tree shroom

tree shroom
Originally uploaded by Julep67

There is a small house on the corner of our street which has been vacant for about a year now.

When we first moved onto this street, there were a bunch of..um, "characters" is probably the most polite way I can think of to describe them.

We found out through our next-door neighbours (the very cool ones, not the ones on the other side who feel that they have some kind of a right to steal shit from the construction site - grr!!) that a large group of neighbours had banded together about the group of "characters" on the corner. This happened just before we moved in. The group was renting the house we learned. The landlord was trying to get them out of the house and the tennants started to make a mess outside, make noise, basically become the neighbours from hell. I guess our neighbours went to the city about it the noise and the mess and eventually (around the time we moved in) they became quiet.

Neither Mark nor I noticed anything during that first summer that concerned us. We kept hearing from friends that the tennants had removed all of the eletrical stuff, ripped out of the pipes, destroyed the drywall, basically had reduced the house to a shell. Now, this seemed silly to me because they were still living in the house!! All this while, apparently, the guy who owned the house was going through the tribunal to get them evicted. Around the time that they were to be evicted, they got up on the roof and painted, in huge white letters, "HAMC - STAY OUT." Yeah, cuz this house was suddenly a biker home? I don't think so. Their weak attempt to scare folks off didn't really work.

Over the winter, the house was empty and it was put up for sale. It sold pretty quickly, "as is" obviously. It's on a small corner lot and we thought that one of the adjoining neighbours may buy it up and extend their lot. Last night, I noticed that the windows (what was left of them) had been removed and tonight, the roof is gone. Finally it seems, the new owners got permission for demo. It'll be nice to see something nice and new go up on the corner.

I've grown tired of reading weak warnings from make-believe bikers every day. As much as I complain about the construction on our street, sometimes noise and the progress that comes from it, is a good thing.