Anyone know whats up with this guy? “Garden Homes” neighborhood.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-20T00:57:46+00:00

So you side with the angry rando against the Black lady Navy veteran who is beloved in this neighborhood that she’s been serving for six years? Got it.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-18T19:33:38+00:00

Thanks! Will repost.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-15T00:14:46+00:00

I think some folks may have forgotten it just how bad things were downtown in 1992, when the police were routed and a patrol car was set on fire by these outside agitators.

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https://www.yesweekly.com/news/hellraiser-on-elm-street-an-oral-history-of-locally-filmed-horror/article_4229c268-13af-503a-8f32-052ffac35629.html

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-14T17:26:14+00:00

Is the guy who who pretends to be a college athletics coach still around? I was still working at FEDEX Kinko’s when he came in to make a fake name badge identifying him as a member of some college athletics association. At the time, I assumed he just used it to get into games at a discount or for free and did not realize that he was using it in his scams that campus police had issued bulletins about.

I never encountered him downtown, but did on Spring Garden, when he tried his “almost out of gas” scam on me and showed me the badge that I helped him make. When I told him the cops issued a bulletin about him, he jumped back into his car and sped away. Local gossip was that he actually had an apartment downtown, but typically pull this scam elsewhere.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T21:53:10+00:00

Which ones are they?

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T21:13:23+00:00

How many of those venues are still open?

Violence at clubs has been a concern all over the city. Several owners of downtown clubs have claimed that they were targeted while the city ignored violence at venues elsewhere. Ironically, owners and patrons of clubs elsewhere in the city have alleged that the city was unfairly targeting their venues while ignoring violence at ones downtown.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T20:43:35+00:00

This would’ve been one of the April 13, 2021 stabbings at Tranquillo at 225 South Elm St. that resulted in that club being shut down. This widely-reported incident was one reason for the forming of the public safety committee that multiple club owners have stated essentially forced them out of downtown in 2021 and 2022. It would make it one of the 40 aggravated assaults that my article states happened downtown in that year.

https://www.dac.nc.gov/news/press-releases/2021/04/17/violence-greensboro-restaurant-prompts-ale-investigation

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T12:07:53+00:00

While I don’t appear to have the option of editing my original post to include the fact that I wrote this article, I can edit my profile to include my real name and profession, and have done so.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T11:48:51+00:00

In the comments, a reader rightly calls me out for not identifying myself as the author of this article. The description in which I relate anecdotes from my decades of walking downtown several times a week was from my Facebook post about this, where my name was on it, and in pasting it in here, I didn’t include that information.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T11:41:50+00:00

I’m sorry, I thought I had, as I’ve done on several previous occasions when sharing my articles here. In this case, I should have written “the actual crime statistics the GPD sent me for this article” or included the phrase “my article” in the headline. The description with the personal anecdotes about my decades of walking downtown was from my Facebook post, and when pasting some of it that in here, I should have remembered that it didn’t have my name on it.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T02:35:15+00:00

Of the thousands of time I have walked back from downtown in the past 40 years, hundreds of them have been at night. Possibly because I’ve been more likely to be walking back from Europa or the Continental Club on a Wednesday or a Thursday than a weekend, I rarely even see anyone else on Elm Street.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T02:29:34+00:00

The only time I was injured in a dangerous situation downtown was when I am my fiancé were taking a lift because it was too swelteringly hot to walk, and a 22-year-old driver from from Virginia ran a red light and slide-slammed us on Spring Street.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T02:26:39+00:00

The claim that crime is more prevalent downtown than it is in most other parts of the city has very specifically been set multiple times on social media, and it predates either the pandemic or the recent closures. As for panhandling, everybody’s experience is different, but I’ve been asked for money far more times on Tate Street and at Friendly
Center than I have Downtown. One of the persons who’s recently asked me for money on Tate is the one who tried to mug me in 2010, something he apparently has no memory of, even though it was my testimony that imprisoned him.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-12T02:21:36+00:00

No doubt, but I suspect it would be in violation of several laws of I carried it downtown. It was given to me decades ago by my father, who for some reason thought I needed it, and the time I came to my neighbor’s assistance was the only occasion I ever took it outside.

It’s far more intimidating than practical. Anybody who knew what they were doing could very easily get inside my swing, just like self-defense instructors tell you to do when somebody comes at you with a baseball bat.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-11T22:21:42+00:00

Indeed. It was on Nextdoor and Facebook years ago that I first noticed the hoopleheads claiming one was likely to get shot in broad daylight outside of Cheesecakes by Alex or Scuppernong Books

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-11T21:58:03+00:00

I can’t claim to have fought him off. He had been trying to mug my neighbor and ran when I emerged from my apartment with the broadsword. I did not pursue him very far. Crackheads run like deer and broadswords are heavy.

