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Are you trying to say those are "rough spots" in Sioux Falls? Or just used to more of an urban environment?
Well, mainly some of the only areas that are non-suburban in feel (so yes to 'more of an urban environment'- although DT, historic district, and areas around w 12th are fairly urban in feel as well). There are 'rough spots' in these areas, or at least there was when i lived there- nothing anyone should be scared of, but definitely a lot of poverty, addiction issues, etc. (areas close by the penitentiary and north of it/east of airport, some areas due east and west of DT, some apt complexes farther down on e 10th, etc.). Most people view SF as a family-friendly fantasyland, but I saw some pretty crazy fights and a lot of drugs growing up and/or living as an adult there, and the apt complexes/businesses down the street from where I grew up had both a fair amount of violence (including stabbings/murders) and would get robbed quite frequently- on the other hand, our block was actually pretty nice and we'd often leave our doors unlocked which seems strange.
Last edited by Camden Northsider; 03-22-2010 at 02:09 AM..
Well, mainly some of the only areas that are non-suburban in feel (so yes to 'more of an urban environment'- although DT, historic district, and areas around w 12th are fairly urban in feel as well). There are 'rough spots' in these areas, or at least there was when i lived there- nothing anyone should be scared of, but definitely a lot of poverty, addiction issues, etc. (areas close by the penitentiary and north of it/east of airport, some areas due east and west of DT, some apt complexes farther down on e 10th, etc.). Most people view SF as a family-friendly fantasyland, but I saw some pretty crazy fights and a lot of drugs growing up and/or living as an adult there, and the apt complexes/businesses down the street from where I grew up had both a fair amount of violence (including stabbings/murders) and would get robbed quite frequently- on the other hand, our block was actually pretty nice and we'd often leave our doors unlocked which seems strange.
I agree-we lived in the historic district when we lived in Sioux Falls and even that area is rapidly going down hill. We were there in October and couldn't believe how bad things were even in the historic district.
frogtown's ghetto, east-side switches around from some of the nicest neighborhoods (lake Phalen,) to some okay ones. It's all pretty safe though, as long as you stay on the main streets. If your going downtown, don't take a wrong turn into frog town, if you do don't go strolling through the neighborhood. between 94, 35 e and the Mississippi, on the south west-side, all nice neighbor hood. just north, of that is nothing special, and further north is Como/ Saint Anthony park, nice neighborhood, beautiful park. First Glance selby might look ghetto, but the closer to the city the nicer it gets.
I agree-we lived in the historic district when we lived in Sioux Falls and even that area is rapidly going down hill. We were there in October and couldn't believe how bad things were even in the historic district.
Did somebody forget to pick up after their dog, or was their a thirteen year old loitering in front of a drug store?
I don't really understand this idea that anybody should be "relishing" in ghetto-ness.
I mean, c'mon? The bad neighborhood in Sioux Falls???
Fact of the matter is, on probably every other block in Minneapolis you can find somebody who is shooting up, pimping, selling drugs, about to be foreclosed on, XYZ....it's a big city-- that type of stuff is typical of big cities, especially big American cities. And especially big Midwestern American cities.
If you want to find good old fashioned S. Bronx circa 1986 ghetto, you are not going to find it here. Period. Especially not in daylight.
You can find the ghettos in Minneapolis by walking down any random street on the Northside, or Chicago, Portland, Elliot, et al on the Southside, alone at midnight. Trust me-- you'll find the ghetto really quick that way.
However, you (and by you I am generally referring to the kid from SD) are too much of a pansy to do that, so it's a moot point. Quit worrying about finding the ghetto and acting all tough because you think that you'd "make friends" in the bad neighborhoods. Because everybody is friendly before the sun sets.
The ghetto has real problems. Be glad you don't have to live with them, and keep it at that.
PS. So that I don't invite a malstrom of flak, I live in Ventura Village, in Phillips-- a neighborhood that I would *not* classify as the ghetto, but still blocks away from Ground Zero of violent crime in South Minneapolis in the '90's. Twelve blocks from the triple-homicide in Seward earlier this year. So, I have a reasonable amount of authority when I talk about what is or is not considered a bad neighborhood, by Twin Citians' standards...
Fact of the matter is, on probably every other block in Minneapolis you can find somebody who is shooting up, pimping, selling drugs, about to be foreclosed on, XYZ....it's a big city-- that type of stuff is typical of big cities, especially big American cities. And especially big Midwestern American cities.
You can find the ghettos in Minneapolis by walking down any random street on the Northside, or Chicago, Portland, Elliot, et al on the Southside, alone at midnight. Trust me-- you'll find the ghetto really quick that way.
