I’m thinking of moving to Kennedy Park. I love it there and the view is good. Plus, you have to appreciate the proximity to work. I’ll be the guy with the notebook hanging out by his tent. Stop on by, y’hear?
Kennedy Park is a reporter’s playground. Sometimes I walk through it just to get to Speaker’s for a hot ham and cheese. Occasionally I’ll walk a colleague to her car up on Bates Street. And almost every time, stories fall like acorns from the trees. If it’s not a story fit for print, it’s at least a story worth hearing.

Just the other night I was strolling through on my way back to the paper when a group hailed me to the steps of the gazebo. A couple of men and a couple of women lounging under the foliage. Behind them, a guy was playing his guitar. Music buzzed from an amplifier. In no hurry to get back to the newsroom, I stopped and chatted.

One man was irate about something. He gestured dramatically with his hands. He spoke to his friends, but his words came in my direction. The fellow was alarmed and angry about a downtown location where registered sex offenders congregate during the day. I’d heard of this place in connection with sex offenders, but this guy had some extra information. I had no notebook but I took mental notes. It works, you know. Two-thirds of the things I write in my notebook, I never need to read, anyway.

If a dozen convicted sex offenders were frequently hanging around one spot unsupervised, that’s a story to check out. Into the mental notebook it went.

A woman leaning against a railing had a stack of fliers. She had been planning a gathering in the park that very night. The gathering was aimed at raising awareness of a crisis at a housing development. Rents were being raised and families were being forced out.

But the meeting was postponed as certain officials explored the situation. One week, the woman told me. The gathering would take place in one week. She handed me a flier and I handed her a business card. Mental note for next week.

A young lady I know well was sitting with friends on a park bench nearby. She’s almost always in the park. After some banter, she pointed to a teenage girl sitting on the bench. The girl claimed she had been attacked by an older teen days before. The mother was notified and the police contacted. Cops are investigating and I’m waiting to hear what they discover.

Exiting the park, a man I’ve seen downtown for years tried to hit me up for some spare change. No dice. Hey, I didn’t even have a notebook, forget about loose change. I was traveling light.

I love the park. It’s still a place of some notoriety for those who don’t visit often. Years ago, the park was known as a scary place, filled with drug dealers, goons and shadowy criminals.

You don’t see those types out there so often anymore. Just an occasional brawl or a loud domestic argument now and then. Police patrol the park well. But so do the people who love to linger there. They don’t want any ugliness in their home away from home. They outnumber the mischief-makers and run them off when they have to.

The young lady who inhabits the park like a squirrel is a redhead named Laurie. I call her the Queen of Kennedy Park. She has her favorite bench and a regular clan of friends. Laurie knows something about everyone in the city. Probably because she spends so much time in the park, where gossip breezes through like the wind.

I went to see Laurie on a recent Friday night. She was right where I expected her to be – on a bench surrounded by cronies. She told me who had been arrested, who had been in a fight and which drug dealers were back in town.

Trying to act like a journalist, I asked her why she spent so much time in the park.

“What else is there to do?” she said. “I walk here from home and I’m in no hurry to go back.”

Simple answer.

I think the truth is, in the park she knows what to expect. She knows what time of day the shadows will grow long and which people will walk among them. She knows the name of every beat cop on patrol and how much lip she can get away with. I think to Laurie, the park feels as safe as it feels frightening to some people.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.