Big city neighborhoods that are gritty not "ghetto" (living, better)
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I was visiting Toronto, Canada, a city with essentially no "ghetto" areas, but what stuck out was the abundance of blue-collar areas, full of grit, grafitti and old posters stapled to power lines. These areas looked lively, racially diverse and livable (albeit "lived-in" and well-worn"). Alot of the houses had visible signs of aging, but still were occupied and often decorated eccentricly. Nearly every mailbox was tagged in grafitti.
There were lots of mom and pop corner fruit markets, hamburger diners, old time inner-city hardware stores and some signs of maybe the start of gentrication, although some parts looked like what i would call skid-rows, not ghetto, but still rough around the edges, with lots of bums, street kids and old bag ladies, all of which tend to be caucasian.
Does America still have any inner city areas like this? I can tell you Chicago does'nt (from my experience). To me, Chicago just has nice gentrified/yuppified/Disneyfied (call it whatever you want) white hipster neighborhoods in the north and segregated African-American areas where no white dare tread in the south and west. There might be some in-between areas in west town, pilsen, wherever the white and latino areas border each other, but nothing like i saw in Canada.
I was in Vancouver several years ago, and noticed the same trend as in Toronto...the area east of downtown was diverse, blue collar, grungey and was home to lots of rough-looking white people. Are rough blue collar inner-city caucasians only a Canadian thing these days?
I recall seeing alot of movies set in New York during the 80s and 90s (like "the fisher king", "ghost" and Larry Clark's "kids") and they seemed close to the atmosphere i was describing in Canada. Is NYC still like this in some areas, or is it all monocultural nonwhite ghettos contrasted with ****-and-span glitzy white areas?
well, the definition of ghetto according to dictionary.com is
a section of a city, esp. a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships.
The areas that i observed in Toronto were not dominated by an ethnic minority. I would say most of the areas were 35-60 percent white living alongside (and presumably in harmony with) a diverse mix of orientals, hindus, arabs, blacks and latinos, as well as off-white ethnicities like Greeks and Portugese.
When most people think ghetto, they think of the terrible inner-city detroit neighborhoods were many buildings are abandoned or torn-down and murders are a dailey occurance. The areas in Canada i described still have lots of retail (usually mom and pop stores), lively streetlife and although there seemed to be a problem with panhandling, drunken barfighting, pickpocketing and harassment, it is a known fact (even a stereotype) that Canada in general and specifically Toronto have very very ridiculously low homicide rates. Sure, Toronto has homicide, but i think most of it occurs in the suburban commie-block tower-in-a-park communities rather than inner city neighborhoods like Cabbagetown or Queen East. There also seemed to be alot of starving artist and young punk/grunger band types in the Toronto neighborhoods i am talking about.
As for grit, yeah there was grafitti, old posters plastered on walls ...but it comes off being more of a lived-in blue collar generally healthy neighborhood, than something like East St Louis, South Chicago or Camden.
In some of the Toronto areas, there was some small signs of gentrification such as the odd starbucks or the odd new condo or infill project, they were not areas like East St Louis, which has been bypassed/forgotten by building developers/franchisers and tourists like myself alike.
I know what you're saying. I really like those type of neighborhoods myself, but they’re not as common as they used to be because many have become too gentrified or tuned ghetto. This is one aspect that I have always liked about Toronto, and from my understanding Montreal also has these types of areas in abundance (although I have never been to Montreal to say so for myself).
I live in Chicago and tend to agree with what you are saying about the neighborhoods here, although I think there are a few areas like that. Maybe Bridgeport, Ukrainian Village/East Village, Logan Square, or Avondale have a bit of this element, but nothing like Toronto. It's one aspect of Chicago that I do not like, as most of the more urban areas here are either yuppie or ghetto.
Anyway, here are some places like that I have been to:
Philly - most of South Philly, Port Richmond, Fishtown
Pittsburgh - South Side Flats, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, and a bunch more tiny neighborhoods that I don't know the name of.
New York City - Lots of places in the outer Boroughs - Greenpoint, Long Island City, Bay Ridge, much of South Brooklyn, Astoria, Woodside/Sunnyside, and a lot more. I think even some of the gentrified areas in New York retain this vibe, even in parts of Manhattan. Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and the Lower East Side are examples of such areas.
