n' the Ghetto

In 2001 I shared a house in North Clearwater with my good friends James, Mandie and Kris. And Roscoe, James' crazy minature schnauzer came later. It was on Poinsettia, which is right off of Union Street. This is significant because Union Street marks the border between Clearwater and Dunedin, which is near where I work now in Dunedin. Having an hour long lunch break gives me time to relax and have lunch, or grab a quick bite and run errands. The other day I drove past our old residence to see how the neighborhood was. Now the house we rented in Clearwater was a sweet 3 bedroom/2 bath deal with vaulted ceilings, 2 car garage, and a good size kitchen area. The neighborhood however, was a little less classy but most definitely unique and strange.

Some of the neighborhood characters:
Mr. Mackey was this old guy who live with his adult son who has a drinking problem. Kris saw his son taken to the hospital by an ambulance one day due to drinking too much. Mackey live directly across the street from us and most likely was a retired member of society, because he seemed to spend alot of his days sitting on a chair in his front yard staring at our house.
Mr. Lopez was a cool guy. He was our neighbor to the right from Cuba or Puerto Rico, I can't really remember, let's just say he and his wife are Hispanic. The house that he owned was exactly like ours, but its hard to say if they really liked inside the house, because they spent all of their time in their garage. They used their garage like a regular family room, watching TV and listening to music there while entertaining guests. I can safely say we saw them everyday, except when it got cold because they would close the garage door down.
Baby's Momma, not her real name, was this attractive 18 or 19year old white girl that lived across the street in her mom's house with her black boyfriend and their new child. She was part of the daily entertainment for Kris and I while we were unemployed. We would sit in our living room and watch the neighborhood when we weren't playing Unreal Tournament and not looking for jobs. It was kinda disturbing to watch this girl out in her frontyard in a bikini washing her baby's crib out with a hose. I finally got work, but thanks to Bobby the Baby's Momma drama got dropped into Kris' lap.
Bobby, damn crackhead Bobby. He is the sole reason why we don't miss that neighborhood. He was the local high school dropout who thought he was cool, and wanted to hang out at our house all the time. He talked alot of shit about everything. He tried to hook Kris up with baby's momma, but Kris didn't fall for that crap. I remember when he got stopped dead in his shit talking tracks by my man Dave Ferguson. We were having a house party for Eric Shinn and his new bride at the time Kyoko, because they were leaving for Japan soon. So here comes Bobby trying to impress in the midst of this sophisticated crowd of ex-Hydrogen Media employees. A bunch of us are outside and we are talking holograms with Dave because he knows alot about them from working with his uncle. Bobby goes off at the mouth swearing he knows how to make holograms, but quickly gets booed off stage as Dave begins with grilling him for info on hologram production. Bobby starts stuttering and finally fades away. That is one story out of many. On nights we wanted to be left alone, we would have to go into "bobby mode". We would all chill on the couch in the kitchen with the lights off and ignore the knocking on the door. That's enough of Clearwater for me.