Another Late Night Holla

In the same line of my recent post on late night harassment, Sara sent this story:

Hey! I love your blog (and all of the HollaBack sites for different cities). As a woman living in DC, they help me learn ways to deal with creepy men on the street. Anyway, this just happened to me and I needed to vent:

I work until late at night, and I was walking home. Fortunately, no one says anything to me most of the time, especially on a weekend night when more people are around. Tonight, though, I walked by this guy and hear him say, "nice," as if he's staring at my ass or something. I turn around and glare at him, and he said, "I said you look nice. You don't like a compliment?" I said, icily, "No." He said, as he was crossing the street and walking away from me, "You need to learn to accept a compliment."

At least he was walking away and not bothering me. But then, he walked up the steps to my apartment building! I really hoped this jerk wasn't also my neighbor. He called someone from the downstairs buzzer, so he didn't live there. Turned out he had the wrong building and instead went to the building next door. But he took his sweet time figuring that out, so I hid behind a tree next to a hotel and waited for him to leave my stoop so I could go home.

It's pretty pathetic that I have to run and hide from these guys in my own neighborhood, in front of my HOME, but what was I supposed to do, cross the street and saunter into my building right in front of him? That man needs to learn that complimenting women on the street late at night isn't flattering, it's scary.

Thanks for giving people a space to get these stories off of our chests!

It's not right when you have to hide from some clown when all you want to do is go home and relax. Thank god he ended up not trying to follow you for real---but part of me wonders if he ran to that other apartment as a bluff when you caught him at your place. Either way, I'm glad you're safe.

Men, we can take compliments---when the time and place is right. Late at night on the streets is not the right time or place! The last thing we want is some man trying to hit on us then when all we're concerned about is getting home safely.

As a follow up to my last post on late night harassment and the mention of RightRides, Oraia Reid, RightRides' co-founder, sent me this information on how to get a chapter in DC. It is a project I am definitely interested in working on.

I think the smartest idea is to smart small and work from there. Right now I'm the only person working on this site, and to do something as large as a rally is a huge task for one person. As mentioned previously, I'd love to schedule a meeting in the next couple of months. I want it to be informal (maybe at a coffeehouse?) and we can discuss working to make the streets in DC safer for people. We can also start a committee as well and go from there. One can be the catalyst, but it takes the strength and ingenuity of many to make things happen. Who's with me?