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I did not compare the Bronx to other areas I said, "The Bronx still has some terrible neighborhoods".
Are you trying to say the Bronx doesn't have some terrible neighborhoods?
Nothing worth noting in comparison to other areas thats out there
Nothing worth noting in comparison to other areas thats out there
What areas specifically in NYC are the worst? Do you have any street names? I am just asking a curious question for the sake of conversation. Thanks man.
I will agree that East Coast ghetto cities like Baltimore, Chester, Camden, Philly and parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are much more visibly dilapidated than West Coast ghettos. I know because I currently live on the East Coast in the Baltimore/Washington corridor. All the buildings in cities like Baltimore, Philly and Chester are hundreds of years old and almost seem haunted.
At the same time, I know all of you East Coast city dwellers who have never been to California know from watching Boyz 'N The Hood and Menace to Society that Cali ghettos are actually very pleasant looking and clean with single family homes with beautiful Victorian/Spanish influenced architecture and sometimes even spacious backyards and driveways that mirror suburbia. However, when you see visible urban decay in a California hood in a pretty city like San Francisco, you know you are in one of the most dangerous hoods on the West Coast. Case in point, the neighborhood where I was born and raised in Lakeview was the highest crime rate/homicide rate district in SF in the early 90's. I lived right in the middle of it as a kid on the middle of Ramsell St. immediately down the hill from the infamous Randolph St. which was one of the major front lines of one of the bloodiest civil wars ever fought on American soil known as the crack epidemic.
Here are some pictures of my old hood in Lakeview:
MUNI car barn 2003 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grijalvafilmworks/3491626987/in/pool-783756@N20/ - broken link)
Here are the 200 Block Randolph Housing projects that are less than two blocks away from my Mom's old house on Ramsell St. These projects were the site of one of the greatest crime/homicide spikes in San Francisco history during the 80's and 90's. As you can see, our projects aren't 8-20 story high brick projects like New York, but they are visibly in terrible shape with boarded up windows and trash strewn on the balconies. And yes, people still live in those projects. Most big tall brick house New York projects look much less ravaged than these SF projects. Virtually scroll down Randolph St. towards the west and see all the boarded up former stores and the bars and gates on the windows, front door walkways of every house and apartment complex.
Other than that, you can tell my old hood looks pretty clean on first glance. This neighborhood has been gentrified significantly since I left in the late 90's because the SF peninsula is premium real estate so many formerly boarded up abandoned homes and crack houses have since been fully restored by well off folks bidding their way into The City. It was much dirtier and grimier in the 80's to mid 90's. Although it is a shadow of what it used to be, the area is still very sketchy at night. For more info on Lakeview for East Coast ignoramuses, you can read about my old hood right here:
I had a friend in high school who lived in Lakeview (on Lobos, between Orizaba and Capitol, and later on Bright, off of Randolph), and i remember it being pretty sketchy. It wasn't as bad as the 80's or early 90's but it was worse than it is now (though as you said, it can still be really sketchy at times). I remember the first time i had ever been in Lakeview, and that friend told me about how two men were killed in a shootout at Oceanview Park the previous night, one block away from her house.
Here are some Lakeview rappers talking about the neighborhood in the past and present, including those projects:
Yup. I used to see those guys hanging at the liquor store all the time when I was a kid, but they were all about ten years older than me. They put out a lot of good music. My father knew a lot of the thugs in the hood and they never bothered us.
Quote:
I had a friend in high school who lived in Lakeview (on Lobos, between Orizaba and Capitol, and later on Bright, off of Randolph), and i remember it being pretty sketchy. It wasn't as bad as the 80's or early 90's but it was worse than it is now (though as you said, it can still be really sketchy at times). I remember the first time i had ever been in Lakeview, and that friend told me about how two men were killed in a shootout at Oceanview Park the previous night, one block away from her house.
Yeah, Lakeview was bad growing up, but it's sort of how Chris Rock described his home base in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn on his show Everybody Hates Chris: "Bed-Stuy was just a regular place where mail got delivered everyday." Lakeview was the same for me growing up. As a little kid and a young teenager, we didn't have the freedom to take a jog around the block like White folks do in suburbia. We never shopped at the corner/liquor stores down the street on Randolph either. Walking those Lakeview blocks was not an option growing up. We used my father's 89' Honda Accord to get around. And that car got broken into many times back in the early 90's. We used to hear gunshots all the time growing up. But all in all, Lakeview was just our neighborhood. Dopeboys wearing Starter jackets and crackheads were just characters in our neighborhood that didn't really bother us like the milkman and the paperboy on Leave it to Beaver or Nelson Muntz and Krusty the Clown in the animated town of Springfield on The Simpsons. I was just lucky enough to come from a hard-working, but poor family, with morals and discipline. Many of my neighbors weren't so lucky and got caught up in the streets. It also helped that my siblings and I stayed over at my grandparent's house in the safer Sunset district on 32nd and Taraval most of the time. Many of our friends also lived in the Sunset or the Mission and not in the View. Lakeview was where we went home and laid our heads every night though. I think that Lakeview was like this for most people who came from working familes with jobs, not involved in the dangerous drug scene outside of our doors, because there is hardly anything in the View except housing and liquor stores.
