This is yuppie hour, says our host, as joggers and dog walkers fill the streets in the late afternoon. East Nashville is gentrifying rapidly, he says. But at night it's too dangerous to go out. Wasn't he savagely beaten up in his first weeks here? Wasn't he bounced against a chain-link fence and punched in the wind? They took his wallet and left him there, crouched by the fence. It was savage, he says.
In the supermarket that same week, he saw two twelve year old kids held face down by a security guard. He was holding a gun to their heads, he says. He went straight home and locked himself in for a week, says our host. This is a third world country, he says. This country is insane!
He rolls up his shirtsleeve and shows us his tattoo: workers of the world unite, it says.
Lars Iyer's Blog 