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Saw an interesting contrast on the way to work this morning...

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brimic:
My current job is near downtown Milwaukee and the shortest route to get there is through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city. I drive that way in the morning as most of the bad apples are still sleeping or shaking off whatever booze or drugs they consumed the day before. After work in the afternoon I take a much longer, safer route home.

Every morning on the outskirts of the bad area, there is a black gentleman who works a busy intersection selling fruit. He is clean cut looking, always wears nice slacks, and a shirt and tie- he would fit in as a executive at any bank in town. He parks his car in an unused parking lot early in the morning, every morning, with several crates of fruit which he bags up and sells to people waiting for the traffic signals to change. He looks like he is doing ok, He probably makes $5-10 every time I wait at that intersection in the morning, which might be about a minute- multiply that by the number of times the light is red during morning rush hour.

About 10 blocks further down, I came to a traffic light where another black man was sitting on a milk crate on the left hand side of the road about 20 yards in front of the intersection. This man was dishevelled looking, bugeyed, malnurished, most likely a crackhead. He was sitting on the side of the road shouting profanities and threats at the top of his lungs to people driving through or stopped at the light. I can't repeat some of the things he shouted but here's a edited sampling
"F- you whitey, I'll f-ing kill you"
"Don't look at me, I'm not you're boy you mf-er"
"F-ing MF-ing F-ing white people I f-ing hate all of you MF-ing MF-ers"
"Oh yeah, I should come over and kick they living MF-ing sh- out ofyour M-fing white asses"
"Mf-ers"

My only thoughts were, I hope he has a drug overdose soon, and my car's console will probably have a 1911 tucked in it from now on. I've been warned about the area I drive through, in fact, my neighbor got mugged their a few years back while on the job.

280plus:
We have areas and people like that here in Hartford. When I know I'm passing through a bad place at a bad time I take my pistol out and tuck it under my weakside leg so I can grab it quick should I need to.

One time I got dumped off the GWB in NYC at like 2 A.M. because of a detour. Not the most friendly place. I think it was Brooklyn but I'm not sure. I was (naturally) unarmed, being in NYC and all . The only trouble I had was convincing the guy on the corner that I did NOT need my windshield washed with his dirty rag for a quarter.

cosine:
Not to rain on your parade, and it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six, and all that, but I just thought I'd give you the heads up that that might be illegal in Milwaukee. However, if I recall correctly, last year a guy shot another guy in self-defense during a carjacking with a gun he had kept hidden under his seat in the car and the DA refused to press charges.

I'm not a lawyer, and this advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, (how many more cliches can I fit in this post? ).

Stay safe and sound.

brimic:
Cosine- I know the laws and know its illegal, it the only reason why I don't carry already
I have a live and let live attitude and really don't care much about what others do no matter how obnoxious they get, but I have 2 kids to feed and want to come home in one piece at the end of the day. This tool bag on the side of the road was probably nothing but a fairly harmless racist with no where he had to be that day but to sit and try to scare the sheeple. I'm more worried about the not so crazy ones who might try to approach while I'm stuck in traffic.  
Haven't spent too much time in Milwaukee until I started my new job a few months ago and I'm getting an education. 2 weeks ago, 2 people were shot on the route I take to work.

AJ Dual:
What's the route your taking?

I worked a jobsite for a month up in Brown Deer,where the most direct route from my home in West Allis was Sherman Blvd.  Seeing the old mansions that line the street, some being re-habbed by "urban pioneers" is strange. It's a busy throughfare so it's "okay", but one little detour a block to the side...

Going from West to East, taking Capitol Dr. all the way from Pewaukee to Shorewood is an interesting little antropological experiment too.

Another "funny" episode was when a co-worker was visiting for three months from our Indian office for training. He was staying downtown in the nice Residence Inn carved out of the old Marshal Field's in Grand Avenue mall, with access to the Riverwalk and the mall, pretty swank overall.

However, wanted to go shopping for basic sundries, and stuff that's not cheap in India, looking for a Wal-Mart type store, instead of a department store, so he asked the concierge desk where the closest Mega-Stores were that he could access by MCTS bus.

They sent him to Capitol Court. LOL...

The guy is from a well-to-do family in New Delhi, currently living in Bangalore (high tech boomtown), so you know he has had to have seen some pretty bad shanty-town stuff in New Delhi that makes the worst Milwaukee has to offer look like Beverly Hills, but Capitol Court had him shaken. I guess it's the people, and not the scenery...

I asked him about it, his eyes got big, and all he would do is say "Oooohhhhh Not good! Not good!" and then he broke into a pantomime of the thuggish swagger of the young male residents of the area. I was glad he survived, but I fought hard to hold back the tears from my badly supressed case of the "funeral giggles".

He had a good time when I took him to The Shooter's Shop though. After we were done shooting, we window shopped for a bit. When I told the staff he was from India, they jumped into action, getting him to pose for his camera with every sexy gun they had on the wall, including thier Barrett .50.

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