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WTFH, Avondale in Chicago? That neighborhood is average, but NO WAY would I say 16th best neighborhood. This poll is just as weird and bizarre and useless, as the other poll(I think done by TimeOut) that declared Andersonville as their 2nd best neighborhood. And if it wasn't due to gentrification pushing people north from Logan Square, Avondale would barely be on anyone's radar. Before then it was a mostly Polish settled neighborhood, that never got a lot of attention from those in the rest of Chicago. Although the amount of Poles who still live in this neighborhood, has been declining for years. I think many of the Poles who moved out of Avondale, do still like to attend church at St. Hyacinth church though.
And btw, is Santurce a San Juan, PR neighborhood? If that is a neighborhood in San Juan, I'll have to look this one up. I had always wanted to visit this city, but never have.
WTFH, Avondale in Chicago? That neighborhood is average, but NO WAY would I say 16th best neighborhood. This poll is just as weird and bizarre and useless, as the other poll(I think done by TimeOut) that declared Andersonville as their 2nd best neighborhood. And if it wasn't due to gentrification pushing people north from Logan Square, Avondale would barely be on anyone's radar. Before then it was a mostly Polish settled neighborhood, that never got a lot of attention from those in the rest of Chicago. Although the amount of Poles who still live in this neighborhood, has been declining for years. I think many of the Poles who moved out of Avondale, do still like to attend church at St. Hyacinth church though.
And btw, is Santurce a San Juan, PR neighborhood? If that is a neighborhood in San Juan, I'll have to look this one up. I had always wanted to visit this city, but never have.
I was thinking the same thing for the Toronto listing in Dundas St West. It certainly isn't a bad hood but I wouldn't even rate it top 10 in Toronto let alone the world. Oddly, another such list a few years ago listed Queen St W in Toronto as the second coolest in the world. I don't think so but definately cooler than Dundas Street W. Whatever happened to it on this list though. I guess they forgot about that list.
So yeah - these subjective lists are just dumb. I wish they'd just say check out our list of cool nabe's worth exploring, instead of these stupid grand best proclamations. The lists would have a lot more credibility and believability if they dispensed with this world's best or coolest cr*P. Unless they have objective criteria and data on objective topics to go by to actually back up their claims, yeah these subjective lists on subjective criteria are bogus.
I can see Dogpatch in SF. It's an industrial turned mixed-use neighborhood, probably the newest part of the city to develop.
I don't really think of it as "cool" in the way that Seattle's Georgetown is (another industrial --> mixed-use area), but I can't really put my finger on why not. It might be the dominance of new construction, or the fact that Muni goes there (so it seems more "officially" supported by the city, not a place that sprung up quasi-organically), or the general lack of old repurposed warehouses and factories.
Probably the only cooler thing about the SF neighborhood is that it is named Dogpatch instead of Georgetown. That would imply a unique history of the neighborhood.
What you can't seem to put your finger on is that the Dogpatch feels more manufactured and built for profit rather than any kind of organic development or history to it's past that it allegedly claims as a working class area. Upon using the Google Map links you provided, the Dogpatch chose to not follow the flow of a "post-industrial" area in aesthetics. In the first link, looking west, you are immediately greeted by rather overpowering buildings while nice and beautiful buildings overall, are out of place with the lofts across the street. Modern buildings but they are certainly not industrial style. The lofts however were clearly a warehouse or plant at one point. This is even more apparent in your second link. You can tell the buildings in the second link with the Muni line are rather new and you can tell not a single one of them was at any point, a warehouse or plant of some kind. Yes you can see signs that the neighborhood was at one point an industrial area, especially looking west and east in that intersection, but up and down the Muni line? Absolutely not. You can see buildings with that traditional California mission style architecture, mixed in with a bunch of modern buildings. There is a difference between "industrial-style" condos and actual industrial style lofts and it shows. Something anyone can tell you is that buildings are built with "form follows function" in mind and almost all of the buildings in the second Dogpatch link are built with expensive housing in mind.
This is not at all true with the Georgetown links you provided. Let's be honest with ourselves, industrial areas are not and have never been beautiful areas. They are gritty and "ugly". They manufacture and ship goods but certainly not beauty. They are rough on the edges. Georgetown still has this. In the first link you can see a wall of brick buildings which may be historic lofts but may also still be an old warehouse or plant, it's unsure. Almost all of the buildings follow the same shade of red as the original brick buildings of the area, which creates an attractive aesthetic flow to those in the neighborhood. The buildings that do not do not stick out and dwarf the original buildings unlike your first Dogpatch link (the lofts in contrast to the new modern buildings on the other side). The exception to this rule seems to be a white and blue building in the background on another street which, just zooming in from the link you used, looks like a LITERAL WAREHOUSE based on lack of windows and extra ventilation and other things on the roof of the building. There's also things like chain link fences, shipping containers, open parking lots, etc. that just scream that they are not at all manicuring the area. In the second link of Georgetown, this is even more apparent. A wine tasting room? That wouldn't be profitable there unless the area was or still is being gentrified. But what's across the street? A literal upholstery garage with a dumpster out front? And down the street, is that a literal truck yard under an underpass with chain link fence and barbwire? Does the distillery there have a worn down "SIGNS" neon sign at the top and more shipping containers with graffiti on them? The plants especially at the overpass are not being taken care of and are nothing to write home about.
These are NOT the two of the same neighborhoods. Once they were the same like you say. However one's municipality decided to abandon one's history to redevelop it entirely into something new while another chose more adaptive reuse while keeping the original elements (an aggressive amount of powerlines, still having light industrial use properties in the area. For example, two clicks north on the airport way link and there's a literal METAL SCRAPYARD with what across the street, a bunch of trucks with graffiti and even trash bins full of garbage. I could only comfortably identify ONE industrial-like building in the Dogpatch, and that would be a tile/countertop warehouse in the first link next to those lofts. The dock/harbor in the second link of Dogpatch seems to be dwarfed out significantly by the amount of gentrified overpriced residential buildings along the Muni line and across the street, which really says something because it's hard to overpower a literal industrial port when looking at it from streetview.
TL;DR: Dogpatch is pretending to be an industrial area to profit off of something trendy, while Georgetown still is very much one. What you can't lay a finger on is that Georgetown is AUTHENTIC, Dogpatch is not.
I stopped reading as soon as I saw Ridgewood as the coolest in the US. I can think of 3-4 neighborhoods in Queens alone that are better for all kinds of reasons.
I stopped reading as soon as I saw Ridgewood as the coolest in the US. I can think of 3-4 neighborhoods in Queens alone that are better for all kinds of reasons.
Which Queens neighborhoods would you rank above Ridgewood? Ridgewood doesn't make my top five favorite Queens neighborhoods, but I can understand it to some extent from the point of young people, events and nightlife.
If Dogpatch is their pick for SF, then this list is based on the influx of formerly industrial neighborhoods being invaded by insufferable techie gentrifiers-wait, I thought they were all moving out of state?
Which Queens neighborhoods would you rank above Ridgewood? Ridgewood doesn't make my top five favorite Queens neighborhoods, but I can understand it to some extent from the point of young people, events and nightlife.
Astoria, Jackson Heights, and Flushing are all obvious, off-the-top-of-my-head neighborhoods that are better than Ridgewood for nightlife and things to do.
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