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No joke! Im bored at work and i was google mapping and i went to compton and it looks very nice, nice houses, manicured lawns, a couple of junky cars, but overall it looks very nice! I must stop listening to what rap songs say lol
No joke! Im bored at work and i was google mapping and i went to compton and it looks very nice, nice houses, manicured lawns, a couple of junky cars, but overall it looks very nice! I must stop listening to what rap songs say lol
I agree with the other thread though, neighborhoods aren't always defined by their visual aesthetic. Examples here in Chicago: Roger's Park - Normal 'nice' looking lake-front neighborhood where you can get jumped or stabbed on any block or at the beach (I have been robbed at gp there), Cabrini Green Projects - you'd be surprised, these days that neighborhood is very chill on most corners, Logan Square (West Side) and the "Wild 100's" (past 100th street southside... regardless of the look of these neighborhoods, anything can happen day or night.
I tend to pay more attention to what kinds of business are in the area, and how far apart sections of commerce are... I think that can tell you a lot.
No joke! Im bored at work and i was google mapping and i went to compton and it looks very nice, nice houses, manicured lawns, a couple of junky cars, but overall it looks very nice! I must stop listening to what rap songs say lol
I think you should take a vacation there and then return to the thread and let us know how it was. I'm betting you could find some really great rates on motels
The wild crime-ridden ghetto areas in many cities across America don't look exactly run-down and dilapidated. Many ghetto areas in cities like Baltimore, Detroit and Camden look very run-down by American standards. However, some of the roughest blocks from DC to Oakland to San Francisco to Miami don't look that bad. Look at all these historically dangerous neighborhoods from street views on Google Maps. Pretty much all of these areas had a murder rate of 200+ per 100K at one point in time during the 80's to the present as all of these areas were ravaged by the advent of crack cocaine and a constant flow of heroin. Yet, all of these neighborhoods look solidly middle class:
This is known as the arguably historically worst neighborhood in the rough and tumble Northeast DC:
Here is a streetview of my old neighborhood of the infamous Lakeview in San Francisco which had the highest crime rates in the entire city in the early 90's which had a dozen recorded homicides on a single street corner in the span of one year back in 91' or 92':
One of the reasons many of these areas "don't look that bad" is because many of these areas have been gentrified and restored in the past ten to twenty years. For example, my old neighborhood of Randolph Street in San Francisco look much more dilapidated and run-down only a few years ago. As the wounds of the crack epidemic have healed, houses have been flipped, re-bought and re-painted as a wealthier, lighter shade of people has moved into the old hood redefining these areas.
Also, in America, poverty is largely relative and not extreme like it is in the third world. Aside from homeless people, America does not have the filthy shantytowns of sheet metal shacks or mudhuts that you will see from India to Indonesia to Africa to Jamaica. In America, we have public housing with electricity, water, plumbing and EBT. Ironically, many ghetto areas in big cities and former industrial towns were once places inhabited solely by working class to upper middle class White folks. This is the reason why Detroit has many rather large houses, which are albeit extremely neglected. Compton was also once entirely White. George W. Bush lived in Compton as a child before the town became one big ghetto in the 50's. George W. Bush isn't all that old which also gives us a frame of reference to how relatively recently certain cities, areas and neighborhoods have actually been neglected and ghettoized. White flight was definitely a driving factor in what caused overwhelmingly Black ghetto areas to exist in and around big cities. Once Blacks started moving to the cities, Whites said "there goes the neighborhood" and started leaving in droves for the newly built suburbs. Factories where Blacks worked were shutdown and moved overseas. Blacks living in the inner city who worked manual labor jobs in the shutdown factories lacked formal education and were left without jobs. Small businesses in these areas that catered to working White folks in the city were replaced with liquor stores and places that sold firearms once poor jobless/low-income Blacks became the majority in the neighborhood.
In addition, in many ghetto areas in California, the weather is not as extreme as it is on the East Coast and in the Midwest which have heavy snowfall, extreme heat and cold etc. So even when California hoods are completely neglected, they don't have the same wear and tear as you would see in Detroit or Baltimore.
All in all, it is the mentality of a handful of bad apples living in the ghetto that makes these areas dangerous. Most people living in the ghetto are law-abiding citizens. A minority of thugs, drug dealers and gang bangers is what makes every ghetto crime-ridden. The cost of living is high in most big cities and major metro areas in America and people in the ghetto have the fewest options of how to make money legitimately. Public education in the inner city is notoriously poor as a huge percentage of inner city kids do not complete high school. Many inner city kids have to worry about providing for themselves financially at a very young age because they lack financial support in their household because their parents are neglectful, broke and or addicts. When the only options people have is to sell drugs to make lots of money, work at McDonald's everyday and still not really makes end meet or starve, people are going to choose to sell drugs. Also, in America, poor people in the hood want to buy a bunch of fancy **** like the latest cars, sneakers and clothes like middle class White people who can afford these things by working in upper middle class White collar jobs that inner city Blacks are generally shut out of completely because of lack of education and extreme institutionalized discrimination. The extreme competition for the limited scrounged up dollars of neighborhood dope fiends leads to people in the ghetto robbing and killing people. The law of the street is very unforgiving. Unlike many jurisdictions across America, capital punishment in the streets in the form of gun violence and murder is standard stuff. America only has 90 guns per 100 people.
