Ha, I just remembered from when I was in undergrad in Santa Cruz, people used to think of the Beach Flats as the “ghetto”.
Yes, the famous ghettos of Santa Cruz, California. I don’t know what they thought was gonna happen there. It is to laugh.
I was going to mention that. Us Eastsiders are a pretty mellow bunch these days 
Thing is people seem to think that “bad areas” are areas where there are lots and lots of drive by shootings. Most shooting related crimes in the bad areas are either gang member or drug related.
In the mid-90’s, my parents acted like the area around 6th street would get me killed if I ever went down there.
Yep, I spend a lot of time in East Austin with the kid’s soccer club. I feel safer there than in my own (‘nicer’) neighborhood.
I agree with everything you’ve said, but I think you’re understating how bad the Tenderloin is. The first time I walked through the area, I saw a woman injecting her boyfriend in a doorway and (what looked like) a sex worker paying off her pimp. This was around noon.
I’ve spent some quality time in South Chicago and in New Orleans French Quarter after closing. I lived in a neighborhood of Erie, PA that had my friends’ jaws dropping. The Tenderloin freaked me out.
When was the last time you were in the Tenderloin? I was there in March, and there might have been people doing drugs there at night, but definitely not during the day. Tons of well-off people go to Dottie’s, and a BART station is there. Tons of expensive condos and the Marriot (which I stayed across from) are transforming the neighborhood, IMO.
That doesn’t surprise me all that much, I guess. I was there 18 months ago, and given the rate of gentrification in SF, something had to give soon.
…everywhere, pretty much. There might be genuinely terrifying places in the US, but as far as I can tell, none of them are in Boston. Growing up in the suburbs hearing white-knuckled tales of Dorchester, I was surprised to walk the area as an adult and find that it’s mostly pleasant, friendly neighborhoods full of people barbequeing. Roxbury? Not attractive, but not particularly frightening either. Mattapan? Gritty, maybe, but no mortal danger there.
It doesn’t take a genius to eventually realize that in most white-majority communities, “bad part of town” is coded language for “people of color live there”.
Actually, now that I think about it, the few times I’ve felt genuinely uneasy on the streets of Boston were while waiting to be picked up at South Station late at night.
Agreed to the infinite!
Many, maybe most, areas of Cleveland are considered “roll-em-up-and-lock-the-doors” areas. Once somebody told me not to stop for red lights on E. 55th because of the threat of smash-and-grabs. It is a very high-crime area, but the real likelihood of danger is much exaggerated, in my opinion. Yes, if you lived there, your chances of getting robbed/raped/murdered would be a significant concern, but just passing through, acting normally? Nah.
A far more important reason to stay away from those areas is simply that there is rarely a reason to go there. They’re just blocks and blocks of depressing, ramshackle old houses and projects punctuated by the occasional mini-mart or storefront church behind iron bars. There are a few interesting “holdout” stores and restaurants from when the neighborhoods were white ethnic, but that’s about it. It is probably a self-reinforcing cycle: people are afraid to go there, so there’s no point in building a nice park or restaurant, so there is even less of a reason to go there, etc.
Unreasonable? Hmmmm…
Vancouver’s downtown eastside is, without much argument, the worst neighbourhood in Canada. You will see heartbreaking displays of human misery and degradation there every day.
It’s naturally quite overwhelming when you first pass through, and people are often terrified.
Thing is, if you are someone from the “nice” part of town, it’s as safe as milk to walk through there. They are way more afraid of you than they are of them.