Welcome to the Neighborhood

As most of you know, I lived in New Orleans for the last three years. And, as most of you know, New Orleans isn't exactly low-crime. Shit happens all the time. Not to me though. With the sole exception of some crazy dude following me around a couple of years ago, my car (Goldie) was safe and sound in her neighborhood outside the Quarter for that whole three years. We had people parking there all of the time. It was a hotbed of drunken foolishness. But I never had any problems, aside from a random beer can left on the hood of my car.

About a week and a half ago, I moved to Pittsburgh. I live in a nice, middle class neighborhood with one of the lowest crime rates in the city. There's an option to park in a garage, or off the street, but there's a waiting list and I figured "why bother?" There's plenty of off-street parking, no big deal. Not so. Today, I go out to my car, hoping to go to Whole Foods to get some dinner that was neither hot dog, nor pizza, nor chicken salad. Instead, I walk up to my car and as I get closer, I see all this glass beside my parking space. No way, I think to myself. I drive a 95 Mazda with nothing stealable in it, and though fabulous in its own way, not exactly a target car, so surely this is not my car's problem. Turns out it was. Some jackass decided that it would be a good idea to smash in my front window and steal nothing (or so I thought, more on that later). There is glass everywhere. So I, having had a bad day anyway, call the police, trying not to cry with sheer frustration. Didn't work. I practically sob out my address and 10 minutes later (one benefit of living in a functional city), the cops show up, file a report, tell me to call if I need anything else. All in all, it wasn't so bad, I guess. There was nothing of value in my car, although being broke and frustrated by the bar, the expense in mental health is so not worth any gain to the resident stupid criminals.

A few minutes after the police have left: I go and clean my car out, and tape up the window, remove the artwork from the truck, and generally make it look as empty as possible. As I'm doing so, I realize that they have stolen something. What did they take? What was worth the dignity of my window? Fucking cassette tapes. CASSETTE TAPES! They've probably been in my center console since the car was purchased. Bet that fetched a lot on the black market you total fucking idiots. I honestly hope that they get run over. It would be karmic perfection. I'm not a violent person, but I wish violence on these people. A friend suggested that the proper punishment would be to take the sheets of glass lying in my car and break them over the heads of these morons. I think it's fitting, personally. I mean, honestly, cassette tapes. I keep saying it over and over in my head and it still makes no sense. I have to spend in the neighborhood of $200 to fix a window for some fucking tapes that total about $3 in value, which I'm guessing isn't even enough to buy crack. Welcome to the neighborhood indeed. I'm putting myself on the waiting list for a parking space.