Securing "3019" (This Glass Is From My Buddy's Car)

(A photo from Flickr.com obtained by using the search term "3019.")

During my "morning security check," I figured it was finally time to board up the garage at 3019 6th Street N., just a few houses down from Peter and Joy.

The house sits next door to Scott, who sees people get in the garage all the time to, as he puts it, "smoke weed." (I have to wonder why anybody goes inside a building to "smoke weed" on the North Side, unless they have a thing about smoking weed naked while with a prostitute) But, in any case...

It was time to board it up. I fetched my board from the "House Of The Stolen Purse" because, as it turned out, the board to that particular door was laying right on the ground and it fit the house door perfectly, so better to use it. I carried back my other board, which actually had part of a door frame attached to it.

No, it wasn't going to be PRETTY. But I got it secured, and I hammered down some of the nails sticking out of the violated door frame fragments so nobody would come along and inure themselves. While I was there, a blond guy in his early 30s came along, with a whispy little "hipster beard."

He asked (in a friendly tone) if I was boarding up my own garage. I explained it wasn't my garage, but I was boarding it up because I tried to take care of the block, and the garage was unsecure, and people went inside to smoke weed and commit acts of prostitution. He immediately concurred, saying he had seen it, himself. He directed my attention to the large garage door, itself.

"This just opens up," he said, lifting up the door.

"Oh, (expletive)," I said. "And I just went and boarded the side door."

Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if anybody who owns a vacant building on the North Side locks or secures ANYTHING. The city which tells us to "adopt" these buildings and talks about "litter" and "graffiti" appears to not understand how unsecured the buildings are, and how they should be talking, instead, about "boards" and "nails."

He suggested it would be possible to lock the garage door by "jamming a screw driver in the chain" on the pulley.

"You see this?" he said, kicking at some fragments of automotive glass on the ground. "This glass is from my buddy's car. They broke into his car while it was here."

"You live right over there?" I asked, and he nodded. He told me "the state" had been out a few days earlier and looked at the garage, noted it was unlocked and wide open.

"The state?" I asked. "You mean the city?"

Maybe it was the city, he agreed. But somebody had been out to look at the garage, somebody official. Yet, as I could see, there it sat...unlocked two different ways.

I tried to bite my tongue. I really tried. But perhaps I was having indigestion, and perhaps a little bit of acid boiled up from my stomach.

"If you live right there," I said. "And you see people going in there and trespassing, and your buddy's car gets broken into...why don't you do what I'm doing and board the damn thing up yourself?"

He shrugged. He didn't know. Was this what the city WANTED?

This is always happening to citizens. Decent citizens respect private property so much they are afraid to secure their neighbor's door, even when it is left wide open to thieves, for fear of touching a door they do not own, without explicit permission. But the so-called "owner" is probably some bank in California, which has never laid eyes on the house in question. And the City of Minneapolis has given a broad grant of authority to decent people...admittedly in need of more explicit direction, but a broad grant, none-the-less.

Adopt these houses. Watch out for these houses. Take care of these houses.

"I call 311 all the time," I said. "I actually called on this garage about a week ago. But usually I'm able to board the buildings up before they can, so I call and update the report and let 'em know. They've never said Oh, my goodness, stop boarding up buildings on your own. Rather, they seem glad I'm doing it."

He suggested a way to board the large garage door without ripping the boards off the side door to get inside. Nail some two-by-fours int he corner, to both the frame and the door itself. It wouldn't be too secure, but if somebody ripped off the boards, I'd notice it right away.

"And I'll just nail it up again," I said.

He went into a nearby garage and handed me a board. I found another board laying on the ground somewhere. I drove in the nails. At the end of the alley, a silver sports car just parked there and watched. I couldn't tell if the occupants of the sports car were glad, mad, or merely curious.

I said to myself, "The next time I see that man, I will introduce myself based on our previous dealings in scrap lumber, and I will talk to him more."