Read Drink & Be Merry

It’s been several months since the unnoticed dead body in the illegal rooming house across the street caused a bit of an uproar in our ‘hood. Sadly, there seems to be no interest in uncovering the events that lead to the death. At first I thought it might be due to his colour but I suspect it has more to do with his socio-economic status and involvement with drug dealers. Who cares about another dead junkie? Somewhat of a sad indictment on the police, the media, and us, the community, when we can judge some people to be of less value. His suspicious death will probably only be of value if someone higher up the ‘food chain’ of drug dealing can be connected. Otherwise it may very well languish and be forgotten.

The whole incident did get the house onto the city’s radar. A very determined housing inspector finally got access to go inside the house about a month ago. Sitting on my side porch enjoying a martini I was able to witness the slumlord being taken to task for multiple violations on the outside of the house with (I’m guessing – due to the nearly two hours they spent inside) an equal number of problems inside. I was a bit dismayed when I heard the owner tell the inspector ‘thanks for going easy on me’ which made me wonder what he might be getting away with.

The days passed. No work was done on the house. Drug dealers and ‘working ladies’ busy as ever. Looked like nothing was going to change. That is… until I noticed something strange one afternoon last week. A very determined looking lady (you know the type – bluetooth earpiece affixed to her head…) was crawling all over the property with a couple of men taking measurements…. Interesting.

Seems the city had denied their application to operate legally as a rooming house. They could operate as a rental property if they made some major renovations but now that the city has the owners on their watch list it they are inspecting all their other properties as well so it looks like they are opting to divest. May be a hard sale, unless they let it go for a song, as they’ve made to many half-assed repairs (many without permits or inspections) and not thought things out (like replacing the plaster with drywall but not bothering to upgrade the electrical while the walls were down). House flipping is still happening in our neighbourhood so we’re hoping somebody sees the value in a house with 6 fireplaces in an up and coming area.

The city is allowing people to live there in the meantime, under a few conditions. They have to reduce the number of people to five (we think there may have been as many as 10 people living there) and one room on each floor has to be opened and converted into a common area. They also have to keep the front door unlocked so if the police want to enter they can. A couple of the drug dealers, thinking this bad for business, have since moved out.

Now we’re waiting for the ‘For Sale’ sign to go up. Hopefully it won’t be on the market too long. I can handle construction traffic. It’s junkies to lazy to get out of their cars sitting in front honking their horns that get on my nerves.

Finally, under the heading of ‘be careful what you wish for’, there’s the feral felines. The cat colony has gotten as large as it has due to their feeding of the cats. I put out a little bit of food a couple of times a week (mainly for a couple of orphaned kittens living in our bushes) but am not sure if I want to put out food every day or for the whole population. There is almost always three or four cats on their front porch and I have never been able to trap any of those. I seem to just get the stragglers living on the edges of the colony. When the house sells or when the boarders are forced to leave the cat colony is going to be in for a bit of a shock. Hopefully, with all the cats I’ve had fixed, the population is sustainable. Just have to wait and see.

Oddly, we just had a knock on our door (M is at home today). A police officer and someone from the RRHA (Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority) asking if someone called the police… M said no and they went on to the next house. She had the impression they were checking out the interior of our house. Fishing trip for other rooming houses in our ‘hood? Perhaps, I just don’t know why someone from the RRHA would be with out on a random police call. Anyone else have a better idea?

It all started with dinner one night with Mr & Ms In Vino Veritas with the thought of grilling ‘big ol’ honkin’ pieces o’ meat’. Compounded by an email from Veron about her Hungry Hubby having grill envy. The idea was simple. Fire up the new infrared grill and throw open the doors to a few foodies and allow them to bask in the 700+ degree heat with whatever food stuff they cared to play with. Emails flew back and forth for a few days and then the preparations began and the players arrived. Joining us were Mr & Ms In Vino Veritas, the Sketchy’s with little Aidan, Veron & Hungry Hubby, as well as our non-blogger friends Cy-n-Ide (with C4 still on board – so to speak). RVA Foodie was invited but decided to blow a gasket in a futile attempt at aioli instead.

Once everyone arrived, and Finn greeted Aidan (see above picture), martini’s were made and the grill fired up. To get things rolling I threw some fillets of grouper (marinated in a Japanese inspired liquid) on the grill. For this dish I used my grilling basket to avoid the fish sticking to the grill. Four minutes later we had juicy grouper for people to nosh on.

