Tulip Alley Worse Than Ever

Despite the two apparent arrests mentioned earlier, the residents of Tulip Alley have re-emerged with a vengeance. Like cockroaches, two go away one day, and ten show up the next. The houses on Tulip Alley are overcrowded firetraps with successful, ongoing, entrenched drug businesses thriving within and without, all hours of the night and day. Sometimes, vagrants wander down there and walk away cursing loudly because, for the moment, the store is closed. When they return a few hours later, the store is open for business again. There are either 20 people living in the easternmost shack, or there is simply an ongoing, nonstop trade. Last I heard, the Alley was not zoned for commercial use, but then again, the laws here only exist for those who follow them. I am quite certain now that nothing will ever be done about this nuisance. We, who have invested heavily in the neighborhood, will continue to see our taxes raised and be subjected to nonstop traffic up and down the alley. The slumlord who owns these shacks should at least get a business license. Oh, i forgot, he is a preacher, and so doesn't pay taxes.
Despite all the newspaper hype about downtown Petersburg, which is merely hype and little more, Poplar Lawn is getting worse. Drug traffic has increased, loud, wandering gangs of kids have appeared, and with all this has come the noise pollution of loud mouthed-transients whose three-word vocabulary centers on using the F-word as often and as loudly as possible. The Public Defender's Office, which has no business in a residential neighborhood, invites true or would-be criminals to our nicest street daily—simply because of the landlord's greed.
So where are all the neighborhood activists? Where are the building inspectors? Where are the police who still fail to show up after being called at 2 AM? And, perhaps most important, where is HPLA? Is the association on hiatus or has it just died altogether? Together, perhaps we can fight these things. So the real question is: Has the malaise and indifference that has long been a Petersburg tradition now infected our neighborhood association as well?

—Jeff a