Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well, you admit that you have minimal experience in either city, so your observations on this specific topic are pretty much pointless. Once again, i'm an SF native and life-long resident who has been to pretty much every corner of this city. I have been to Oakland many, many, times too, and been in some of it's grittiest, most run down areas, as well as gritty areas of some other big cities, such as LA, Philadelphia, San Jose, San Diego. Trust me, SF has plenty of grit that can hang with places like Philly and LA, though Philly seemed more gritty overall for sure (and SF's grit knocks the socks of off SD and SJ's grit for the most part). Do i need to show you pictures of SF grit? I could easily post hundreds (amateur photographer here, and there's no shortage of other people's gritty SF pics on flickr either). In fact the only cities I've been to that make SF look like "beverly hills" are Mexican cities. SF grit has nothing on Tijuana, Ensenada or Morelia grit, that's for sure...except for maybe some of SF's very worst housing projects.
That's another thing... SF has multiple housing projects that were rated by HUD as some of the worst in the nation. I'm talking scores of 20-40 out of 100 total points, with 80 points being "good" and 60 points being "acceptable." Mold, abandoned, boarded-up units, broken appliances, backed up pipes that create open sewers in the street, bullet holes in walls, rot, water damage, busted stairs, lack of smoke detectors, burnt out trash cans and play structures, garbage, squatters, drug dealers, crackheads, etc etc. Does that not sound pretty damn gritty to you? Trust me there is grit in SF, and some nabes of SF really have some serious amount of it going on.
I believe most US cities have grit to some degree (especially cities with moderate to high crime rates and old industrial areas...which SF definitely is). I think a better thread would have been "America's LEAST grittiest cities."
Of course Oakland has more poverty per capita. SF has more impoverished people than Oakland, but on the flip side it has more affluent people too (SF has more people period). I was just pointing out that SF has things that many people think it doesn't have (and look at that, "toy grit" SF even has some of it to a larger degree than scary old "MEGA GRITTY" Oakland does). Neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class as we all know... It's not like SF's poor people are evenly dispersed among the well off people, while Oakland's poor people are all concentrated or something. The point being, SF has at least the same amount of poorer areas as Oakland, as WELL as many more nice areas too (or maybe it's that SF's poor areas are just more populated due to SF's higher density, but not necessarily as large in land area. Oakland IS about 10 square miles larger than SF with just half the population).
for the record, my definition of "grit" includes but is not necessarily limited to:
-graffiti
-litter
-rough, cracked, and dirty streets and sidewalks
-well-worn buildings (this can be of the worn, forgotten nearly falling down North Philly variety, or the worn, dirty, but constantly maintained and lived-in SF variety)
-abandoned buildings (whether completely bombed out like many are in North Philly, or still structurally sound, but boarded up, tagged up, and dirty, like is common in SF)
- a decent amount of "street people" (homeless people, drug addicts, crazy people wandering around, drug dealers, hustlers, thugs, pimps, gangbangers, prostitutes, etc)
- old semi-abandoned industrial areas
- moderate to high crime rates (This isn't set in stone of course, but of the cities i've been to, the grittiest have always had higher crime rates than the least gritty....take SF and Philly vs. SD and SJ for example.)
SF meets all those requirements. So does Oakland...so do many, many other cities.
The question in the OP points to the "overall feel" of a city not straight "poverty rates" -- as regards the impressions of a tourist being "pointless" in such a disccussion I would argue that on the contrary, they are quite relevant in speaking to "ambience."
Your post is extremely interesting and has brought to light a side of SF I didn't know existed, but I still find it hard to believe that SF can compete with the miles upon miles of grit one finds in a place like Philly. I don't dispute that "grit exists" in SF -- you have convinced me -- but I remain unconvinced that it dominates the character of the city in a way it does in say, Philly, Newark, or Chicago.
What do houses cost in SF in the "gritty" areas within the city limits? Can working poor/lower middle class families afford to buy there?
If gritty=dirty, then NYC is up there. Chicago is pretty dirty but I was surprised at how dirty New York felt, even beyond the obvious garbage bags in front of buildings.
This is the most underrated Gritty City in the country...DURHAM, NC
To me, this city's grit is like no other for a city of its size.
Grit is more about aesthetic than socio-economic. At least in the connotation I am using it in.
Durham is made up of a population of 200,000. The inhabitants are mostly affluent, top echelon intellectuals, many black. Durham does have a crime rate due to economic disparity but this just correlates to the grit. The actual cause is blue collared in origin hence, being more industrial influenced.
I would love to see some of the other smaller gritty cities...
These are my favorite gritty cities:
New Orleans (grittiest in the southeast/sw)
Balitimore
NYC
Memphis (Delta Grit)
Trenton (grittiest)
Durham, NC (example of a gritty affluent city)
...also...just because a city is big does not quality it as gritty. I don't think of chicago, and west coast cities, or miami as gritty.
There was a book written in 1978 by Mary Procter which was actually called "Gritty Cities". It is a collection of photos and histories of several smaller gritty cities. Included in that book were:
Allentown, PA
Bethlehem, PA
Lancaster, PA
Reading, PA
Paterson, NJ
Trenton, NJ
Hoboken, NJ
Bridgeport, CT
Norwich, CT
Waterbury, CT
Troy, NY
Wilmington, DE
I definitely cosign Allentown, PA.
I hate grit, its ugly, I could never live in a gritty place.
I can't think of a single city in the Rust Belt that is NOT gritty! And those cities were gritty even when they were prosperous. I do like grit in a city!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
