Old Philly Crime Threads (Philadelphia, York: apartments, how much, houses)

[sklater]

I was reading through some past Philly threads as I have been interviewing with a company up there. I came across a long one dealing with crime in Philly. Lots of posts. I only bring it up because of one poster on there, couldntthinkofabettername

He made a statement once:
"I'm not tearing LA down. I'm definitely not doing it to make Philly look better. I'm not like people from LA, who need to try to turn their noses up at other places and delusionally think they're better than them"

Right during a long rant about how much LA sucks, the city sucks, the people suck, he only respects immigrant minorities, etc. Then he closed with how he hates people who rip on Philly.

Just throwing out that the guy appears to be a dunce.

His original bashing comments
"However, it's not an old city, no matter how people might like to say it is. If it were, it would have the same rowhomes or tenements that lined or line our metro's streets for decades. It doesn't. Every single one of its problems is due to the fact that the people who migrated there Guess what though? Those people get single-family homes in the neighborhoods they screw up. They don't live in concrete jungles. They have no reason to embrace the culture that they have but they did and do because they have no order or discipline over there whatsoever. People try to act like saying truth about somewhere means you hate it. No, I don't hate LA, and I especially don't hate the people from there who don't come from privilege, or really anybody for that matter. I see it for what it is though and if I moved there it would be for the sun, the girls, and all of the shallow things that place offers because it could never in a million years be on the level of this area in the things that matter.

No, LA is not dense. No part of that area is. They get their numbers through building apartment buildings. Density is rowhome or brownstone or any other urban-grid layout without any tract-housing in site. They don't and will never have that. It is criminal what they did to that beautiful area.

I never said they didn't. They don't however have the added complexity of generations of poor "white" people. That's the difference.

Philly didn't have those riots because Philly people know how to act and are hard-workers. The only people over there who give a damn about working as a whole are the immigrants. LA and all of the West Coast has a culture of entitlement. They have absolutely no idea what people went through in East Coast cities. They couldn't in a million years work the back-breaking jobs East Coast people did before the labor laws that exist now came about.. and they only came about because of those people working those jobs.

Northeast Philly only has rising crime because it's being pushed out from elsewhere. Tell me, what is LA's excuse? We have people here who have been stuck for generations, and not just minorities. We have old, complex problems. They don't. Their problems didn't start until non-white people migrated there and were subject to the entitlement and racism of the well-off white people who moved out West in the first place. Those are LA's worst neighborhoods. Tell me, do they look anything like Camden or Chester or Wilmington or parts of Philly? No, they do not. They look like some of the nicest parts of our area. The physical appearance of where you grow up matters.

No, it gets worse when the weather is humid. That's because of the fact that we're a concrete jungle. It makes people feel constrained and all of the tensions and problems that exist due to having so many people just stuck after centuries just explodes. LA has sun all year 'round, single-family houses, and many more opportunities.

I'm not tearing LA down. I'm definitely not doing it to make Philly look better. I'm not like people from LA, who need to try to turn their noses up at other places and delusionally think they're better than them.

What I'm saying is that out of the 10 biggest cities, only New York and Chicago have any basis comparing themselves to us and even then, they have had things going for them for decades that we didn'"

and...

"Quote:
Originally Posted by frankgn87
I see. I am told( I was never in LA) that is is not really a city but more of a huge suburb. There are not skyscrapers and such like CC Philly.

Yes, there are. It has a downtown. It's a city. I would never try to claim that it isn't. What it is though, is a West Coast/Sunbelt city. They build sprawl and apartments and that is it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rotodome
It's a different kind of a city, for sure, and much more decentralized as compared to Philly, but it is certainly a city.
LA has skyscrapers; taller skyscrapers than Philly, and more of them (although of course some of that is because Philly had a de-facto height restriction until the late 80's). LA actually has a dense walkable busy downtown (streetview) with historic buildings (not colonial of course, but lots of art-deco, and some buildings that date back to the early 19th century). Downtown LA has often been used as a stand-in for New York in movies & TV. It's got a burgeoning downtown art scene, and much like Philly, downtown LA has been experiencing a lot of residential growth recently.
I'm not saying it's the greatest city ever, or that I necessarily like it more than Philly, but I do think that LA is often misunderstood and inaccurately stereotyped. And I know I hate when people unfairly stereotype and bash Philly.
I'm not stereotyping them. I'm refuting the stereotypes they and others try to give them, that they then use to delusionally talk ish on Philadelphia. After all, that is what this thread is about.. people using BS positive stereotypes about places like LA to try to judge Philadelphia.

