Things start with doors

This seems like an appropriate beginning. Two days ago my front door was replaced. They had to kick the lock right out of the door for the landlord to finally get around to having it done, but the process took more than a year. By the time of its official demise the door, made originally of metal siding concealing a filling of wood and some no-doubt toxic foam, weighed about four pounds.

See, initially, the punks next door would boot it in from time, when they forgot their keys. Steel toed boots will get you a lot of places, but they had to work at it a long time before they got it properly bent. It was solidly curved, but at least it met the door jambs at each end. Time and the occasional viciously inebriated drop-in guest or violent altercation took it's toll, but things really got vindictive when they finally got evicted.

People held grudges against our esteemed landlord, Mr Soni, and would return from time to time to kick the shit out of the door, quite literally, leaving chunks of foam and wood strewn about and the metal panels peeled out away from each other like wings. Someone even picked up an expelled two by four and, once again literally, raped my mail slot. Left it doubled in size, a gaping, ugly brown hole. It was repainted white a couple of times on account of graffiti, which I'd never even minded, though I'd noticed a gang sign for the Folk Nation I'd been taught by a documentary (It gets better as it progresses, if you get past the pitifully dumb back country white kids), but it took the disappearance of my lock, the door now just two splayed sheets of aluminum held together at the top by a couple nails, for my landlord to bother with a new one.

Now it's so clean, white and solid I feel like a bourgeoisie. Inside? An apartment that violates some impressive health code violations. Outside? The Main. The Heart. The Tenderloin. Awesometown.