How do you know if you are suffering from PVSD? So glad you asked. Because I’ve put together a handy dandy checklist of signs and symptoms of PVSD so you can feel free to self diagnose and medicate in whatever way you see fit… Without further ado and in no particular order, you might be suffering from PVSD if……….

You find yourself in awe of grocery stores in other cities. Walking through the isles you might think Wow, its so clean in here! Or Jeez, look at this selection! Perhaps, Holy Shit! Is that an olive bar?!? Or maybe Whoa! This wine selection is top notch! Is that Robert Mondovi R e s e r v e ??!? And not to mention you marvel on the way in and out of the store that you were not approached by a vagrant asking for money. And I’m not even talking about grocery stores like the Whole Foods in San Rafael or Berkeley Bowl in, uhhh, Berkeley. Nope. I’m talking about you being impressed by the Raleys in Fairfield or the Tom Thumb in Rowlett, Texas.

You have the Vallejo Police Scanner bookmarked on your computer for easy access but you don’t bother to turn it on for run of the mill sirens. Gunfire? Maybe. Police helicopter compete with engaged spotlight circling your neighborhood. Definitely turning that shit on.

You never leave anything in your car. Ever. Anything. Ever. Why? Because you know sure as shit, it will get stolen. And I don’t mean your Timbuk2 laptop bag sitting in the passenger seat or your iPhone lolling about in the center console. Duh. Of course some asshole is going to steal those. People with a well developed case of PVSD know that you cant even leave as much as a Target bag full of trash on the floorboard of your car because some meth head will surely walk by and bust out your window just to get her scabby little hands on what she thinks could be in there. That day-glo purple plastic toy cellphone you bought your daughter at the dollar store? Yeah, if it has any resemblance to anything of value, you best be bringing that shit in your house or you’re just asking for trouble. A handful of change? Yep, say good bye to your passenger side window. A car charger for your cellphone? Be prepared to pay for paint and body damage caused by a slim jim. A library book? Oh, wait, that’s totally safe.

You hear voices coming from the sidewalk outside your house and you always go to the window to scope them out. Physical descriptions are automatically if not subconsciously noted and snapping a pic with your cellphone is not completely unheard of.

You are not stupid enough to call 911 when you need the police. 911? Bitch, please. You have the number for Vallejo Police Dispatch programmed into your cell phone and you’ve called it often enough that the person answering the phone recognizes your voice.

You case your own neighborhood when you come home and you think nothing of having to make the block a few times in order to wait for the sketchy foot traffic to dissipate before getting yourself and/or your family out of the car. There’s a lady chasing a dude around a shopping car shouting a wielding a hammer? Yeah, I’m gonna make the block. There’s some guy rummaging through the neighbor’s recycling bin? Yeah, I’m gonna make the block. Someone rounding the corner walking their pit bull with one of those razor wire choke collars? Yeah, I think I’m gonna make the block. Several dudes are walking up the middle of the street shouting angrily at each other? Making the block! Pretty much anyone under the age of 72 within 400 feet of my house in any direction? If I don’t know them by name, I’m making the block.

You are completely unfazed by the crazy shit you encounter in Vallehell on a regular basis. A hooker being paid and then dropped off across the street from your house? Booor-iiiing. Blatant drug deals in broad daylight at your neighborhood park? Whoop-tee-doo. A person is pushing a shopping cart up your residential street? Must be Tuesday! Someone took a dump on the play structure? Whatevs. Two women having a profanity laced shouting match in the children’s area of a local restaurant? Yawn.

You never leave a single door, window, gate, or any other access point to your property or your person unlocked at any time, ever. A home security system? Pffft! That’s for amateurs! You have a video surveillance system on your property that would make Mob Wife Drita D’Avanzo jealous.

You automatically assume the people moving in across the street are trouble. You are correct.

You base major life decisions on the criteria: What is the Least Shitty Option? For example, are you looking for a school for your K – 12^th grade child? Guess what? You’re fucked!! I could write an entire post on this topic alone – perhaps I will someday. And did you notice that I didn’t even qualify that as public school? Nope. Every. Single. Fucking. School. In. Vallejo. Is. CRAP. Yes, my friends, it’s true. So once your little darling reaching 5 years, you will be forced to examine your educational options and decide which is the least shitty. And a little piece of your soul will die each day at drop off. Same goes for things like voting for city council members. Do you remember the most recent ballot? Or the one before that? How about the choices for Vallejo’s School Board? Much offense to anyone and everyone involved with the city council and the school board, you are all a bunch of fucking ineffective, blubbering morons. My point here being when you live in Vallehell you will find that pretty much any decision that matters, and even those that don’t, will not be based on choice but rather on what is passable… what is tolerable… what are you willing to settle for… or what is the least shitty?

