Worst Areas (Cleveland, Lakewood, Euclid: crimes, shop, buses)

[costello_musicman]

Originally Posted by BenFlesh

My take is that some of the higher crime areas are also some of the most interesting. I put neighborhoods into three categories:
1. Safe (relatively): old brooklyn, most of west park, edgewater, archwood, shaker sq

2. High crime, but interesting (that is, businesses are operating and has a functioning economy): north collinwood, clark-fulton, buckeye, st clair-superior, harvard-lee, ohio city, tremont,glenville; all of these have reasons for going there

3. Dead; some of these neighborhoods are so far gone they're basically rural: kinsman, central av, most of hough, willow (if you've never been there, make the trip; a fascinating trip through time; I believe stranger than paradise was filmed here), warner-turney (all the crime of the inner city plus the blandness of the burbs).

By the way, I moved from cleveland seven years ago, so my understanding may be somewhat outdated. I miss it, though; boston is a bland simulacrum, an alphaville posing as a real city.

In your seven years gone, Tremont and Ohio City have been on the upswing as one of the trendier places to live. I know during that basically during your time period gone, Tremont had the highest property value increase of all of NEO.

It took me being away for six months to realize I miss Cleveland and what it had to offer. I'm back now enjoying the city.

[gtsurfer05]

Sure Tremont has many new Housing options for the Urban Pioneer, however its still not a safe area. Cleveland Police like to refer to these people as VVs (Volunteer Victims). I've actually been told by Cleveland Police when I was around the Clark/Storer Area, by 54th, to leave the neighborhood because it was unsafe. ( I was looking for St. Michaels Church on 54th between Bridge and Lorain and ended up on 54th between Clark and Storer since I just knew the place was on 54th). As for the bad areas in Cleveland, I'd really say it would be most of the east side. The area around 55th and Woodland looks really bad, especially along woodland and the projects.

[BenFlesh]

Gtsurfer05,

I used to live at the corner of 59th and Storer in 2000-2001. Tremont was far too upscale for the likes of me. Basically, Storer Avenue back then was a row of bars, such as the Tropical and the Beehive, that the city was always trying to close.

I was never a victim, except to the extent that the local pharmacists liked to use my old broken down car as a stash location. I wised up and sent the car to the wrecker before something could be pinned on me!

Storer isn't terribly interesting, unless you're into bar brawls and lots of places to sell your scrap metal. However, I used to love Clark Avenue, with its great junk shops, bakeries, and the best newsstand in Cleveland, Bank News.

I suppose many of you will tell me these things no longer exist, and I will be sad.

[BelieveInCleve]

I think some of the worst areas on the Westside are near Madison Ave. and some of the side streets off of Detroit and Lorain. Also some of the sidestreets off of W25th/Pearl arent that good. The near westside has a pretty high crime rate outside of Ohio city, and even Ohio city isnt that good crimewise. The worst areas in the city I think are around E 93rd St./ Woodhill. Also off of 55th seems to be the most abandoned areas, not to forget E 79th which is really bad all the way down. Some of the areas just a few blocks from the Cleveland Clinic are also pretty bad, but they have a lot of new housing so it doesnt look that bad.

[TheProf]

Here's an easy way to visit the worst area, in relative safety. Just go to Tower City. Board an eastbound Blue or Green rapid transit train. After you past the East 55th station, the line will be elevated, for the most part, to the next stop at Woodhill road. Between these 2 stations, on the elevate portion, you'll pass through and see the poorest and most decrepit housing tracts in Cleveland. This area is called either Central or Garden Valley. Most houses have burned or been torn down so that most areas are bucolic. The houses that are left are mostly dilapidated shack-like structures, although there are some spot efforts to build new housing tracts, like those around the E. 79th St station. Cheek to jowl with this area are miles of empty, crumbling factories. It's very, very depressing.

