I never edited a post til now.  My picture turned into a link.  Probably just me.  If ya click, it's there.  😎

This

I'm sittin on the sidewalk outside my door around 10pm July 4th.  Waitin for the street cats and just enjoyin the solar lights.  See the flashin red lights peekin round the front house from the main street.  Then flashlights lightin up the sidewalk into my yard.  Not one.  Not even two.  But FIVE Galveston Popo walk up to me.  Couple with shotguns and vests on.  I'm still sittin on the sidewalk.  They say show me your hands, etc.  I splained who I was.  They said they're lookin for the latest new dude livin upstairs.  Your neighbor got hurt, etc.  After I described the weird AF building layout, they told me go inside for a while.  They finally got dude outa there.  He was fightin like a mf.  Shit all knocked over outside by the other door that goes upstairs.  Heard dude yellin.  Heard shit flyin.  The one dude that's been upstairs almost 5yrs got beat up.  He's ok, but they had an ambulance.  Maintenance dude painted over a little blood here and there yesterday mornin. 

A new person already moved in last night.  There's just 2 rooms upstairs where people cycle in and out.  The 3 rooms share a common bathroom.  About half the people that end up in them 2 rooms leave under sketch circumstances.  So... 🤞

Ima say one, maybe two, outa the dozen or so former residents moved up when they left here.  The best was a dude that moved up once, then scored some kinda sweet job in Fla and moved there.  He had the coolest older girl pitbull doggie.  Someone came by here and told us all.  That was a fun surprise. 

I think the record for shortest stay was some lady that was here like 8hrs before I walked outside around 7am hearin her hollerin.  Had no idea who TF she was.  Cops in the yard talkin to her.  She pushes one of em away from her.  Hands to cop's chest.  Wrong answer.  She went face first into the wood fence and was took outa here in cuffs.  Never saw her again. 

Damn IBC. Crazy in your complex right now. So, the guy upstairs got beat up, and then he got arrested? 

It's a big house chopped into various sized rooms and apts.  3 rooms above me share a bathroom.  New dude in one beat up 5yr dude in room down the hall.  New dude is gone.  In jail awaiting trial. 

Damn bro. That is wild. Fight over the shitter maybe?

The last place I lived in in Baltimore was on the east 200 block of Preston Street. Big ass 3 story row house. Like 5,000 sq feet total. It was shopped into 3 units, and I was in the middle unit, but we all had our own front entries, two baths in each. My bedroom actually had a door that led back to the parking space in the alley. There is a lot of shit like that around Bmore, but I never had to do the shared bathroom thing with other tenants. Wild. 

The first apartment I rented in OB, San Diego was on Del Mar Ave. Right on the end, overlooking my favorite reef break. The building was called "Torre Del Mar". It was a bunch of units, we all shared a common balcony-walk-way with a big court yard underneath. Every unit was different. Completely different. It was weird and there were trap doors and hidden hallways and shit. One day, I asked my neighbor: "Why is there a tiny door with a pad lock on it in the back of my closet? The neighbor was like, oh, you don't know the history of this building? Back in the 1960's and early 70's it was a nudest colony. And a weird sex gathering place. So there are all these trap doors and hidden hallways so people could sneak into each others rooms and shit...

Super Creepy after I learned about it, but if you know anything about OB, it's full of hippies, stoners and hell's angels, so the fact that it was an old nudest colony is not a surprise. 

The nice and fancy up to code Airbnb kinda places ain't where us locals live.  A place like that this close to the Pier would easily cost 2, maybe 3 times our rent.  There's many big, old houses been split up like mine.  Well, less after Covid.  Lotta rich outa towners bought em and kicked us all out.  That's how I ended up here.  The owner is this amazin Latina 70 somethin yr old grandma that owns 4 houses all next to each other here.  All of em grew up in these houses.  Ginormous family.  It's weird at times, but still a special place.  It's all rentals now.  Sometimes they'll have some humungo family party in the biggest house when nobody's rentin it.  It's Bnb only.  Sleeps 10 people.  I think it's up to around $400 a night for that place.  Haha

That one house has had some big groups come in.  Usually turns out pretty cool.  The whole spectrum.  Could be some teenage cheerleader competition team with a few adults.  Ten Harleys and a yard full of bikers during the Lone Star Rally.  Maybe one of the best was the 10 women that partied the day before their cruise ship time.  The maintenance dude ended up in there drinkin with all of em.  Haha

I joke that my landlady is probably related to half the people in Galveston.  She don't just have a multi generation group of her own.  Her sister does too.  Haha 

But, hers... One son is a Galveston County Constable, a division of the cops.  Another owns one of the biggest towing companies in Galveston.  One daughter that passed away a few years back owned a coupla hair salons.  Used to do my sister's and Mom's hair.  I went a coupla times, but one of the others did my easy hair.  I knew the lady fairly good, though.  When Mom got where it was hard goin to the salon, girlfriend would leave someone in charge, and go to Mom's HOUSE.  For reals.  When I was really up against the clock at my old place, Mom says haircutter lady's Mom rents houses.  That's how I found this place.  One of the grandsons is an Army vet.  Another, Air Force.  Several of em all work for the towing company.  

