Let’s start with the fact that he doesn’t screen his tenants. There hasn’t been a single tenant in this building who wasn’t some kind of asshole. You’d probably respond to that with, “Everyone’s got a little asshole in them.” and you’d be right. Hell, I’ve got a lot of asshole in me. I ain’t too proud to admit that. But the people who have lived here really take the cake.

Don’t believe me?

Assholes #1: These two were relatively quiet when they lived in the downstairs rear apartment, aside from the occasional kerfuffle and rare car wash days (when he cranked his POS stereo), but we’ve all got those days. Imagine our surprise when they moved into the apartment beneath ours and almost rattled the pictures off our walls by body-slamming each other around the house every three days like clockwork. Then we discovered he was a crack dealer and she was a conniving cunt who blamed all her bullshit drama on everyone else. They moved out on their own after an argument with the landlord over how our parking lot was plowed.

Asshole #2: This lady really wasn’t so bad. The only really annoying things about her were that she is a complete feminazi, a little racist and didn’t take care of her cat in what I would consider the best way an animal should be cared for. But those things can be mostly overlooked. She moved on her own when she realized the landlord was never going to do anything about the cookouts A#3 were throwing in our parking lot. Which were never anything more than a normal cookout: a bunch of people hanging out, playing cards, tossing back a few beers and talking.

Assholes #3: This couple was nice most of the time. But Jesus, would they turn on you on a dime. They got money off the rent for taking care of the grounds, but they’d complain because no one else took the garbage out to the road. And every Saturday and Sunday morning the radio would start blaring at 8am. Around noon it would go off. They moved on their own because he had to have hip surgery and couldn’t do stairs for a while. For about five minutes, this place was quiet.

Assholes #4: The Crackhead and her crew. There were drug dealers and johns (who were often the same people) running in and out of our shared hallway which was our only exit. And if it weren’t for the guy who walked around our building with a sledgehammer screaming about smashing all the windows in the place, or the one who was constantly leering at me and making disgusting comments as if I were one of The Crackhead’s other crackwhore friends, or her creepy stalker who almost got into a knife fight with A#3, I probably wouldn’t have cared. Eventually they’ll kill themselves and the world will go on a better place without them. But it became painfully obvious that having them here put us in danger when they started having knife fights in the hallway. Course, the landlord only evicted them because she was late on the rent.

Asshole #5: An older gentleman, probably in his forties or fifties, moved in with a sob story about hard times in his marriage and his wife living in Syracuse. It wasn’t long before it became obvious that the reality was he was a crackhead, fresh from some program, trying to show his wife he could stay sober. Then he met The Crackhead. He moved out on his own when he realized how far down he’d fallen. The last time I saw him, he’d been gone a month. He was back here trying to score some crack.

Assholes #6: A girl in her late teens, early twenties moved into the apartment we live in now with her boyfriend. She was pregnant, overdue and had an inducement scheduled for a couple weeks after she moved in. Two days before she went in to have the baby, she was in The Crackhead’s apartment. Naturally, when she took the mandatory drug test the state gives every mother about to give birth, she failed and lost the baby. Once the baby was gone, the party started. Then the boyfriend left, and the party went somewhere else. While a 200lb pitbull was locked in the kitchen. Sometimes for weeks at a time. Guess who cleaned up that mess? Once again, the landlord only kicked them out because they didn’t pay the rent.

Assholes #7: These folks were a couple young guys. I’m not really sure if they were lovers or friends. There’s a girl living there now with the one who’s been evicted but has yet to move out. The front window’s broken because they got into a fight and he put her head through the window. The landlord hasn’t fixed it. It’s been at least two weeks. The sheriff has yet to come to follow through on the eviction. It’s been at least a month since the landlord started the process. So he’s not getting paid, and he’s not really making any effort to get rid of the guy, either.

Assholes #8: A girl and a guy. I think. As far as I know the rest of the people who’ve been there are just visitors. But, dude, seriously? Who the fuck goes to someone’s house and helps them fuck with someone they’ve never even seen, so much as met, and can’t possibly have an issue with them?

The first time they were too loud we thought, “No big deal. It happens.” But then they got increasingly worse. Apparently, not calling them on their bullshit was an invitation to be assholes. So finally, after spending a night listening to their insane antics that swing sharply from one extreme to the next, we called the landlord and complained. Two weeks later, they got (what we thought was) out of control, only this time, they paced the house screaming “I don’t give a fuck who has a problem with my music this loud. I’m gonna listen to it how I want.” for an hour or so. Later, they were yelling about how they were going to blow the building up and kill everyone in it.

The landlord’s response? “Call the police. They’ll do something.”

Well, we called. The first night we called less than ten minutes after we made the call, they turned the music off. The second night we called, the same thing happened.