Buffalo-Allentown area
Cleveland-Ohio City, Tremont, Asia Town, Gordon Square
San Francisco - not good with the neighborhood names there, but this city surprisingly has a good amount of areas with an old-school gritty vibe. Maybe Lower Haight or Hayes Valley? Anyway, like New York, there are some high-end areas that still have an old-school vibe. I think Nob Hill and Russian Hill are like that.
yes, i googled some of those areas, 5lakes, and they kinda have that Toronto vibe. I could'nt believe Fishtown is a majority-caucasian area, it looks so run down. But yeah, Queens NY looks pretty blue-collar as well as multicultural.... Lots of grafitti and busy mom-and-pop stores. Thanks for the list...i think you know exactly what im talking about.
Anyone know if Seattle (the birthplace of grunge music, which glorified blue collar, flannel-wearing skid row culture) has any gritty white or mixed areas left? Or has the entire city been turned into a hip microsoft/apple boutique store?
BTW, im home sick today if you're wondering why i replied (and did the in-between googling) so fast...i have nothing better to do than this stuff right now
Don't know about Seattle, but here are a few more places:
Boston - Charlestown, South Boston, and many of Boston's inner suburbs.
Cincinnati area - Newport, KY (across the river)
Also, lots of small to mid-sized towns in the Northeast have blue-collar whites living in urban areas, although not much of chance of these places being bohemian or really vibrant like in bigger cities. Many smaller cities/towns in PA for example consist of dense, row-house type neighborhoods. Check out some of these cities for example:
Troy, NY
Wilkes-Berre, PA
Scranton, PA
Bethlehem, PA
Easton, PA
Altoona, PA
Johnstown, PA
Hagerstown, MD
Frederick, MD
cool, you are certainly well-traveled and full of information
seeing that you're midwestern, what do you think about south milwaukee and west allis? I've heard them described as blue collar, mullet-wearing, mustang-driving towns? What about some areas of Milwaukee? Is the area south of downtown in the city proper completely Hispanic yet? Or are there still blue-collar Polish?
I know what you're saying. I really like those type of neighborhoods myself, but they’re not as common as they used to be because many have become too gentrified or tuned ghetto. This is one aspect that I have always liked about Toronto, and from my understanding Montreal also has these types of areas in abundance (although I have never been to Montreal to say so for myself).
I live in Chicago and tend to agree with what you are saying about the neighborhoods here, although I think there are a few areas like that. Maybe Bridgeport, Ukrainian Village/East Village, Logan Square, or Avondale have a bit of this element, but nothing like Toronto. It's one aspect of Chicago that I do not like, as most of the more urban areas here are either yuppie or ghetto.
Anyway, here are some places like that I have been to:
Philly - most of South Philly, Port Richmond, Fishtown
Pittsburgh - South Side Flats, Bloomfield, Lawrenceville, and a bunch more tiny neighborhoods that I don't know the name of.
New York City - Lots of places in the outer Boroughs - Greenpoint, Long Island City, Bay Ridge, much of South Brooklyn, Astoria, Woodside/Sunnyside, and a lot more. I think even some of the gentrified areas in New York retain this vibe, even in parts of Manhattan. Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and the Lower East Side are examples of such areas.
Buffalo-Allentown area
Cleveland-Ohio City, Tremont, Asia Town, Gordon Square
San Francisco - not good with the neighborhood names there, but this city surprisingly has a good amount of areas with an old-school gritty vibe. Maybe Lower Haight or Hayes Valley? Anyway, like New York, there are some high-end areas that still have an old-school vibe. I think Nob Hill and Russian Hill are like that.
Might add Bella Vista, Queen Village and Graduate Hospital area in Philly though technically they are all South of South street
Also Northern Liberties still has a gritty feel to it as well
cool, you are certainly well-traveled and full of information
seeing that you're midwestern, what do you think about south milwaukee and west allis? I've heard them described as blue collar, mullet-wearing, mustang-driving towns? What about some areas of Milwaukee? Is the area south of downtown in the city proper completely Hispanic yet? Or are there still blue-collar Polish?
Not sure about Milwaukee. Been there a few times, but only to downtown and the high-end neighborhoods on the north side. I live in Chicago now, but I grew up in Ohio between Cleveland the PA bordor. I have actually traveled to more random places in the northeast than in the Midwest.
I was visiting Toronto, Canada, a city with essentially no "ghetto" areas, but what stuck out was the abundance of blue-collar areas, full of grit, grafitti and old posters stapled to power lines. These areas looked lively, racially diverse and livable (albeit "lived-in" and well-worn"). Alot of the houses had visible signs of aging, but still were occupied and often decorated eccentricly. Nearly every mailbox was tagged in grafitti.
this sounds like the area I spent some of my childhood in on the East side of Toronto.
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