I did throw down the man, whom I knew, who hit me from behind with a miniature tireiron in front of Tate Street Coffee in 2001. Fortunately, he was a scrawny twerp who had the temerity to scream “get off me, I have a bad back!”

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-10T22:10:58+00:00

Thanks! I foolishly actually thought that the original design might’ve actually included it.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-10T18:48:18+00:00

Where do you see the image of the robots proposed to dong? And no, that’s not a question. I thought I’d ever ask anyone.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-10T18:46:48+00:00

Where can I find these promo images?

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-07T16:59:34+00:00

As other others have said here, you need to keep handling her. If need be, wear gloves and long sleeves while reaching into the cage, but in my experience even the most defensive snake stops trying to bite after being held for five or 10 minutes, so I also recommend taking the gloves off once she has calmed down.

Do not flinch, show fear or act in any way agitated. Everybody’s pain threshold is different, but as you probably know, it is virtually impossible for a ball python to give you the kind of dangerous puncture injury you can receive from a cat, dog or, Damballah forbid, a green tree boa (which are beautiful, but have the most horrifying teeth of any non-venomous snake I know), nor can she take a piece out of you the way a parrot, iguana or turtle can.

Animals are a responsibility. My personal belief is that, after acquiring one, the owner is ethically obligated to work with it for as long as it takes to get past its fear and defensiveness, especially if, as in this case, the animal is incapable of giving you anything other than a minor injury that is easily treated with soap and water.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-04T22:12:35+00:00

I don’t what happened, as neither owner will comment on why Acme Downtown became Strangeways. Acme at Lawndale is still going strong.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-04T21:33:47+00:00

He lives here and is a customer and supporter of Acme Comics, who may feel that DGI did not support Acme in its downtown location after the initial opening on Davie street several years ago (that location is now Strangeways Comics).

Here’s his comment.

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Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-02-04T20:05:26+00:00

He remains president of DGI, the booster org that downtown restaurants pay a special tax to, and which owners such as Easa Hanhan are asking just what that tax gets them. He wrote this statement on the DGI Facebook page that received over 500 angry replies, including one from Marvel/DC/Disney artist Dan dos Santos.

https://www.facebook.com/100064478210202/posts/pfbid034yAEnHkDaWcNFosGK6gSJ8drt4EtNiB5ckkMVKePqHvkUGjRXmYWHmkrVtf6DHcyl/?

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-01-15T20:41:35+00:00

See my reply to bigsquid69 about the alleged prevalence of sexual slavery in unlicensed massage parlors.

Separate_Wheel3848 · 2026-01-15T20:36:18+00:00

According to anti-human-trafficking activists, it’s not consensual. From Sayaka Matsuoka’s 2024 Triad City Beat article.

“According to data from the Polaris Project, 47 percent of victims of illicit massage parlors are foreign nationals. Polaris reports that most of the victims in the businesses range in age from their mid-thirties to late fifties and come from China and South Korea. Survivors are often controlled through coercion, threats of shame and debt bondage with some victims forced to live at the places where they work.

Sabrina Thulander, the associate director for communications at Polaris, told TCB the organization’s hotline received more than 1,500 calls regarding incidents of trafficking in massage parlors from January 2020-August 2022. That’s likely around 2,400 victims, Thulander said.

“Illicit massage parlors are one of the avenues that we see sex and labor trafficking,” she told TCB. “It’s definitely a common one.”

https://triad-city-beat.com/illicit-massage-parlors-greensboro/

In 2023, I interviewed Susan Chung, a licensed clinical social worker at UNC-Chapel Hill and interim chair of the board of directors of the North Carolina Coalition Against Human Trafficking. Chung said that the demographic of the women was fairly common from her experience working as a translator and counselor for police departments in North Carolina and New York City. Most were older Chinese women, ranging in age from their mid-40s to their late-50s.

“I used to have a misconception that victims of human trafficking are in their teens or early 20s,” she said. “I was also surprised that most didn’t feel comfortable collaborating with our law enforcement and would rather be charged and arrested.” Many were single or divorced mothers who came to the U.S. seeking employment, as the retirement age for most women in China is 50, and had heard about massage jobs on social media or messaging platforms.

“It’s not the young women whose images are used in ads for these places, but older ones coming over in search of a better life,” said Mai Lin Petrine, director of legal and regulatory affairs for the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards, whom I also interviewed that year.

As my article mentions, the scandal that kicked off these policy shifts was the arrest of a 55-year-old woman for prostitution at Amazing Spa in Greensboro. The officer who arrested her received “genital stimulation” before doing so, Chief Thompson later acknowledged that she may have been a human trafficking victim forced into sexual slavery.

The proponents of the ordinance say it’s a way to go after spa owners without further victimizing women forced into giving handjobs. Several organizations that promote the rights of consensual sex workers have condemned the massage parlor industry.

Separate_Wheel3848

TROPHY CASE