Another story from Hunting Park.

Looks like a solid gain today, highest since I opened the account. I'm looking at a one day profit $3.98 totaling $209.22  Not too shabby.. I might actually turn a profit after broker fees if the trend continues. Right now I'm planning on keeping up with the dollar cost averaging at $100/month. I'll diversify my portfolio a bit from the technology stocks I'm in now and obviously bring in some bonds and ETFs this is just an initial start for my investments.

If you look at the area I used to live it's not hard to see the kind news that comes out of Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. Combine this with the Local newspapers stating that violence hinders education (duh) and you can see why it's hard to get out of the cycle. If you look at their data it seems that at the very least shootings and stabbings in schools are only at 0.2%!  It's actually gotten a bit better since my days but this is still no environment that is poised to produce the future leaders that will turn the city around. However the type of violence has never really changed and the kids that live on my block today still live through what I lived.

When I was a kid I remember quite clearly how quickly a situation outside could go sour. We had a "new guy" which we'll call Robert on my block that liked to pick fights with every single person in the neighborhood. I suppose that was his way of rebelling against his mother during his teenage years and showing the world how fearless and tough he was. I remember at one point he was the "cool" kid and we would all sit on his steps while he barked orders at his girlfriends.

He had two girls that would follow him around and he would command them to be his servants. Sometimes we were out on the steps and he would just go "Bitch, go get me some hugs (corner store drink) for the yung bos on my steps here". Off they would go to get us some drinks and maybe even some chips from the store. He even commanded them to perform sexual favors on the older kids when he demanded it. I don't know if they were attracted to the bad boy image or if something else was at play. But to this day I can't contemplate why normally aggressive and violent girls would take that from the guy. He quickly became every kids dream in the area this guy had women, money from selling drugs and a group of people following him all day. He was a celebrity in his own little world of North Philly. After a while he started carrying a gun to assert his dominance over the older kids on the block. You don't want to fuck with a guy willing to possibly shoot you. So there we were his little followers hanging out in front of his house everyday listening to his "wisdom" about pleasuring girls and "not being a pussy". Sometimes we'd be out at 3am without our parents knowing just hanging out watching movies at his house or something.

One day though, we were out on the corner which most kids tried to stay away from. He told us to just relax for a bit because he had some coke to push. These kids from the suburbs were coming by to pick them up. They were "rich as shit" he said and good customers he was willing to take their orders any time of day. A few hours later of just sitting around talking about nothing and a car pulls up with tinted windows. Robert goes over to talk to the guys inside and then suddenly he collapses onto the floor. He'd been shot in the head and the entire pack of us ran as fast as we could away from the mess. He was on the floor pouring blood from his head and that's the last thing I remember as I made my blind dash for my life. An hour later and there was police tape everywhere, the body had been moved by then. I came back outside and saw the two girls he was always with telling the police what happened. The next day I went to my magnet school in the better part of the city and as my school shuttle van came to pick me up I noticed the pool of blood was still there. In fact it remained there for days. I had never thought of that, I always assumed someone would come and clean the stains off the street. But it had a huge impact on all of us, sure lots of people hated the guy but to see a pool of blood on your way to school is a grim reminder. Concentrating in school was pretty hard, I was preoccupied with other things when I was there. To make things worse a fight broke out in the cafeteria a few weeks later because a group of kids decided to piss on his grave. People who were around him in life were guaranteed to get beaten on the way to school. How I managed to make it through school back then I still don't quite know.