Which Northeast city would be best for a black middle class family? (live, cost) - City vs. City - Page 51 - City-Data Forum

ckhthankgod · 07-16-2021, 04:04 PM

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

ckhthankgod · 07-17-2021, 12:02 PM

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

ckhthankgod · 07-17-2021, 05:45 PM

ckhthankgod · 07-19-2021, 12:01 PM

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

BostonBornMassMade · 07-19-2021, 07:04 PM

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Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade

No this is very much not the case. The first rec dispensary in Boston was black-owned. There's a mandate 50% of Boston marijuana businesses have to be women or minority-owned. Mayor Kim Janey made that reality while she was still council president. So far there 4 marijuana shops in Boston 2 are Black Owned (Ascend and Pure Oasis) 1 is a woman-owned (SEED). It-by law- won't be like the liquor industry, at least not in Boston

Other black marijuana dispensaries with preliminary license approval in Boston:

Rooted In Roxbury (Roxbury)
KGB Collective (Mission hill and Jamaica plain)
Verdant (Downtown)
Evergreen (Hyde Park)
Mojos (Mattapan)

Major Bloom in Worcester is owned by a Black American and Haitian American, just got its final license to open.

https://themajorbloom.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV05kUQyOb0

Worcester has been said to have a lot of pull for younger black people in the state. Not so much families. I've pretty much been out of state since this begun (mostly) and its definitely a major departure from what I was used to when thinking of Worcester growing up.

This is important outside of just weed in that these businesses are cash cows generating black wealth and are essentially forced to contribute to their communities by MA law... whether that be block parties, neighborhood clean ups, educations courses (that's what this business has been doing- the owner are an MBA and a lawyer), or culturally sensitive programming/displays/lectures.

ckhthankgod · 07-20-2021, 03:26 PM

In terms of another smaller area, Ithaca NY actually over indexes in the representation aspect. For instance, this is the city's mayor: https://www.cityofithaca.org/131/Mayors-Office

School district superintendent: https://www.ithacacityschools.org/di...cfm?pageid=415

School board: https://www.ithacacityschools.org/di...cfm?pageid=213

A couple of county legislators that represent the city at that level: Accela Meeting Portal
Accela Meeting Portal

A community center on the city's South Side, which historically is where the black population was concentrated, but has dealt with some gentrification: https://sspride.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2PP00XtuQ

The city's oldest church and where Alpha Phi Alpha first got started, which is also in that neighborhood: https://st-jamesamezionithaca.org/
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/underground/ny2.htm
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4375...6!9m2!1b1!2i37

There is a concentration on the city's North Side and some are on West Hill as well. This pool named after the author born there is on the city's North Side: https://www.cityofithaca.org/facilit...x-Haley-Pool-1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Haley

It is right by this community center: Greater Ithaca Activities Center | Ithaca, NY - Official Website (the first county legislator listed is the director)

This elementary school named after a black native that was the class president at Ithaca HS in the early 1950's and later a teacher in the school district: https://www.ithacacityschools.org/bjm
https://thehistorycenter.net/Blog/10062306

This church is also down the street: https://cbcithaca.org/about-us/church-history
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4437...7i13312!8i6656

Income numbers are skewed down likely to the big college presence from Cornell and Ithaca College(, as 32.5% of black residents 25 and older in the county(Tompkins)/metro have at least a Bachelor's degree according to 2019 5 year census data(53.5% of the county/metro of that age range has at least a Bachelor's degree). That means that the black BA percentage is right around the national figure.

Ithaca City Schools are generally solid/good and covers suburban and rural areas outside of the city: https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000036448
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.ph...d=800000036448
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?...d=800000036448

https://data.nysed.gov/profile.php?instid=800000036423
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.ph...d=800000036423
https://data.nysed.gov/gradrate.php?...d=800000036423

School district Athletic director: https://twitter.com/AthleticsICSD?re...rg%2Fathletics
https://www.ithacacityschools.org/athletics
Schools sports Hall of Fame: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...sEeO3woTGIfN-h

Some are scattered in other areas in the county like Newfield, Trumansburg and Dryden.

ckhthankgod · 07-21-2021, 02:26 PM

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

AshbyQuin · 07-21-2021, 03:23 PM

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

Appreciate the post!
2 other "black main streets" I'd also add are 52nd St. in West Philly, and Germantown Ave.

masssachoicetts · 07-21-2021, 03:25 PM

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Originally Posted by AshbyQuin

Appreciate the post!
2 other "black main streets" I'd also add are 52nd St. in West Philly, and Germantown Ave.

ckkthankgod's work is so underappreciated.

MarketStEl · 07-21-2021, 10:59 PM

Some (occasionally personal but always) impressionistic comments on the Philadelphia-area communities you sampled here:

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Originally Posted by ckhthankgod

^continued starting with the PA zip codes...

(Western Pennsylvania street views snipped)

19320: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9837...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9882...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9750...7i13312!8i6656

Coatesville is the only city (as opposed to borough or township) in Chester County — it's an old steel town that has seen better days, but as the view of its downtown you chose shows, it looks neither rundown nor beat-up. A friend of mine drives a bus on a Rover bus route (local Chester County bus service) that runs through downtown Coatesville.

