These Days In My Hood

Author’s note: Sometime in the late 70’s or 80’s the phenomenon of gentrification began to sweep across our land rejuvenating tired and faded metropolitan neighborhoods. For reasons I will not go into, in my city this process began on my block, creating a net worth for my wife and me that we never expected and didn’t particularly deserve.

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Pasted below are the 1st, 14th and 15th of a series of emails posted on our neighborhood forum over a period of 7 days. The omitted messages trace a progression from the first alert toward a possible identification. You’ll see.

#1: I just wanted to alert people that we had an strange person come to our door last night while we were eating dinner. He knocked loudly and repeatedly until my husband answered. The guy was disheveled and yet wore a tie, he was a little overly eager and loud and was asking how to get to Montlake. We told him he was in Montlake, at which point he said he needed to get to "the store."

We weren't suspicious at the time, but thought more about it and decided he was probably trying to figure out what the interior of our house looked like and what might be valuable, etc. Anyway, given that break-ins have been a problem lately, I thought I'd alert others.

# 14: Hi - we lived in Montlake for four years, the same person tried the "locksmith" bit two separate times. He lives in an apartment above Fuel or works for the building, I am not sure which. I often saw him cleaning the sidewalk and taking out the trash. Good luck.

# 15: If you are going come this close to accusing a specific person of misbehavior, I think it more appropriate you take your information to the police and get the matter settled immediately. You shouldn’t make accusations unless you are both quite certain about them and willing to follow through on them. In this case you have simply pointed to the wrong person. I happen to be a friend of the person you are describing and you are totally wrong about him.


The following day there were 6 messages posted under the subject, “New suspicious solicitor”. Here’s the first.

We just had a visit at dusk by a suspicious solicitor. It was a young African American man with a close shaved head. He is tall and thin and carrying a clipboard. He was
wearing a light colored shirt and dark pants as well as a tie. He had blue
baseball cap attached to his belt. He said he was from "urban development,"
which we never heard of so we sent him away. We saw him bend down to try to see
through our opaque glass entry.

Be alert.



These six were followed by six more under the subject, People With Clipboards Roaming The Neighborhood. Here’s the first of these.



Batten down the hatches. On E McGraw St just saw at least two people with clipboards roaming around.



Finally I felt called upon to offer my own post, to wit:


A few weeks ago as I rode my bike up our street toward home my thoughts happened to fall upon the cars that lined the street at the curb and in the driveways. I thought how the current set of cars might compare with those that rested in the same spots in 1969 when we moved here. I wondered what would be revealed about changes in our street by such a comparison. With that in mind, on a Sunday a week or so later I picked up a clipboard and proceeded down the block making an inventory of the vehicles to be found. In some cases, if a machine was a bit outside my common familiarity, I stopped to scrutinize what I found. I would like now to apologize for any alarm I may have raised in the breasts of any of my good neighbors by this behavior. I suppose it was even more likely in as much I was wearing a faux leather jacket I got at the  Goodwill, some tattered Carharts, and Keenes, without the benefit of socks. Sorry.

As for the results, I found 1 Maserati, 1 Ferrari, 1 Jaguar, 2 Porsches, 4 Beemers, 1 Audi, 3 Mercedes, 1 Cadillac (a classic), 8 VWs, 4 volvos, 1 Harley, 1 Vespa and a bunch of other stuff too mundane to mention. All I can report from 1969 is the '63 Chevy II that we owned and my own Vespa which is now long gone. A couple of years later we picked up an International Harvester delivery van. The Chevy has been replaced by a Honda Civic. We still have the International, but it is now a chicken coop.

Apologetically,

Paul Gibson