpkinhead in the beer garden. 

And a beer-less beer garden.

The Bathroom at the Local Dive Bar

We live thisclose to a shady dive bar. I've referred to it before as the Ruby Hotel. If you're local, you can probably easily figure out which bar I'm talking about. Anyway, we've been known to wander in there from time to time when we find ourselves without kids. (Don't judge. It's within walking distance.) Imagine my surprise when I discovered these little gems in the bathroom!

As my kids would say, "What the WHAT?!" Apparently it's 1992 in the Ruby Hotel bathroom, judging from their cologne choices. 

And then there's this incredibly awesome sign...

What?! This is enough of a problem that they NEEDED TO HAVE A SIGN PRINTED ABOUT IT!! Whoa. 

And of course, no tour of the good things in the 'hood would be complete without a visit to Turtleboy! Stay classy, Worcester!

The Bad

The Trash

I've said it before, but my crazy, illegal garage-building neighbor likes to dump random trash on the street. He had a particularly active period this summer, as evidenced by this photo. 

At one point there was enough random furniture on our street to set up a little bedroom suite right there on the stret. There was also this strange phenomenon this summer where random shoes would constantly turn up on our street. Constantly. Sometimes in pairs. Sometimes single shoes. But there were lots and lots of shoes for several weeks. It was weird. 

Rogue Shopping Carts

This one is a double edged sword. While constantly finding abandoned shopping carts in your neighborhood can be an eyesore, they also serve a greater purpose. While the fancy towns have Robin sightings to herald the coming of spring, we have shopping carts. You start seeing these showing up in the 'hood and you can pretty much guarantee that spring is here. (Because you can't push a shopping cart home from Price Chopper with 3 feet of snow on the ground. Duh.)

Spring is in the air!!

The Ugly

Drugs

Luckily this doesn't happen often anymore, thanks to the arrests of some key players, but there was a time when we regularly found drugs in our parking lot. Needles, pills, drug paraphernalia...it was there and it was pissing me off because my kids play there. 

Sometimes when I showed people these pictures, people would say things like, "Oh, my grandma uses those needles for her insulin!" or "They probably just spilled their medicine." Um...no and no, Naïve Nelly. Diabetics don't leave their needles all over parking lots. People don't spill random assorted, unlabeled pills all over the steps. This crap is left by junkies, pure and simple. 

The Random

I needed one more category because my last two pictures didn't fit in anywhere. Last fall I noticed what looked like corn randomly growing on the side of our building. Upon further observation and a quick google search, I learned that it was corn!

Growing nicely...

See the corn tassle thingy down at the bottom? That corn looks ready to harvest! No idea where this came from, but we got a good laugh out of it for a solid 3 months. 

So there you have it.  Your own personal tour of life in the 'hood. Spring is coming, so keep your eyes open for those shopping carts!!