Secrets of the City

Oh, thanks Bob. Now I’m reliving the trauma all over again.

Max’s neighborhood is my favorite neighborhood in the city. There is crime there, sure, but the advantages the neighborhood has outweighs any negatives.

My neighborhood has seen quite a few murders in the last couple years, but nothing like some of the Northside or Central neighborhoods. But, Minneapolis has only had 8 murders this year, which is excellent. St. Paul has had more. I fear that there are a lot of dead bodies in boarded up houses a la “The Wire” though.

Shots have been fired near Stately Moffitt Manor in the past, and Mrs. Lungs and I have discussed moving.

Question is, to where? What place in Twin Cities is immune from this kind of problem?

In the end, our neighborhood rallied together and demanded action on a “drug house” that attracted the shooting and other area crime. It took awhile, but home owner was eventually sent to prison and neighborhood now safer and better place to live.

No where is immune. While it may not be out in the open like a drug related killings, every community has violence. Spousal abuse and child molestation take place in all neighborhoods regardless of race, class, or geography. Columbine was in a nice neighborhood.

This a tough question to answer. If I was single I would definitely have bought a big ole house in N. Minneapolis..got a couple of dobermans… name em Zeus and Apollo and taken that block to the top.

But having a wife and thinking about her safety and her routinely having to work till 10:30 pm it was an easy choice to pick SLP and it’s relatively low violent crime rate.

It is a trade-off for sure…my neighborhood has no coffee shops, art gallerys and very few restuarant choices within walking distance.

Oddly I hear a ton of sirens…Sadly I think it’s old people croaking mostly…

wow Max, that is intense. At least they shot and captured the guy though. Makes you feel a little safer that he is not still running around your neighborhood with a gun! He should be going to jail for a while.

Former Cat House ‘hood was active. A lot of gun fire heard, but never witnessed end result, thankfully. The crackheads, on the other hand, were an endless source of entertainment.

The current Cat House ‘hood is Pleasantville quiet. Other than last summer’s weird false fire alarm calls, it’s uneventful — knock on wood.

KC, according to Max’s Daily Glean, St. Paul has only had 7 murders so far this year.

St Paul claims that’s on pace to break their 20 average. But as Max wrote, that’s actually below pace, unless there’s a typical summer surge that they’re including in their claim.

When I lived in Uptown, I was riding the Number 10 bus one day near the post office on Lake Street. Kid ran out of the alley with handgun — but it looked at the time like a bazooka — and fired it over the bus. Everybody hit the deck but me. I was too surprised, but everybody else seemed to know exactly what to do as if they had been through it before.

I have been robbed at work (years ago, when I managed a movie theater in Indianapolis), but when the violence is close to home, it hits close to home.

Yes, the only thing good about what Max experienced, is that no one was hurt and this guy will probably charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm, attemped robbery/assault, and since his weapon was most likely not licensed, I think that is a year in jail automatically.

Even my quiet little dead-end street in SLP has occasional grafitti and full-time dirtball, skeezy, shifty residents.

Max’s neighborhood is my favorite neighborhood in the city. … the advantages the neighborhood has outweighs any negatives.

Why do you like this neighborhood? I don’t know much about that area.

Even my quiet little dead-end street in SLP has occasional grafitti and full-time dirtball, skeezy, shifty residents.

oops, hit save instead of the rich text editor.

Meant to add: the graffiti in my neighborhood is across the street, in New Brighton.

One night, my wife and I were sleeping in an apartment in Kingfield when we were awakened by a bunch of sirens and a loud crash right in front of our building. We ran to the front to see what was up, and saw/heard a crapload of cops with dogs chasing a guy into our neighbor’s yard. He went behind a fence, but we could hear the cops hitting the guy, the guy telling for them to stop, and the police dogs just generally freaking out. It was really, really upsetting to hear– it seemed like they were whaling on the guy forever– and we had a really hard time getting back to sleep.