"Every other block in Minneapolis" and "any random street on the Northside"?- maybe with the point on foreclosure, but for everything else on your list that's not exactly accurate by any stretch of the imagination (whether talking specifically about North or the rest of the city)- know your facts before making claims as "an authority" on MSP neighborhood livability/crime, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by srsmn
PS. So that I don't invite a malstrom of flak, I live in Ventura Village, in Phillips-- a neighborhood that I would *not* classify as the ghetto, but still blocks away from Ground Zero of violent crime in South Minneapolis in the '90's. Twelve blocks from the triple-homicide in Seward earlier this year. So, I have a reasonable amount of authority when I talk about what is or is not considered a bad neighborhood, by Twin Citians' standards...
LOL- considering your above classification of Mpls areas w/ qualities of urban blight, and that all 3 of the streets you name as being places to find 'the ghetto' at night run through it- how did Ventura Village somehow escape your very broad classification of 'ghetto' areas in MSP? Ha!
Quote:
Originally Posted by srsmn
I don't really understand this idea that anybody should be "relishing" in ghetto-ness.
Strange- I thought that was what you were doing being an authority on the matter and all, calling people "pansies" in relation to your self-proclaimed 'street cred', etc.
I think you'll find that generally the people living in the city on this board are making some of the points it seems like you might be trying to make with your post- e.g. not to blow any perceptions/fear of crime out of proportion here in MSP, and that for the most part neighborhoods in the core city areas are close-knit, diverse livable communities.
(Re: the whole south dakota thing, that was primarily an off-topic tangent in which I gave a joking tongue-in-cheek response about cowboy justice; but, as you're an authority and all- in your questioning of whether "real" crime might actually happen in SD- you might want to ask yourself if an urban area at the intersection of two very major interstates in a centralized location of the continent is going to be appealing to drug and/or other types of traffickers, and/or whether there might be some crime in the nation's poorest state, where you can not only find 5 of the country's 10 poorest counties- some qualifying as 3rd world status- but a great example of the midwest's meth epidemic as well).
Last edited by Camden Northsider; 03-23-2010 at 11:28 PM..
"Every other block in Minneapolis" and "any random street on the Northside"?- maybe with the point on foreclosure, but for everything else on your list that's not exactly accurate by any stretch of the imagination (whether talking specifically about North or the rest of the city)- know your facts before making claims as "an authority" on MSP neighborhood livability/crime, etc.
LOL- considering your above classification of Mpls areas w/ qualities of urban blight, and that all 3 of the streets you name as being places to find 'the ghetto' at night run through it- how did Ventura Village somehow escape your very broad classification of 'ghetto' areas in MSP? Ha!
Strange- I thought that was what you were doing being an authority on the matter and all, calling people "pansies" in relation to your self-proclaimed 'street cred', etc.
I think you'll find that generally the people living in the city on this board are making some of the points it seems like you might be trying to make with your post- e.g. not to blow any perceptions/fear of crime out of proportion here in MSP, and that for the most part neighborhoods in the core city areas are close-knit, diverse livable communities.
(Re: the whole south dakota thing, that was primarily an off-topic tangent in which I gave a joking tongue-in-cheek response about cowboy justice; but, as you're an authority and all- in your questioning of whether "real" crime might actually happen in SD- you might want to ask yourself if an urban area at the intersection of two very major interstates in a centralized location of the continent is going to be appealing to drug and/or other types of traffickers, and/or whether there might be some crime in the nation's poorest state, where you can not only find 5 of the country's 10 poorest counties- some qualifying as 3rd world status- but a great example of the midwest's meth epidemic as well).
I think you are misunderstanding me, and perhaps that is my fauly.
The statement about every other block was hyperbole; the point is, that you will find problems of low income, high crime, drug use, home foreclosure, etc. in pretty much *any* neighborhood in Minneapolis. The distinction, then, is what type or proportion you find those problems in. The concentration of the problems-- not the mere existence of the problems-- is the gauge by which people traditionally tell what constitutes a "rough" neighborhood or a "good" neighborhood.
My statement about Portland, Chicago, the Northside, et al. was meant to illustrate just that. I was not meaning to say that any of those places are "the ghetto," per se. I meant to tell "rough and tough South Dakota boy" that any street in Minneapolis can get nasty after dark-- that he shouldn't be so quick to want to "explore the ghetto", because he does not really know what that entails.
And I stand by that. There are higher levels of illicit activities in *all* of the places that I mentioned after dark than there are in other areas of the city. A simple look at the crime-data map-- public information, btw-- confirms this.
