We live in, like, the boring-est neighborhood ever. Which I mean in the most positive way. (Hey, it's why we're willing to add the extra ten or fifteen minutes to our commute!) There practically no riffraff, rubbish, ballyhoo, hoopla, or what-not. One can truly feel the calm, the peace — one can just relax, gaze at the mountains, go for a hike, grab a bite, shop the farmers' market, and just mind one's own business most of the time. Which I do not take for granted, especially after living in Baltimore for six years.
Not to diss Charm City. It's just that crime abounds there. (As do drugs and STDs.) The map below shows various events that took place during the last two months. Our former neighborhood, Hampden/Wyman Park, which we loved (and still love) for lots of valid reasons, is right there where you see a lot of blue guys (thefts) and a red bulls-eye (shooting theft). (And that's now that the area is all gentrified and hip. When we lived there, it was perhaps transitional or as some say, "in renaissance.")
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| Map with Baltimore, MD crimes (4/9 to 6/9/2012) from crimebaltimore.com. |
Below is the crime map I could find for our current neighborhood. It's not a perfect equivalent of the Balto. map, but the visual contrast still reflects the truth. That's us, and this is our annual crime index. (There's more info. at the source site, though they try to get you to subscribe.)
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| Map with crime annual crime rate info. for La Crescenta from http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/. |
So, that's what I mean when I say boring in the best way. The reason I say this is that when there is police activity nowadays, it's a big deal for our little 'hood. Today when this LAPD helicopter kept circling low over our house, we're like, "Gee whiz, honey, what could possibly be going on?" My first (humorous) thought was that the police had heard about our Robber Fly situation.
The last time we had a whirly-bird involved disturbance of this caliber was on March 7 when the nearby Toyota dealership found a World War II hand grenade in a trade-in car. The L.A. County Sherrif's Department Bomb Squad came out, as did all the local news 'copters, but it turned out that the grenade was inert.
Our biggest "breaking news" events in 2012 have revolved around wildlife hijinks — such as the culinary exploits of a big-ole black bear.
This bear, affectionately nicknamed Meatball, was eventually tranquilized and relocated to a spot deeper into the L.A. National Forest. I should also mention that some folks referred to the bear as Glen Bearian, and he had his own Twitter account, as this national (!) TV news story (wittily and/or cheezily) reports.
Our favorite part of the drama was this bear's (hilariously) surprising a clueless texter (is there any other kind?) one day while a local news helicopter filmed:
Who knows what today's situation may have been. I'll update when/if I find out.
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