I woke up the next morning feeling tired and crappy and thought, well, at least it’s a nice day and hey, it has to be better than last night. Then MPR reported that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center…

Question is, to where? What place in Twin Cities is immune from this kind of problem?

I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of shootings in Linden Hills.  Or Bryn Mawr.  Or Lake of the Isles.  I think there are definitely places that are largely immune to that sort of thing.

Linden Hills has felonious cats, though.

My friends who literally live three blocks up the street in SLP have a skeezy neighbor that watches Pron on a big screen tv with the blinds open…thats classy.

Just remembered a friend was robbed at gunpoint at her job in Linden Hills. This was about 15 years ago. Guy in mask, gun in face. Scary.

“Max’s neighborhood is my favorite neighborhood in the city. There is crime there, sure, but the advantages the neighborhood has outweighs any negatives.”

KC, I guess I am a bit curious too. What advantages are more important than not having bullets flying around your neighborhood?

They could call the cops and ask them to drive by and see what they think.

My reply was to Ryanol.

Jane thats what I told them.

My neighbors aren’t really sketchy other than the one thats a 60 year old guy recording a “Demo” in his mothers basement and sleeping in his van.

Living in Linden Hills we don’t see a lot of this type of activity. Although there were 4 cops outside my house at 2am last week. Looked like they busted three kids for having out of date tabs and found a small amount of pot (based on what I was able to dig up from police records the next day). Beyond that – almost everyone on my block has dogs and more than a few families own guns. I simply do not worry.

I’ve lived here for four and a half years and have seen bullets fly exactly once, from the police, chasing a guy who ran here from another area. Elliot Park isn’t exactly the wild west.

In my old hood, where I spent a good part of my youth, there is a campaign to combat major crime by starting small. The east side of Indianapolis has had real issue with violent crime of late — my mother and sister now live in the south side, but my dad lives alone near our old place. Worrisome.

lol, I know Max. I just found that comment a bit odd in a thread about a shooting in the street.

Relatively speaking, anywhere in the Twin Cities is fairly safe. I’m just saying that some areas are safer than others, as is true of any city.

Benefits to Max’s neighborhood:
It is basically downtown, so there is walkable access to everything including great food, art, and entertainment.
It is an old neighborhood so there are tons of really cool old buildings and lots of history.
The neighborhood itself has cool stuff like a college, coffee shop, couple restaurants.
The neighborhood has recently seen quite a few new buildings go in with upscale residents to boot, raising the property values and safety.
Public transportation in the neighborhood is great. It is easy to get anywhere in the city.

Other than this one instance, I can’t think of anyone being shot or murdered in the last couple years. I’m probably wrong, but it isn’t that bad. It is a lot nicer than my neighborhood, or Ranty’s neighborhood, or Steven’s Square in terms of crime.

To Max’s point about him only seeing one shooting, we’ve seen shootings twice since we moved into our neighborhood. Once at Lake and Pleasant and once at Nicollet and 28th (which is technically not my neighborhood.) In a five block radius from our house, I can think of 5 murders in the last 3 years, and we are not in North or in what most people think of the bad part of South, we are West of 35W.

mnblrmkr- Yep, I’m an idiot. St. Paul has 7 and Mpls has 5.

“In a five block radius from our house, I can think of 5 murders in the last 3 years,”

This kind of seems like alot, really close to home. Do you guys have kids?
What are the factors keeping you there? Your desire to make it a better place?

As they say in Singapore, “low crime doesn’t mean no crime.” Living in a high-rise there didn’t mean immunity from burglaries. There were actual “cat burglars” who would scale the side of a building at night until they found an unlocked window.

Things were starting to heat up around Lake Phalen earlier this summer but seem to have quieted down now (knock on wood). Still nothing like what happens in Frogtown or around the Payne-Phalen neighborhood.