[BelieveInCleve]

I dont even know if thats that safe though. They have had 4 or 5 reports just this year of people getting shot and robbed on the RTA. I have been to the area that you are talking about (E 55th-E 93rd) and its a really bad looking area. It seemed like there were abandoned factories everywhere and the houses were either boarded up or falling down. The new houses they built make it look slightly better, but still 1 block away is abandoned again. Some parts of E 79th St. are completely in ruins. The area north east of downtown looks better than the SE because most of the buildings are still standing but they all have bars on them or are boarded up.

[gtsurfer05]

Originally Posted by BenFlesh

Gtsurfer05,

I used to live at the corner of 59th and Storer in 2000-2001. Tremont was far too upscale for the likes of me. Basically, Storer Avenue back then was a row of bars, such as the Tropical and the Beehive, that the city was always trying to close.

I was never a victim, except to the extent that the local pharmacists liked to use my old broken down car as a stash location. I wised up and sent the car to the wrecker before something could be pinned on me!

Storer isn't terribly interesting, unless you're into bar brawls and lots of places to sell your scrap metal. However, I used to love Clark Avenue, with its great junk shops, bakeries, and the best newsstand in Cleveland, Bank News.

I suppose many of you will tell me these things no longer exist, and I will be sad.

If I was unclear before, I was talking about how Cleveland Police refer to the yuppies that move into the new houses being built in areas like Tremont.

What I really don't get is why anyone would want to move into those houses right next to the projects on Woodland Ave even if you were to work downtown. Its not like you'd want or could go walking around the neighborhood.

[BenFlesh]

GTSurfer,

I agree with you on most counts. I took your comment about Clark and Fulton to be a springboard for reminiscing about Cleveland. Tremont and Clark-Fulton are OK as long as you are aware of your surroundings. At least there are places to shop.

It was really bizarre, I thought, to build the suburban style housing pods that sprang up along Central Avenue, which was, in the late 90s at least, the single most horrible street in Cleveland. I wonder how many of these have slipped into disrepair. After all, there's nowhere to shop, or do anything that involves going outside the house. A number of the recent inner city developments were put up, it appears, without any thought as to how people actually live.

[tribecavsbrowns]

It's not often my jaw drops at decay and desolation in Cleveland; I've lived here pretty much all my life. But the other day I was driving down Woodworth Road from 152nd to St. Clair, a drive I had never made, and let me tell you, I'm not sure I've seen a worse-LOOKING area in Cleveland. I believe it is the city of East Cleveland on the south side of Woodworth (which looked worse) and South Collinwood (DEFINITELY not to be confused with North Collinwood) on the north side of the street.

As a westsider, I sometimes forget just how much worse the worst neighborhoods are on the east side than on the west. It's easy to spend most of your time on the west side and zip down Chester whenever you're on the east side and forget that places like Forest Hills and Kinsman and Garden Valley and Woodhill exist. Nasty, nasty areas.

The worst area on the west side is probably either Storer between Fulton and 65th or the trapezoid formed by 81th, 65th, Lorain, and Madison with all those little alleys. It's pretty third-world over there.

[BelieveInCleve]

I also thought it was really weird that they decided to build suburban looking houses along Central and near Hough. I remember i was on the eastside a while ago and I was in a real decayed area and then 1 or 2 blocks later I saw suburban houses and I was very confused for a second and then started laughing at how dumb it looked. I think they should have built more urban-style houses, I mean its in the middle of Cleveland. I dont think any of the people can even afford those houses and the people in the suburbs dont want to live there because its considered a ghetto and it was burnt down 40 years ago.

The westside doesnt have any completely gone areas like the Eastside does, but still I was surprised that even in the nicer areas of the westside there was still a lot of abandoned/burnt houses. I was near Ohio city and they had houses going for 200k, and on the same block of most of them were really bad looking houses. Tremont seems like its improving some since they built all that new housing and knocked down the projects (Valley View I think) a few years back.