my neighbors the crackies

I live in a strange neighborhood. You would think, having grown up partially in New York City and spending a fair amount of time in not-so-savory areas, I would be somewhat immune to the fascinations of street dealers and their ilk. Not so.

I happen to live within the block and a half radius of this smallish upstate NY town that could be labeled as the "bad area." The house next door to ours is split into two apartments, top and bottom. I don't even know which of the people I see around all the time actually live in the bottom half, but it's safe to say at least one of the inhabitants is a crack dealer, and the others help with/work in the same business. The top apartment houses a couple (or single mother, I'm not sure) who seem to be "welfare queens," people who pop out kids to take advantage of the welfare system. Anyway, the downstairs people are the most entertaining.

Without fail, every day I see at least two unfamiliar vehicles parked outside the house next door. People get out, look around sketchily, and emerge a few minutes later. Individuals sit on the porch drinking out of bottles wrapped in paper bags, waiting to greet whomever is coming to buy whatever drugs they sell. The man who lives there is actually quite friendly and non threatening (at least in the daytime) and I usually wave or say hi when I walk by. His compatriots wander the sidewalks around our apartment at all times of the day and night, in various states of drunkenness or other sorts of inebriation.

They are not the brightest dealers I've ever encountered. The windows in my room face the alley between the two houses, and I can always hear exactly what they're saying when they're outside. You see, they are not smart enough to say, keep their voices down or work out deals inside, and instead have a fair number of arguments in places where I can plainly hear them. Most often the arguments are about money, but apparently someone who comes around is worried about the woman who lives there, often accusing her of being unpredictable, bitchy, and unreliable. I get the feeling it's related to her drug use but I don't know for sure. My favorite quote from her defending herself? "I ain't a crack whore - I deal crack!"

Every other week or so I come home to find squad cars outside our neighbors' house and often I see police talking to them on the porch. I've seen/heard at least 6 arrests there since I moved here in August; once there were 5 squad cars plus the sheriff, and they arrested 3 guys!

My roommates, who all come from pretty small towns and find this all really novel, are afraid to talk to our neighbors. The thing is, they're not really dangerous or threatening. Once a guy came to me on the sidewalk and asked for $20 - he was clearly drunk (at least) and wanted beer money. I regretfully informed him that as I was just running to the deli for some soup I had very little money on me. He was disappointed, but ventured that he had a gun in his pocket, in case that might refresh my memory. Now, he clearly didn't have a gun, but I wasn't stupid enough to point that out. I said a gun wouldn't do him much good in getting $20 if I didn't have any on me.

This conversation was all quite cheerful and friendly - much less menacing than it sounds - but I could tell that if not handled properly it could have become a bad situation. I usually think nothing of wandering around by myself at night but sometimes I actually feel safer in NYC than there. Most people would disagree on that count, I suppose, but I feel like it's harder for people to take threats seriously here. If one of my roommates had had the encounter with $20 guy here it's likely someone would have panicked and things could have gotten ugly. At least in NYC everyone expects loose cannons and are prepared - here the come at you from nowhere. That said, I've never had a real problem here. And hey, if my crackie neighbors continue to be entertaining and friendly, what do I care, really?