You’ve been robbed. Whether it be a full on horrible home robbery, your gas being siphoned from your car in your driveway, some tools being stolen from your backyard, or your fucking Gucci purse being stolen from a fucking YOGA STUDIO PEOPLE, if you live here long enough, you will have something taken from you. And it might just be your SOUL.

Did I miss anything? Please, leave a comment! I love any and all feedback. Really, I do. And also… go like the Why I Hate Vallejo Facebook page so you don’t miss out on my quarterly (ha!) blog posts!

I had this fairly expensive purse, a Gucci purse…  I am almost embarrassed to say that because I am not the type of person to go around flaunting things, not that I have a bunch of material shit to flaunt in the first place. But anyway.

I point out the brand of this particular item just to give you an idea of what it was, and a little background on what this purse represented to me:  When I finished my masters degree, my parents sent me a very generous gift – a very generous check.  Instead of doing something boring with that check – like pay some bills – I purchased this Gucci purse.  I would never spend this amount of money on an accessory in a million years, but I thought this would be a nice way to mark the occasion of earning my graduate degree, courtesy of my parents.  And I loved that purse, I carried it for years. Years.  Until one day someone took it from me.

I know what you’re thinking.  Get over it Miss Why I Hate Vallejo Pants.  People get things stolen from them every where, every day.  Yes, I know this.  But the thing that makes this story so Vallejo is how it happened.

I was a few months pregnant, and taking an evening yoga class on Georgia Street, in downtown Vallejo.  One lovely evening, in the middle of class, a young man walks in.  The studio had an open design as many yoga studios do, with the class space open to the cubbies where we all kept our shoes and other belongings during class.  Well, while the entire class is watching (we all looked over at this person entering the studio because nobody ever comes in mid way through a class), this rat bastard piece of shit asshole does a quick scan of the contents of the cubbies, and before you could say downward facing douchebag, he grabs my purse… my fucking Gucci purse… and runs out the door.

I attempted to scramble towards the door, but being pregnant I wasn’t exactly the most agile.  Thankfully, my lame attempt at heroics didn’t matter.  Why not? Because my yoga instructor… a sweet petite firecracker of a woman… bolted out the door… b a r e f o o t… with nothing more than a “HEY!!!”

Being addled with pregnancy hormones, I of course immediately broke into tears at the thought of some asshole meth head mother fucker having my home address (of course for the first time in my life the address on my drivers license was actually current) and the keys to my house… and… MY FUCKING GUCCI PURSE.

Now –  after living in Vallejo for over 10 years – I wouldn’t leave so much as a stick of gum unattended.  But in my defense, this incident happened about 7 years ago, before I knew better. So please refrain from calling me an idiot for leaving my purse so ripe for the picking.  Believe me, I can hardly imagine that there was ever a time I was so innocent and naïve.

So anyway, someone called the VPD and an officer came within minutes. But, before the officer could even finish taking down all of the information about the incident, in marches my yoga instructor panting heavily… and…. holding my FUCKING GUCCI PURSE!!!

Apparently she ran down Georgia Street after this scumbag shouting “HELLLPP!! HE TOOK MY PURSE!!!!”  and some good Samaritans down the street heard her and started chasing him as well.  When he realized he wasn’t going to get away, he threw my purse one direction and ran in another.

So there you have it. Where can you get robbed in a yoga studio…one of the seemingly most peaceful, relaxing, Namaste-ish, places you could possibly be? Uhm, that would be Vallejo.

But every so often you will run into someone who wants to play the Who’s Harder Judging from the Crappiness of Where We’ve Lived Pissing Contest.  Okaaaaaaaaay, not exactly a game I want to win, bruh, but let’s go! And invariably these people will tell you with puffed up chest and idiotic smugness, “Well, I used to live in Richmond.” (Sometimes it’s Oakland, but c’mon people, there’s really no comparison between Vallejo and Oakland… sure, Vallejo is just a miniature Oakland, but of course Oakland is harder… hellloooo… more people = more murder and robbery just due to the simple fact that there are more people to kill and mug.  And also, uhm, Raider Nation? Nuff said. Okay, moving on.) So yeah, why do people always want to act like they one-upped you by living in Richmond?

When “normal” people move to Vallejo, they have a vague idea of what they are getting into. Maybe.  Vallejo tries to act like it is just this misunderstood red-headed step child of the bay area.  Vallejo is a great place! Vallejo has such great potential! Vallejo is up and coming!  All Vallejo needs is _________________________ (fill in the blank…. A moderately functional school district? A city council that can read?  Twice as many police officers? About $784 Gazillion dollars? A bustling downtown? A Trader Joes? One street that couldn’t be mistaken for being in a third world country?? An earthquake?????)  Just you wait… invest in Vallejo and you will see… this is town is on the brink of being a Great Place to Live and Raise a Family!

