My favorite kind of neighborhood association? Mind your own damn business.
“I wonder if a neighborhood association could fix my golden locks of hair?”
Darrin “Director of neighbors and junket trip digger-uppers” Smith (Image; KELO-TV screenshot)
While I agree neighborhood associations are a good idea, especially neighborhood watch associations, I sometimes feel like this is an excuse for the city to encourage neighbors to turn in neighbors for stupid crap like ‘leafy branches’ or ‘long grass’. Thank Gawd I don’t live next door to Costner, or I would be fixing my sidewalk and trimming my boulevard trees every ten minutes. Maybe the conspiracy theorist in me is talking here, I don’t know?
I do have a terrific relationship with my neighbor to the South. We share a fence and a grapevine and have many great fence line conversations about city government. They have lived in my neighborhood since 1950 when they built their house. But my neighborhood is interesting, for several reasons, I’m zoned ‘light industrial’ and can never add onto my home without council approval (which I think is a violation of my property rights) and the fact that my home was built in 1889 and as far as I can tell has been added on to at least 5 times since the original structure was built (the original siding still exists in a crawlspace above my kitchen). We also have several businesses in the hood, a casino, a sandwich shop, a plumber’s outfit, a fireplace installer, a mechanics garage, a lawnmower repair shop and a copy machine peddler (and a can crusher, gas station, and my favorite; a liquor store) We also have some guy who works on his hotrods and sells electric scooters. Besides that, there is several rental properties that have residents come and go like the wind.
Like I said above, I am all for neighborhood associations, but this isn’t fucking Mayberry. I’ll stick with the neighborhood association I like the best, Me and Don bitching about city hall while standing by a grapevine.