I've never seen South Coatesville before. Some interesting contrasts between the boulevard you picked and some other nearby streets.

Coatesville was also the site of an infamous lynching of a Black steelworker in 1911. In the "Red Summer" of 1919, Black Coatesvillians took up arms in order to prevent another rumored lynching (the rumor turned out to be false).

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19026: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9493...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9397...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9465...7i16384!8i8192

Drexel Hill (ZIP code 19026) is the toniest community in the state's largest township, generally middle-middle/lower-middle-class Upper Darby, but oddly enough, your street view picks missed Drexel Hill's toniest section. UD outdoes Cheltenham by a nose on the racial/ethnic diversity scale, and its high school — there's only one public high school in the 82,000-person township — ditto. The school district, however, is lower-ranked than Cheltenham's (which I don't hold against it), and Upper Darby is known for having high property taxes.

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19050: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9356...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9393...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9437...7i16384!8i8192

Lansdowne is one of the loveliest communities in Delaware County and has a rich stock of grand old turn-of-the-20th-century homes. Its downtown has a historic theater that is being restored, slowly but surely, and the borough recently voted to drop its ban on liquor by the drink in hopes of stimulating a restaurant scene in the downtown. Everyone I've ever talked to who lives or has lived in Lansdowne loves it, but families tend to avoid it because of the reputation of its school district: the William Penn School District, which Lansdowne shares with Black middle-class Yeadon (also in the ZIP code, as one of your picks shows) and poorer Darby Borough, Darby Township and Colwyn Borough, is the second-lowest-ranked school district in the county, ahead of only troubled Chester-Upland. But Lansdowne teens can at least walk to its high school. (I don't know whether East Lansdowne students are also in the William Penn district or the Upper Darby district; UD surrounds East Lansdowne, and a thin strip of UD separates East Lansdowne (Fernwood and Pembroke) from Lansdowne.

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19144: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0345...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0358...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0444...7i16384!8i8192

Before the highways and the malls ate away its business, Central Germantown was the second-busiest shopping district in the city after Center City itself; the building with the Walgreens in the second view you picked housed the C.A. Rowell department store, Germantown's ritziest; the Library of Congress' Gottscho-Schleisner Collection includes a bunch of photographs the architectural photography company took of the store after it enlarged and remodeled itself in 1950. Central Germantown had two homegrown department stores (this one and George Allen Inc., one block to the west on Chelten; Allen's 1927 building now houses the downsized and relocated Walgreens on its street floor) and two chains (Sears and JCPenney; Penney's was still in business when I moved here in 1983, but all the other stores had closed by then).

The first of your views lies two blocks south of the second one. It's sandwiched between two great local coffee shops, the Germantown Espresso Bar on Maplewood Mall (one block south of Germantown and Chelten) and Uncle Bobbie's Coffee and Books, Marc Lamont Hill's dope coffee house/bookstore at the south edge of Market Square, Germantown's historic town center. (Here's what I wrote about the place when it opened in November 2017.) Both survived the pandemic and are returning to full service. The atmosphere is cooler at UB's, but they're more serious about the coffee at the Espresso Bar. Both businesses regard each other as complementary and contributing to Germantown's slow revival.

You might want to consider finding a street north of Chelten Avenue and west of Germantown Avenue (5900 block or above) to include. The west sides of the three neighborhoods that comprised colonial Germantown Township — Germantown (19144), Mount Airy (19119) and Chestnut Hill (19118) — are all more affluent than their east sides, though your block of East Washington Lane in the northeast quadrant is pretty nice too.

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19129: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0125...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0191...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0130...7i16384!8i8192

East Falls is a little more diverse than outsiders think it is and a good bit more affluent than either the city as a whole or than outsiders think it is. But most Philadelphians know that the neighborhood is, or was, home to several notables: oarsman Jack Kelly, father of Princess Grace of Monaco; Mayor, and later Governor, Ed Rendell, the first Philadelphian to serve as Governor of Pennsylvania since 1913; and U.S. Senator Arlen Spector, who shares hometowns with the late U.S. Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.): Russell, Kan. (Spector being Jewish, I think that says something about western Kansas.) My landlord lives in a handsome turn-of-the-century Colonial Revival home right next to the rear entrance to William Penn Charter School (a private Quaker school dating to 1689) in East Falls' tonier north side. It's neither as busy nor as precious as Chestnut Hill, which recommends it to some affluent families.

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19128: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0332...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0480...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0464...7i16384!8i8192

Ridge Avenue is an attractive commercial district, and Roxborough is certainly affluent and well-educated, but it's only 14 percent Black, so I'm not quite sure what this is doing on this list.

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19118: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0729...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0760...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0670...7i16384!8i8192

Philadelphia's second-wealthiest neighborhood after Society Hill, or third-wealthiest after that and Rittenhouse Square. Its business district along Germantown Avenue is the dining destination for all of Northwest Philly above the Wissahickon. As such, it draws an eclectic clientele that makes Chestnut Hill look Blacker than it is, but it has a respectable percentage of Blacks residing there.

More later....