Bitch, please.

But yeah, that’s another post.

Anyway…. My point is… people move to Vallejo thinking that is could possibly be something that it’s not. Or they just don’t realize that it is as shitty as it is. Or they are in some sort of denial about this crap hole shit smear of a city. Or they think they purchased or rented a home in the “good” part of Vallejo (Hilarious! I asked a member of the VPD where the “good” parts of Vallejo were and without hesitation he responded, ‘Benicia and American Canyon.’)  Richmond, my friends, is a completely different story.

I’m not even from the Bay Area and it didn’t take me very long to find out that Richmond is not a place you want to be, much less buy property or raise a family. And let me just say right here, I am by no means trying to disrespect Richmond… because, uhm, hello, glass houses and stuff.  But! If you ended up Richmond, it was because you were born there, brought there by some of juggernautical (dude, that is totally a word. Google it, I swear.) force, or you are just a fucking idiot. You can’t really compare living in Richmond to living in Vallejo because people in Richmond know exactly what the fuck is up.

People in Vallejo? Not so much. People in Vallejo move here with high hopes.  People in Vallejo want to try to cross Tennessee Street or Sonoma Boulevard on foot as if that is safe. People in Vallejo want to try to build a nice community park in the middle of a bunch of drug dens and whore houses.  People in Vallejo want to have a big kum ba yah party over E-40 donating $10k to the Salvation Army because, uhm yeah, he’s a Vallejo native to be proud of… and I quote, “And my motto is fuck a hoe and hit the throttle/ To the smoke talkin’ on my Okie doe / World wide I got a clydes up in Tokyo” (I really have no fucking idea what that means, but I am pretty sure it loosely translates to “Hi, I’m a marginally literate moron.”)

Essentially, people in Vallejo have either been duped and are stuck here or take some sort of perverse pleasure in the act of polishing turds.  If you live in Richmond and are stuck there too, I feel for you cousin-city, I sincerely do.  But if you are trying to impress me with the fact that you once lived in a crappier city than what I live in now, well… uhm… congratulations???

And if you are mad at me right now and are mentally composing a stern comment, by all means leave your comment but do realize that you are only angry because I am right.

So when local election time rolls around, what is an average Vallehell citizen to do? How can you possibly make an educated voting decision with all of the obfuscation, accusation, and pros·e·ly·ti·za·tion flying around?

Have no fear, today is your lucky day!  Just in time for the 2013 Vallejo City Council election, I have created a handy-dandy, unbiased, and completely fact-based voters guide, just for you!!

I guarantee this is the only guide you will need when choosing Vallehell city officials because all of the information contained herein has been gathered from direct mail fliers, Vallejo Times Herald online commenters, Facebook, bipartisan recounts of candidate forums, the Internet, and some other shit I made up after having a couple of glasses of wine. Feel free to print out this post, take it to the polls, and make an informed decision when choosing your future Dung Beetles.

Vote for Joanne Schivley if you enjoy watching outdated, poorly acted reruns with overblown budgets.

You can vote for Rozzana Verder-Aliga (Jump Start Vallejo) if you think Vallejo public schools are awesome and have a deep appreciation for people who state the obvious and have limited comprehension skills.

Vote for Ronald J. Johnson Jr. if you don’t mind a man who uses smolder as a campaign tactic.

You should vote for Anthony “Tony” Summers (Jump Start Vallejo) if you hate gay people.

Vote for Pippin Dew (Jump Start Vallejo) if you support living in Vallejo but not actually sending your kids to a Vallejo public school.

If you think the grace of all mighty god will play a significant role in improving Vallejo., you might consider voting for Tony Mapalo.  This also might encourage Tony to actually attend a city council meeting.

Vote for Jess Malgapo (Jump Start Vallejo) if you can’t wait to play the slots on Mare Island after you play the sluts on Marin Street.

If you know you will never tire of jokes about difficult to pronounce surnames and you believe Midol will soon be available in aerosol form, vote for Liat F. Meitzenheimer.

Vote for Katy Miessner if you hate Police Officers (and people who speak in complete sentences) or if you think a disco ball should be mounted in council chambers.

If you think it is equally important to give a shit as well as be full of shit, vote for Herman Woody Blackwell.

If you loved watching Popeye the Sailor Man as a child, Chris Platzer might deserve your vote.

So there you have it, simple as can be!  Now just don’t forget to vote because this great city we live in has so much potential!

