You can't make this shit up

So I've mentioned in the past how we live in a somewhat ... borderline ... neighborhood, right? Everyone on our block (that we've met) is really nice, but we're not far from those meighborhoods that consistently figure in evening news reports for burglary, gunshot wounds, etc. In our optimistic moods, we think of our 'hood as "up and coming." And in truth, with the exception of the shooting right outside our house a year and a half ago and the flophouse/dope-den on the next block (that got shut down about a year ago), most of the stuff we deal with is pretty minor. People doing drug deals in cars outside our house; kids egging my stepdad's BMW; Loud parties spilling into the street. We call the cops; they don't come until too late; we go to bed. But tonight we had a new experience: drive-by plating. You heard me. We were in the living room multi-tasking (i.e. surfing the web while watching TV) when we heard - and felt - a loud crash like glass breaking. There's been a spate of burglaries in this area recently, so my first thought was "christ, someone just broke one of our basement windows," and my second thought was "fuck, I bet someone just broke into my car." But no; Mr. Squab went outside and all he could find was some broken ceramic pieces on the side of the house. Our backyard neighbor was out looking around, too, and there were similar shards all down his sidewalk. "This isn't the weirdest thing I've seen in this neighborhood," he said (he's lived here 10 years). "It's a new one on us," replied Mr. Squab. So we came back in, called the cops, and chalked up another weird moment to urban living.

Drive-by plating. WTF?