Takin' to the Sidewalks, Part 2

Those Bedlam guys at 2nd & Bell are really saying it with chalk. Here's their latest message:

It's a little faint due to high traffic and a drippy maple tree, but it reads as follows: CRACK FREE ZONE. GO AWAY. BELLTOWN IS FED UP. Hey, how do they know what Belltown feels? They've only been here for less than a month! They've learned the hard truth that a dedicated crackhead will hit the pipe just about anyplace where there aren't cops out in force. This includes the doorways or sidewalk spaces of newly-opened coffee houses. Like I said in yesterday's post, I wish them luck. Now it's all up to the crackheads to read the sidewalk. In my experience, it's not that they can't read; it's that they choose not to. This little conflict may prove to be interesting.

Welcome to the Neighbohood!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about this new coffee shop that was opening at 2nd & Bell. That's great and all that, but it seems that reality has set in a little for them. Observe:

In case it's not so clear, it reads "WE ARE ALL WATCHING YOU & TAKING PICTURES. LEAVE." Below that, it has the words "COFFEE" with an arrow pointing toward their shop, and "CRACK" with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction. Yeah, that's a particularly bad corner and it's a noble effort to try to clean up the neighborhood, but it's going to take more than chalk on the sidewalk in front of Dennis' Murder Mart to change things. It took several years for things to get so awful. It'll take just as long for them to get better.

I really can't blame them for objecting to Belltown's crack tourism, but let's get real. I mean, didn't they look around the corner before they signed the lease? Well, they would have seen some of this neighborhood's crack smoking champs in action. That's also the place where scummy people drink Joose and scream at each other. I predict that in an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" move, these guys will be selling crack by the end of the summer.