Last night, they didn’t turn their music on. Not once. Instead, they literally bounced off the walls and the floor all night long. So hard that the ceiling showered us with plaster powder and our pictures (including the sand painting M brought home from Africa when he was thirteen) rattled so hard I thought a frame cracked. Around 4:30 this morning, his company left and we thought we’d finally be able to go to sleep. But our bedroom door makes noise when you open and close it. And every time he heard the door open, he’d jump from one end of the apartment to the other for twenty minutes. He finally stopped around 6am.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is intentionally torturing us.

This morning, after hearing him talking to more company (that was here pounding on the back door so loud it was rattling our windows at around 10am) and telling them he’d intentionally kept us up all night, M called the police. Who said there is nothing they can (or will) do. They won’t even give the guy a ticket for violating the noise ordinance. They called it a “quality of life” issue and said it’s far too low a priority to send an officer to address the situation. “But file a report, and get it on file. That way if something happens we know who to look at.”

Gee. Thanks. So if the guy kills us, you’ll have a suspect, and our deaths might be avenged. That’s a huge load off my mind. I’m so glad we called you.

On Tuesday, I’m calling every housing authority I can find a number for. Tenants Rights, NYS Housing Authority, Code Enforcement … whoever I can find. If the police won’t do anything, and the landlord won’t kick him out, maybe we have some civil recourse against the landlord. We could own this building! But you best believe we’ll be selling it if the judgment does come out in our favor.

But I really wish there was something that could be done about the police’s picking and choosing of which laws to enforce. I mean, I get it. With an average of one teenager being shot a week, someone being loud really isn’t that big of a deal. But the problem is that at this point it’s not just someone being loud. In any other situation this would be considered an attack. The more we complain, the worse they get, and the more threats we hear them screaming over the music.

It’s an attack on our sanity, if not our physical well-being. Though many more sleepless nights and it’ll be an attack on our physical well-being as well.

And this is how violence in the ghetto starts. Person A harasses Person B for some perceived offense that may or may not be real. Person B tries to get law enforcement to do something about Person A but law enforcement refuses. Then finally, at his wits’ end, Person B loses control and does something to Person A. And the cops blame it on the neighborhood, or the drugs, or poverty when the reality is they refuse to step in until the situation has erupted into violence, and someone’s hurt or dead.

The more they do, the more confused I get about their choice of occupation. I mean, why would you be a cabby in the ghetto if you hate black people? What could possibly make you consider a profession that forces you to spend a good amount of time in a rolling box with the very people you hate? In some cases, it’s gotta be that they really just can’t do anything else. Because Jesus, these people are stupid.

For example, did you know all the violent criminals in the US, and especially in Schenectady, are either drug dealers or drug addicts? No one has ever been arrested for beating, raping, stabbing, shooting, mutilating, or killing another human being who wasn’t involved with drugs in some way. And the second they arrest one young blood drug dealer (who’s black, by the way), another one takes his place, and starts hurting people again.

Yeah… that’s what yesterday’s cabby said in response to my comment on New York’s police force seeming to be more interested in drug busts than murders and assaults. “That’s because the murderers and assaulters are all drug dealers and drug addicts. It’s all over money and drugs.”

o.O

But Rayne! My cousin’s sister’s aunt’s best friend’s uncle tried meth just one time, and he was hooked, and started stealing and stuff to get money for it. And someone caught him stealing their stuff, and he went nuts, and killed them.

I hear ya! Drugs do bad things to good people, and some violent criminals were on drugs when they were picked up. But “some” is not “all”, and just as many armed robberies are about the person being flat broke and having to feed their family as they are about drug money. Desperate times, and all that.

For that matter, I’d venture to say that your cousin’s sister’s aunt’s best friend’s uncle is more to blame than the meth. Being a former addict, I can tell you there’s a moment where you go, “Hmm… I wonder if I’m just a little too into this. Maybe I should quit.” I don’t know that I met any addicts at rehab who didn’t say they had similar thoughts. Many say they make a conscious decision not to care before spiraling out of control. I mean, no one really thinks it can happen to them, you know?

“Oh, whatever. I can stop whenever I want. It’ll take a lot more than a couple lines here, a few more there, to get me addicted.”

Not to mention the conscious decision the addict makes to try the drug in the first place. There are very few people who aren’t subjected to some form of drug abuse prevention therapy at some age in these great United States.

The thing about a drug dealer is, usually, the hustler on the street, or behind the door at the knock spot, is just a cog in the wheel. The cashier at the grocery store. A dude trying to make a buck to feed himself and his family. Half of them only own weapons because of who they have to deal with, and the dangers surrounding being a drug dealer, not because they actively seek to use it. The vast majority of the ones I’ve known intentionally keep their weapons in a place only they know, out of reach, and never look at it again unless they’re cleaning it, or find themselves in a position where they have to use it.