Sounds like the big city is the same as it always is and will be. Glad you did not get hit Max bullets have a way of bouncing off of objects. I did not live to far from you location and the area in and around their is as they say “in transition”. which means you get robbed or hear gun shots while you pick up your favorite french roast at your local coffee shop. The worst part of it is that you try to improve the situation by attending “community meetings” which end up being a crock of shit from some city council member who’s idea of fighting crime is a program to get the kids off of the street. After a Realtor was robbed near my house and the shooting started up I moved. I cashed out before the crash, and do not miss the crime one bit. By the way crime happens everywhere but it happens a hell of a lot more in Mpls. and is much more violent. Furthermore, the PC crowd continually undermine the police. But hey if a coffee shop, museums and restaurants are your thing more power to you. Good to hear you were not hit Max.

I do, however, now know what it looks like when somebody does get hit. They don’t seem to enjoy it very much.

Chicago has 6 murders this weekend alone.

Yep, 5 murders, and not one of them was random. I don’t use drugs, I’m not in a gang, and I’m not in an abusive relationship so the chances of me getting murdered are almost non-existent.

And what ties me to my ‘hood is that we have a great house that we love. We have good neighbors, aside from the drug dealers and gang members which are a minority. We have easy access to both the 18 and 21 bus lines, which get us anywhere. And almost everything we could want is in walking distance, except a liquor store.

And, even if we wanted to move, our house is worth about $20k less than what we owe on it.

I heard Obama is going to give you a check for that 20K so you can buy matching Honda Goldwings (used of course/lets be reasonable).

I don’t use drugs, I’m not in a gang, and I’m not in an abusive relationship so the chances of me getting murdered are almost non-existent.

mayor ryback said something similar a couple years back and was skewered for it.

I heard about a study a few years ago that was done in the city we love to hate, Portland. As I recall they weighed the possibility of dying from crime in the city against the possibility of dying in a car accident in the suburbs. Again, from what I recall, they concluded it was pretty much of a wash.

“I don’t use drugs, I’m not in a gang, and I’m not in an abusive relationship so the chances of me getting murdered are almost non-existent.”

boooooooorrrrrring.

No kidding. They even go to bed by 11 on the weekends.

mayor ryback said something similar a couple years back and was skewered for it.

In a large part because he said it shortly after or before a bystander was killed during a crime (don’t remember the exact timing).

Doesn’t change the fact that he and kc are correct.

It’s much safer to fly than to drive, but tell that to the passengers (and their families) of the Air France flight.

shut up David, if we have a reason to stay up to Midnight, we do.

And to be fair, there have been some mistaken identity and revenge killings in the last year where the person killed had nothing to do with gangs or drugs, but it is rare.

Aren’t you in the MNvengers?

Speaking of busses, I just rode the 3 from the U to the 5th St. garage. The I was the only one on the bus for the last 6 blocks or so, and the driver didn’t know I was there. He started singing “I’ll Be There” in a beautiful voice. And thanked him when the bus arrived.

Charez Jones, Vernice Hall, Tyesha Edwards. Rare, but still a fact.

Ooh, Jane, I’ve done that a couple times. It’s rather embarrassing, but I made sure to tell them that I wasn’t charging them a single cent for the entertainment.

Sweet Caroline! Bump bump bum…

Chicago has 6 murders this weekend alone.

I would bet Kansas City has similar stats.  Murders are so frequent there, they don’t even make the news.  It’s sad.  I SO don’t miss it!

I fled Stevens Community when the crackheads started to look a little too twitchy, and then a gang of teens were walking the streets robbing and beating people with bats during the day/early evening, and THEN a couple was stuffed in their trunk at the SuperValu, driven to their apartment, robbed, the women raped, then stuffed back in their trunk and finally dropped of on the shoulder of I-94E. Stevens was/is a really great neighborhood, but I just had enough (although, watching the ATF use a battering ram to bust some drug dealers in the building next door was fucking awesome).