We had a little commotion here last night.
I live in a quiet little block of flats (55 of them, I think), populated by working, middle class people. I like it fine. The downside (and probably the reason I was able to buy the flat so cheap a few years ago) is that it's quite close to some similar flats, but those are council housing, and has more trouble. (Though not a lot.) Apparently yesterday two young black men had brought knives around and tried to get a "friend" to open his door to them. He declined and called the police instead, I think. At least what I do know is that the coppers arrested the two young men, and at least one of them had run into our parking lot, and I was alerted by a lot of shouting. They had the guy on the ground, and I saw one cop picking up two large kitchen knives off the ground.
Gandalf weighed in:
I arranged to get a 'typical' GI (soldier) apartment as my wife to be was arriving next week. But at the last minute the occupants didn't get their transfer paperwork and I had to find another place.
Late my wife and I heard that the place had been broken into the first month we would have been living there by three men who beat the solider, raped his wife, and stole their payday moneys.
I have never gone for a cheap neighborhood again. Sometimes living in the wrong part of town is not worth the money you save.
Good point. There are certainly places I would not want to live.
On the other hand, I don't know... I've lived in all kinds of neighborhoods through my life, and the only break-in I ever had (early Sunday morning, a man taking a crowbar to my bedroom window) happened in the nicest place I've ever lived.
Similarly a friend of mine told me that he'd been living in a supposedly crappy neighborhood for twenty years, and the first time somebody tried to sell him street drugs was two weeks after he moved to an upscale neighborhood.
I've never felt physically threatened living here, and I took care to take a first floor flat (I think in the US it's called second floor: not the ground level, the one above). All the break-ins I've heard about in this neighborhood happened on the ground floor. And there not many of them, I think I only heard of one in the six years I've lived here.
Ooh, by the way, I just read that since I moved here, crime has dropped over 30%. I'm not sure I can take all the responsibility for that, but you never know... :)
(Of course this was being reported in the council newsletter. Newspapers never report good news.)
That being said, I'm not ruling out one day moving to a town with a bit more culture and style. There are only two book stores. And the people around here consider "dressing up" to be taking off the track suit and putting on blue-jeans. Seeing a really stylish and beautiful woman in this town is almost a shock to the system.
I arranged to get a 'typical' GI (soldier) apartment as my wife to be was arriving next week. But at the last minute the occupants didn't get their transfer paperwork and I had to find another place.
ReplyDeleteLate my wife and I heard that the place had been broken into the first month we would have been living there by three men who beat the solider, raped his wife, and stole their payday moneys.
I have never gone for a cheap neighborhood again. Sometimes living in the wrong part of town is not worth the money you save.
"Seeing a really stylish and beautiful woman in this town is almost a shock to the system."
ReplyDeleteWhen you're right, you're right.
I don't like to judge people by how much money they have, or whether they can afford to dress "stylishly."
ReplyDeleteI live near a huge college campus. We have some scary commotions here from time to time, particularly during football season. But it's not a bad neighborhood. Trouble can happen anywhere.
I try not to spend my life in fear. Otherwise, moving to a "better" neighborhood couldn't help. The fear goes with you. It's in you.
That's very true.
ReplyDelete...
I don't *judge* people so much, it's just that it's a pleasure for me to see pretty and stylish people.
Also, I know girls who have no money, and who yet dress stylishly. It's a matter of think.
Style's an attitude. Just like professionalism. At some level, either one requires a bit of financial resources, and the re-allocation of those resources according to different priorities. TOobe "relaxed" and "just being myself" often seem to be the priorities which non-stylish people choose.
ReplyDeleteBad neighborhoods seem more an issue in the USA than in other parts of the developed West. I don't know about places like Pakistan or Nigeria, which have that weird new-money third-world mix-up thing going on. But in France and Italy, or Germany, or Austria, or the United Kingdom, the level of violent crime is rather much lower than in major cities in the USA. This is, to me, an embarrassment and a shame. I'm not sure why our legislators find it so important to make our nation a bad place to live for our nation's citizens.
Kids who come to New Orleans in order to attend Tulane (a major and fairly elite university) are often surprised to learn just how difficult it is to find "good" housing. If they had based their judgment on only the US government statistics, they'd have believed that there were ample, cheap, empty apartments ("flats"). Yes, there ARE those places; but you'd get shot if you lived there. The subjective factors -- white middle class kids, owning a car which must be parked on the street, wearing business-like clothing -- all point to apartments being a problem.