The bad seed of our neighborhood

I live across the street from an employee of the City of Philadelphia. He works in some capacity for the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, a job that he obtained by throwing a few fundraisers for Mayor Street. His house is the biggest eye sore on our street. The stucco on the exterior of the house has huge cracks in it in numerous places, some of the windows are missing and have been replaced with plexiglass, he has been known to store broken down cars on cinderblocks in his huge yard, and he puts large pieces of garbage on the sidewalk -- which he claims as his own -- and waits for garbage-pick-up-day after garbage-pick-up-day for it to disappear. The City doesn't pick up large bulky garbage every week, only on designated days. But our neighbor doens't care about leaving his box springs, refrigerators, old bookcases, huge pieces of contorted metal, etc . . . out for days and weeks for everyone to look at. One of our good neighbors considered putting Christmas lights on one of his piles of trash before a holiday party she was having. Instead of curtains this family has decided to use old sheets as window treatments. The house looks like crap. What a great representative of the NTI. He's sure transforming our neighborhood!

This guy has a wife who seems to make a living suing people, including the Phillies. That fact isn't really necessary to understanding our neighbor but I find it too interesting to leave out.

Our neighbor drives a city issued car with municipal plates and uses it for personal use. I have to assume he uses it illegally because it is always parked outside his house or around the corner (to try to fool those of us who know he doesn't work hard, more on that in a second). He and his wife own an SUV that she uses mostly, and no other car. They're not the type of family to just own one car so he uses the city's car as his own. I hate to think of my taxes going to gas-up and repair his personal car.

Because I'm a stay-at-home mom I know that this neighbor hardly works, if at all. He is home around 1:00 p.m. most afternoons and sometimes I see him putzing around his yard -- not making it look any nicer just walking around it -- in the morning, like at 10:00.

This neighbor also has an attack dog who is out in the yard all day and all night during any type of weather. He was out all week during this deep freeze we're having where the temperatures have been in the teens and twenties during the day. The dog used to wake up baby Doodle and us, but now we're all used to the barking and seem to be able to block it out. Whenever someone walks by or emerges from their front door the dog barks until you walk or drive away.

Last spring he was on the ballot (in the primary election) to be some sort of neighborhood Democratic official. Mr. Doodlebug and I didn't vote for him, neither did our good neighbors.

I just discovered that our neighbor who doesn't deserve the job at the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative is a candidate to be a traffic court judge. I'm sure he'll be elected because he's a Philly political hack and there won't be much, if any, competition for the job. I'm sure he'll suck at that job too and get all of his friends out of paying their deserved parking tickets, like when they undoubtedly park on the sidewalk in Roxborough.