Next up to the grill was Hungry Hubby. After a few minutes instruction on the grill itself, HH pulled out a sword and measured the grill. Off to the kitchen he went threading sword after sword with chunks of meat daubing them with some sort of melted butter concoction. The smells that came off the grill were heavenly. The meat came out moist and juicy, the extreme heat having seared all the juices inside. After years of dry, overcooked kebab meat this dish has ruined all other possible attempts at kebab making. HH decided then and there that he was getting an infrared grill and Veron, after tasting the results did not seem inclined to argue.

Next up to the plate was Mr Vino. The Vino’s are on a cleansing diet for a short time so they were consuming no animal products. This made for a few adjustments for the evening. I had decided to make my faux mashed potatoes (actually made with cauliflower) for the evening so I had to adjust to make it vegan. Substitute Veggie Stock for Chicken, Soy Milk for cream, Smart Balance for butter, and I actually found a vegan parmesan substitute. The result was pretty good, I think I under salted but no one seemed to agree with me, so there you go. The Vino’s had also brought kebab’s, but of the veggie variety. We lowered the heat on the grill a bit, didn’t want the skewers to burn (they did anyway), spritzed with a bit of olive oil and on to the heat. While this was cooking I added a piece of cedar board and threw on a hunk of salmon with a bit of white wine and dill. Once again all came out well (except for the burned skewers). The veggies stayed moist and, since we kept them moving on the grill, they cooked all the way through without getting too charred.

The next guest chef was Sketchy. He had brought some skirt steaks. The heat on the grill went back up and wrapped pieces of corn added to the upper rack. As skirt steak is so thin these had to be cooked quickly but with lots of contact with the grill to encourage proper charring. Sketchy’s steak was a success. Perfect MR, juicy, and lots of flavour. The Sketchy’s had also brought tow kinds of homemade marshmallows. One was infused with lavender, the other peach. Great snacking items. Stopped eating marshmallows years ago because they were too sweet and just really didn’t taste of much. These were wonderful, especially the lavender. Sketchy mentioned maybe posting the recipe on his blog….

To finish on the grill I had planned a NY Strip tasting. I had got 4 NY Strips – One from Fresh Market and from Belmont Butchery a regular CAB, an organic CAB, and a Wagyu. All were cut basically the same, allowed to come to room temperature and sea salt applied. While they all cooked the same amount of time the Wagyu may have got a little more heat as the amount of marbling caused the grill to flare up a bit. Once cooked they were allowed to rest and then sliced thin. The results? The cheap one from Fresh Market was ok flavour, nothing special, but was a bit tough and had some gristle. The organic had really good flavour but had so much gristle that it was tough to cut and to chew. The regular CAB from Belmont Butchery was a winner, great taste, tender, and no tough spots. The Wagyu was excellent, buttery, tender, melt in your mouth. I would, however, give the ribbon the regular CAB based on the relative little damage it did to my pocketbook compared to the Wagyu.

Veron stepped up to the plate for desserts. Cupcakes, Financiers (little teacakes), and, of course, her macarons. All were delicious and the way we attacked them would make one think we were a bunch of 19th century orphans in London. Yum!

Of course with all this we had copious amounts of adults beverages. Martini’s, too many different kinds of wine to count, and akvavit. As the liquor flowed so did the volume on the side porch. My favourite neighbours across the street, the ones with the dead body a few weeks ago, seemed to have their illegal activities interrupted by all the noise and activity. Although there has been change. The drug dealers seemed to have been moved out by the owners and new people moved in. The new profession is not dealing but prostitution. Oh joy.

A week has passed since the body of a man turned up in the unlicensed rooming house across the street. Beyond the initial reports of the body having been there for several days prior to ‘discovery’ this is what we have learned so far:

a) The dead 44-year-old didn’t live there.

b) The person who occupied that room and didn’t ‘notice’ the dead body for several days has not been around lately. Speculation among the neighbours is that the body expired elsewhere and was brought to the house.

c) The owners have actually paid the water bill for two months in a row and they currently have running water (it’s been cut off twice this year alone – I guess the owners payment on their brand new Mercedes is more important…).

d) The police, having spoken to people claiming to be residents instead of the actual residents, actually have the death listed as a ‘pending matter’. Considering the house cleaning prior to their arrival I doubt there was any evidence left and they don’t seem to be treating this very seriously. Let’s keep the murder rate down through creative record keeping.

New developments for the house include a return of most, but not all, of the normal residents. Drug activity, which was down over the weekend is starting to pick up again. Oh, and a new city agency has them in their sites.

