Let's do this again sometime soon.

Wow, the semester is over. And I'm amazed I kept this blog up as long as I did (although I must admit, I faltered in the last month).

However, I'm very glad I kept it up, and frankly, I think I might continue it. Neighborhoods genuinely interest me, and looking back on my postings, I feel I was able to bring up items of interest that happened in and around my neighborhood. My only problem now is keeping my eyes open for unusual happenings. It's hard to maintain these posts when I get home late at night, and am not paying any attention to my surroundings.

One last thought: all the leaves in my front driveway that I failed to rake up are decomposing into a brown, soupy mush. This is why we rake our leaves.

Comments

Here.

And Here.

Website for Game Script

http://fileserver.art.utah.edu/~scharles

Decapitated

Yesterday was Halloween. I was walking back from Smith's, with a few bags of candy, when I came across a dragonfly on the sidewalk. At first, it looked like it was copulating with another dragonfly. I looked a little closer, and saw that it was being attacked by a wasp. I continued to stare in horror, as the wasp killed the dragonfly, slowly removed it's head, and flew off with the head in tow.

The weirdest Halloween, ever.

Working Mushrooms Website

Phew. I finally got my website working. Here's the address.

http://fileserver.art.utah.edu/~scharles

Spooky

It's getting close to Halloween, and a few people on my street have been decking out their houses in spooky ornamentation. The woman living across from us covered the entire entrance of her house with fake cobwebs, fake pumpkins, and other assorted fake halloween goodies. What she doesn't realize is that we are totally beating her in spookiness. Sure, we have our fair share of fake halloween plastic decorations, like the fake grave stones that sit in our giant potted plants, our fake skeleton that hangs from the front porch, and the fake plastic glow-in-the-dark bugs that are all over our patio. However, our porch is covered in actual cobwebs, filled with actual spiders, tangled in a mass of actual dead flies, moths, and other assorted bugs.

Call it laziness, or a bit of Halloween brilliance, but no one in our neighborhood can hold a candle to our spooky/disgusting porch.

I'm Lost

I was riding the bus home along main street the other day when I saw an incredibly sad man standing on a corner. He looked like a disheveled, homeless version of Karl Marx. The bus stopped, and I was able to get a good look at what he was doing. He stood on the corner, not by a bus stop, not by a restaurant, and not by any place meaningful. In fact, it seems he had found the most uninteresting and useless corner to inhabit. And what was he doing? Looking around in confusion, holding a grocery bag full of who knows what in one hand. He looked completely lost, and I wish someone had asked him if he needed help.

Homeless

Maybe I've already touched on this subject before, but is it just me, or are there more homeless people than usual? The past couple weeks, I've seen a few people sleeping in the park up the street from my house. One morning, I even saw a man sneaking out of an abandoned lot with an old shed, presumably his new home (are squatters considered homeless?). Is it from this recent economic downturn, or are more people simply without a home?

Absolutely Nothing

My neighborhood is such a bore. Apart from the fact I haven't been home lately, when I am home, very little goes on. I occasionally hear what sounds like gunshots at night, but nothing in the papers seems to hint at any crime happening. Maybe I need to get out more...

Shady Dealings

Earlier this summer, when I first moved in, our neighborhood was much more exciting. Maybe it was the heat, which seems to drive everyone outdoors. My friends and I spent virtually the entire summer sitting on a couch on the porch, escaping the heat of the house. As I mentioned in my previous post, a few of our neighbors were incredibly suspicious. An older women, and a 20-something year old man with a gaping hole in his rotting teeth would spend all of their time outdoors, sitting in front of their house. This wouldn't seem suspicious in itself, if they wouldn't have continually been walking up and down the street, directing all sorts of people to their home. It became quite clear after a while that dealings of the most shady nature were taking place. My guess from the lack of teeth, and the way the older woman would periodically pass out sitting on the curb or her home, that they were dealing some sort of drug, either meth or cocaine. Eventually, from what I heard from my other neighbors, they were both arrested and taken away. I didn't see it happen, but I haven't seen them since.

Neighborhood Stray

I was about to leave my house the other day, when I received a surprise. Opening my front door, a black cat with white spots lazily walked through my front door and began to swagger around my house. It seemed strange to me that some random stray like this was so confidently walking around, in my home. I attempted to pick up the cat, to no avail, for about 15 minutes. Eventually I was able to herd him/her out of the house, but when I shut the door, the damned cat just hung around my porch. About a half hour later, one of my roomates made the same mistake I did and let the cat in.

Rinse and repeat.

I later found out that it wasn't a stray, but one of my neighbor's cats down the street, who they had been looking for. Oops.

