A walk in the neighborhood and an old twist on an older scam

My family is full of enthusiastic walkers. We walk long, we walk often, we walk kind of fast. I love it – I get to look around the neighborhood, see what’s new, catch some vitamin D, run errands without having to figure out parking. It’s good exercise and a great tool in the stress management arsenal. And it gives you a pedestrian’s-eye view of your environment – which allows you to see more detail than you can from a car.

Details like this, found on a bike/running/walking kind of trail near my house:

Thanks for this, Sport. Very motivational. I was thinking of writing below it “Surrender Dorothy,” and then I lost interest.

And this little number in the window of one of those shady rug stores that are perpetually going out of business:

A nice twist don’t you think? To Prevent Bankruptcy. I think the subtlety may have been lost on some folks, since they have since reverted to the standard issue Going Out Of Business signage. It was cute while it lasted, though. And I would have totally missed if it I had been in a car. Not because I’d have been whizzing by, mind you, but because I would have been blinded by apoplectic rage. Traffic in my neighborhood sucks.

Interestingly (to me), I think the rug store owner is either acquainted with or is the same person as the owner and landlord of two group houses on my street. Folks who have known me since we bought our place knows that an adventure those houses have been. It looks like I’ve deleted my old posts about the neighbors. But they were a real treat. Once in a while, in a surplus of high spirits, they’d celebrate “Call Each Other a Motherfucker” hour at four in the morning, while slashing one another’s tires. I invested in earplugs and learned how to grind my teeth in my sleep.

Ah. Memories.

But the landlord remodeled the house a couple of years ago and implemented a total tenant turnover (after an attempt to sell for an outrageous sum failed – which I figure is probably helping him skirt some other regulation about owner occupancy, or rental permitting). The group there now is great and I have no complaints. But the owner is apparently a long-time scammer, and is up to some old tricks. I refer you to this old CityPaper article about The Going-Out-Of-Business Business – it’s a good explanation of the never-ending bankruptcy sale, and references my rug-mogul-turned-real-estate-tycoon right at the tippy top.

See? You can learn some stuff by getting out of the car and walking around.