Years ago, when my sister occasionally pulled work assignments that took her away from home for a month or so, her company allowed her to have a family member stay free of charge in her room for a time - vacation time for me! At any rate, one of these assignments took her to Puerto Rico in October, and naturally I went for a week. She was working during the day, though, so I decided one day that I would go scope out the shopping in the Condada part of San Juan (we were staying at Isla Verde). The tourist map had no scale on it, but it didn’t look all that far, so I decided I would walk there. Outfitted in a tank top, miniskirt and moccasin-style shoes I set off on what turned into a 2.5-hour ramble through San Juan. Along the way I got a few catcalls (at least I assume they were, since I don’t speak Spanish), but mostly a LOT of stares. Hot, sweaty and tired, I finally reached La Condada only to discover that since it was Columbus Day, nearly all the shops had closed at noon, and it was now 12:30 pm. :smack: A kindly soul directed me to a bus stop, where I was able to catch a bus that got me back to the front of my hotel in about 20 minutes. :rolleyes:
My sister thought it was hysterical that I’d done this damn-fool thing, so she promptly reported it to her boss that night while the three of us were having dinner. Her boss, a native of San Juan, stared at me in disbelief. I said yes, I did actually do that damn-fool thing. He then asked me what I had seen along the way, and his eyes widened noticeably when I told him I had passed this little cluster of buildings with some horses tethered in the courtyard. He then informed me that I’d walked past one of the most notorious housing projects in the city, and was damned lucky that I hadn’t been jumped by anyone. But, he added, maybe they figured a lone white girl in a miniskirt had to be crazy to walk through the area, and decided to leave well enough alone.
Got off the wrong freeway exit into old downtown Detroit! It was REALLY scarey…block after block of burned out, abandoned houses…and the few that were inhabited had window bars and roll-down blast doors! Another thing,it was getting dark (early winter), and no functioning street lights! Also, street signs torn off/unreadable, and huge potholes in the streets.
All, in all very scarey…there was nobody on the streets at all.
I finally saw the Ren-Center in the distance, and high-tailed it out of there.
What a dump!
There’s still an active UVF cell in Monaghan, although I’m told they’ve resigned themselves to keeping the British in the Six Counties.
TheLoadedDog, no, I don’t know that one, or at least I don’t remember it.
And just to get this back on topic, there was also the time I took the subway from Manhattan back to the house I was staying in, in an unfamiliar (and VERY BAD) part of Brooklyn; I had misread the subway map and didn’t realise the train I was on didn’t stop where I thought it would stop, and for some reason I decided it was a better idea to go above ground and walk to the station to get the train heading the other way rather than stay on the train til it reached a stop where you could do that without exiting the station. It happened to be about 7.00 on a Saturday morning after I’d been out clubbing all night. Fortunately, the (relatively few) locals up and about at that time were too amused at the sight of the white girl in miniskirt and go-go boots, obviously lost, wandering around their neighbourhood to actually do anything about it.
I work in a hospital in what’s considered a “bad part” of Chicago. My sister-in-law once insisted that my husband (her brother) drive her there to see our hospitalized brother-in-law, as she didn’t want to drive there - she said that a white suburban woman driving a Lexus would look like a “target”. :rolleyes: Hell-o, what did she think the doctors who work here drive? Sheesh.
I took the subway out south once with a few friends, ended up having to walk through an area with burned-out and otherwise abandoned buildings. People looked at us funny but didn’t hassle us. It’s been several years so I don’t even know if that area’s in that same condition now or if it’s looking better these days.
Twice. Once, not scary at all, because we were on a school field trip to a Mexican restaurant in NW Philly. Nasty neighborhood, but amazing food.
The other time, I was 15, on a school trip to Costa Rica. our first night, me and one of the guys from my school went out to walk around San Jose. We ended up completely disoriented in what was very clearly one of areas we did NOT want to be in. That was scary.
Last Thanksgiving, I drove from DC to my parents’ house in Pennsylvania, and I decided to go via Rt. 1 to avoid the I-95 traffic. I was doing fine until I got to the outskirts of Baltimore, where I suddenly had to make the decision between going on Rt. 1 and Alt Rt. 1. I can’t remember which one I took, but whichever it was, I made the wrong choice.
