Welcome to my hood. AKA "The Ghetto". I live on a middle-class cul-de-sac in the 'burbs consisting of the typical vinyl-siding homes built a decade ago. Your 2-storey pastel specials. Nothing spectacular.
You'd think that living on a cul-de-sac, it would be quiet, maybe full of children riding their bikes around. Not really. Every house on this street has a rented out basement suite. Which means there is a serious lack of parking. And wayyyy too many cars. Yes, my kids are allowed to ride their bikes but they have to stay on the sidewalk (I know - my bad. But it's only on this street that we have that rule). And if a car comes, they have to stop.
We even have a little park just about 7 doors up. It has two little playgrounds, kind of cute. Let me just note that by law, in park zones around here, the speed limit is 30 km/h. Besides, if you're driving into a little cul-de-sac and it's not a very long street, you'd think people would slow down. But no. Not on my street. People floor it. Not just young teenagers either. EVERYONE. It's scary.
Anyways, back on to the real subject of this story.
There's this house across the street from us. Probably the biggest house on the street. Owned by a middle-aged Asian couple. OK, now aren't Asian's famous for their beautiful Oriental gardens? Well, not these two. Their front yard consists of concrete. They've made the entire front of their yard a parking lot. And a makeshift sign sits right at the front near their front door with the words painted: No U-Turn On Property.
Now we've figured out that they must have two suites in their basement because one guy parks his big (pedophile-type) work van and then goes through the gate at the left side of the property and another guy and his little girlfriend and sometimes his son park at the other end of the parking lot and go through the fence to the right of the property.
The guy on the left seems pretty normal. Don't see him a lot. Probably mid-thirties, goes to work, plays hockey, we wave to each other, that's about it.
The guy on the right needs his own post. I'll try to shorten it and squeeze it in here though. HE'S A FREAK. Here's a typical evening with him coming home from wherever he has been:
- drives down street towards his house
- turns into driveway, full speed
- slams on brakes
- reverses, fast
- slams on brakes
- pulls forward, fast
- slams on brakes
- reverses again
- slams on brakes
- you get the point, he does this about 3 or 4 times each
- parks car, gets out
- locks car
- pulls on driver door handle, up and down, about 5 times
- pulls on rear d/s door handle, same thing
- walks around vehicle, pulls on rear passenger side door handle
- same thing, front passenger door handle
- you know the drill, walks around the car about 5 times doing this, staring into the car windows, sometimes he stops to look underneath the car
- finally stops, starts walking to his fence
- turns around, sprints (not walks or strolls but SPRINTS) back to the car, does the door handle thing one more time, looking in car, looking under car....
- FINALLY goes through the fence and inside.
He does this pretty much every night. We don't always see his car coming, sometimes we're just sitting in the living room watching TV and hear the frantic jiggling of his door handles and then we watch him. F-R-E-A-K-Y.
Now I get to my initial reason for this post. It's a beautiful, sunny, hot Saturday morning. I'm tidying up my house (OK, more like going into the kids room and throwing out some of the crap they have that just takes up space but don't tell them). I catch sight of the middle-aged Asian owner of the house across the street, washing his car. Normal thing to do, right?
But today is special. He's dressed special. For this, I needed to grab my camera and take a picture. 
Yeah, that's right folks. He's wearing Daisy Dukes! How short are they?
For this, I took a close up: 
I mean really: who else gets this kind of view right from their living room window?
