The intimacy of poverty

My top floor jackets.

After New Mexico, I had moved into the most amazing flat I had ever found, 3 bedrooms, 2 floors of restored hardwood, a bike ride to work and so so so cheap. Like $600 a month cheap. I have many beautiful memories of that place, that can only take place in that house.

The neighborhood though, was full of questionable sounds.

My first night there, I didn’t have a screen on my bedroom window. As I laid out my sheets one simply floated out the window, like a blue ghost landing beside the house. I slipped downstairs at 3am and breathed in the grey landscape and yellowy beauty of early summer streetlights, gathered the delinquent sheet and closed the front door behind me.

Just then, pop pop pop pop pop. Squealing. Pop!

Oh right, I live kitty corner from a motorcycle gang, the Outlaws.

In black painted ancient brick club house they were notorious for shooting at cops who came too close and keeping heroin out of the city because it wasn’t profitable enough. That’s right, they murdered heroin dealers and got away with it. There were 6 murders in a quarter mile radius of my house that summer.

Fair enough, I thought.

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