"These kids have no respect for property or anything else," Sushinsky said, describing numerous offenses and irritations: They fight, carouse and yell at each other.
In Hampden, a traditionally working-class neighborhood that had a reputation of being hostile to blacks, the white youths on Elm Avenue have adopted a hip-hop vernacular and style.
"They think they're in a video," said Sushinsky, who lived a few blocks away for six years before buying a two-story rowhouse on Elm Avenue in 2005. On the old block, she said, everyone looked out for one another, and interlopers were strongly discouraged. But on Elm Avenue, the combination of four vacant houses and a dilapidated park invites trouble.
A couple of months ago, a resident of nearby Powers Street broke up a fistfight between two girls on Elm Avenue and was immediately challenged by a surly boy about 15 years old. Another resident of the area, a woman in her 40s, moved to Towson after being beaten by a pack of youths with whom she had exchanged words on the street.
On a recent afternoon, several teenagers turned their backs and hid their faces when a reporter holding a notebook approached.
Sushinsky, who sells advertising space in the City Paper, is perfectly aware that there are risks in taking a public position on irksome teenagers.
"Usually, when you cause a problem around here, they vandalize your property," she said, pointing to the plants outside her front door that had been ripped from their pot. Her mailbox was stolen recently and, one night last week, someone broke a bird feeder, a Christmas gift, on a tree a few feet from her front door.
"It is little stuff, but it really gets to you in the pit of your stomach," she said.
Outside the home of a neighbor who made a point of letting youths know she would call police, a plastic statue of an angel was blown up with a firecracker, Sushinsky said, and it "exploded into a million pieces at 2 o'clock in the morning."
"The kids don't like 'nicing it up,'" she said, referring to the gentrification of Hampden. "The worst thing for me is the amount of public urination. I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams seeing an adult male urinating in a park in Hampden in broad daylight. But the amount of underage drinking is out of control, and it's particularly bad in the park."
