These are the people in your neighborhood

I live in an old (for suburban Atlanta) neighborhood, in an MCM house built in 1960. It's one of those transitional hoods - old couples dying off or moving out, young professionals moving in, with smattering of blue-collar folks, lots of gay couples, and a few random eccentrics for color. It's ethnically and socio-econimically diverse, with immaculately manicured properties sitting cheek to jowl with cruftier versions of the same houses sporting adandoned-looking vehicals, ragged bamboo, or feral-looking dogs. Sometimes all three. Simply put, it's a groovy affordable joint that sometimes gets just plain wierd. Take today - I saw a) a car fire, b) a freaky redneck family featuring both large, gelatinous people and rail-thin banjo player types, and c) a group of teenagers cruising through the darkness in and on top of an Olds Cutlass. There were at least three kids on the roof of that car.

We're really, really close to a major highway and a commercial / industrial area, so we get to see hookers. Awesome! I haven't seen one in a while, but occasionally we get skanky truck-stop flavored streewalkers along the main road that goes by the entrance to our little hoody. We get "boom" cars all the time, like it's the freaking NOPI Nationals outside. And this one time, police helicopters swooped in low over the block in the middle of the night, search lights scanning the backyards and pools. We never found out what had happened. Maybe it was a hooker hunt, like that Ice-T movie where he was running from Rutger Hauer and all, but with hookers.

We have a driving range, a couple of pawn shops, a pro soccer complex, and multiple excellent ethnic restaurants all within walking distance. One neighbor has a wolf. Several have totally boss vintage cars. We have bats and hawks and chimpmonks.

Why live anywhere else?