They begin to dream of somewhere to relax their restless flight/Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights -- "Subdivisions," Rush
Not even a decade ago some of my friends and I bemoaned being stuck in this rather bland little Anywhere, USA suburb where nothing much ever seemed to happen. Now we may begin pining for those days.
Just a few days ago I heard that there was an armed robbery at the AMC 24 theater. A Brinks truck driver was either dropping off or delivering some cash and a guy got his gun away from him and bashed him in the head with it repeatedly -- in the lobby in full view of matinee attendees! Onlookers say there was so much blood it made them sick. The Brinks driver was taken to the hospital.
There is a Spanish grocery store in town. That in itself is news, but that's not the big story. It has wasted no time in becoming the target of an armed robbery, which also happened earlier this week. My mom wondered why Spaniards would hold up a Spanish grocery store. I said they wanted to talk to people who would understand them when they said, "Stick `em up."
Out town has also suffered a rash of burglaries from some ingenuous and highly-motivated crooks. Instead of just smashing a window and barging in, they took the time to cut through vinyl siding. The authorities speculated this was so they could bypass alarm systems. Victims came home to not only find their possessions missing, but a large hole in their house. These guys (and gal) have been caught.
Going back a few months there was the now nationally-famous Barbie Bandits pictured above. These were a couple of strippers who robbed a bank inside a grocery store with nothing but smiles and designer sunglasses. They've since even been interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show. Better-quality photography than the security camera provided exposed them to be not nearly as "Barbie" as had been previously thought.
Traveling back maybe a year or more there was the one that disturbed me the most. Just about a mile or two from here a young mother of two had dropped her kids off at her mother's house. A carjacker (five years ago the word "carjack" on the news was exclusively followed by the words "Southwest Atlanta;" that stuff did NOT happen out here) got her. The car jacker made her turn left on a green light, causing her to hit a dump truck head-on. The woman was killed instantly...and of course the carjacker survived. He leapt out of the car to make a run for it. Did I say he survived? Not for long. A passerby saw what happened, jumped out of his own car, and shot the carjacker dead in the intersection with one shot! I mean this happened only about a mile from here! The police suspected this may have been the same New Orleans "refugee" who had raped an old woman around here a week earlier.
Perhaps ironically there's now a neighborhood near the site that says, "New homes for $1.3 million."
The signal even that this ol' suburb was turning the corner was a daylight robbery at a Garden Ridge store back in 2001. The manager got shot in the arm during normal business hours with shoppers standing by. The robbers had a getaway car waiting in the emergency lane of the Interstate that runs behind the store. I bought some plates and candles at that store once. The robbers were found at their apartment on Franklin Road in Marietta, the street where my first guitar teacher lived and where we used to rent videos in the beginning days of VHS. My college band used to play a bar down there, too. Now all the signs on Franklin Road are either in Spanish or gang graffiti.
Now, keep in mind I'm not talking about crime in metro Atlanta, I'm talking about just this suburb. I'm not talking about the county seat down the road, I mean just this suburb. If I was including everywhere else I could talk about the Waffle House I sometimes lunch at near work that got held up with a full breakfast crowd (maybe the shitty service provoked them?), or the Blimpies near work that got held up three times in a single month ("...and the owner is afraid it'll happen again!," the TV news said. Aww, what is he, paranoid?). How about the emergency room doctor found guilty of trying to get butt sex with a 17-year-old boy over MySpace, or the other local guy who allegedly kept a teenage boy he lured from Pennsylvania hostage in his house for ram-butts? I would swear if you ran a 1975 newscast there might have been some shootings and holdups in Southwest Atlanta, but this stuff wasn't going on out here in the "nice"/semi-rural area.
Back in 1998 I marvelled to travel to Los Angeles and see so many Hispanic signs and Hispanic people. Now just a mile or two from here there are exclusively-Spanish billboards, black guys in jerseys and baggy pants walking up and down by the highway with no clear destination. I saw a small bumpity-car exhibition a couple of Saturdays ago near the car dealership with the banner that says, "Fiancial Facil!," which is around the corner from the apartment complexes that announce, "Se Habla Espanol!" All of this has come about in just the past four or five years.
When did I move to the `hood?
