Well, we moved. After seven intense hours of lifting heavy shit up three flights of stairs we have a larger, brighter apartment in a much more interesting part of the city.

The first moment we could, Ry and I sprawled out on our furniture in exhaustion. However, we couldn't fully relax as there were sirens blaring from seemingly every direction for what seemed to be a good 20 minutes.

'Welcome to their neighborhood,' it seemed they were saying.

And so it goes with living in a trendier part of town. Being on the Cutting Edge means you're that much closer to the Shitty Edge. Due East, West and South of us things can get a sketchy. Nothing too alarming, just a lot more humanity. Walk down Chicago Ave. (which is just south of us) for ten minutes and you'll see plenty homeless people, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Ukrainians, yuppies, hipsters, really old women with walkers. Just about any form of human being you can imagine.

The thing about this neighborhood that's really strange is that you frequently find patches of rundown tenement housing scattered amidst brand new high-end condo developments. You'll see people who paid $500K for their home living next to Section 8ers with weight benches in their yards and beat up Caprices parked in front.

Just today on the way home form work I saw an undercover cop arresting a handful of young Latino males. It all went down right outside what looked like the only rental property on the block (some of its windows were broken out, there was trash strewn about the front yard). As all the 9 to 5ers were coming home from work in their SUVs they were slowing down, peeking their heads out of their windows to look at what's going down (probably hoping the cops will take the kids away the whole time).

As I walked amidst it all with my black leather computer bag and pink dress shirt (i.e., the young professional look) I felt, for the first time in while, that I didn't look just like everybody else in my neighborhood. Kind of refreshing.