When I lived on the North side we dealt with cats eating dead rats, the old lady who owned all the cats who ate the rats; Richard the hippie-guy who forgot to stop doing drugs on his trip to Cali in the 60's and still says, "Far Out" and "Cool Man" he rides the city bus around and pushes broken lawn mowers; and then there's the GBN's (Gay Black Neighbors) who tried to sell us hot (outdated) computer software to raise funds to visit their ailing sisters in Chicago and Whooed each time my Lulu walked bye and yelled "Hey Britney Spears."
Since moving to the South Side of the Ave North I've experienced an entirely different ecosystem. We like to sit on the next door neighbors' stoop and play the "try and guess where they'll stop, if at all" at the intersection of 5 streets.
We also have our regular transients. And the ever-popular weekly yard sale = people moving and placing whatever they don't want on the curb. (I placed my old couch out there and it was gone in less than an hour.)
Today the regular bums KP (Kevin from Mississippi) and Terry (born, raised AND schooled in Milwaukee) asked us, "Where the good stuff" because apparently the three couches, arm chair, pieces of a dresser, toaster, bottom to a blender and miscellaneous cans of food were not to their liking. The couch was good enough for them to sit on while they enjoyed the Bud Lights I brought out to them, as I refuse to give them money. Too bad it poured this morning and both of their asses looked like the pissed themselves when they got up.
While stooping it, we heard a car screeching and swerving. It was coming straight at us like it was doing the giant slalom down Lyon. I jumped up onto the porch and we started screaming at people coming from the other three roads. One of which was Lu's ex-boyfriend Charlie. The car whipped around the corner and continued at over 40 MPH swerving and screeching finally crashing into the fence of a daycare center down the street. Turns out it was a dude whose brakes went out and he hit at least a couple cars along the way. It was good he crashed it when he did because there was a street festival going on less than a block away and in the direction he was heading.
We waited for the Po-po to get there (took them forever which is sad since they were all over less than a block away). We tried to explain to them that this driver (whose tabs were expired, didn't have a license and appeared high as a kite since his pupils weren't even visible - but he did have a nice golden grill!) did a great job of not hitting people/cars. He swerved around and past cars (and people) coming and going. The police didn't really care so we gave them our contact info and went on our way. There were more 5-O's coming because apparently they keep answering calls even if there are already 6 of them on the scene. We stopped two of them to address the other issue that bugs me a bit.
I have a neighbor in his 40's-50's who has more than his fair share of visits from several ladies - all of the same decent, pretty similar in their clothing styles and demeanor, but the funny thing is that there are a lot of them. I don't think he's teaching them English. Now you would think that the coppers might be interested in finding more out about the man who on some days has one lady after another, all ending with them leaving out the back door and him sitting on the front step having a cigarette. Nope. They don't care. Unless they are hookin' on the street there's apparently nothing the police can do. That's nice. I'm telling them there are WHORES visiting my building daily and that's alright with them. Fabulous.
And I moved to a nice part of town. God Bless Milwaukee.