"hip" places to live in Pittsburgh (Wilkinsburg: price, property)

[Uptown kid]

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/ed...Y.kLR2LkHNmANI
-I meant to post this earlier in my previous post... A Crime Map of Hazelwood... Screw the percentages I said, but the map depicts the areas I listed while the list of similar tier neighborhood's are also still the same.

Yes most of Pittsburgh IS hip.

[JimboPGH]

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

Who ever told you that LIED!!!

I told myself that, secondary to my experiences delivering pizzas there.

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

-From The Hazelwood Y/the Lewis St Playground to lower blocks of Hazelwood Ave/Flowers Ave to E Elizabeth St is like living in most of Garfield, the Charles Street Valley area Perry Hilltop, Mt. Oliver Boro, the Blair District of Clairton, or Homestead.
-Winston to Alluvian Street, the heart of "Down Low" or Glenwood, is just as bad IF NOT worse. These areas are the gangland ghettos.

Those areas suck, no arguments here. Most of those streets we didn't deliver to after dark. Monongahela Ave and the flat part of Flowers Ave were particularly nasty.

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

-East Elizabeth St/Ashton Ave/Johnston Ave/Throwbridge St is like living in "Southern Swissvale", southern Knoxville, "Upper Manchester", East Pittsburgh & parts of northern East Liberty. Crime is still bad, robberies, theft, burglaries are just as high. While shootings, homicides, home invasion, gang activity and riff-raff/drug addicts ARE less common. This area is rough but more intact and is more on it's way to becomming a ghetto than a true ghetto.

My opinion of that area is a bit more favorable, but that's mostly based on the subjectivity of having a lot of good customers there. Johnston Ave (below Glen Hazel), East Liz, Trowbridge, and Mansion were mostly good streets for us, as were the blocks of Glenwood and Gertrude between them. We did have a robbery once on Ashton, but that wasn't even committed by someone from the neighborhood, and we had several customers on that street who were really upset by it.

I'm sure you have the crime data to prove that part of Hazelwood does have some issues, but it is noticeably nicer than the gangland blocks that sandwich it.

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

-Hazelwood west of Second Ave/the train tracks also Glenwood is relatively safe but sketchy & largely undesirable like inbetween Elliott/Fairywood/South Oakland by Fraizer St/West Oakland past Robinson St and Lower Spring Garden Valley/East Deutschtown/SE Mt. Washington.

There were/are some dodgey characters down there, but it seemed like most of the dealers below the tracks were small time and not gang affiliated. It reminded me of a trailer park in urban form; dingy, druggy, but without any real acts of random violence, and a odd sense of communtiy pride. I mean, there was/is a pretty sweet little urban garden back there...

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

-The portion in between Nansen St-the cematary/border of Greenfield & Slyvan Avenue are gritty yet safer and likable. Similar to sourthern Greenfield, Troy Hill, parts of Beechview, parts of Mt. Washington, Bon Air, Lincoln Place, West End, part of Lower Hill/Crawford Square, Garfield south of Broad St, parts of East Liberty, southern Highland Park & parts of Larwenceville.

Yeah, that part of the neighborhood is basically looked at as an extension of Greenfield. I never felt unsafe in the least around there.

Perhaps I should've said only 30% of the neighborhood is outright dangerous, while about half of it is a bit sketchy, but relatively pacified, and about 20% is basically Greenfield.

I feel like that's the way it is with most "ghettos;" certain blocks/streets set the reputation for the neighborhood at large, and the rest of the neighborhood, while not actually that dangerous, is too rundown and broke to break that label.

[Uptown kid]

^Well sorry to call you a "LIAR" lol . You do seem to have a very good sense of the neighborhood & I agree with your points here.
Yet i do think in spite of rising crime/blight that may progress in the future, the area of Hazelwood that houses the highest precent of reputable college graduates (besides 'the Greenfield part') is the E Elizabeth-Mansion St area [the red highlighted area on the map link]. This area is also even higher income than the section across the train tracks which is a notable bit safer.

To get back on topic... Perhaps the 'basically Greenfield' area of Hazelwood and (to a lesser degree) that Elizabeth-Throwridge St area could be considered "hip".

[eschaton]

I was just talking about Hazelwood with my wife. She's convinced it's hit bottom and going to start turning around. She might be biased because her mother's family was from there and her firm worked on the ALMANO project.

Still, I disagree on many levels. If the neighborhood had remained intact, it could have potentially been another South Side or Lawrenceville, but the business district is all but gone except for one block, and major segments of the rest of the neighborhood are quite patchy as well. The level of disinvestment is great enough that a lot more is going to have to come down before there are a critical mass of people interested in reinvestment.

As to the ALMONO project, while it is true they plan to build new construction in a "Hazelwood Flats" area, right next to the existing (mostly intact, but beat down) Scotch Bottom, I realized recently that it's quite likely this is going to end up being mixed-income housing (because the area will be hard to justify for market-rate, and with government funds they can get more money for construction). Hence I think the future of the area, if it gets rebuilt, is likely to be a dumping ground for poor black Pittsburgh residents who are displaced from the Hill District and elsewhere.

[Copanut]

Dude, I am so down with my homies in my McCandless hood.

[Buckeye Burgher]

I have heard Dormont described as "the place where Hipsters go to have kids".

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Burgher

I have heard Dormont described as "the place where Hipsters go to have kids".

and pay high taxes.

[JimboPGH]

Originally Posted by Copanut

and pay high taxes.

My god, you are going to beat that dead horse until it is ground into old leather, huh?

(For the record though, the high taxes are part of the reason my better half and I bought in Brookline instead.)

[Copanut]

Originally Posted by JimboPGH

My god, you are going to beat that dead horse until it is ground into old leather, huh?

(For the record though, the high taxes are part of the reason my better half and I bought in Brookline instead.)

You gotta point, I should back off. Just can't understand where all the money goes. Highest twp/boro millage rate there is, so many living in apts/doubles and apt buildings, and a ton of business tax. I enjoyed living there, kind of wished I held on to the duplex, would be great to got to Bucco games on the T.

[JimboPGH]

Originally Posted by Copanut

You gotta point, I should back off. Just can't understand where all the money goes. Highest twp/boro millage rate there is, so many living in apts/doubles and apt buildings, and a ton of business tax. I enjoyed living there, kind of wished I held on to the duplex, would be great to got to Bucco games on the T.

The dingbats who run the borough government are tremendously corrupt. Hopefully they'll all be put out to pasture in the next 5-10 years.

Also, I think Wilkinsburg has the highest millage rate this side of East St. Louis.