is River West doomed?

[caieva]

Thanks for looking out for those kids while they get the hang of life in the big city!

[Allan Trafton]

Originally Posted by dontyoulookatme

I am a freshman at uwm and i live in Sandburg, but i am from Milwaukee. I generally tell kids not to go west of Holton, as i feel thats where the real "hood" starts. Many people in the dorms are from Waukesha County or somewhere like Eau Claire, Appleton, or Neenah where there is no crime whatsoever. On Sunday my friend(from Janesville) decided to go the the Midtown Shopping Center and two security guards outright asked him why he was shopping there. One of the security guards asked him if he was scared, and he replied "Now I am". Many students come into the school being naive and don't know what kind of people are out there. Riverwest is generally safe but i feel that people from other parts of the northside come into Riverwest looking for naive UWM students that they can mug or rob.

I think the security guards were messing with your friend. I go to Midtown on occasion and I see plenty of white people, especially at Pick N Save and some at Walmart. Also there is a fairly large jewish population which lives due south of Midtown.

Calling UWM students naive is an understatement. Having lived around the students for over 20 years there careless behavior amazes me. They will do the following:

Leave their front door open all night in clear view.
Leave their bikes unlocked all over the place.
Leave valuables in clear sight and unattended
Stumble around drunk at 2 or 3 am sometimes by themselves and sometimes female.
Invite complete strangers into their home even when they are up to no good.
Buy drugs from inner city dealers and let them into their home.

Many of the crime problems experience by the students could be easily avoided if they were more careful. The crime rate against students would drop 75% if they used some common sense.

[Milwaukee City]

Originally Posted by Allan Trafton

Many of the crime problems experience by the students could be easily avoided if they were more careful. The crime rate against students would drop 75% if they used some common sense.

I agree, I remember when I went to UWM. I had met a lot of friends from upstate Wisconsin that were basically blind when it came to living in the city. They would ride their bikes from UWM to Mayfair and take North.Ave all the way across. I'm not saying that North Ave. is the worst street in Milwaukee but let's use a little brains here.

You still see it, cd's and computers sitting on passenger seats of cars. I would say the real hood doesn't start until you go west of 43, but I have a lifetime of living in Milwaukee.

[city414]

Originally Posted by dontyoulookatme

I am a freshman at uwm and i live in Sandburg, but i am from Milwaukee. I generally tell kids not to go west of Holton, as i feel thats where the real "hood" starts. Many people in the dorms are from Waukesha County or somewhere like Eau Claire, Appleton, or Neenah where there is no crime whatsoever. On Sunday my friend(from Janesville) decided to go the the Midtown Shopping Center and two security guards outright asked him why he was shopping there. One of the security guards asked him if he was scared, and he replied "Now I am". Many students come into the school being naive and don't know what kind of people are out there. Riverwest is generally safe but i feel that people from other parts of the northside come into Riverwest looking for naive UWM students that they can mug or rob.

lmaoooooooooooooo that part of the east side is on the north side of the city so i consider that north as well itsa just NE

[KC3700]

Originally Posted by Milwaukee City

I agree, I remember when I went to UWM. I had met a lot of friends from upstate Wisconsin that were basically blind when it came to living in the city. They would ride their bikes from UWM to Mayfair and take North.Ave all the way across. I'm not saying that North Ave. is the worst street in Milwaukee but let's use a little brains here.

For real.

The city isn't helping them out much either by putting bike lanes on North, either. All someone has to do is stand between a couple of parked vans or trucks and charge out at the person at the bike. A lot of teenage hardhead kids do this to mess with people.

Originally Posted by Milwaukee City

I would say the real hood doesn't start until you go west of 43, but I have a lifetime of living in Milwaukee.

I'm from the north side, and I would agree with this dude from UWM that the hood begins at Holton. King Drive and the area around Northcott are definitely hood.

You are right that it gets rougher west of I-43, but don't be too relaxed about 5th & Center.

[Milwaukee City]

ou are right that it gets rougher west of I-43, but don't be too relaxed about 5th & Center.

I guess after spending a couple of months in Bed-Stuy Milwaukee isn't so bad!

and then a year in Miami, Milwaukee isn't so bad

Which brings me to my ACE card: People who haven't been outside of WI don't realize how nice Wisconsin and Milwaukee are. I always laugh when people say all of Milwaukee is Ghetto and hood. Okay try going to Memphis, NO, Detroit, St.Louis, Chicago, NY, Cleveland and the list goes on.

[KC3700]

Whenever someone wants to talk smack about my neighborhood, I usually remind them that it's not like Zone 8 in Detroit or Watts in LA.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. In my opinion, if you are street smart you'll be OK in Milwaukee. And this is coming from a guy who has been on some really rough corners late at night, waiting on the bus to come. Teutonia & Center comes to mind.

Everybody here should strike a balance between being alert and being calm.

[karfar]

Originally Posted by KC3700

Whenever someone wants to talk smack about my neighborhood, I usually remind them that it's not like Zone 8 in Detroit or Watts in LA.

I guess it's all a matter of perspective. In my opinion, if you are street smart you'll be OK in Milwaukee. And this is coming from a guy who has been on some really rough corners late at night, waiting on the bus to come. Teutonia & Center comes to mind.

Everybody here should strike a balance between being alert and being calm.

I agree...alert, calm and also looking like you belong there & you're not afraid. But I will indeed say, I used to be a process server & there are some pretty scary areas, I'm sure we know what areas these are that I'm talking about. I was never physically threatened but I can tell you, I would not want to live in those specified areas. They are scary, plain & simple. Even being there during the day, it's a little intimidating for most people. I started getting a tougher skin w/that job, but I was still scared.

[NorthsideSlumlordWatch]

Harambee/west of Holton is getting some mistreatment here. It's a big area and not a real, unified neighborhood with a sense of itself as one. There are smaller more cohesive sub-neighborhoods in the north mainly focused on the older remnants of black homeowners worried about the twin threats of crime and gentrification from the east and south displacing them. Halyard Park, Brewers Hill, parts of the southern Harambee and MLK strip plus Hillside Terrace and the brewery area show what is possible and what ought to be pushed for as the future of the area.

The south end of Harambee differs radically from block to block. Some blocks are really nice or at least stable. It's the Hubbard-Richards-Buffum-Holton-Booth slot from southern Harambee, Brewers Hill, and Riverwest up to Burleigh over to Atkinson, Port Washington and I-43 that is the long-term drug-guns-hookers corridor. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it may be coming back in a bad way. There also seems to be more white people buying and tying into that market these days. The UWM student population has turned out to be a really problematic drug and drug-related crime market, and that is adding a new complication to things.

This is very true:

There is a crime issue in [Riverwest], but east of the river is riding on their coattails in that regard. It's just that ingrained perceptions and tradition of some people hold that in Riverwest, anything goes, and east of the river is a college student's playground. These ideas hold back both areas.

But the questions about the dorms are apt. UWM has been silent as robbery and related shootings (fatal and non-fatal) have affected students in the Riverview dorm area. There are some concerns about this and burglaries in the north end of RW, but most of it seems to be the bar and high rental areas south of Locust and Center. It is not just west of the River though. UWM alerts about muggings are frequently on Murray and other east side streets off of North Ave. from 12-2am.

North Ave. needs to be the solution--it should not be a difficult win to secure and improve the whole strip from I-43 east. You can find a lot of data, historical observations, and ideas about that in many articles like this at riverwestneighborhood.org--please join in and contribute if you have any desire to do so:
Lies, Damn Lies, and MPD Statistics | Riverwest Neighborhood