The iPhone cometh…almost with high caliber gunfire and blood
I’ve finally joined the ranks of the enlightened multitudes (as Ernest Lawrence Thayer would have called them) and purchased an iPhone.
I got this fantastic gadget from a guy in a slightly seedy Jamaica Plain neighborhood, though it’s not what you think. The transaction was set up over Craigslist and the seller was a perfectly normal guy with no obvious ties to crime, gangs, deceit or anything untoward. His beautiful house was just in a part of town that didn’t have as much refinement as I’m used to.
Is that classist? I suppose so. But maybe when you read the following bullets (not actual ones – although they could have come soon enough) you will understand my concerns….
• I rode the scooter into Jamaica Plain and found the seller’s house. It was on a one-way street accessible only via a series of other one-way streets. When I first arrived I chose to break the law and drive the wrong way up the one-way street to avoid a crowd of teens hanging around a tricked out Honda Civic.
• While I waited, no fewer than three other cars came up the street the wrong way as well. Perhaps they were blind or blatant traffic law breakers, or they were also staying away from the ‘gang’ at the end of the road.
• I was too early so I went for a ride to a local pub where Boston Media Makers meets – Doyle’s. I used the facilities and received a call from the seller informing me that he was now home. I returned to the neighborhood.
• This time I decided to brave the crowd of kids – that had now turned into two crowds of nearly nine kids in each group (that’s about 20 teens taunting each other). As I approached, one kid pulled an aluminum baseball bat out of the front seat of the Civic and started to chase a girl across the street. She ran and he turned and tossed the bat back in the car. I buzzed past the group and then saw the police car.
• Just a half block away from where the kid with the bat assaulted (that’s what threatening with a weapon is called I believe) the girl, there was ANOTHER gang jostling about and being approached by two uniformed cops. I kept going. Real nice neighborhood.
• Once I got past that group I thought I was home free until a group of younger kids, five youths between 11 and 14 years old, chased my scooter for about 10 feet before giving up (I’m very glad I got the bigger engine as it accelerates quickly).
• When I arrived at the house, the iPhone seller advised me to put the scooter out of sight and near the door to the house.
Now what do you think? Nice place to visit?
Bear in mind, it was the middle of the summer and it was only 6PM. Still light out. People around everywhere.
Oh, I almost forgot. As I came out of the house, three more cops raced down the guy’s street to assist the police officers who were there already.
Now that I’m all worked up again I need to do some yoga and breathe deeply. I’ll tell you about the iPhone in another post.
More to come…
August 27th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Congrats on the purchase – I hope the drama (and the danger) are worth it!
August 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
His beautiful house was just in a part of town that didn’t have as much refinement as I’m used to.
HURRR BROWN PEOPLE
August 27th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Wait lemme guess, you live in Brookline. Do I win?
Thank you for passing judgment on my neighborhood based on your 20 minute trip there wherein – wonder of wonders – you witnessed teenagers do stuff. I’m white, professional, and have lived not a five minute walk from where you just described for two and a half years. It might be a bit rougher than the tree lined promenades from which you apparently hail, but Neither I nor basically anyone I know here has ever felt threatened or unsafe, regardless of the hour of night. And sure as hell not at 6 on a summer evening.
And dude, a scooter? Where exactly do you *not* get harassed riding a scooter?
August 27th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
You shouldn’t have cheaped out on the iPhone. Buy a new one.. And turn on the news sometime… Jamaica Plain is on there all the time….
August 27th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
I live in JP. Can you please be more specific about what street you were on? I’m curious to know if it was near my place.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
It was Egleston Square.
I’m not from Brookline.
Hyperbole occasionally.
3G phone has yet to be unlocked.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Wow,
Did you tell all your friends about your harrowing ride through “the hood”? You must be so proud of yourself for being so brave! As a lifelong JP resident and a current public employee in JP (oh yeah…and I work in Egleston….at night oooohhh scary!) I think you are truely an ASS. Suck it up buttercup and spend the money for a new phone rather than looking to get off cheap and trashing my neighborhood.