Last edited by goldenchild08; 09-23-2010 at 07:11 PM..
I actually think google maps is deceiving for out of towners to tell whether an area is truly a scary ghetto or not. Google map photographers are smart and roll through some of the roughest blocks when they are the most dead. For example, this strip in Baltimore looks almost quaint with the exception of some boarded up houses. This could be the neighborhood squeaky clean Will Smith grew up in West Philly to the untrained eye. However, I have walked through this block many times and it can be scary as f*ck even in the daytime. For example, this past August during the annual Stone Soul Picnic in Druid Hill Park, there were about 100-300 people from the hood outside on hot Saturday all drinking the hardest judgement impairing liquor out of black plastic bags just standing around. It is dead obvious if you walk through a Baltimore block and you weren't born and raised there. Drunk thugs eye you up like huge silent junkyard pitbulls. As a 27 year old 6'1" 180 pound male that was born and raised in the heart of the ghetto and seen a lot of sh*t himself, walking through here does NOT feel safe at all.
I will agree that East Coast ghetto cities like Baltimore, Chester, Camden, Philly and parts of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are much more visibly dilapidated than West Coast ghettos. I know because I currently live on the East Coast in the Baltimore/Washington corridor. All the buildings in cities like Baltimore, Philly and Chester are hundreds of years old and almost seem haunted.
At the same time, I know all of you East Coast city dwellers who have never been to California know from watching Boyz 'N The Hood and Menace to Society that Cali ghettos are actually very pleasant looking and clean with single family homes with beautiful Victorian/Spanish influenced architecture and sometimes even spacious backyards and driveways that mirror suburbia. However, when you see visible urban decay in a California hood in a pretty city like San Francisco, you know you are in one of the most dangerous hoods on the West Coast. Case in point, the neighborhood where I was born and raised in Lakeview was the highest crime rate/homicide rate district in SF in the early 90's. I lived right in the middle of it as a kid on the middle of Ramsell St. immediately down the hill from the infamous Randolph St. which was one of the major front lines of one of the bloodiest civil wars ever fought on American soil known as the crack epidemic.
Here are some pictures of my old hood in Lakeview:
MUNI car barn 2003 | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grijalvafilmworks/3491626987/in/pool-783756@N20/ - broken link)
Here are the 200 Block Randolph Housing projects that are less than two blocks away from my Mom's old house on Ramsell St. These projects were the site of one of the greatest crime/homicide spikes in San Francisco history during the 80's and 90's. As you can see, our projects aren't 8-20 story high brick projects like New York, but they are visibly in terrible shape with boarded up windows and trash strewn on the balconies. And yes, people still live in those projects. Most big tall brick house New York projects look much less ravaged than these SF projects. Virtually scroll down Randolph St. towards the west and see all the boarded up former stores and the bars and gates on the windows, front door walkways of every house and apartment complex.
Other than that, you can tell my old hood looks pretty clean on first glance. This neighborhood has been gentrified significantly since I left in the late 90's because the SF peninsula is premium real estate so many formerly boarded up abandoned homes and crack houses have since been fully restored by well off folks bidding their way into The City. It was much dirtier and grimier in the 80's to mid 90's. Although it is a shadow of what it used to be, the area is still very sketchy at night. For more info on Lakeview for East Coast ignoramuses, you can read about my old hood right here:
I agree with all of this. I'll also say that it hasn't been cleaned up everywhere in the city and in the worst parts of Oakland it looks exactly the same as it did 20 years ago. Most of West Oakland looks worse than most of the east NY pictures above your post.
East Coasters' ideas of west coast poverty usually don't look like any of the above. The Bay aint LA. It's ****ed up that any of the stuff posted in this thread exists in the richest country in the world though...
East Oakland is a mix... some areas look good and some areas look like this:
Same thing with most hoods in The City. I don't understand why San Francisco is always portrayed in such a positive light while Oakland is always put down as being a terrible place by the Bay Area and National media. Where I currently live on the East Coast, everyone who has never been to California is convinced that ALL of Oakland is a ghetto warzone and ALL of San Francisco is some alternate universe across the bridge that's a playground for rich people and hipsters. Maybe because most of the ghetto hoods in SF are hidden from tourists and rich people, therefore they don't exist.
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