top 10

I am going to finish off my top ten list of things I wont miss in Lake Shitty. Let me recap

10. drunk people urinating in the bus shelter
9. sketchy businesses - XX stores, gun shops, strip club
8. shopping carts inside my building
7. people not stopping at the uncontrolled intersection
6. sloppy building next door

and now I'll come up with reasons 5 through 1.

5. no coffee shops are open late in the area (except Starbucks which has no free wifi and burnt tasting expensive coffee with no frequent customer cards and they wonder why they're doing shitty) . The closest coffee shop open later than 7:30pm is way up in Shoreline or down in the U-District.

4. pan handlers. It's almost impossible to go to QFC to buy groceries without being approached by a pan handler, or having to walk past a whole group of them hanging out behind the businesses which can be intimidating. Most of them don't appear to be homeless, they're just asking for money instead of working. As someone who makes $14K a year for my halftime TA appointment, which is less than anyone who works full-time at minimum wage... and I still manage to pay rent, that pisses me off. If you have a place to live and clean clothes to wear like many of those panhandlers, you can get at least a minimum wage job and make more than I do in a year and stop asking me for money.

3. abandoned cars. There were two cars abandoned on my street for months, then after the flood, another car was left abandoned and because it had been flooded it actually started to grow furry stuff on the seats. Apparently Lake Shitty is the place to leave unwanted cars

2. public library. The Lake Shitty branch is about the size of someone's living room. I've never seen a smaller library with so many noisy children running around unsupervised in my life. It SUCKS.

1. I don't feel safe walking around. I love to walk and I hate driving but even around dusk I don't like to be walking around in Lake Shitty. In fact, when I went jogging in broad daylight I often got unwanted attention (whistles, hollers, comments etc) from people hanging around or driving by. I saw one guy almost run through a 4 way stop because he was looking at the ass of a woman bent over pulling weeds from her garden. People are just generally trashy there and can't keep their comments or eyes to themselves.

Where I live now, which I've heard referred to as the homo-hipster area (Davie meets Kitsilano for you Vancouverites), I can walk everywhere and feel safe even at night. I'm in a more quiet residential neighbourhood while being no more than a 10 minute walk to cafes, bars, little boutique stores, and restaurants. There is some rif raf as in any major city, but people are more eclectic and friendly and less sketchy/trashy/up to no good. I still have noisy neighbours but it's heavy walking/video game noise, not children screaming or couples arguing which has been my experience in the past particularly in Lake Shitty.