Yep, we’ve city building and zoning inspectors sniffing around. Normally that makes all of us residents nervous as most of our houses are in various stages of renovation (yes, rain gutters are on my list but I’ve got other things to do first…) but they are all interested in the ‘house across the street’. I don’t know what got them started. It may have been my multiple phone calls over the years. It wasn’t the body (they didn’t know) and it certainly wasn’t Councilwoman Ellen Robertson (who only gets really involved with the community just prior to an election – she comes by our house each election cycle, I complain to her about the rooming house, she says she’ll look into it, nothing happens.).

Whatever it was the city inspector is pissed. There never seems to be anyone home (he should sit in the middle of the street and honk his horn like all their other visitors/customers) and he can’t get in. He says he knows it’s a rooming house but they don’t have the permits for it and it lost it’s ‘grandfather’ status due to a re-zoning (single-family homes only) of the neighbourhood which went into effect when the house last sold in 2004. The inspector has vowed to shut them down. Of all the people in life I do not want to have annoyed at me it’s a city building inspector.

It’s kind of sad. The police have allowed a known drug house to continue operating for years and look to be more interested in managing the ‘numbers’ of the murder rate rather than investigating a very suspicious death. No, instead the most dangerous house on the block will not be shut down by the men in blue but instead by a bureaucrat enforcing regulations. Who needs detectives and forensics when you can just be caught by the red tape.

If I felt the need to deal drugs I would be very low-key about it. When engaging in activities that law enforcement agencies frown upon it is wise to keep a low profile. The neighbours in the unlicensed rooming house across the street seem to have missed this little nugget of advice. I doubt anyone on the block would care one way or another what they were up to if they kept it quiet. Instead we have heavy traffic stopping in front of their house, blasting horns at all hours, questionable individuals standing in their front yard yelling or throwing rocks at windows for attention (obviously none of these people have heard of doorbells or cell phones…).

The number of phones calls made by me and others to 911, the 4th precinct, and various other government agencies has reached the point to make the house a big red blob on any of the local crime maps. So it was no surprise that I was met with boredom or more correctly – ‘What have they done now?’ – when I called several numbers last night.

Sitting in my kitchen last night I watched as the same green Explorer kept driving down the block. Sometimes it would stop, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes someone would yell something from the front porch, sometimes someone would run out to the car for a quick chat. Usually when someone runs out to a car you can see a quick pass of cash and small bags. Tonight it was only words that were being passed. Watching closer I noticed small bags and cases being brought out, regular tenants getting into their cars and driving off and many new people arriving. A lot of new people. People we had not seen before.

My calls to the police seemed to produce nothing except a couple of new numbers for me to call during business hours so I was a little surprised a half hour later when I noticed flashing lights in front of our house. Fire Trucks, EMS, police cars. Finn was very excited, I was curious. Something was going down. The evening progressed, we tried to watch Top Chef but kept getting pulled away as something new arrived or left outside (Thankfully we have a DVR and were recording the show). Then there was a knock at our back door…

M had been IM’ing our neighbour, S, and he had snuck around back to come over to our house with news and in hopes of a better view of the house across the street. Seems they had a body in the house. Seems the body had been there for a few days. Seems the police had been scammed….

The police had been told that no one had noticed the body (or the smell). Problem with that is the body was in a room belonging to someone else and he had been around all week. Personally, I would notice a dead body in the room with me, but I could be wrong. So the body was moved in the house or from somewhere else. Prior to the arrival of the police the house was ‘cleaned’, both literally and figuratively. What do you think was in all the bags and cases removed in the hours leading up to the ‘discovery’ of the body? The people the police questioned about the body were not residents (We’ve secretly replaced your paroled and wanted tenants with people having fewer legal issues…) but purported to be – all the real residents left earlier.

One can also not underestimate the stupidity of your average drug addict. You would think he would notice all the police cars parked on the street when he drove up, he didn’t. As he stopped and blasted his horn, waiting for someone to run out with his fix, I can only imagine the look on his face as the officers turned to look at him.

Slowly things began to quiet down. The police and EMS left. Scott’s Funeral Home’s hearse arrived. The body was manhandled down the stairs (rather roughly I might add) and whisked away. Don’t know the guys name. Probably never will. I find it a bit sad that the closest he may come to being remembered is right here on my blog. Hopefully he has some family or friends somewhere that will remember him better than this.

The new people at the house will hang out there for a couple of days. The regulars will trickle back and business will resume. And I will still hate my neighbours.