I chose the first choice, you could keep your doors unlocked pretty much all the time. In fact, my father does, and always has, for as long as i remember without any incidents, ever. I never had a key to the house growing up. Never needed it. Only recently since ive been married and gotten my own apartment have i regularly used keys and locked my doors at night and when we are gone during the day. Not that i feel i need to, just that it makes my wife feel safer, and it is a good idea, just in case...
We dont have any real gangs where i live, which is surprising, considering its probably one of the worst towns in vermont as far as drugs go. Dont get me wrong, in the last couple of years there has been some gang style grafiti popping up, but i think its mostly wannabe's. You see latin kings tags and then there is the amusing 'home grown' gang tags 'south side' (for southern vermont, *chuckle*) and the funniest one, the ones who were calling themselves the 'green mountain boys'. Again, the latter two are a joke and are most likely formed with a total of 3 members who nobody knows. The former is a legit gang, but again, up here its mostly just posers who aren't really affiliated with the real gang. It seems like every 5 years or so, you'll see the big news on the front page of the local paper about the supposedly new gangs in town. Its always wannabe's. Every time. Our town for its size (about 25-30,000) has a pretty active police force, so gangs and grafiti get investigated and taken care of pretty quickly, then all is quiet again for a few years or so.
To sum it up, in my town, im more afraid of drunken rednecks than the so called 'gang members' around this small town.
I don't know what magnetism that street has to it but every town I have lived in I tried/try to avoid that stretch of pavement. It's hard now because the way I usually go to the horse track involves this interesting scenic route.