PS- As a young female I feel safe walking around JP, In fact in my 30 years I have never been robbed, mugged, beat up or chased down a street. But then again, I don’t ride a scooter.
August 27th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Andrew says,:
“but Neither I nor basically anyone I know here has ever felt threatened or unsafe, regardless of the hour of night. And sure as hell not at 6 on a summer evening.”
Well, why do won’t shut our eyes and pretend all is ok in JP then, because according to you it’s just as safe and peaceful as can be.
You must be asleep. I’ve seen big packs of kids fire fireworks from the street right into wooden houses right on Center St. In JP at 2 in the afternoon on a Saturday and no one was going to do a thing about it.
Packs of kids get out of hand everywhere, and being chased by 5 14 year olds is never going to improve anyone’s day.
And then there’s , jk, who writes:
“As a young female I feel safe walking around JP, In fact in my 30 years I have never been robbed, mugged, beat up or chased down a street. But then again, I don’t ride a scooter.”
Good for you. Well, this guy WAS chased down the street. And if you’ve been in JP for 30 years and haven’t seen plenty of messed up stuff, you must have been asleep the whole time.
yeah, jk, I’m sure the last time you passed a group of 20 “kids” where one had a baseball bat out chasing someone across the street, then were chased by 5 14 year olds (who i’m sure were getting their cue for behavior from the mob of older teens further down the street) it felt totally normal and safe to you.
From your response, I’d say you are the one in fairy-land without a clue, not the blogger. Or maybe I should cut you some slack. You might be afraid of this crap and just not want to admit it. It’s easier to attack this blogger because he’s describing something that you don’t like and is threatening.
Last time I checked, chasing someone as group is aggressive, threatening behavior. The fact is, 5 fourteen year olds can pull down an adult no problem if they want to. Chasing after him is threatening to do so. It could be a game, it could not. But the fact is, these kids have no one putting a boundary on them, so they pick on the guy on the scooter.
however, since you think it’s acceptable that he was harassed based upon what kind or transportation he uses, maybe he should just close his eyes and not say anything and pretend nothing is wrong.
Well, something IS wrong.
That’s actually how situations like he’s describing develop–no one in the neighborhood dares do anything because they are afraid.
Hmm–there were 2 or 3 cops there too. Must be because everything was peachy keen and apple-pie over there that night.
There’s a difference between being used to something/accepting it and its being ok.
Sounds like you’re used to it.
But, in fact, it isn’t OK. You shouldn’t have to deal with it, he shouldn’t have to deal with it, and I shouldn’t have to deal with it.
But that’s not the reality we’re living in. We do have to deal with it., unfortunately.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Kids with fireworks, you say? The horror! And I’ve certainly never seen cops around groups of teenagers anywhere else. Oh, except Newton, Brookline, Cambridge, Allston, Back Bay… but we know what happens over there.
I’m not denying there is crime, in JP and in a lot of places around Boston. But this post was incredibly naive and overstated, from someone who by his own admission is used to ‘refinement’ in his neighborhoods. Well, turns out most people don’t live in refined areas. Kudos to the two of you who can pass judgment and shake your heads at the lack of stepfordism here in “the hood”, but it turns out most people go their entire lives in Boston without getting shot. If you’d had any real experience with JP, Roxbury, Dorchester, Roslindale, etc. that WASN’T your local news, you’d know that.
August 28th, 2008 at 1:57 am
Re comment #3 “And dude, a scooter? Where exactly do you *not* get harassed riding a scooter?”
Same places you don’t get harassed for walking, not having tatoos or not being armed.
Tell ya what: if it’s OK for your peeps to chase people with scooters, it’s OK for some fine citizens to chase you if you’re unarmed. Those firecrackers make great cover! Oh yeah, carry some cash.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:34 am
I quit riding the Orange Line from Downtown Crossing into JP years ago because of the gangsta wannabe teens on the trains in the afternoon. Decked out in hoodies, multiple “gold” chains, rhinestone earrings, and badly done tats, these people talked trash and occasionally fought. JP has deteriorated unbelievably. Same problem at Downtown Crossing. Ask the security guards at the small businesses. Frequent fighting on the street, shoplifting in the stores. Always a patrol car parked there. Sometimes you can watch one of the punks get arrested. I can’t imagine how these morons think they are ever going to get jobs.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Guys,
There’s a difference between passing judgment and expressing one’s feelings. Just because he felt unsafe doesn’t mean that he’s passing judgment, he’s just feeling unsafe. You say he’s naive? Probably, if he’s not used to that kind of neighborhood he is naive. Is he an idiot for driving a scooter in JP? I don’t know. Should he be harassed for driving a scooter? Well, only if you judge a person by what they drive.
