Saturday, November 20, 2010

An Oldie, But A Goodie

You may or may not know it, but  downtown Albany can get a little exciting from time to time. I'm not talking about bars, clubs, or house parties. I mean the break-ins, muggings, and gunfights kind of exciting. Even though this happened WAY back in February 2010. For the full story go to http://wnyt.com/article/stories/S1420081.shtml?cat=0

A small memorial of flowers was placed
here, but is gone now.

I was new to the whole "Student Ghetto" scene, as it was called on the channel 13 news. I knew it wasn't the safest place, but that kind of stuff never seemed like a real threat. But, one minute your goofing around on Facebook, trying to conjugate "she swims" in Spanish to past tense, and the next you are hitting the floor after hearing half a dozen gunshots outside your window.

Police rushed to the scene of the gunshots, where a 37 year old man named Howard Tucker, was shot and killed after running over a police officer while trying to evade a routine traffic stop. The suspect was allegedly on parole with drug charges and was carrying a loaded handgun.




The right side of this fence has been repaired.
Sad to erase history like that.
The next day I decided to do some sleuthing around the crime scene, when I was stopped and interviewed by the Channel 13 action news team, I was on TV and everything! At that time of year everything was covered in snow and ice. I noticed the fence around the church was caved in where the car had collided with it. Sadly when I went to go check things out this week, I noticed that there is no sign of anything happening here at all.


Of course since this has happened, there has been a whole list of other incidents like this in Albany. But not all of them get you on the 6 o'clock news. So if you kids out want there want to be famous, go wander around the streets and follow the sounds of sirens and gunshots for your 15 seconds of fame.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Staying Alive in Downtown Albany

So you can run and tell that.
Well, obviously, this blog is going to be about downtown Albany. The life, the happenings, the danger, all of it.

Some people may or may not know this, but Albany is a bit of a strange place to live. The neighborhoods change from a warm, family community, to an impoverished slum, to a drunken destination for college kids. Far away from the safe haven of the SUNY Albany campus, their is a darker side of Albany, with plenty more guns, drugs, and drunks.


So don't hide from the reality of what downtown Albany really is, embrace it! It is, and forever will be, the Student Ghetto, and I am proud of how long I have survived here.

There's good things and bad things about Albany. Fun times and scary times. I will try to post them here, so anyone can feel like they live in the Student Ghetto.

It's kind of like surviving in the wilderness, except with a lot more booze and girls in scandalous clothing.