I've heard a lot of things coming from the street while staying at Josh's place for the past twelve days - Police records at 2am, 90's house music at 9am, Rap music during the days on the weekends, and the sounds of a large crowd in the nearby Prospect Park on occasion just to name a few.
Last nite, however, I heard my first gunshots. It was 2:45am, and all of a sudden...
BAM!
(pause)
BAM! BAM! BAM!
(pause)
BAM!
Five shots.
I asked Josh about it this morning, and he hadn't heard it. Cait later told me that the sound woke her up, and that by the time she processed it, she was hearing a commotion - though she didn't know if it was people who were involved, or just the sounds of other neighbors talking about the noise.
One of the last things my mom told me to do before I moved here was to "get some [pepper] spray." I rolled my eyes then, and I still would now. I don't feel any less safe now than I did before hearing the gunshots. When I was a junior in college, a man was killed outside the hot dog shop that was below the dorms I was an RA in. It didn't stop me from walking the street then, and it wont' stop me now.
That said, however, I do realize that I am crashing at an apartment in an area of town that when Jamie, one of my fellow supervisors, heard where I was staying, she said to me, "You live in the ghetto!" While no one here has bothered me - in fact most people have either ignored me or been pleasant to me - I do stick out like a sore thumb around here, and so while I'm not afraid to walk down the streets, I will be moving as if I had even more of a purpose than I had before.
