MY NEIGHBORHOOD

I live near Somerset road, or by Military and Palo Alto rd. It really depends on how you want to get there. I live in the city of course. I live on the south side. I live in right in between, with Palo Alto rd. on one side and Somerset on the other. The highway near me is IH 35. I live near south west Military.

My neighborhood is lower middle class. The houses around are well kept, they have been rebuilding the houses so a lot of them are new. People down my street like to work on there houses and yards, so most of the yards look nice, though not all of them. All different ages live around my neighborhood, young, old, big families, and little families. Mostly Mexicans live around. All my neighbors speak spanish as there main language.

The major features of my neighborhood are, well I live near Golden International Park, a lot of kids go there to play basketball, and fly kites. Not too many people go to that park mostly just people who live around there. The park has a lot of tagging, and sometimes things get broken, but they added a new playground for little kids so now a lot of parents take there children. I live near South West General Hospital, so sirens and ambulance can be heard some of the times. Kindred Elementary and South San High School, so when driving in the morning and between 2:00 and 4:00pm there is traffic and kids walking around and speed limits of 20mph. Next to the park is a St. Clare’s church, so on Sunday mornings there is a lot of people and cars there. I also live near a corner store named grandma B’s this is a store where a lot of the near residents to cash there checks, buy a few groceries, or just to by snacks. Down my street there is a Mortuary so once in a while there well be a lot of cars parked there for a funeral and its hard to get by, or they well be driving for the funeral so its easier to go through the other roads near my house. There is construction going on, on Palo Alto rd. but its further form my house, I’m not sure what they are doing. That is causing some traffic because only one lane is open on either side. On military there is construction also, they are putting curbs in between the street so it makes it kind of complicated to turn into certain stores.

My neighborhood is usually not too noisy in the morning, it’s calm and quiet and nice to sit outside. Then around noon it starts to get loud and cars are driving by, music is on, and people are talking. Around 5 or 6pm it’s the same thing, then in the night depending on what day it is, it’s loud and people are having parties. I’ve lived next to my neighbors for all my life, I know most of the people who live around my neighborhood, and I used to go walking all over my neighborhood. My neighbors on the right are the calm type they don’t make a lot of noise and once in a while have parties but nothing big. My neighbors on the left, which I like to call “the gangsters” like to have parties, have there music playing loud, usually rap, and like to have a lot of cars parked everywhere, this sometimes causes problems but usually if we ask them to move there cars they do. My neighbors in the back always play their tejano music and their borracho music, we get that a lot and when they are drunk you can hear them singing, it’s entertaining. The people in the front like to have their TV super loud. There use to be a band that lived there and they would play cumbia’s at night. There are always parties going on in my neighborhood, this doesn’t bother us because we love music and kind of enjoy it. I don’t think we have a big problem with gangs, although there are some kids who cause trouble. There is tagging everywhere so I’m sure gangs can’t be too far but recently there has been no big trouble with gangs near my house. There is shopping on military with the mall and other stores. So it’s a very interesting place. I think the only problems are the park that place seems to attract a lot of attention. I think there have been a few murders in my neighborhood one recently. I think they had something about the cops, at the park near my house also. But I enjoy living here, its an interesting place.

I work and study at Palo Alto College. I go to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and I work on Tuesday and Thursdays. I’m there till about 4:30 or 5pm. I don’t live far it takes about 10 minutes to get there.

Usually for fun I go to parks, or just downtown, no where near my house really. A few of my friends live nearby but no one that I talk to a lot. Two of my closest friends live near but that’s all. My other friends live far about 20 to 30 minutes away. Mostly I like to go to the park to run and exercise, I go with my sister and sometimes we take my little cousins. I identify with my neighborhood well, I’m used to all the people walking by, and all the cars. I used to walk all over my neighborhood, but now I don’t get to, so now it doesn’t really feel like home anymore, because I don’t know everyone and see everyone. I spend half of my days there and I would not like to spend more time there. I rather would be out somewhere else. I spend about 30 minutes a day getting from place to place since I usually go to the same places.