Pony Keg: A small convenience store that focuses on beer and wine. When Ohio only sold hard liquor through state stores, Pony Kegs were very popular. Always small locally owned places – many of them had/have drive thrus.
They are a dying breed these days, but there is one next door to my apartment building. This afternoon it was robbed and someone was shot and killed. My co-worker who lives a couple of blocks from me has sources who say the owner shot the robber. He’s been robbed a lot and I guess he had hit his limit. However, none of the news stations will confirm who was shot and the police have opened a homicide investigation. Which I guess they would have to do in either case?
If it was the owner who killed the robber, I just can’t imagine feeling like a few hundred dollars was worth a killing someone. You forget about the money. You never forget that you killed someone. However righteous you feel about it. It’s got to just kick a person in the gut on a daily basis.
As you may have gathered, I live in a borderline sketchy area. Just a few blocks from the full on sketch. It’s cheap and my street generally feels very safe. Lots of kids and people walking around and well cared for homes. But I’m one building, that pony keg, from one of the main drags in Cincinnati. And as I said just a few blocks on that road to the scary areas.
I don’t want to move. It’s comfortable here. And it’s cheap. I guess it could have happened in any of the upper crust neighborhoods I used to live in. Just less likely, somehow. Fewer desperate people in those places.
It’s odd. I no longer really want to live in those upper crust places. They feel artificial or something? Too white. Too insular. Too out of touch. I don’t know. Something feels off about moving back there, even if I could afford it.
Or maybe I’m just more comfortable not moving. And so I’m projecting these things onto those places in order to justify my choice.
In any case, I think I’ll stick it out here.
It's a Thought 
I’d say stay as well. Don’t feel you have to move because of one isolated incident. I know that it’s frightening to have something like that happen so close, but it sounds like this was an extraordinary incident. And as you said, this kind of thing can happen anywhere, in any neighborhood.
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This is what I keep thinking. But I wonder if I will realize it if the street crosses over to the scary neighborhood. Will it all just slowly become more normal?
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I know what you mean. There are people always “out” in my neighborhood. School kids of all races go flying by my house. The Indian-American or Pacific Islander families are out walking their dogs. Older Asian-Americans get in their steps, wearing face shields and visors. The old white Catholics head to the store on their mobile scooters. The young Latinx couples often walk around the block with their parents.
When I walked around the very expensive neighborhood less than a mile away, I saw no one. Pretty houses and more trees, but hardly any people. Like a Stepford community. Kinda freaky.
The houses in my neighborhood might not be as nice, but our community is alive.
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Right?!
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