Wanted for Endagerment of Child

I've been curious to know if their are crime statistics to my neighborhood. So I went online to the Salt Lake Police Department's website, and that is exactly what I found. I'm amazed at how much crime there is downtown, as compared to Federal Heights, or the Avenues. It's only amazing when you first glance at it. You realize quickly how influential economics can be on crime.

Another feature that caught my eye was Salt Lake's Most Wanted list. Browsing through this, I found this woman.


Her name is Deborah Townsend. She's hearing impaired, and wanted for the endagerment of a child. Apparently she slammed her 12-year-old daughter's head into the floor. What caught my eye about this woman though is that I think I have seen her from somewhere. She looks alot like this woman that was living across the street from us, who my roomates and I thought was dealing meth or something. But I'm not sure that it could be her, because that woman was taken away by the police. Maybe I have seen her walking up and down our street or something.

Working Website

Here is my website that is in progress.

http://fileserver.art.utah.edu/~scharles/Spencer_Whittington_Charles___Designer/index.html.html

I could see myself living here.

I think everyone has a notion of where they see themselves later in life. A career, a family, a car, a home. I can say for certain as a 20-something year old that my notions of all these things are vague. However, having spent quite some time wandering the neighborhoods of Salt Lake, I can say that I wouldn't mind considering becoming a long term resident. I have other places I would like to visit first. But the buildings in Salt Lake exude such a distinct, comforting character. Even the house I am renting at the moment, as ramshackle as it may be, has a lot of life to it.

Where do I see myself 20 years from now? Hopefully living in a small, old house that needs some care.

Who do you think you are? Miles Davis?

A couple nights this past week, I have been kept up by trumpet playing, somewhere in my neighborhood. At first, I thought it could be someone playing their stereo very loud, but after what I have endured this past week, it is most definitely someone playing the trumpet. This in itself wouldn't annoy me so much, if it weren't for all the neighborhood dogs that join in chorus. Not in singing, but mostly barking. My guess is that it's some 7th-grader reciting for his band class. But who knows, maybe it's a trumpet player that has fallen on hard times and is wandering the streets in a lonely daze, stuck on a loop of Taps.

Inconsistencies

Another walk through my neighborhood, and I can't believe how varied one block from another can be. Fifth east near Liberty Park is a shithole. Lawns are dustbowls. Porches are littered with piles of trash and urin-stained couches. Walk just one block east to Sixth east, and it's like a whole different world. Everyone's grass is incredibly green and well maintained. All the houses are quaint, splendid, and admirably homey. Why such a big difference in a matter of a few hundred feet? I couldn't say why. It almost seems like these two neighborhoods are something like an odd couple. One being that gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed model, the other being a sweaty, overweight, middle-aged balding man that lives in his parents basement. Maybe she's blind (rent is cheap).

*shrugs*

Up In Flames

I was taking a walk the other day, and a couple blocks east of my house was this fine establishment.


It's a bit difficult to see from the photograph, but the doors and windows have been boarded up with plywood. The tops of the windows, doorways, and roof are blackened from what appears to have been a fire.

The sad part of the story is that there are a dozen other houses like this on the block, boarded up, not from from fires that ravaged these homes, but from foreclosure and neglect.

In Your Neighborhood

About a month ago, I moved into this house.


It's a few blocks from the Main Library, and I would have to say that the best feature about it is that the rent is dirt cheap. It's easy to see why. The house itself is incredibly old, and it looks every bit of it. The front "driveway" is a bizarre, bricked piece of land, where a car can be squeezed in, with the appropriate dose of insanity. The back yard is something of a desert, and the house itself has something of a bug problem. The swamp cooler only works about 5% of the time, making the upstairs (where my bedroom is) feel something close to a furnace. But, that's charm, right?

The neighborhood is pretty interesting as well.


Neighborhoods have always interested me. Their inhabitants, the collective mood, the houses, the cleanliness, the planning. Not only that, but there is an incredible amount of history to so many of these places, and most people seem completely oblivious to this fact.

My first goal, seeing that I am a new inhabitant of this neighborhood, will be an attempt to become acquainted with not only the people, but the houses, the mood, and the history of the neighborhood. I'm going to start with a fairly small scope (just my neighborhood block), but may expand the area depending on how things go. Something that interests me alot is the history, and for my first assignment, I'm going to pay a visit to the City County Building, as well as the Library to see if I can dig up any information about my city block.

Exploring that one website.

Had to explore this website. Reminded me alot of this and this website. I'm not sure which came first, the chicken or the egg, but seems reasonable that multiple parties could happen upon the same ideas, deep in thought. I'm inclined to personally believe that humans are vile, plagiaristic creatures that feed off the few with an inkling of an idea.