I got lost in the bowels of Baltimore, where houses were boarded up and packs of hungry-looking men hung out on street corners, staring at me alone in my new car, as I tried to paste on my best “I’m cool – I belong here” look on my face and tried not to cry. I had no idea where I was, no clue as to what direction I was heading in, and I wasn’t about to stop anywhere and ask directions. I just figured as long as I kept driving, I would eventually exit Baltimore somehow, someday. Thank God this was around 2 in the afternoon, and not at night.
I ended up seeing a sign for the Beltway, and made it back to Rt. 1. My detour added 2 hours onto an already 2-hour-long trip.
I’ve also gotten lost in North Philly at night, but thankfully I wasn’t the one driving so I could focus on begging God to keep us alive.
My grandmother, a (more or less) lifelong Baltimorean, died in 1990. My mom called us all with the funeral arrangements and gave me an address on Edmondston Ave. Since Baltimore has dozens of towns on its suburban outskirts and I can’t keep any of them straight, I asked Mom what city this would be in. With an irritated cluck, she said “Baltimore!”
Well, I drove to the address she gave me and there wasn’t a funeral home in view. There was a scary succession of crack dealers asking me if I was a cop. Plenty of parking, because no one wanted to leave their car unattended in this part of town. Grandmother, rest her soul, did not like black people much (I can’t sugarcoat this or make excuses for it; She was a teenager with immigrant parents when Birth of a Nation was released, and she never saw Civil Rights as anything but a passing fad like the Lindy Hop) and I had a definite sense that I was the only white person within at least a mile. “She wouldn’t be caught dead in this neighborhood,” I thought. “Literally!”
I ducked into a corner crocery–the kind where the Asian proprietor is behind thick bulletproof glass–and used the phone book to locate the funeral home. In Catonsville.
Half an hour later, I’m at the correct location. “Mom, this isn’t Baltimore, it’s Catonsville!” “Oh, so it’s Catonsville, big deal. Everyone else found it all right!” Five minutes behind me, my oldest sister comes in. “Mom, this isn’t Baltimore, it’s Catonsville!” A few minutes later, my other sister comes in with her husband and kids. Same story.
Well, there’ve been a few funerals since, but the difference is, thanks to the World Wide Web and Yahoo!, we have a way of double-checking my mom’s directions.
I’ve walked in downtown L.A. at night, which at first sounds crazy to anyone who lives here. I’m talking about the area around Chinatown, Union Station, Olvera Street, and the jail. But the fact is, it’s actually a fairly calm neighborhood, for the simple reason that nobody lives there. (Well they do in Chinatown, but I didn’t really spend much time there.) Not only that, but there are few people there after about 7 or 8 PM as all the sightseers have gone home. All this means that there is not much to attract the criminal element by way of prey, and there are no local toughs to fight it out over turf.
When I was in DC for the March on Washington in 1993, I went to a couple of the clubs down near Navy Yard, then discovered that it was 5 AM and the Metro was closed for another hour or more.
So I walked to the National Mall. I think I witnessed two muggings and a couple of assaults on that walk. But nobody bothered me. Being 6’, 300+ lbs has its advantages.
I’ve also spent many a nocturnal hour in downtown Minneapolis, where the muggers say, “Excuse me” before they cosh you. Never got bothered there, either. Of course, even I didn’t venture anywhere near Lake Street after dark…or during the day much, either.
Ah yes, I forgot. I lived in the middle of the “Wedge” neighborhood there in the mid-90s. Just a few blocks east the area was considered really bad. I tried to get car insurance from an agency in-state, but it was astronomical based on that zip code; I ended up insuring from my parents’ address out of state as a “student” - grad student at the time - instead. I was trying to convince my mom on a visit that it wasn’t that bad of a neighborhood (it really wasn’t!) and when she tried to use the restroom in a nearby park, there was some drunk and presumably homeless guy passed out in the women’s room. :smack:
Yup. Lake Street in the Uptown neighborhood and west is fairly decent. You don’t have to get too far east of Uptown to get into bad areas, though (a matter of three or four blocks, actually…that’s where the boarded-up storefronts and broken-glass-littered vacant lots begin).
