The 'Hood

After about a year and a half, I've finally found the perfect metaphor to describe our neighborhood. Have you ever been to a Ross store? Imagine: you're one of three white people in the whole place -- one has a day-old glob of Hostess fruit pie stuck in her teeth while she gophers her way through a mound of clearance throw pillows, and the other one's wearing a crispy Dolly Parton wig, a pair of knee-high leopard-print high heeled tramp boots and an entire Indian nation's worth of turquoise on her eyelids. There are clothes all over the floor, and unattended children burst unexpectedly from thick bushes of discount tube tops. The panels overhead are yellow and musty and rotting through so that the ceiling chihuahuas can escape, there's a trampoline in every department, and the poorly-maintained shopping carts and their twenty-inch rims are parked askew out front in a sea of empty blue drink bottles. That's exactly it, but our neighborhood doesn't have a spikey-haired lesbian wearing a "loss prevention" vest peeking in departing bags as they cross Colfax.