There's a lot to despise about my neighborhood, mostly involving the commercial strip that forms its southern boundary. The Hawthorne zone of purposeless commerce and cuteness and heart-stopping pedestrian terror. Still, as neighborhoods go I could do much worse, and I have, in fact this is the best neighborhood I've ever lived in, no contest. The Sunnyside neighborhood, if you can even believe that. I guess it's better than the Terminal Midnight neighborhood, but then again maybe not. How can I live in a neighborhood called Sunnyside? I've barely involved myself with the neighborhood since I moved here, it's been years. I'd like to become a neighborhood character, a person known "around the neighborhood." A familiar figure, a permanent fixture, in a benign way. I want the baristas to know my order, to exchange friendly nods with the bookstore people and the record store people, that kind of thing. Not in a negative way, not someone perceived to be lurking around, not an unnerving presence. I have no general objection to being an unnerving presence, in fact I think that's my best bet in many situations. But in the neighborhood I want to cultivate a genial neighborly vibe. Not so familiar as to invite conversation, more on the level of the near-smile and the almost imperceptible nod of mutual recognition. Such micro-acknowledgments can go a long way toward establishing one's personal reality in the modern urban setting. I don't want to do any of the work involved in becoming a genuine member of the community, nothing substantive or personally rewarding. I just want to advance from invisible status to harmless ghoul status, so that if I ever go berserk and go on a killing spree, for instance, they can describe me on the news as a familiar figure around the neighborhood or a neighborhood fixture, not an unnerving presence or a creepy local character, or worse, someone completely unknown to everybody, someone possibly from out of town. That's just an example of the level of benign familiarity I'm aiming for, I don't anticipate a spree, but then I don't imagine many killing sprees are anticipated, even by the killer himself. No one really knows, such is the vitality of the lively city neighborhood.