I grew up in a public housing complex, which I guess people would call a ghetto. Bars over the windows, illicit nocturnal transactions around the entryway, the stink of urine both human and canine in elevators and stairways, all that lovely stuff. We had law enforcement stop by a few times to ask about attackers and murders in the building. I was rigorously schooled by my parents in staying out of trouble, but I remember lying awake listening to the couple upstairs abusing their children and their dogs and each other.
My mother, an English-unproficient and underweight wisp of a woman, still lives there despite having been mugged, despite having a recurring flood of undescribably foul water rain down from her ceiling, and despite her children telling her countless times that they are more than happy to take her in…but excuse me as I close this can before any more worms wiggle out.
Another NoMi person. Camden, though, not Jordan area. Now I’m in Crystal and miss the neighborhood atmosphere that I enjoyed growing up on the Northside.
I grew up in Queens, and spent plenty of time in many of NYC’s “ghetto” neighborhoods, e.g,. The South Bronx, Harlem, Bed-Stuy, East NY, The Queensbridge projects.
But i’ve got to say that all of those places seemed safe by comparison after I spent one day and night in Naples Italy a few years back. I wasn’t even in the “ghetto” part of town, but that whole damn city was scary as hell! Maybe the fact that the thugs spoke a different language made it scarier, because I felt I’d have trouble talking my way out a situation.
Come on, really? I just located the last elementary school I went to before we moved out of the city. Click on the orange thingie (sorry, I’m google-map impaired) and then compare and contrast. The neighborhood I lived in wasn’t any nicer than where the school is. Kind of reminds you of that Fallout game, doesn’t it?
I’m from The ghetto (Chicago south side), and I’ve been in sketchy areas of Manila and Tijuana (my only third world experiences). Id rather be anywhere in Metro Manila anytime of night than parts of the south side and west side after dark.
I find ghetto to be one of those terms that the more you know, the harder it is to use. I have friends who purchased houses in transitioning neighborhoods with lots of crime and housing projects, but I don’t know that I’d use the term ghetto. My siblings who live in suburban and rural Virginia absolutely consider my neighborhood the “hood,” but they get freaked out pretty easily.
Really “ghetto” is kind of racist (or classist or…whatever) term. People use it to mean anything from a lawless Sao Paulo favella to “non suburban neighborhood where dark people live”.
Boston’s “Southie” neighborhood as depicted in films like The Departed and Good Will Hunting are largely depicted as Irish ghettos. But in reality, it’s more of a gentrified working class neighboorhood.
I live in Glen Allen, VA so I know a little bit about the ghetto. Just through the woods (not in sight or hearing distance, but you know it’s there) there is a multi-family residential complex and all that that entails (I think some of the people there drive cars 4-5 years old); on the way to work I drive by the elementary school which is kind of in a bad neighborhood, lots of sub-2500 sq. ft houses on lots < 1 acre in size…I guess you would have to consider that the ghetto.
