The low-income tenements that cap the ends of my street are a regular source of discarded chip bags, green beer bottles, stripped chicken bones, and random criminal element. After my seemingly daily ritual of cleaning the first three out of my bushes I had developed a thirst, so I decided to hit up the bodega around the corner for a juice. The larger tenement’s sidewalk had been cleaned earlier that morning, but was now littered with a few female residents and two younger males that by the way they were dressed and leaned on their ride could have easily been a backdrop for a Snoop Dog video. As I passed through their conversation, I heard a “snap” come from the taller male and my Spider-Sense started to tingle. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the sun’s reflection and realized he had displayed a knife, probably a butterfly. I kept walking to the store and quenched my thirst. Now, on the way back there were two routes I could have taken. One: around the other side of the block or Two: back the way I came. Well, I’m sure you know which direction I chose. And within the confines of these words it would have been easy to embellish a heroic knife fight where I ended up looking like the previously mentioned superhero (yes, much easier in writing) but my walk back went off without incident. Well, besides this…the conflict that I felt from walking the line between looking for trouble and the need to p*ss on my territory. One seems foolish while the other seems necessary. There is one thing I am not conflicted about though, “If I have to live with the tenements, they have to live with me.”