It's not grappling for straws to establish street cred.-- I have no need nor desire to establish street cred with a bunch of anonymous strangers on an online forum. And particularly not with one who clearly does not even begin to know what he is talking about. It is the fact-of-the-matter truth: if SoDak kid *wants* to experience the problems of a bad neighborhood-- God knows why somebody would choose to do that if he didn't have to-- then he should walk down one of those streets alone at Midnight, and if he does that enough, he'll eventually run into trouble.
I'm not going to discuss this with you any further.
I think it's unfair to say "every other block" as hyperbole is misleading and unfair when writing in the context of a forum where some readers and posters really DO believe that these sorts of traditional inner city problems plague each and every neighborhood. Anyone who actually knows Minneapolis knows that of course kids in, say, Linden Hills or East Isles aren't running around dodging bullets, dealing drugs on the corner, or worrying about wearing gang colors, but read enough of these posts and you realize that there are people out there who do think that the entire city is dangerous. Although reading your post more carefully, is that what you think, too?
And I fundamentally disagree with you that you will find problems of low crime, high crime, etc. in any neighborhood in Minneapolis. That's not hyperbole; it's an outright false statement. If you believe this then you haven't spent any time in some of Minneapolis's nicest or most expensive neighborhoods. Not to say that there isn't any crime ever in these areas, but there's crime EVERYWHERE, including the suburbs, small towns, rural areas, etc. (and I don't intend to equate low income residents with crime here, but it's also equally false to suggest that every neighborhood in Minneapolis has poor people; economic segregation in the city isn't quite as overt as you find in some heavily zoned suburbs, but I think it's a fairly likely bet that there are few, if any poor people living in neighborhoods like Kenwood.)
Yeah, just because Minneapolis is a mid-sized middle western city that it doesn't mean there is going to be crime going on in all areas. There are numerous Minneapolis neighborhoods that are nearly crime-free and beat out many surburban areas in regards to crime. Even the areas that have crime many times are comparable to many suburban areas once you include population density into the equation.
srsmn clearly has a different perspective of the inner city neighborhoods than Camden and I do. I don't live in Ventura Village but I do live fairly close by in the Corcoran neighborhood. You seem to be painting this picture that as soon as it gets dark out that the city suddenly converts into sin city with needles and prostitutes at every turn, like everything suddenly turns evil like in Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest for Nintendo (odd reference, I know). I guess I just haven't seen what you've seen. Although I would agree that the streets you mentioned on the southside are pretty blighted looking (although it varies from block to block) between about 18th St to around 40th St), I still haven't exactly seen the area crawling with gangs, drugs and prostitution during nighttime hours. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but in my experience it has been very sporadic and fairly spread out.
Now, I'm not condoning walking around the intersection of 25th and Bloomington or 4th Ave and 34th St S at 2:00AM, I also don't think it necessarily means you'll be automatically running into trouble. In fact, chances are the street you're walking on will be empty.
On a pesonal level though I find this discussion to be fascinating and would like your continued thoughts on the subject. Maybe you could share some personal stories regarding run-ins with shady people on the streets of Ventura Village and nearby areas? On what blocks have you seen prostitutes and drug transactions, etc and at what times were these people out and about?
Last edited by Cruz Azul Guy; 03-24-2010 at 11:11 AM..
Location: Cleveland bound with MPLS in the rear-view
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I'm starting to think people's perception of "ghetto" are DRASTICALLY different from one-another. If "srmn" lives in Phillips, "Camden-Northsider" lives just there, and "Slig" lives in the north end of Powderhorn, yet all three of you have different spins on what goes on in each area. My guess is that "srmn" may have experience in a shadier 'hood than the other two, but I also guess that "srmn" views the area in a different light as well. I know I've lived in areas that may give me "street cred" but God knows I hated every minute of it and I saw all kinds of things I'd never subject my kid(s) to if I had the choice. It may be also subject to personality. I am very forward and aggressive if pushed, and I know I'll run into trouble if I'm put into a corner, whereas some people are much better at just playing cool or avoiding confrontation. Additionally, it may not bother some people that drugs and/or guns are around you, just as long as you don't see or hear them being used, but it bothers me because I know that where there are drugs being sold there are people who need them and kind of traffic leads to trouble and also can equate to increased gang presence. In my opinion, an area is "ghetto" if you can walk down the street and run into somebody who is able/willing to hurt/kill you for money or drugs. These areas are usually in the more impoverished parts of the city (because they have less money) but don't think for a second that people in Kenwood or Linden Hills don't use drugs. If they run out, they just get more, whereas if you're broke you skip corners or steal or lie and that's when people get into trouble. I know this with first-hand
experience so that's where my theory comes from, but it's just that -- a theory.
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