I got lost with a few friends in a small town that I doubt any of you have ever heard of but I’ve been all over the world and it’s one of the worst ghettos I’ve ever seen. East Spencer, North Carolina. We got stopped by the cops just so they could tell us to get the hell out of there.
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Another time when I was about 16 we snuck some 151 in coke bottles into a movie in downtown San Diego. My brothers friend and I got really drunk and bored with the movie (Black Mask with Jet Li :rolleyes: ) so we went outside and started wandering around. My brother found us about a half-hour later talking to a homeless guy in what was apparently one of the worst parts of SD.
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My mom ran out of gas in the middle of the night in Compton in the early 70s with just her (also female) friend. She said people were giving her looks so scary that she didn’t think humans could make those faces.
A few months back I went for a weekend in Barcelona. I was meeting a friend at a hotel on the seafront a mile or two out of the centre. I’d checked the map and decided to use the underground.
It was P***ing down by the time I got off the airport bus. I made my way to the nearest station and phoned my friend, who was already checked in. I told him how I planned to get there. He insisted that I should get off at the station before the one I’d intended. I didn’t have a map with me so he said to phone once I got there and he’d direct me.
It was dark as well as stormy by now. One thing I’d noticed about Barcelona on my previous visit was that they don’t seem to go a bundle on signs, or at least not as much as I’m used to. This meant a fair bit of walking around in the dark and rain while I found a street sign, he located it on the map and so on. Anyway in the end we got located and he gave me directions. I followed them (or so I thought) but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I could only assumed the sea was to my right from the direction of the rain and wind, but I couldn’t see anything that might indicate which the sea was. I phoned for more directions, it seemed I’d over shot, but the sea was indeed on my right so it would be easier to head that way and then decide right or left.
The neighbourhood seems to be getting darker and shabbier. It really didn’t look like the sort of place a new 4 star hotel would be built. I was cold and even my underwear was soaked. I stopped to phone again, I’d been keeping my head down, ‘cos of the rain, I looked up for a street sign and saw I was standing outside the Hell’s Angels’ club house :eek:
A few years ago I was visiting LA and decided to give myself a little “walking tour”. I started in Beverly Hills and walked toward Hollywood and got there without any trouble, so I decided to keep on walking towards downtown, where I was staying.
Big mistake.
I was walking and walking through all these not-so-nice neighborhoods, thinking that it couldn’t possibly be much further. I guess I didn’t really pay enough attention to the scale of miles on that map, and I didn’t know enough about where I was to figure out the buses. I ended up walking about 15 miles, going past MacArthur Park and into downtown LA in the dark. I was scared to death, but too damn tired to run.
Since then I’ve learned to trust in the public transportation systems of whatever city I’m visiting.
A wrong turn off I-10 on the west side of El Paso will land you on the Valley hgihway, a pre-Interstate expressway of sorts which literally runs along the Mexican border. On the US side of the street is the ASARCO smelter. On the Mexico side you’ll see squatter camps … I mean they’re right there, looking far worse than abandoned Detroit neighborhoods or Elizabethan-era London slums. The only thing separating them is a little creek one could easily skip over without getting your socks wet … the locals call it the Rio Grande.
Oh yeah … there’s people alongside the border highway who throw rocks at passing cars. If you make the mistake of getting out to check the damage, they’ll carjack you at gunpoint. If it’s a competent 4WD vehicle, they’ll drive it across the Rio Grande into Mexico.
I live in Baltimore County. On Sundays during the ‘school’ year, I sing in a church which is in downtown Baltimore. When I first started, I would get lost driving, and invariably end up in not-so-great places. I never came to harm. Likewise when I worked at the Johns Hopkins hospital, which is smack-dab in the middle of East Baltimore, a really not nice place to be.