Go “like” the Why I Hate Vallejo Facebook page if you want to make sure you don’t ever miss another informative post like this one. And don’t be shy! Leave a comment!!

This year’s campaigning for city council has been rather lively, even for Vallejo. The propaganda that has been floating around has been interesting to say the least. I received this in the mail the other day:

How I feel about what it says is really not the issue here… it’s just so, uhm, extreme. And then I saw this on Facebook:

Apparently this flyer was left on cars in several parking lots across Vallejo. Again, my opinion on what it says is not important here. Honestly, I don’t have much of an opinion because after reading this flyer I am left going “Huh?”

Personally I find the best way to inform my voting decisions is through extremist messages printed on fancy cardstock, random flyers left on cars, and Wikipedia. It’s all about facts people.

Anyway, who is getting your vote in this city council election? Or better yet, how are you deciding on whom to vote for? Seriously, I am having a hard time sifting through all of the everything and it seems like the people who do have a definitive opinion on how to vote are fanatical about their position. And helloooo, fanatic = red flag.

And I will also say that one of the main reasons I am having so much difficulty selecting city council members to vote for is just the simple fact that you are running for a seat on the Vallejo city council makes you suspect in my book. I was discussing this with a friend of mine the other day and of course one of my all time favorite expressions had to be used – King Shit of Turd Mountain. Because that what being a Vallejo city council member or mayor of Vallejo or Vallejo city manager or Vallejo Superintendent of schools or any other “high ranking” Vallejo official reminds me of – being King Shit of Turd Mountain. But anyway, I asked this friend of mine what kind of person would want to be in this position and he enlightened me with a beautiful moment of clarity when he responded: “A Dung Beetle?” Exactly.

And one has to wonder… Just how does a used condom end up in someone’s front yard? Was someone having sex in my front yard? Was somebody actually carrying around a used condom and decided to throw it down as they walked by my house? Could a gust of wind carried it into my yard… I mean it seems as if a used condom would kind of be weighted down with…something…

These are all questions I never would’ve thought I would need to ponder. But the funny thing is, anyone reading this who happens to actually be blessed with the unique joy of living in Vallejo will probably be thinking “Whoop tee do, this happens all the time.”

I haven’t even necessarily had any of my Vallejo friends and neighbors tell me stories similar to this. But something just tells me that finding a used condom lolling about in an unlikely and inappropriate place in Vallejo is a common occurrence. Please feel free to help me test this theory by sharing your Vallejo Used Condom Encounter stories in a comment below. (And yes, I do realize that this invitation could go horribly wrong, yet I hit publish anyway….)

Hey! Did you know I have a Facebook page? Go “like” Why I Hate Vallejo on Facebook and you will never have to miss another post again, ever! Wow!

So why don’t I “just move”?

Well, gosh golly gee! Thank you, super-genius, for suggesting that brilliant idea! I mean, really… are you like a rocket surgeon or something? “Just move” – wow, that unique and creative idea had never occurred to me!  Great job, you little thinker, you! That is the innovative out-of-the-box thinking that ‘Murica is so proud of.  I am totally going to add “just move” to my to-do list.  Right after I rip off your head and suck your guts out of your neck stump.

What’s that you say? “Just move”? Oh yeah, right!  I hear it sucks to live in Syria right now. Maybe those people could “just move”.  I bet setting up camp in the middle of a highway in post-earthquake Haiti really blows.  I wonder why those people don’t “just move”.  The city of Detroit has been getting a lot of bad press lately.  I think everyone who lives there might be better off if they would “just move”.  DUH.  Yeah, I get that living in Vallejo is not really comparable to living in Syria or Haiti or Detroit (?maybe?) but the fact remains that suggesting that someone who is living in an undesirable situation should “just move” is a presumptuous, elitist, and fucktardtastic thing to say.

Do you really think – after all of the shit I’ve described in this blog, and all of the shit I haven’t had time to record here – that I would continue to live in Vallejo for one single solitary second longer than I absolutely have to? And before some real estate mogul tries to talk to me about a short sale, let me remind you that there are many tax, credit, and moral implications of taking that route. Plus it’s not like banks are passing out short sale approvals like dollar store halloween candy.

So yeah, just in case you missed the sarcastic tone of this post, if I could move right now, I would.  I have every intention of moving as soon as it is a feasible option.  Believe me, I can’t wait for the day that I can say goodbye to Vallehell forever.  And if you are wondering why I can’t move right now or why I haven’t done so already, well the explanation is not really very exciting and it’s pretty much none of your fucking business anyway. So until then, I will continue to bitch and moan about life in the City of Crapportunity and if the best response you can come up with is to suggest I “just move”, I suggest you go fuck yourself.