"Boooooo!"
"Yeah, why don't you hold a job fair up here for a change, huh?"
"Why don't you try spending money on something we need?"
"Arrrgggrrrbrrrglllffrrrg!"

And so it went in the Greater Northeast Thursday night, as Mayor Street and Pals took the Safer Streets tour back on the road. This time, hizzoner stopped at St. Anselm's Church on Dunks Ferry Road for a 7:45 p.m. meeting with a hundred or so of the locals.

The meeting started off better than expected. Street did the standard mayor bit, posing for pictures, shaking hands, slapping backs, trotting out well-worn anecdotes. The crowd -- mostly folks ranging from their mid-50s to mid 70s -- responded gleefully as he moved from table to table. I was surprised; I didn't think people openly professed to like Street anymore. Yet when Loree Jones, the city's new managing director, asked the attendees how they felt about their mayor, there were plenty of cheers and just a smattering of boos.

Jones gave a quick run-down of how Safer Streets would save the city -- open curfew centers, get the faith-based communities involved, fight for tougher guns laws, close your eyes and hope for the best. The crowd stuck with her.

Street took the mic, surprisingly did not mention that he was having a great day, and fleshed out all of the points Jones hit on. The crowd still stuck with him, although one woman sitting close to Street kept interjecting herself into his speech as loudly as she could. It made for great theater -- every time Street would say something like, "We need to get the parents involved," the unidentified woman would shout back, "That's right! It's their responsibility!" It was funny at first, until I realized she was going to probably yell back at Street all night long. Then it hit me: this meeting had the potential to be a comic goldmine.

Sure enough, when Street opened the floor to questions, the floodgates opened. One man claimed he had read a newspaper article that suggested Street was using his budget to splurge on the arts and screw over the rest of city. Fair question. Street attempted to respond by explaining how important the arts are to the city, what with the millions of dollars and tourists and -- "It's too damn expensive to even go down there and visit these things!" the man fumed. "Do you have free passes we can use, or what?" The mayor gamely suggested that the man -- and hell, all of the attendees for that matter -- look into buying family packages to visit various city destination spots. I began to hear something in the air ... what was it? Why ... boos! I heard boos!

It was around that time that a young girl grabbed the spotlight. The girl, who appeared to be no older than 14, stared at Street and asked a simple question: "What's the point of going to school if they don't teach us nothing?" Street's face appeared to twitch. He had used up so much energy already preaching about the importance of kids going to school and taking their education seriously. Now, there was this girl ... "I'm failing my physical science class. My teacher's terrible. We don't learn nothing."