Jakarta. I didn’t live in a bad neighbourhood, but it was still awful:
It was cheap, though
I haven’t experienced most of what you’ve experienced, although the hotel I stay at the most often has some of its rooms in hearing range of a 7-11.
But I lived in a place once that was three miles from a downtown railroad crossing, but I could hear the trains blow their horn loud and clear during the middle of the night because I was on the third story and at the end of a “C”-shaped complex that funneled the sound right into the secondary bedroom. Thankfully I had a master bedroom on the opposite side that was quiet.
I lived in a crappy apartment, but at least it was clean, when I lived in Mannheim, Germany back in 1979 to 1981. The place was in Neckerau, just a couple of minutes walk fromt he streetcar stop. I lived on the fifth floor of a six floor walk-up. The apartment had obviously been a decent enough sized one-room before the owner decided to split it into a bedroom and a living/dining room. The bath was one of those “by your own and plop it in the room where you want it” types and the toilet itself was in a room by itself outside the apartment (across the balcony and next to the stairwell). On top of that, the owner of the building had no problem lying about the tenants, including me, to the base housing office. The place met exactly the distance limit for any of us to be permitted to live off base at the time. Two events really stand out for me: 1-the bedroom ceiling collapsed whiIe the coupel upstairs were asleep, and 2-a couple moved next door and brought lice with them. I ended up moving to a much nicer place that was a 15-minute walk from the base, and that made all the difference in my enjoyment of a rather wonderful town. I was thrilled when the place was finally available. Late 70s, early 80s was not a great time to be shopping for housing in Germany as an Army Private or Specialist.
There used to be a Hula Hoop Tree in my area. It was cut down in 2020, a few months BEFORE the infamous derecho, because the tree was on private property and the owner was concerned about safety issues.
Sharing a room with my sister was no fun, either, in part because we also shared a full-sized bed. Don’t do that, parents. Kids at least need some space that they can call their own.
I was actually in Mannheim the year it was closing down…the summer of 2010 or 2011, I really can’t remember which. I was staying at the billeting on BFV (I’m a DoD civilian, and at the time I was TDY from Wiesbaden, where I lived and worked). It was surreal, because it seems like I had the entire post to myself, but everything was open. Met some crazy DoDEA college interns who were also staying at the lodging (some of them apparently “intern” at select military installations in Europe during the summer from the states), and we partied downtown at these discos that were like in arcade-like corridors.
Equally surreal was the prison. Mannheim Correctional Facility was like a little slice of West Texas copied-and-pasted into the otherwise lush rolling countryside of the Rhein-Neckar region.
I don’t believe Oklahoma City is shi##y in general, but it was shi##y for me when I stayed there.
I did a month-long externship program in OC in the early 80s. I was young, broke, and naive. I figured Texas had a hot climate and since Oklahoma sat on top of Texas, it too must be hot year-round. So, I packed nothing but hot-weather clothes—shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Scrubs would be provided at the hospital, so no other clothes would be needed.
Well, when I arrived, OC was experiencing an unprecedentedly frigid January. The run-down apartment I shared with a fellow classmate had a single heat vent on one wall and it put out air that was only slightly above absolute zero. We fought like cats and prairie dogs to sleep closest to that vent every night. And, venturing outdoors in my beach attire was not only painful but embarrassing to [cowboy] boot.
One night, while driving around hungry, I stopped at a place called Molly Murphy’s House of Fine Repute. Cute name. A short line of dudes in cowboy hats was waiting to get in. I waited my turn.
The garishly costumed hostess directed me to a small waiting room and said I’d be served soon. I waited. That’s when the thought crossed my mind: hey, wait a minute, maybe this isn’t a restaurant after all. Maybe Molly Murphy’s House of Fine Repute is really Molly Murphy’s House of ill Repute, with a paradoxical play on words. (Did I mention I was young and naive? I figured perhaps OC had legal brothels like Nevada).
I’m not morally opposed to brothels, though I’ve never patronized one. The problem was that I didn’t have enough money to pay for and tip a high-end prostitute properly (did I mention I was young and broke?). So, I sweated it out, trying to think of a way out of this potentially embarrassing situation.
But, it turns out Molly’s was indeed a themed restaurant, much to my relief.
I did get a cheap, authentic cowboy hat while I was in OC, so it wasn’t all bad.
Cousin and I rented two bedroom apartment. It was basically half of a duplex. $110 a month, so $55 each. That should give you an idea. There had been a fire in the basement, where the old coal burner furnace was, but at least it had been converted to gas. The fire charred the kitchen floor. So it was just a charred kitchen floor.
But it was kind of a cool place. Built in 1908. Tall ceilings, had a two sort of living rooms I guess, and a very cool (non functioning) fireplace with a real nice wood mantel. Two entrances.
It got scary though. Big gang problems started happening. Where the ‘Crips’ and the ‘Bloods’ where trying to outdo each other with how many people they could attack. The ‘Crips’ liked to use golf clubs. Cripple people.
After sleeping in my clothes a couple of times (flee or fight) my cousin and I decided to flee.
It’s since been gentrified, and the place probably goes for a $1200 a month.
I thought they were called the Crips because their founder was crippled? At least, that’s the story I was told.
When you see blood on the sidewalk, well…
I don’t suspect they where particularly into regular golf.
They carried canes as weapons. They were facetiously referred to as cripples because they walked around with the canes
That’s every day at the local Walmart. Sometimes they’ll commandeer all the hover rounds and attack en mass. Fortunately their treachery ends when the batteries die by the time they get to the laxative section in Aisle G 24.
That makes more sense than a golf club. Same effect, but somewhat explainable to walk around with a cane.
This is longer than I’d like, and it’s the short version.
My first week in a new apartment, I heard the downstairs neighbors screaming and thought, “Well, somebody’s angry.” A few days later, I could hear them screaming a little more clearly and thought, “Wow, somebody’s drunk.” By the next week, it was evident that somebody wasn’t in good mental health. Around that time, I noticed that the elevator would sometimes be unavailable because the door was slightly ajar at the ground floor. It happened a few times, and I started to view with apprehension the swastikas that somebody had scratched into the paint in the elevator cabin.
A week or so later, the elevator stopped working and everyone had to use the stairs. Eight flights of ‘em for me, and the unlucky souls living above me had it even worse. With all the tenants using the stairs, I got to meet the screaming downstairs neighbors. That brief exchange confirmed that most of them did indeed have mental-health problems. I’m not trying to be mean; it was clear from the way they spoke. I don’t know if their intercom was broken, but they always dealt with their many visitors by shouting from their seventh-floor windows. I soon learned that one of their teenage sons was responsible for the swastikas and the elevator door being left ajar. Shortly after that, the police were called because the son had thrown a drinking glass at a child in the street (from seven floors up), hitting the poor kid in the head.
A few months later, I got a letter addressed to my landlady. I didn’t open it, of course, but I saw on the envelope that it’d been sent by a lawyer whom I went to see a few days later to ask if anything could be done about the elevator, the neighbors and other things. He gave me an odd stare and said that the elevator hadn’t been repaired because my landlady was the only property owner in the building who refused to pay her share of the expenses and that she’d being doing this for years.
I got the hell out of there not long afterward. I’d hired movers to deal with the eight flights of stairs, and, surprisingly, the elevator was repaired the day before they were to arrive. The repair lasted exactly one glorious day, until the second or third load of my stuff, and the movers had to carry my fridge and washing machine down all those stairs.