I’ve known a couple who had never been in a fight. I’ve known a couple who only fight in defense of themselves or those around them. I’ve known a couple who found themselves in a position to defend a stranger on the street in a situation they knew nothing about, or just walk on by, and they stopped and saved the stranger.

And I’ve known a couple who would just as soon kill you as look at you. But they are in the minority, by far, and usually didn’t come up right to begin with, so they were gonna go bad whether they got involved with drugs or not.

And, naturally, you’ve got the psychotic, power hungry thug often portrayed on television, or the big screen. They’re even fewer and farther between, and they’re easily deflated. Just plop someone in front of them who is completely unfazed by their abuse, and isn’t really afraid to die. They become completely confused, retreat to a dark room to try and figure out how to hurt the person, and finally just wither and die.

Okay, maybe that last is wishful thinking. The psychotic thugs seem to have nine lives. So maybe use nine people who are unfazed?

Let’s say there’s no need to point out that some drug dealers are the equivalent of a WalMart cashier. Let’s, instead, point out to these ignoramuses the fact that most serial killers are white males, and plenty of white people have been arrested for and convicted of armed robbery, assault, possession of drugs with intent to sell. Hell, the chief of police up here was arrested for heading a drug ring, and he’s white!

While the cabby is correct in his belief that in order to do away with the drug-related violence, we have to go after the people involved, he’s completely wrong about which people we should be going after.

We shouldn’t be arresting the weed dealer on the street because the crack dealer behind the window killed a crackhead for looking at him funny. We shouldn’t be putting nonviolent criminals behind bars for the majority of their lives because other people who choose their illegal line of work think they have the right to go around hurting people who piss them off. That’s like hating all bus drivers because one of them intentionally splashed water out of the gutter on your brand new thousand dollar suit. Or deciding to put down all the pit bulls in the world because a few that weren’t properly cared for hurt children. Or executing all the AIDS patients because a few assholes are going around intentionally infecting people.

I’d love to see stories in the news about the dealers I knew who were constantly trying to find and hold down a legitimate job, and barely covering their bills with the money they made selling drugs. I’d love to see an exposé on the ones who try really hard to hold their families together, and don’t go to work till their kids are in bed, and make sure to be there when they wake up, and keep it completely separate from their families. Or even the ones who are heavily involved in the community, and not the way the mafia was–or is, depending on who you ask.

But you might not even see that if pot is legalized. I think even if that happens, it’ll be demonized. Just like alcohol, and cigarettes, and now carbs, and trans fat, and gluten, and high fructose corn syrup.

Anyway… That’s all I’ve got to say about that.

Do you live in or around Schenectady, New York? Have you used one of our parks or bike trails or playgrounds? Then you’re darn right I’m talking to you.  So I ask you again, what are you doing Saturday, May 22nd?

This morning we stopped down to the Muddy Cup to grab some coffee, and I noticed a flier taped to the wall for Project SKIP (Schenectady Kids Imagine and Play).  They’re still looking for volunteers.  So far, they’ve got around 150 people getting involved. 

If you live in or around Schenectady, you’ve probably heard of Hamilton Hill and Vale.  Chances are, unless you live there, you avoid these neighborhoods like the plague.  But some of us, here in Schenectady, still see the beauty this city has to offer and are trying to clean it up.

To this end, on Saturday, May 22nd, citizens will gather to revitalize and rebuild Jerry Burrell Park and the spirit of the community.

Here’s what you’ll find in the pamphlet:

The Vision of Project SKIP

The ultimate goal of Project SKIP is to construct, trough the community build model, a new playground in Jerry Burrell Park.

What makes a community-built playground special is that the success of this project relies on the involvement of the local community.

Local citizens, like you, are assisting in designing, fundraising, and will even be constructing (usually in one day) the new play structure.

With its emphasis on community involvement, Project SKIP provides an opportunity to not only revitalize Jerry Burrell Park, but the spirit of the community itself.

Origin of Project SKIP

In December of 2007, several Union College students traveled to New Orleans to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.  While there, one of the projects they worked on was a community-built playground.

Struck by how the playground brought the community together to really help better their own community, they thought, “Why not Schenectady?”

How to Accomplish This Dream

Design: Local residents who are mothers, daycare providers, and people just like you worked with a qualified playground vendor to design the new playground.

Fundraising: This project will cost approximately $80,000.  In order to raise the necessary funds, fundraisers will be held throughout the community.

The Build Team: In the months leading up to the build, we will be recruiting volunteers to come out to help construct the playground.

Build Day: The build day will bring together all corners of the city to construct our dream playground.

Why Jerry Burrell Park?

Not only is Jerry burrell Park the most utilized park in the city, but the playground equipment is approximately 15 years old, which is the average lifespan of the type of playground currently installed.

In addition to aging, the play structures in place are increasingly difficult to maintain.