There’s no part of my town (Toronto) that would be considered a really bad part of town by American standards.
But I’ve accidentally driven into the bad parts of Detroit and Washington, D.C. Holy flurkin’ schnitt. It was like Beirut 1983, except less friendly. I don’t understand how they could let parts of their cities get like that.
I’ve got a few stories. All are set in Philadelphia.
A friend asked me to go to an appointment with her. It’s bad news. When she comes back to the waiting room, she just starts walking. For half an hour or so, she doesn’t say anything and just keeps walking. Eventually, she starts talking but doesn’t stop walking. We walked through a few of the more impoverished neighborhoods that day. It was daylight, and the only thing that worried me was spotting members of the Nation Of Islam.
On another outing with the same friend, we ended up lost somewhere around Chinatown, at night. This was the standard crack vials and broken syringes on the sidewalks neighborhood. We also passed two muggers going through a stolen purse. It was definitely the wrong neighborhood, and they were not wearing the proper outfits, for the purse to belong to either of them. Judging by the frenzied way they searched it and discarded anything they didn’t think was valuable, I doubt it belonged to a wife or relative. They glanced at us as we passed within a few feet. But, that was it.
My psychiatrist moved from a clinic located along a major street in the burbs of northern Philly, to one located in a housing project. As she is an excellent psychiatrist, I decided it would be better to make a longer trip and keep seeing her. All the folks I asked for directions (by sheer coincidence they all happened to be white) told me what a dangerous place the project was and that if I absolutely had to go there, I should take a cab as walking there was far too hazardous. I saw no evidence of crime in the project. It was actually cleaner than most neighborhoods-almost no litter, next to no grafitti. Despite being white, and wearing a yarmulke, I was harassed a grand total of never. When I asked one of the residents for directions, they were polite and helpful. The only frightening thing I saw there was a chihuahuaso obese that its body had become ovoid. The thing looked like it had swallowed a football. It was surreal.
I taught high school in the most dangerous part of town. Residents couldn’t get pizza or newspaper delivery. Maintenance men from the central office were scared to come to our school.
When I worked the back ticket booth at the football games, I was told that if anyone asked for the money, I should give it to them and keep my eyes down. (I also had to wear boots because the back booth had a constant puddle of urine in it.
My husband had to put me out at school before he drove on to work. During the winter it was still dark when he put me out.
I don’t think that I was ever really very frightened. I’m not particularly brave. It just makes a difference when you know the people who live in the neighborhood.
I think that this has happened to everyone who visits Chicago occasionally but doesn’t live there. I was about 20 and me and my 16 year old brother had “borrowed” my dad’s car while he was out of town to drive into Chicago. Being the dorks that we were- and still are- we were going to see They Might Be Giants at, I think, Navy Pier. After the show (which was AWESOME), there was hella traffic for some reason, and I decided to do some creative hunting for I90 instead of sitting in traffic. Then we were in a VERY BAD NEIGHBORHOOD. I can’t remember if it was Cabrini Green, it might have been after Cabrini Green was gone, but it was about equivalent. The problem with the south side, though, is once you’re there it’s damn near impossible to drive out. The streets loop around and everything is a one-way. And here we were, two little TMBG geeks, in our dad’s Hundai Accent, looking for all the world like we were sitting in pee.
