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The mean streets of Jamaica Plain
By adamg on Wed, 08/27/2008 - 12:42pm
Well, one mean street, at any rate. Jeff Cutler describes what he went through to buy a used iPhone from some dude living near English High School:
... Just a half block away from where the kid with the bat assaulted (that's what threatening with a weapon is called I believe) the girl, there was ANOTHER gang jostling about and being approached by two uniformed cops. I kept going. Real nice neighborhood.
Once I got past that group I thought I was home free until a group of younger kids, five youths between 11 and 14 years old, chased my scooter for about 10 feet before giving up (I'm very glad I got the bigger engine as it accelerates quickly).
When I arrived at the house, the iPhone seller advised me to put the scooter out of sight and near the door to the house. ...
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
Sounds like the author leads
Sounds like the author leads a sheltered life and has a penchant for hyperbole.
yeah...
and he buys used iphones in "real nice neighborhoods". have you heard of the apple store? why do i get the feeling that someone is missing an iphone?
I thought the lead in
I thought the lead in sounded kind of like the first few pages of an illicit encounter of another sort. Like in one of those dark movies about hookers and call girls.
Where was the smoke coming out of the storm drains?
or maybe they want a phone that actually works...
...because the 3G iPhones have turned out to be pieces of crap. With 3G enabled, battery life is dramatically cut, and many, many people have problems with calls dropping- a problem 1st gen iPhones don't have. Among the people I know who have them, it runs about 50/50; some have no issues, others have repeated dropped calls.
As for other commentary: I don't think it's hyperbole to describe someone chasing another with a baseball bat. The bit about needing to do yoga after the whole experience is pretty funny, however...
Ah well. On the one hand, stuff like this increases the difficulty of convincing friends that no, JP is not "The Hood". On the other- maybe it'll drop the real estate prices :)
turns out it's not the phones - it's the network
Caveat: I'm not an "Apple Do-or-die" fanboi - but I am involved in the ubiquitous/hand-held computing industry.
User problems with Apple's latest iphone appear to have been a combination of a few software bugs - for which Apple has already released a fix - and it appears now more significantly with some carriers in US/EU doing fugly things with their 2G/3G networks. Orange and AT&T have been cited by several wireless research firms as having particularly widespread problems, not just with iPhones, but other 3G devices like the Moto Blackjack and RIM's new Blackberry Bold. The recent large increase in 3G users with the new iPhone release has simply increased the volume of consumer grumbles that have been going on for a while now.
The early reports of iphone chipset issues (one from a financial advisor with no tech background?!) which were picked up and repeated by BusinessWeek et al, are looking like pure BS at this point. Several very reputable and independent researchers here in the US and in Europe have confirmed in the last couple weeks that Apple hw does not appear to be to blame for any of the current reception issues.
Of course, none of this info makes an immediate difference if you've paid for a new iPhone but keep getting bumped down to slower EDGE network speeds (or your battery runs itself ragged by trying to switch between 3G/EDGE every 30 seconds). If there's a small silver lining it would be that iPhone users can stop beating themselves up and focus their attention on joining with other 3G device users to pressure AT&T to get its 3G networks running properly.
Kids Chasing Bikes
Yeah, they do that. Actually, I think it is more like "see how fast I can run", which isn't unhealthy.
The last time I encountered this, I yelled back "if you're gonna act like a dog, bark already". So then I had this pack of pre-teens and young teens chasing the bike and barking like dogs - when they weren't laughing too hard to breathe. Too funny.
Hahahahaha...I'll have to
Hahahahaha...I'll have to remember that though I've yet to have anyone try to chase me down on foot; did have to dodge a wall of bike thieves in Charlestown once but no foot mobile chases (yet?).
Oh English High Antics
This story reminds me of when my high school's JV football team (The Boston Latin School) played English High on their field in JP. To be honest, both teams sucked but we scraped by with a 7-2 win [intentional strategic safety]. After the game, the English kids pelted our bus with rocks, which really didn't surprise any of the Latin players on the bus [heck, I'd been in a car that got shot at in Yonkers, NY when I was a kid so rocks were laughable] so go figure that Jeff felt shook in that area.
Bear in mind I'm from Dot, so JP seems damn near suburban to me.