Graffiti

Ah, the familiar feel of East Oakland once again rears up to ruin my impromptu three day weekend. The connecting ramp between freeways gets melted by an exploding tanker truck early Sunday morning, causing an untold number of delays for all of the foreseeable future. Then, what to my wandering eyes did appear, rounding the bend toward my shop this morning? Certainly not Santa’s reindeer; but instead, the colorful ambience of graffiti covering my shop front, sprayed there by young morons with nothing better to do than destruction. I always think ‘oh man, if only I had been here to catch them’; but I know it is not always a good thing to get one’s wish granted, because then I would be in prison.

While I spent my first two and a half hours cleaning the black spray paint off my metal door and metal window cover, many of my neighbors came by to express their sympathy. We all thought we had the graffiti problem licked, which is why most of us redid our homes and storefronts. As my neighbor across the street said, there’s probably a new bunch of the old neighborhood thugs paroled recently. This usually means a new bout of break-ins and worse. I have it easy. My neighbors are still here at night when things have been getting real wild lately. A few have reported these characters hanging out in front of their houses, and the Oakland police, morale lower than their San Francisco brethren, have all but ignored them. The police don’t do themselves any favors ignoring this stuff, cause some of the neighbors are past the upset stage, and heading into wild west mode. Just thought I’d add a little local flavor to the blog today. :)