my nice neighborhood

so i went to one of my friend's random cookout parties, and in the middle of getting pleasantly intoxicated and talking to his friends, they insisted i thusly blog about this incident:

a couple weeks ago, we got shut out of our damn street by the cops for hours.

see, we have this club down the street from us, and evidently its main clientele seems to be 18 year old wanna-be gangstas with guns. they get in spats, and then they run down our nice pleasant street (full of older neighbors who own their houses and younger renters), shooting the fucking place up. it's more than a tad bit annoying. there's a petition to shut down the club, i'm so signing it the next time i see it.

now most of the time they drive by on the bigger main street, but this time some little fuckers ran into our street, and shot back at the cops, who were pursuing them.

so, we come home at 10pm, i am eagerly awaiting dinner of some variety (night person, remember?), and the cops WON'T TELL ME WHY THEY WON'T LET ME IN MY FUCKING HOUSE.

bastards. NOPD cops are complete assholes when they feel like it. which is, far as i can tell, most of the time.

so we're standing on our corner, when our neighbor what owns the mustard-colored mansion on the corner walks out, and we ask him, "WTF is going on here?"

so he tells us what the hell is going on. i'm standing outside, a bit cold outside, and then another of our neighbors bikes up, like "WTF?" and we tell him, too.

turns out that neighbor is an award-winning musician with a hit song on a famous big network show. he is also awesome, and gave us some fantastic cd's of his. he lives a block from us, in a house his great-grandfather built.

anyway, the mustard-mansion guy (who has renovated the crap outta this amazing house) invites us in, and, because i am starving, cooks Matt and i eggs, and toast, which was really delicious, and shows us the first floor of the place. really nice exposed brick kitchen, and he left part of the fabulous old plaster moldings up, lest anyone who has more money than he ever get the nerve to try and recreate, someday.

i love people who restore history, btw. my dad does this, see. (i actually grew up in a pre-civil war brick plantation home, which was really awesome.)

so that's what happens, in my neighborhood.

when stupid people shoot up my street and lock me out of my own goddamn street for four hours, i meet my awesome neighbors, they cook me eggs and give me free cd's, and then other friends show up and take me to pizza.

life can be so awesome.