Ryn Gargulinski

Creativity on Fire

ua students

The case of the belligerent bike boy

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, here comes belligerent bike boy.

bikeboybike
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

Belligerent bike boy is this college-student-looking dude who cruises around the neighborhood “at a high rate of speed” with his dog leashed to his bicycle. He’s always out at prime dog walking time when I’m out with Sawyer and Phoebe and other dogs and owners are strolling around our midtown neighborhood.

Even though biking with a dog seems incredibly hazardous – especially since belligerent boy is way too cool to wear a helmet and his bicycle and dog combo drives Sawyer wild – we usually don’t really care about bike boy.

bikeboyatus
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

We cared, however, when bike boy came barreling right at us.

Sawyer, Phoebe and I were on the sidewalk when bike boy came bolting out of a pathway, saw us on the sidewalk, then turned directly into us.

We were too stupefied by the stupidity to do much more than just stand there.

Of course, bike boy’s dog and Sawyer went at it.

bikeboydogs
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

Of course, this made bike boy fall off his bike.

bikeboyfall
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

We wonder what bike boy was thinking, or if he were thinking at all.

bikeboymap
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

Once he got up, bike boy began to yell at us. He said we were in his way on the sidewalk every day. We were in the wrong, said he, because he was biking in the same direction as traffic, even though he was on the sidewalk. We were supposed to cross the street and use the sidewalk on the other side to “go with the traffic flow,” he said. Besides, he added, it’s easier for us to go into the street and out of his way, letting him have full reign of the sidewalk, since he’s on a bicycle.

bikeboyyell
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

We bring up bike boy because he illustrates so much of what is wrong with society:

1. Some people don’t give a dang about the laws.

2. Some people don’t give a dang about their neighbors (bike boy lives down the street from us and we’re also convinced he’s the one who left a bag of dog poo in our yard the last time we had a bike boy run-in).

3. Some people are pocked by false sense of entitlement.

4. Some people pick on women (bike boy NEVER pulls this stuff when I’m out walking the dogs with my beau).

5. Some people stink.

Have a nice day.

[tnipoll]

wb-logolil

What do you think?

What would you do about belligerent bike boy?

Have you had similar encounters with folks who just don’t care?

Should we give bike boy the right of way even though the law is clearly on our side?

Return of UA students creates living hell for some

The throng of thousands of University of Arizona students that descend on Tucson every August is a mixed blessing.

Students terrorizing neighborhood?/Ryn Gargulinski
Students terrorizing neighborhood?/Ryn Gargulinski

It’s great for the overall economy, the university, and campus-area clothing shops that charge $50-plus for a T-shirt.

But it’s not so great for at least one Tucson neighborhood, according to one longtime Feldman’s resident who would rather her name not be used.

She said Feldman’s Neighborhood has become a menagerie of “mini-dorm ghettos” with students “acting like a pack of wolves.” The pack, she said, comes complete with loud late-night parties, gallons of booze and now, even destruction.

She lodged a complaint with the police against one of those loud parties, at Fourth Avenue and Adams Street, at about 1 a.m. Wednesday (today), she said, only to meet retaliation.

The partiers got her name and address and she suspects took it upon themselves to smash two windows of her tenant’s van out front.

She said another Feldman’s resident has also been terrorized by this pack while the resident’s husband was not home.

“The students threw beer bottles through every window in her home while she was trapped inside. They have been terrorizing her for loud party complaints to the point where she is afraid to answer the door or talk to anyone,” the woman wrote in a Wednesday morning letter to President Robert Shelton.

“From what I can see, the kids in the mini-dorms have no ethics or interest in a higher education,” she wrote. “They are here to party out-of-state and let their parents just pay all the bills.”

Illustration Ryn Gargulinski
Illustration Ryn Gargulinski

While I have not lived in Feldman’s, I have had the opportunity to live next to one of these types of students. Yes, he had rich parents who paid the rent on the property’s main residence while I scraped together my rent for the property’s guest house.

He also had no regard for others.

This kid’s parties would snake deep into the night and I would often be greeted the next morning with beer cans lining the outside of my living room windowsill.

Thankfully, no violence ever erupted – but then again, I never called the cops on him, at least not for his parties. I was also able to drown out most of the noise with triple-pane windows and a bedroom far from his side of the yard.

But that doesn’t seem to be happening in Feldman’s.

“In order to justify the destruction of this historic, diverse, downtown, quiet neighborhood, Mr. Michael Goodman (minidorm developer) has argued that the kids need to be near the university,” the upset resident wrote. “The university has also tried to brand itself as having ‘sustainable’ features and culture. These mini-dorm kids, however, always drive to campus in their BMWs despite the fact that they are a 10-minute walk away from Park and Speedway.

“The creation of a ghetto full of undergrad adult male child boarders from out of state with no supervision and lots of money to burn is not only short sighted and negligent in a number of ways, it is dangerous.”

wb-logolil8
What do you think?

Have you ever had similar problems?

What should be done to correct situations like this?

What about the landlords who rent to these kids – what role do they play?