Neighborhood Developments.

The other week at the coffee shop down the street from me, I ran into my stoner neighbor from downstairs, who told me that the Latin Kings had tagged the front of our building the previous night.

When I got home later, I looked, and though it wasn’t on my staircase door, there was this big crown in white paint on the black door of my stoner neighbor’s apartment, which also opens up onto the front of the building and the sidewalk.

He said his roommate had texted the landlord to get it cleaned off, and that ours was the only apartment building to get tagged, since the doors to other apartment buildings are behind fences.

I’ve heard that the north-south street just west of my house is a boundary in gang territory and that five-ten years ago the neighborhood used to be a lot worse, but this is really the first major sign I’ve seen of that, compared to other places that I’ve lived.