"Rapey"

   A couple nights ago one of my friends described the atmosphere in my neighbourhood as "rapey". My response was something like, "my neighbourhood, rapey? No..." I mean, just because there's a halfway house across from my street and the occasional public meth deal that doesn't necessarily warrant words like rapey. What about all the reptile stores you ask? Well surely they're not all drug fronts.
   When I tell people where I live they don't immediately think its the ghetto because it is surrounding neighbourhoods are inhabited with mommy and baby yoga, froyo lounges and places where you can purchase silk booties for your Puggle. Its when I tell them to get off the Southbound bus at the stop with the Coffee Time that words like "opium den", "six months without parole" and now "rapey" get tossed around.
   During the day my neighbourhood is a lively ethnic enclave. I take pride in the fact that the average person has to walk fifteen minutes to get to a Starbucks from my home. Actually, lets follow the Starbucks theme for a minute. If you were to describe my neighbourhood and its surrounding areas like the popular coffee retailer, the areas directly to the East and West would be the serving and seating area. My neighbourhood would be the Starbucks bathroom, because as Tina Fey put it in her autobiography, "many of the worst things in the world happen in and around Starbucks bathrooms".
   I would not go so far as to say the Starbucks bathroom that is my neighbourhood - where I was born and raised- hosts the worst things in the world. But the gentrification that has taken place is my expanded community has forced a concentration of rapiness into my immediate neighbourhood. The bathroom is a necessary part of Starbucks and the under-the-table dog groomers, exiled youths and one-step-away prostitutes have to go somewhere. It would be great if the Starbucks bathroom wasn't a necessity, it would probably cut costs or something. But if you try to eliminate the Starbucks bathroom because you can't deal with what goes on in there, you're going to have people running into the streets in a panic after they've drank too many beverages, and ultimately have a bigger mess on your hands than if you'd just kept the bathroom.
   See what I'm saying here? Maybe I've gone overboard with the metaphor, but all the "rapey" things that have accumulated in my neighbourhood are there because they were ruining the vibe of other neighbourhoods. Rather than dealing with what has been wrong with the larger community, these "rapey" things have been forced into one area where they may very well have festered.
   I don't know what the solution is; more support programs or rent freezes maybe. But the bathroom isn't going to get any cleaner by ignoring it, and building another Starbucks probably won't help either.