Formerly, an exclusive address for many of this cities most celebrated citizens, Sesame Street has become a “boulevard of broken dreams”. Failed careers, the fall in home values, home repossessions and crime, have taken a toll on this once happy neighborhood.

The decline started in 1982 after the death of long-time community grocer, Mr. Hooper. His building was purchased by a local couple and served as a furniture consignment store until that business failed in 1984. Abandoned for several years, deteriorating, a flop-house for vagrants, prostitutes and drug users, the city razed the building in 1995. The location is now a “Park N Ride” for City Transit.

With the loss of the area’s most stable business, crime increased, home values decreased and many long-time residents moved away. Cookie Monster, know to many as the friendly, but eccentric “Mayor of Sesame Street” was gunned down in a drive-by shooting that also crippled Oscar the Grouch. Mr. Grouch suffered depression following this incident and developed dependency on pain medication and alcohol. This deadly mixture took his life in 1999.

This was the same year that Bert & Ernie, stars of local cable access television’s “Outings with Bert & Ernie” accepted a better career opportunity with a San Francisco television station and moved from Sesame Street. With them went adopted son, Elmo. Their house sits empty to this day. Crime has driven out residents and kept neighbors away.

In 2002, his career in the past, facing eviction from his home and suffering from obesity, Cookie Monster lost his battle with colon cancer. Penniless at death, Cookie was buried in a pauper’s grave with a headstone donated through the generosity of the letter “W”.

In 2003, the city renamed Sesame Street, Jesse L. Jackson Boulevard. The home loan debacle, mortgage crisis and economic downturn have decimated the area and most homes on JLJ Boulevard now sit empty.

Bob McGrath, music teacher, married Linda the local New York Library librarian in 2004. Linda, was the first deaf person on Sesame Street.  Bob’s mysterious disappearance in 2006 left Linda to fend for herself. Her only companion, dog Barkley, had become a member of the city’s police K9 unit. Linda, pictured here, now aging, frail and alone, fears for her safety, in what has become a very unfriendly neighborhood.

NEXT WEEK: The city’s “Animal Kingdom Park” gets a make-over. Read our “New Zoo Revue”

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