Like a A Moth to the Flame

So I think I mentioned the neighborhood crackhouse here. It continued on in the same vein for the last few months - no power, no water, rotating cast of characters, your basic flop house, until a couple of weeks ago when... the city declared it uninhabitable. Oh happy day! And everyone left (I would say moved out, but that would imply a level of moving in that would be disingenuous.) And they stayed gone! Oh happier day! (Because I was pretty sure they would stay gone for about 10 minutes and then sneak back in the back door - but no, turns out city code enforcement is serious about this stuff, and apparently word is out on the crackhouse circuit.)

So then a big construction dumpster mysteriously appeared on the sidewalk. And then yesterday some people were over there cleaning out the house. Huh - a mystery! So I wandered over to say hey and snoop around on what was going on and discovered that. . . the house has been sold!!!!!! Let me repeat, the house has been sold - to a guy that's going to fix it up and flip it!!!!!!!!!!!!! Happy, happy day!

But here's the moth to the flame part - so the construction dumpster is sitting on the street full of detritus from a crackhouse (in other words, stuff that is so gross that not even a crack head wanted to take it with them.) And people walking by on the street just can't stay away from it. No lie. Yesterday afternoon I looked out the window, and the three lovely girls I had just seen singing in the cafe at Earthfare were in the dumpster. Literally. And they were distinctive, because one of them was wearing a pair of boots that looked like she had cut off the bottom of Chewbaca's leg and slipped it on. So she and her furry boots were knee deep in the crack dumpster, digging around looking for treasure. After a few minutes she and her two friends gathered up their treasure and drove off. And then for the rest of the day I'd occassionally look out the window and see people digging around in there. Seriously. Like a moth to the flame.