LA is great for what it is, and I'm sure I'd love living there as a young guy who isn't looking to marry, but I'd never in my life want to raise a family there and I have no respect for anybody except for the immigrants over there. I'm not going to judge any of the various minorities who moved there and were forced into a bad situation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to extend my respect to any of them when they grow up in single-family homes and have so many opportunities in various fields out there, and when the biggest problem out there is clearly the violence and drugs. That whole state and really so many places outside of the East Coast and Rust Belt and outside of places like Chicago has a very lazy attitude and is much more out of control than we are around here. In this area, if you opened the factories of old today, they would be filled easily and be very productive. More people here would work if they could than wouldn't. That's what the East Coast is about, and it's because of the fact that it was originally filled with so many hard-working poor immigrants and free African Americans. If anything, the biggest problems in this area as far as pushing it to this point was the Great Migration because of the fact that not even remotely nearly enough has been done to restore the foundation that African Americans used to have before the various factors that were forced on them when they got to the area or to help them to the point that they can finally stand on their feet as a whole, and on top of that now they have the jobs they could've gotten being taken by immigrants. (and no I don't blame immigrants for taking whatever jobs they can.. I blame cheap employers who exploit them because of it). But even still, that only made the problem worse.. it didn't start the problem. The discrimination the Irish, Italians, Polish, and so many others went through and the loss of opportunities for generations of them to move up fully is what started it.

In LA though, they don't know anything about that. So no, given the fact that this area has dealt with and still does deal with things that they have no clue about out there, I will not offer them any respect for having less of the completely unnecessary violence they have. Until well-off white kids stop carrying guns around that state and thinking they're gangsters, and until they stop embracing that BS all over their state and instead embrace hard work and acting like a man and for the well-off kids.. knowing their place.. I will offer them no respect whatsoever."

I only bring this up because Philly looks like a great place, but if there are people there so disillusioned to only elevate their city by ripping others down, and the arrogance he has shown, makes me question who lives up there. I know most aren't like that, but I did see a lot of people who got really pissed if anything negative were said about Philadelphia while at the same time would rip apart other cities at the whim.

[gwillyfromphilly]

Judging by your long post it seems like you just wanted to get this rant off you chest. Choosing not to visit or live in a city because you don't like some posters from that particular city is foolish. Just go and visit the city for yourself. Looking at your post I assume your from the Los Angeles area.

[rotodome]

That poster was pretty over the top. But he's now gone, and has come back in an occasionally-posting much less belligerent incarnation. No need to re-live the past.

[gwillyfromphilly]

Originally Posted by rotodome

That poster was pretty over the top. But he's now gone, and has come back in an occasionally-posting much less belligerent incarnation. No need to re-live the past.

I thought it was really random that he pulled up a post you made that could've been a couple years old. For all we know that poster could've spent hours looking for it.

[MikeNigh]

Originally Posted by sklater

I only bring this up because Philly looks like a great place, but if there are people there so disillusioned to only elevate their city by ripping others down, and the arrogance he has shown, makes me question who lives up there. I know most aren't like that, but I did see a lot of people who got really pissed if anything negative were said about Philadelphia while at the same time would rip apart other cities at the whim.

The reason this happens is because part of philly's character is to have pride in itself. Most places in the US are "just places to live". Aside from family in the area the residents could careless if they lived there or somewhere else. That makes it too easy for philadelphians to rip them apart. And also aside from that philly has real urban which is a life style that is impossible to understand unless you lived it. Urbanites are probably always going to pick out suburban living as something to attack, you shouldn't get wound up over that.

[rotodome]

^^Eh, IMO don't even bother justifying that posting. We're not all that wound up with chips on our shoulders.

[toobusytoday]

The reason the poster whose post the OP is refuting was BANNED from this forum. Let's not churn up his old stuff that got him banned.