Monday, October 17, 2011

Slumlord Keith Reitman's Ugly Twin Sisters At 26th And Penn Ave. N.

Contributed photo, xoxo, blog post by John Hoff

Featuring the bastard color known as "Reitman blue," strongly suspected to be the result of mixing a very large batch of multi-color leftover paint all together, the unsightly houses at 26th and Penn Ave. N. are classic Keith Reitman: an ugly, slummy, unsafe, off-color eyesore smack dab in the middle of everything.

These houses were ugly before the tornado. Now they are...


...ugly heaped on top of a pre-existing foundation of ugly.

Somebody sent me this photo more than a month ago, but between giving cute names to the cavorting goats who scavenge in the smoldering trash heaps outside the FOB while I pull guard duty, to taking pain killers after dental surgery in a Third World country, to frequent internet outages, I just haven't gotten around to publishing these photos.

Oh, well. I strongly suspect the buildings look about the same today as they did back in September.Lack of progress is another Reitman hallmark.

Exhibit A: Reitman's Ugly Ass Chocolate Building with its Sharpie marker address numbers.

Oh, please note how one of the window boards wasn't the right size, so somebody slapped another long, little board right next to it! And on the house next door, one of the window boards looks WAY TOO BIG, but nobody cut it down to size.

I've seen better construction by American soldiers who had nothing more than a Gerber tool, nails and a FREAKING ROCK at their disposal. Just sayin'.

Keith Reitman, you embarrass North Minneapolis but not as much as you embarrass YOURSELF.

4 comments:

Ray said...

But they're not as ugly as your circa 2004 blogger template. Hahaha. Just kidding John. But, I do often wonder if you'll ever update to any of the new looks available in blogger.. And where's your ad-sense man! It can pay for coffee some days, in my case. With your traffic, it might pay an electric bill? Idk. Keep up the good works.

Johnny Northside! said...

Circa 2008, thank you very much.

I keep adding the ads, and they keep disappearing. I'm at the point of thinking you know what? Screw it. I'm tired of going into the guts of the blog and clicking, over and over, the button that says I want ads below my posts AND in the sidebar, and yet no ads appear after I do that.

When the ads do appear, they disappear again.

So screw it.

Anonymous said...

The city is currently looking into acquiring these properties. I hope to God that doesn't mean paying Reitman or relieving him of the financial responsibility for back taxes or assessments after years of holding community development hostage.

Johnny Northside! said...

I would love to see some "just in case" eminent domain to smooth the path for the light rail.

"Just in case" the light rail goes through here, best to snap up these properties at a fair value. Minus any taxes owed.