By coming together to build a new playground in Jerry Burrell Park, we will be continuing the current efforts to improve both the park and the neighborhood.

How to Get Involved

On May 22, 2010, the build team made up of over 150 residents from all oer Schenectady, will come together to build the playground of our dreams.  Our volunteers will be doing everything from building to serving food to watching over children.

To get involved call: (518)374-2683 -or- Email: prjctskip (at) gmail (dot) com

If you have a community project you’d like to get the word out about (There is no charge.), please contact the webmaster using this form.

The government and National Grid will tell you that’s not true.  They will tell you that there are a number of other energy suppliers in upstate New York.  That you’re more than welcome to take your business elsewhere.  That you can now deal with any number of suppliers and don’t have to deal with National Grid anymore.  They’ve even got a handy-dandy list for both gas and electric customers that you can refer to to find an energy supplier you’d rather deal with.

When citizens got fed up with the constant rise in price and utter disregard for an already impoverished people, New York started a program called “Your Energy… Your Choice” which, they said, would allow other energy suppliers access to the power lines in upstate New York and give citizens the option to stop using (and, by default, supporting) National Grid.  I looked into switching recently but found out that National Grid still owns the power lines.  And instead of the other energy suppliers renting the lines from National Grid, customers have to pay a monthly fee to National Grid to use the lines.

You don’t even get a bill from the actual energy provider you decide to go with.  All of the billing is done through National Grid.  So even if you’re getting your energy from someone else, you have to pay National Grid for service.  The only way to avoid dealing with National Grid in upstate New York is to live in an area covered by NYSEG, which, from what I understand, isn’t much better than National Grid.

As if all that isn’t enough, let me tell you about the bull shit we’re dealing with right now.

I’m currently on a payment agreement with National Grid.  I owe a lot of friggin money.  At least half of which is my ex’s fault, but that’s neither here nor there.  I owe them money and I’m trying to pay it off as best I can.

But the economy sucks.  Prices on food, electricity, natural gas, gasoline, housing are all going up and pay rates are staying the same.  We’ve managed to cut a lot of unnecessary stuff out of our budget but shit happens.  Emergencies come up.  And sometimes the budget’s still pretty tight.  Like now.

I had to sign a paper and send it back to confirm that we were agreeing to the arrangement.  Because our finances are what they are and we don’t have access to a fax machine, I had to wait till the day before the paper was supposed to be in to mail it out so I got it in just under the wire.  Which means their system had already sent us a disconnection notice that I received on or around June 7th.

On June 8th, I spoke to someone at National Grid about our payment arrangement.  I asked if they received the payment arrangement paper and if I still had a disconnection on my account.  The person I spoke to quoted me a bill due on June 19th (today) for the amount of $134.01.  With our payment arrangement, that meant we owed $144.01 due today.

Over the past few days, we’ve received three envelopes from National Grid, all with different amounts paid and due.  We were utterly confused.  One invoice said $1700 had been added to my account and I owed $0.  Another said that I owe $395.37 by July 5th.

The final notice we received said this:

We recently confirmed that you have been billed for usage on the wrong gas and electric meters from 10/24/08 to 05/20/09.  This situation has been corrected.  Your account was not debited for the usage you were under-billed for your electric service prior to 05/20/09.  We have re-billed the gas portion of your account for your actual usage resulting in a credit in the amount of $633.76.  The adjustments made are based upon actual readings off your correct meter and are in accordance with Public Service Commission Regulations.

They sum it up by apologizing for any inconvenience this might have caused me.  Which, yeah.  It’s a little inconvenient.  I now owe more than I used to.  But no biggie, right?  Tack it onto the end and I’ll pay it off gradually with the rest, right?

Wrong.

They want $400 of it right effing now.  They cancelled my bill of $134.01 and reissued a bill of $395.37 due by July 5th.

I’m not really understanding their logic, here.  I’m already on a payment arrangement.  The lowest payment arrangement possible according to the rules their collections agents have to follow.  The one they reserve for people in poverty.

So how does it make sense to bill me for 119 days of service – that I would have already paid for if they hadn’t screwed up – all at once?  And how is it even remotely fair?  And how the fuck am I supposed to come up with that kind of money on the 5th when rent is due on the 1st?

So I called.  And the first agent was convinced there was nothing she could do.  So she transferred me to someone else.  Who understood completely and transferred me to her supervisor.

It’s still not fixed.  I’m going to have to call back again.  Instead of lowering the amount they want to charge me right freaking now, they pushed it back a pay cycle.  Which is fine for now.  But then we’ll be at an even larger impass.  How am I going to pay $395.37 + whatever my current bill is?

Doesn’t it make more sense to… tack it on the back and let me pay it off with the rest?  Since it was, in fact, their mistake?  They’re treating it like a past due balance… a bill I just didn’t pay.  But it’s a balance they only just discovered.  So why am I being penalized?