NoMi Visit Proves To Be Un-Eventful and Tall Tale For Blogger Johnny Northside

Note: This is the 2nd pic taken of John Hoff's roommate.
Taken by Jim Watkins on Oct. 8, 2012 in North Minneapolis.

In October of 2012, John Hoff wrote a scathing article about me, Jim Watkins (called the “anti Johnny” by Hoff) on his blog, consisting of mostly fiction and/or misrepresenting what really happened. I will warn the readers ahead of time that this post won’t contain any juicy details of the events that really took place because the entire encounter was rather quick and uneventful. True to his style of “stirring up shit” and trying to make something out of nothing, Hoff’s post itself ended up being more entertaining than the encounter itself.

The post I am referring to is called, "Afraid To Visit North Minneapolis Himself, Evil Anti-Johnny Sends "Proxy Fraidy Cat" To This Blogger's House, Chapter Three Of The Evil Anti-Johnny Book Of Revelations.."  Click here to read. 

Below is some of the content from Hoff’s post and my words are in bold red.

“Monday while I was away from home and having a late lunch with my attorney after giving a talk to some law students, the Evil Anti-Johnny blogger sent somebody to my house to snap a picture, and then the dude took off running down the alley like, well, there's just no other way to put it.Like a little bitch....”

His statement claiming I sent someone to his house to snap a picture is totally false. I know it is not true because, I was in the cities that week to attend a reunion and I wanted to go knock on Hoff’s door personally. Why? I will explain later in this post. To clarify, the person in the picture that Hoff’s roommate took while "I" was WALKING to the car was "ME." So much for my being afraid to visit North Minneapolis.

"Here's how the incident went down. My roommate--a mysterious man of many skills, who took good care of my house while I was in Afghanistan--was sawing some dead limbs and doing lawn care when he heard a voice."

I decided to copy and paste what Hoff wrote about the “incident” in its entirety and I will follow with my version of the story since I was actually there. Here is Hoff’s “Made for TV” (sarcasm) version of the encounter…

 "Hey, you," the voice said, or something like that. The voice was coming in an area beyond the back yard. My roommate didn't know if the voice was directed at him or not. He ignored it, but kept hearing somebody calling out. There was a guy in the alley, standing in a spot where my rear security camera can't see because, well, it doesn't look around the garage and way into the alley. I'll be fixing THAT in the near future, and the camera might look like anything; a rock, a thermometer, who knows. 

Anyway, my roommate realized there was somebody standing near the garage. It was a white guy, not bad looking, maybe in his early 30s with dark hair and dark clothing. (I am really 42 but,  THANK YOU)
"Is John Hoff here?" the guy asked. "Does John Hoff still live here?""Who are you?" my roommate asked."I'm a friend from Texas," the mysterious visitor said, in an amiable tone. But right away my roommate thought, "Oh, this would be somebody associated with that freak show Jim Watkins, the anti-johnny blogger whose felonious friend Thomas Balko is rotting in the Duluth federal pen and somehow Johnny Northside gets blamed for THAT," or words to that effect. 

"Who are you?" my roommate insisted, but the guy wasn't giving any answers. So my roommate finally said, "If you know John, give him a call." (Later my roommate told me, "I don't know all your friends and I didn't want to accidentally be rude to one of your friends.") 

Standing just on the edge of my property, the visitor pulled out his cell phone like he was going to make a call. But then he extended the phone to take a picture. My roommate (the man of many dark skills) instinctively put up his hand to prevent his eyes from being photographed and "thwart any facial recognition software.""GET OFF THE PROPERTY!" my roommate shouted, still holding the very serious hand saw he'd been using on the tree limb moments before. The unwanted guest ran away and was all the way to the end of the alley before my roommate snapped a picture with his own cell phone, (see above) showing the dude running toward a black car."

FACIAL RECOGNITION SOFTWARE??? REALLY??? WOW! What an ego!
I have said from the start of this blog that John Hoff AKA Johnny Northside sure does have a way of coming up with some crazy stuff and  being the “Yellow journalist” that he is, his explanation of what happened is proof that he tends to make stories up as he goes. He makes me think of the game “Telephone” where people would sit in a circle and one person would whisper something into one of the other’s ear. Then that person would repeat what they heard to the next person and when it gets back to the first person, what they had said was twisted so far out of whack that most of the time what they said isn’t even close to what the last person was told. My point is that I think John Hoff is capable of playing that game all by himself. (sarcasm) Now back to the normal color text.

I was in the alley at that time because I had already been to the front door after there was no answer to my knocking. I walked around the house next to his at the end of the block on the sidewalk (making sure to not cut thru anyone’s yard) to the alley and saw someone in the back yard. 

Why was I there to begin with? 

Two reasons. 1- I wanted to say Hi to John and pay him my compliments on how well he has kept up his house (sarcasm) and, 2- since John has never posted a single image online that was recorded from his famed security camera, I wanted to see if my guess was correct that his camera is nothing more than a scare tactic to ward off anyone who might want to confront him at his house. No where in John’s post about my 1-2 minute visit did he even mention his camera capturing someone going to his front door.

Anyway, here is what really took place:The roommate was maybe 5ft 10 and on the slender side and after seeing his 4-5 day unshaven face, I guessed him to be late 30’s to early 40’s but, I don’t want to insult him after he had said that I looked to be in my early 30’s. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and since he was wearing dirty jeans and a hooded sweatshirt (and a jacket over that), it didn’t look like he was on his way to or from work. I thought to myself that he could pass as someone one might expect to see while out dumpster diving in the middle of the night. (sarcasm)

I walked to the property line and announced my presence to Hoff’s roommate by saying, “Hello!” The roommate was standing in the middle of the yard wearing a hoodie but, I have no idea what he was doing. I will say that he was definitely not holding a saw or any other lawn tool. His head came upwards briefly and went back down. I figured he had ear buds and was listening to music so, I repeated myself much louder. He looked around and saw me standing there and I asked,
“Is John here?… Does he still live here?”

Roommate: “Who are you?”

Jim: “I’m John’s friend, from Texas.”

The roommate paused a few seconds before he formed an annoyed look on his face and said,
“Why don’t you just get out of here.”
I wanted to note that he did not “shout” at me nor did he even raise his voice at me.

I replied by saying, “Okay” and I took out my phone, took a quick picture of his roommate, turned around and began walking down the alley towards my rental car that my friend was driving while we toured North Minneapolis.
When I was near the end of the alley I turned to see the roommate standing in the alley by Hoff’s garage and I walked back towards him to take another picture. I got the picture just before he stepped out of the alley and back into Hoff’s yard. I turned around again, got in the car and within a few minutes we were on the freeway headed to drop my friend off at his house. It was while we were driving that I sent the pic to John that he posted on his blog. Apparently he thought a mystery man sent it to me and I forwarded it to John but, I took the picture myself and I sent it to John.

That’s IT! I told you it was really uneventful.
  

Hoff goes on with his crazy story telling with the following…

“Man, that dude was BOOKING IT down that alley. You can't even make out the back of his head. He looks like a frightened ant.
A moment later I got an unsolicited text message from the evil Anti-Johnny from his cell phone, 214-734-5100, which a little digging shows to be associated with 1515 Rio Grande Dr., Plano, Texas. Some place called Brentdale Apartments.”

I shake my head in disbelief upon reading his words. Why would I be afraid and feel the need to run away after I made my presence well known and identified myself? His roommate didn’t threaten me nor did he appear to have any sort of weapon. So in Hoff’s mind, it makes sense that I announce I am there and say who I am but, I better run away after that because, I am afraid??? Whatever.

The thing I find disturbing and have no idea what the purpose would be with Hofff posting that address?

Is my address of public interest? What would his reason be? For the record, the address he posted is a very old address that I haven’t lived at since 2000. If posting an address for me that is over 12 years old is of interest to the public, I would like to know what that might be. My hopes for Hoff offering an explanation for that are very low.

Now let’s have a look at that picture close up.

John Hoff's roommate. Photo by Jim Watkins

I fail to see this person holding a saw as Hoff claimed and I also can't seem to find any tree limb that the roommate was working on. I don't remember what he had in his hand but, it was not a yard tool and not a weapon. My guess is it may have been a beer bottle but, that is only a guess. Hoff claimed he was "sawing dead limbs and doing lawn care" but, I don't see any evidence in this picture that indicates the roommate was doing any yard work of any kind. Also, Hoff said the rear camera is not able to see around the garage but, if the picture above shows the house clearly then it is clear I was not standing "around the garage" where a camera could not see. I think the rear camera doesn't exist and Hoff is only wanting to ward off any unwanted visitors.

Hoff ended his post by claiming he told his roommate he would only blog about the events of that day but, that was merely what he wanted the pubic to think. I will be posting information in an upcoming post that shows some of what Hoff really did in his efforts to retaliate. I don’t know what his reasons would be to feel he needed to retaliate but, as Hoff himself has said, “I do what I want!”