He had an experience. He never said “this is the way it is all the time”. He never said “JP is a horrible place.” He simply gave his one-time experience and asked what you thought.
You could say he was overly cautious to avoid the kids at the end of the road, but then you’d have to pretend he wasn’t chased by a bunch of kids. You could say he would have been safe walking down the street, but then you’d have to ignore the girl chased by the kid with the baseball bat and the 5 cops.
Anyway, I’ve lived in all sorts of places. Total dives, small country towns, beautiful suburbs and crowded urban neighborhoods. The living in each is so different that going from one to the other can be a total culture shock, either way. I’ve been the one stupid enough to leave something unlocked or on the front steps in a neighborhood where it was bound to be taken/stoken/broken into, and I’ve also been the paranoid idiot who locks his car and house doors in a neighborhood where my kid could leave the bike on the front lawn all night and expect it to be there the next morning.
It takes time to go from one to the other and ‘get used’ to it. But I gotta say, I prefer the neighborhood where my kid’s bike is still there in the morning.
Jeff, just keep writing how you see things. Its just a ’slice of life’ from one person’s perspective. The same story written by someone from JP would undoubtedly have been different. I’m sure someone from “the ‘hood” who made a trip to Brookline would have had a story to tell that would have make folks from Brookline wonder what HE was talking about, too.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am
1. “Same places you don’t get harassed for walking, not having tatoos or not…” Not sure what tattoos have to do with this….?
2. The Orange Line teens – Ignore the unruly kids on the train (and at the stations), and they’ll ignore you.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:56 am
Andrew:
Hi.
“Kids with fireworks, you say? The horror! And I’ve certainly never seen cops around groups of teenagers anywhere else”
It’s not the fireworks, it’s that
a) it’s illegal
b) it’s a wooden house–dangerous
c) no one on the street says anything because it’s a group of , maybe, 20 out-of control teenagers and only the rare person is going to stick their neck out as an individual against 20.
Also, regarding your earlier response to mine, there was no mention of gunshots in either the original post or my response. So the fact that “most “people don’t get shot in Boston seems irrelevant. “most” people don’t get shot anywhere, except for maybe a war zone. Even there the rates of people getting shot are probably less than 50%. I’m not sure why you even brought it in. I’m not going to address it any further here, though .
Clearly I do have some experience in JP (not so much Roxbury) or I wouldn’t have had the experience with the fireworks to write about.
I think everybody deserves to live in a place where they are respected and people obey basic propriety. As Chris wrote above, it’s nicer and more relaxing. Some places have more peace and order than others. JP is by no means the worst, nor is it the best.
But pretending this stuff doesn’t happen, and acting like it’s totally ok and only the RICH people deserve to have peace on the streets and around their homes is ridiculous and, to me, borders on the bizarre.
Someone describing an actual, believable experience that happens in JP is not disparaging JP. It’s describing part of it.
August 28th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Ok, Andrew, I messed up– Jeff he DID say “almost with high power gunfire and blood” in the title. However, i glossed over it because it seemed like literary exaggeration.
I think that’s why he later wrote,
“It was Egleston Square.
I’m not from Brookline.
Hyperbole occasionally.”
September 1st, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Man, you people are uptight! Crime happens, and it happens in places where people aren’t keeping an eye on things. Sounds like the cops were there to deal with some kids who got out of hand. Thank God school has started and the teens are back in daycare.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
lol… crime happens,if it were your daughter or your sister that was almost assaulted with baseball bat , by some lazy,punk……..would you smile in her face…….and say “well baby ……crime happens?”
jamaica rise up, it sounds more and more like ……