My Neighborhood

First, I want to say that this did not used to be a neighborhood, even though it might have looked like one. It was a collection of relocated earthquake cottages and faux Victorians (lower ceilings, soft wood floors). It was mainly a landing place for any immigrant population that made it to the West Coast. They'd stay until they had enough money for a downpayment in a slicker part of town. Unless they got stuck here.
The first ten years I was here there were still old Russian ladies (no old Russian men), living in decrepit hovels, wandering the neighborhood burdened with wooden crosses and black head scarves. They looked like apple dolls and sometimes preached at you on street corners. They got sparser and smaller, more humped, and one day they were all gone.
In those days, there was Martha, around the corner, who walked the block all day long. She had no teeth and smelled sweetish, like dried pee. There were never any lights on at her house after dark. She sometimes borrowed a jug of water. It wasn't until the hulk of a house was sold at tax sale and she was relocated that the news leaked out she couldn't read and never opened her mail.
The family two doors down drank all weekend, watching sports on TV. Their kids seemed to exist on chips and cheese sticks, washed down with Mountain Dew. If the Dad got drunk enough, he'd totter down the front steps and shoot a little hoop with his boys. At some point, he bought an interest in a bar nearby. The afternoon's entertainment became watching him try to back his enormous Pontiac into his narrow driveway.
Next door was the worst. She must have worked swing shift and gone partying when she clocked out. Her head banger music started up around 2 a.m. and continued until at least 4. Anyone who parked in front of her house would find a vicious note scrawled in lipstick on the front windshield of the offending car. She may have had a boyfriend who beat her up - there were frequently angry voices and sobs weaving around the relentless music.
And there were Dick and Bubbles, the alcoholics in the top flat at the corner. They started drinking when they got up, around 7 a.m. The beverage of choice was vodka and orange juice: Vitamin V, as it's known locally. The only time I saw Bubbles without a glass in her hand was the day we went to court to try to get an extension on the eviction order that had been nailed to her front door. We got a few extra days, but it took all morning, with several breaks at the closest bar. Bubbles wore her red wig to court. I preferred her in the blonde curls and bandana, with her wobbly cigarette and her gravelly voice. There was no way to stop the eviction entirely, so Dick and Bubbles disappeared.
All this changed when the dot com kiddies discovered this bastion of low-priced real estate.