There's one more daughter that isn't so famous, but does a lotta work here.  And a son who's kinda the outsider of the bunch.  My upstairs neighbor couple have been partyin with him for like 20yrs.  He hangs out here fairly often. He does official shit like collect rent sometimes.  Usually just drinks beer up there on the porch and talks about crazy shit with my neighbor. 😎🌴🤙

Reckon he's our bouncer up in here.  Haha. He DGAF if you don't wanna answer the door on rent day.  Dude is fun as hell.  There's a small group of the grandkids that hang out with him.  The ones askin me if I need some weed.  Haha 

No more drought here.  3in of rain yesterday afternoon, then 3 more around 3am this mornin when the thunderstorm woke me up.  Lights blinkin on and off. 

Here ya go...

We haven't gotten much sustained rain, but most days, if not every other, we have been getting a crazy electrical storm late afternoon to early evening. Like, ROARING shit.... Trees getting hit by lightening. A condo complex up the street from me caught on fire last week from a lightening strike. Not normal shit, like right overhead. I was teaching my son how to calculate the distance of the lightening by counting the seconds before you hear the thunder. And a lot of these strikes you will hear within a split second, so they are cracking within a half mile or so.... Violent shit... It doesn't happen every summer, but it's happening every day this year. It goes from 92-94 all day, with a "feels like 105", then as wind shifts or whatever the case may be, we get DUMPED on for like 30 straight minutes. Trees down. Shit on fire....

Crazy....

On a side note, I have two dogs, a yellow lab and a little mixed white dog.... They are both from Hilton Head Island. Little one is somewhat scared of thunder. Shakes a bit...

But anyway, we had a black lab that we adopted in San Diego. He lived there with us for about 6 years I would say. And in the 10 years I lived in San Diego, we never experienced a lightening storm. Not once. It only rains about 6 total days of the year, with total rainfall usually 1-2 inches for the whole year. 

Anyway, when we moved to Hilton Head Island, and our Black lab experienced his first storm, he freaked the fuck out... Shaking, slobbering.... Then, we came home from work one day and the dog had eaten part of the coach, shoes, gnawed on other furniture.... It got to the point where if it was summer, or we were unsure of the weather, we would have to crate him... One day, after a bad storm, this dog chewed his way through the metal cage, broke two of his teeth. Blood all over his face. Cuts along his sides and back. He chewed through metal and made a hole just big enough that he slipped through.... Bought a new cage. used like 50 zip ties to re-enforce it.... We started getting him prescription sedatives and shit, so before a storm we could drug him....

Anyway, a couple years before he passed away at around 16 years old, we were at the movie theater with the kids, watching some cartoon flick or whatever.... In the theater, I start hearing the whole building shake. I look at my wife, like FUCK.. Is that Thunder? We didn't put Eddie in his cage... FUCK... So, the theater is like 2 miles up the street, so I bail and run home.... When I get there, the dog is up in my daughters room. Within 20 minutes, he literally ate her entire room. He chewed up a wooden chair, ate a slipper, knocked her Beta fish bowl onto the floor. Fish is gone. I assume he ate the fish. He ate books. He ate metal.... He was up there just bloody and shaking and shit.... 

Fucking wild...

Anyway, I always told my wife, how fucked up is it that this dog lived half his life not knowing what thunder was, and now this guy is a fucking maniac when the weather turns...

He was the fucking man. Best dog ever... But he did NOT fuck with thunder...

P.S. Thunder vests for dogs don't work. 

The crew is still in Cali for the softball tournament.  I got 147,000 pics.  I think that's Honeyton Pier.  Daughter made sure to send a surf pic.  Haha

I'll put the 2nd pic next.

Here ya go.

Reckon Laird wasn't there that day.  Oh, well.  

My buddies from Baltimore moved out to CA about 8 months ahead of me. They moved to a little beach house 1 block from the HB Pier. That was actually the first spot I ever surfing in CA. We stayed there a couple days because our condo wasn't ready yet in SD. They had a room for me in HB, but after I flew out and visited both places, I crossed HB and OC off the list. Once you spend time in San Diego, there is no doubt that it stands supreme over every other town/city on the west coast. Huntington Beach was all strip malls and car dealerships and stuff. Decent waves in the summer, but winter sucks there mostly. 

I also hear it's been really sharky there lately. They cancelled a contest maybe two weeks ago because of a big ass white shark lurking around that very pier.