Usually when we end up in crappy areas, I’m with Dave, so I’m not worried. West Baltimore, DC Suburbs, some scary-ass Philly neighbourhood that creeped me out. There is only one time where I was really worried, and that was because I had a visiting Canadian (from Edmonton! Where there are no bad anythings!) friend with me. We (I) took a wrong turn leaving Fell’s Point, and ended up in a nasty area. I wisely turned around and re-traced our path until I found something familiar. She was whiter than me after that little excursion.
We were driving through a bad neighborhood of a small city, light on the boarded-up houses but with its fair share of xenophobic residents and druggies. So of course we decided to take a “short cut” through it at about 3 am. Well, we turned onto a cul-de-sac, rather than a through street.
We did a 3-point turn, and saw someone walking toward us as we were pulling away. Now, normally I wouldn’t assume it was a drug dealer, except that he was wearing a Jackson Five t-shirt. Everyone knows that dealers have no shame
What, you’ve never been to the Ivanhoe, the Cambie, or the Old American? I once had a guy try to sell me shoplifted (I assume) beef at the Ivanhoe. I only went to the Niagara a couple of times and it wasn’t so bad. Certainly not the worst of the lot.
I used to live just up the street from the Turf. That place scared me as much as the Balmoral.
A guy I know, back in his youth, was joy-riding around South Philly with his friends, basically (I gather) looking for trouble. They come up to a stop light, and see a gang of local toughs hanging around the corner. The light changes, they yell an ethnic slur at the gang (THE ethnic slur, if you must know), floored it and turned the corner.
I’d like to add the caveat that I lived in Minnesota seven years ago, so things may have changed a bit. What I do remember is walking east down Lake from Uptown (because I had no idea it was that bad a neighborhood…I’d just moved up there) and starting to have a really bad feeling about this…
I’ve prowled through plenty of the roughest, nastiest neighborhoods in Baltimore. Sometimes me and my team had a local guide – sometimes we didn’t. We were protected mostly by our wits and Americorps uniforms. People were generally too confused or curious about a pack of white kids in goofy looking outfits handing out fliers to get belligerent.
While cleaning out a park in Baltimore, we found (if memory serves me correctly) 3 bags of weed, 1 bag of cocaine, several syringes, and miscellaneous bongs, all of which we promptly reported to the police. Seems we found someone’s stash.
Some of my teammates would speak with the drug dealers and such, but I never did. One time, a prostitute did try to climb in the van with us, but was successfully fended off. I got hit up for handouts and change more often than I care to remember. I did talk to several friendly and interested folks, and my teammate Chris loved to play catch with some of the neighborhood kids we met in the ghettos. One nice woman, whom I’m pretty sure was high, let me use her bathroom one day.
A couple years ago, when I was in college in Misssissippi, a girl who was in my English class came up to my room and informed me that we were going to Buffalo to visit her boyfriend. Her reasoning was that I’m from the Albany area, therefore my New York mojo would keep us from getting lost. :rolleyes:
We did ok until we got to Nashville, at which point Mapquest’s directions wanted us to take an interstate that no longer existed. We went merrily along until suddenly, on one of those big old ramp thingies that lifts one interstate over another, there was a big sign saying ROAD CLOSED, forcing you to take that exit, and then the road dropped off. So we took the exit, completely confused, and looked around for a place to stop for directions.
I have no idea where in Nashville we were except that it was BAD. The houses were run down, the street lights were burnt out, there were head shops and strip clubs and such, and when we finally found a convenience store with a police car parked in front of it, it was next door to a place that appeared to be a sex-toy shop, the Pink Mushroom. The cop had turned up in response to a call that there was a prowler hiding in the sex shop’s bushes.
Luckily the cop gave us directions on how to get back where we were going and we ended up ok.
Yesterday I accidentally drove to Dallas but I never left the interstate so I didn’t end up on the bad side of town.
I once had a guy try to sell me shoplifted (I assume) beef at the Ivanhoe. I only went to the Niagara a couple of times and it wasn’t so bad. Certainly not the worst of the lot.