I spent one year at a small private boarding school, that was located near a college town. Most of the people who lived in town were anywhere from upper middle class to uber rich. But the surrounding area was ‘The Land That Hygiene Forgot’. One of the weekends that my dad was too busy to come and get me, I along with a couple of others decided to follow the railroad tracks that ran behind the school. It was mostly woods, but we figured as long as we could still hear the highway, we wouldn’t be in any danger. Our first scary momment, was when we came across a mongrel dog and her pups. She was hidden in the weeds and jumped out at us. But we talked softly to her and she calmed down enough for us leave. Then we were walking along and smelled… armpits! But nobody was around. The smell got stronger and ranker. It wasn’t just “I’ve been working in the yard all day” sweaty pits. It was never met a bar of soap or a can of deoderant stank pits! There was nothing around but woods on either side of the tracks. Then we heard a dog barking (not the one we left behind), and male voices. This is when we decided maybe we should head back to the school. Too late! Jethro and Uncled Jed had done seen us. They materialized out of the bushes just like the dog had earlier. “Well, well, well, look at the little girlies, did ya’ll come to see us? Hee… hee…heee.” By this time armpits were not the only thing we smelled. Jethro was doing all the talking while Uncled Jed stayed near the trees and held the shotgun. :eek: He wasn’t aiming at us but he didn’t put it down either. We said we were sorry if we were trespassing and we needed to get back to school. “Awww, don’t be scared little girlies, we’re not gonna hurt ya. Lets go up to the house and smoke a joint, then I’ll drive ya back to school.” We actually considered it! But since we didn’t see signs of a house nearby, we declined. As we were walking back, there was one point where the tracks crossed a little gravel road. Guess who was waiting for us in their truck! We were terrified. I don’t know what they had planned if anything. But, a car started comming down the road from the other direction and the Clampetts drove off. It turned out to be one of our teachers in the car. We got in trouble for being off campus, and fraternizing with the locals.
I managed to hit the most frightening parts of both DC and Philly in one ungodly car trip - the story of two naive hippie white kids exploring our nation’s ghettos in a Geo hatchback with a Grateful Dead sticker in the back windshield.
A friend and I were driving back from Virginia to southern NY (by Binghamton) and we decided to stop in DC and check out the Washington Monument. It was the first time either of us had been to DC, and coupled with the fact that for some reason the place was swarming with motorcycles (some kind of enthusiast gathering), we got really, really lost trying to get on the correct route out of town. By dusk we had entered an all-residential area which, as we drove, kept getting scarier and scarier. We didn’t manage to find an alternate route out of town until well past dark.
Unfortunately, this alternate route eventually led us right through the worst part of downtown Philadelphia. All we had to do was find route something or other which would get us to 81. Apparently D.O.T. doesn’t keep up with route sign maintenance around there. It was here, at something like 3AM, we had to stop and get gas and ask for directions - we were hoplessly lost.
This is the first place I ever saw the bulletproof glass in a convenience store. The cashier had no clue what I was asking her, so we asked an older guy outside the store. He wanted money, but I had put the last $10 in the tank, so we traded him cigarettes instead. Then he got pissed they weren’t menthol. We booked outta there. We were starting to attract attention anyway. As we drove off, I remember thinking that even with the doors locked, a Geo Metro is no kind of protection from any number of various firearms. How I wished I was driving a big ol’ Lincoln right about then. Or a tank. Especially a tank, since we never did find the route we were looking for and had to plow straight through another 45 minutes of Philly’s world class ghettos before getting generally back on track, or at least heading north. (I counted - roughly every third building was burnt out or falling down.)
By 5 in the morning we were still so lost that we didn’t have enough gas to make it home - we were far closer to New York City than Binghampton. My friend had an uncle that lived on Long Island, so we figured we’d try and make it to his place. We stopped, called, and completely forgot about the toll on the bridges until we had hit the George Washington. We actually bluffed our way past that one (did I mention we were totally, completely stone broke?) and got stonewalled at the next. We pulled over and fell asleep, and I woke up a few hours later to see a guy walking along the other side of the road leading to the toll booth. I shook my friend, who woke up and realized that the guy was his uncle, who had driven out to find us when we didn’t show up. It was the only lucky break in a 13 hour car trip of terror.
Oh, and speaking of bad (slight hijack) I’ve been in a few hotels that would make you sit cowering in the corner. Lessee, the Grand Union, The Lonestar, The Patricia, The Marr, The Smilin’ Budda, The Niagra and the Balmoral. All of the above are strictly Downtown Eastside. Some have since been shutdown or renamed. That’s what you get for hooking up with a guy in a band. :rolleyes:
Side note - they may have been the only band to get kicked out of the Balmoral for being too drunk to play!
I’ve also spent quite a bit of time at the old St Alice in North Van, the Dunsmuire, Windjammer and Windsor hotels in New Westminster and the Newton Inn. Been in the Flamingo, Dell and Turf in Surrey too. :eek:
