When John Hoff (pictured, left) bought his Hawthorne home in north Minneapolis, he knew he was moving into a rough neighborhood. Likely the hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, Hawthorne also annually ranks among the city’s worst neighborhoods in terms of drugs, prostitution and violent crime. Bigger problems, sure. But he decided to do something about it.

When Ed Kohler bought his Longfellow home in south Minneapolis six years ago, he knew he was moving into a decent neighborhood. Which is why the gang tags he saw spray-painted on buildings near his house—which he normally wouldn’t have blinked an eye at—suddenly annoyed him. Then he noticed unwanted phonebooks piling up on his neighbors’ doorsteps. Those annoyed him too. So, like Hoff, he decided to do something about it.

Through their blogs, and through sheer desire to make their neighborhoods more livable, Kohler and Hoff have, in their own different ways, come to represent a trend: the Community Cowboy. Hoff boards up foreclosed houses on his own time and keeps an eye on slumlords in his community. Kohler has waged a one-man crusade against the phonebook industry, sparked by their refusal to stop delivering phonebooks even after he opted out of the service. Both men are irked by gang graffiti and go out of their way to remove it, Hoff by calling 311, Kohler by painting over it himself.

It’s community activism at its local-est: street-level, no city bureaucracy necessary. “A few people can make a neighborhood look worse than it is,” Kohler says. As these two demonstrate, a couple people can also make a neighborhood look a lot better.

Four tips for would-be Community Cowboys
We may not condone all of their actions, but they’re hard not to applaud.

1. Act like you’re supposed to be doing whatever you’re doing.

While most people simply call 311 when they see gang graffiti, Kohler prefers to pull out the big gun: his Wagner Spray Tech paint sprayer, outfitted into the trunk of his hatchback and filled with used paint from a local supplier. “Illegal? Yeah, I guess it is,” he says. “But people generally don’t mind. They usually assume I’m from the City, because who else would bother doing this?”

Hoff says he waits for a “silent nod of permission” from local officials before he goes vigilante—boarding up abandoned houses used by neighborhood prostitutes, for instance. Both men claim they only do so because waiting for the city to do it just takes too long.

2. Start a blog.

Kohler’s blog (thedeets.com) and Hoff’s (adventuresofjohnnynorthside.blogspot.com) have both become virtual community centers, where residents often meet, discuss neighborhood issues and, sometimes, make an impact. Hoff’s blog has turned him into something of a controversial figure among Northsiders (as well as the subject of an upcoming feature documentary), and yet is the first place many Northsiders go to learn about housing, crime and slumlords in their neighborhood. “Who writes about a house getting demolished?” he asks. “Who mourns its passing? I don’t let it go unremarked.”

Kohler uses his blog for a wide variety of topics (hotel toilet paper folding being among the furthest afield), and often he’ll use it to spread awareness among his neighbors about issues that concern him. He’s monitored arsenic levels in his soil through his blog. Last December, he briefly noted that proposed renovations to the West River Parkway included concrete running paths as opposed to softer asphalt. Spurred by Kohler’s blog, local runners made enough of a stink that the city actually changed the path to asphalt.

3. Join the neighborhood association

Doesn’t sound like advice from a cowboy, does it? But Hoff says working with your neighbors is the best way to get involved. He should know: He’s on the board of his neighborhood’s housing commission. He even spent four months on the city council in Grand Forks, North Dakota (he was recalled; we told you he can be a controversial figure). “Just show up and be helpful,” he says. “Be willing to play a role.”

4. Make the most of your spare time.

Kohler recently spent some of his spare time loading up his car with his neighbors’ unwanted phonebooks and tossing them on the doorstep of the Yellowbook offices—a move that, while making for a particularly amusing Web video, took considerably more energy than simply recycling his phonebook. “But it’s important to scale the problem in your mind,” he says. “This is happening all over the country. People are getting phonebooks they don’t want and throwing them away. Isn’t it ridiculous that we’re all sitting here complaining about the same thing?”

Hoff, largely out of boredom, once made “a project” out of an oft-tagged apartment building next door to his Laundromat. “What else am I going to do during the spin cycle?” he says. While waiting for his clothes, he repeatedly called 311 to report gang graffiti until the city finally showed up to paint it over. “I love calling 311,” he says. “God, it’s addictive, like eating potato chips.” So agitated is Hoff by wasted energy that he’ll swerve in his car to hit aluminum cans. “Part of the recycling process is crushing cans. So if I can help out with that, I will.”