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We need to move.
May. 4th, 2003 10:52 amVandals smashed my entry garden's stone lantern last night around 3:45 am. I heard it (because you hear it when somebody lefts an 80+ pound stone water basin and throws it against a stone lantern and the side of the house) and got together to go outside and saw them walking down the street, smashing other things - a neighbour's fence, something I couldn't see clearly further down the street; I was on the phone with the police while they were ripping out the stop sign at the corner on the other end of the block. I did a quick check and found they'd knocked a mirror off a parked car in front of my house, and the policeman who came to my door around 4am said there was a trail of damage.
We're used to that.
I don't know whether these, in particular, were U.W. students, but they were dressed right and were the right age, doing, well, the kind of crap that U.W. students do every second weekend around this neighbourhood, except for this time where things cost more to fix. I hate it. I hate that UW won't do anything about it. I hate it that UW seems to encourage it.
Hell, they've - unofficially, of course, and under the table - threatened our neighbourhood just in the last two weeks, saying that if we didn't stop fighting the University's attempt to lift the lease lid - a local rule that limits them to renting under some... grotesquely large amount of off-campus space; it's a long story, but it's important because they don't want to build, own, or take responsibility anything they do - they'd quietly oppose the new single-family-residential-zone noise ordinance coming up. It's already been delayed yet again. And with the mayor in their pocket, they could probably stop it.
(These streams of vandalism and graffiti form trails to out of control parties that the police can't/won't stop because 1) they don't care and 2) if they did care, there's no usable noise ordinance. No, seriously, they won't even try to enforce it; there's been one enforcement action in our neighbourhood that we know of in the last... um... 14 years. There may have been another one - a bunch of UW students at a party set up megaphones and amps and screamed obscenities for a few hours loudly enough that it was heard on the far side of the hill - but I don't think so.)
I hate the university. I hate their administration, I hate their students, I hate what they've done (and are doing) to this neighbourhood; I hate that they're essentially sponsouring urban blight and trying to destroy one of the oldest neighbourhoods in this city in order to achieve political zoning and expansion goals.
And I love this neighbourhood.
Fucking university. I had liked to think of Transy as an anomaly. Hell, at least they paid people off when students started smashing their houses. UW cheers 'em on.
We're used to that.
I don't know whether these, in particular, were U.W. students, but they were dressed right and were the right age, doing, well, the kind of crap that U.W. students do every second weekend around this neighbourhood, except for this time where things cost more to fix. I hate it. I hate that UW won't do anything about it. I hate it that UW seems to encourage it.
Hell, they've - unofficially, of course, and under the table - threatened our neighbourhood just in the last two weeks, saying that if we didn't stop fighting the University's attempt to lift the lease lid - a local rule that limits them to renting under some... grotesquely large amount of off-campus space; it's a long story, but it's important because they don't want to build, own, or take responsibility anything they do - they'd quietly oppose the new single-family-residential-zone noise ordinance coming up. It's already been delayed yet again. And with the mayor in their pocket, they could probably stop it.
(These streams of vandalism and graffiti form trails to out of control parties that the police can't/won't stop because 1) they don't care and 2) if they did care, there's no usable noise ordinance. No, seriously, they won't even try to enforce it; there's been one enforcement action in our neighbourhood that we know of in the last... um... 14 years. There may have been another one - a bunch of UW students at a party set up megaphones and amps and screamed obscenities for a few hours loudly enough that it was heard on the far side of the hill - but I don't think so.)
I hate the university. I hate their administration, I hate their students, I hate what they've done (and are doing) to this neighbourhood; I hate that they're essentially sponsouring urban blight and trying to destroy one of the oldest neighbourhoods in this city in order to achieve political zoning and expansion goals.
And I love this neighbourhood.
Fucking university. I had liked to think of Transy as an anomaly. Hell, at least they paid people off when students started smashing their houses. UW cheers 'em on.