Desperation + long-term structural unemployment/underemployment + tons of guns + tons of liquor stores/alcohol in a neighborhood + inadequate public education + civic neglect + seething resentful angry unmotivated populace of second class citizens + lucrative illegal open air drug market = ****** up place to live regardless of what the housing looks like.
So you have tens of thousands of career criminals in ghettos across America who live in modest houses in deceivingly normal middle class areas. It is not so much what the neighborhood looks like, but it is the illegal occupations of the inhabitants of many ghetto areas of what they do for a living which is more often than not selling drugs and gang-banging in the case of Compton.
Last edited by Count David; 06-26-2012 at 02:21 AM..
Reason: language
Small businesses in these areas that catered to working White folks in the city were replaced with liquor stores and places that sold firearms once poor jobless/low-income Blacks became the majority in the neighborhood.
Interesting read, but this is incorrect and sounds like that famous but inaccurate monologue from "Boys in the Hood." Unless the store has been there for decades, or affordable space is just hard to come by in an expensive city, it's exceedingly rare to see a gun store choose a ghetto for its location. Guns are expensive; guns are purchased by people of at least some means, and neither the store, the insurance carrier, the customers nor the ATF auditors want the problems attendant with locating a store in a bad neighborhood.
Further, ghetto residents are frequently disqualified from firearms ownership, so it makes little sense to seek that market. Additionally, it takes some desire and ability to bring ones guns to the range for an afternoon of practice or recreation, and ghetto residents simply lack the means to purchase the ammunition and other consumables that is part of active participation in the hobby.
Look at the site selection for Bass Pro, Gander Mountain, Dick's, Cabelas, Big 5, Sportsman's Warehouse, etc. for an idea of who the likely gun buyer is.
Interesting read, but this is incorrect and sounds like that famous but inaccurate monologue from "Boys in the Hood." Unless the store has been there for decades, or affordable space is just hard to come by in an expensive city, it's exceedingly rare to see a gun store choose a ghetto for its location. Guns are expensive; guns are purchased by people of at least some means, and neither the store, the insurance carrier, the customers nor the ATF auditors want the problems attendant with locating a store in a bad neighborhood.
Further, ghetto residents are frequently disqualified from firearms ownership, so it makes little sense to seek that market. Additionally, it takes some desire and ability to bring ones guns to the range for an afternoon of practice or recreation, and ghetto residents simply lack the means to purchase the ammunition and other consumables that is part of active participation in the hobby.
Look at the site selection for Bass Pro, Gander Mountain, Dick's, Cabelas, Big 5, Sportsman's Warehouse, etc. for an idea of who the likely gun buyer is.
I think that poster means gun sellers of the pawn shop variety, not Dick's Sporting Goods.
Interesting read, but this is incorrect and sounds like that famous but inaccurate monologue from "Boys in the Hood." Unless the store has been there for decades, or affordable space is just hard to come by in an expensive city, it's exceedingly rare to see a gun store choose a ghetto for its location. Guns are expensive; guns are purchased by people of at least some means, and neither the store, the insurance carrier, the customers nor the ATF auditors want the problems attendant with locating a store in a bad neighborhood.
Further, ghetto residents are frequently disqualified from firearms ownership, so it makes little sense to seek that market. Additionally, it takes some desire and ability to bring ones guns to the range for an afternoon of practice or recreation, and ghetto residents simply lack the means to purchase the ammunition and other consumables that is part of active participation in the hobby.
Look at the site selection for Bass Pro, Gander Mountain, Dick's, Cabelas, Big 5, Sportsman's Warehouse, etc. for an idea of who the likely gun buyer is.
True. I've never seen a Guns 'R Us in any hood. Although the hood is infamous for having corrupt businesses who "look the other way" with liquor stores who sell alcohol to 14 year old kids and pawn shops who will sell firearms to violent convicted felons under the table for the right price. Most guns in the ghetto are obviously purchased on the streets illegally. No one who has a registered gun and a permit to carry is going to shoot up the block because his bullets and or casings can be easily traced by the cops or the feds. Many guns that are purchased on the street have "bodies" on them already meaning that they have already been used in murders. This is the reason why many thugs in the ghetto only own larger firearms like AK's and assault rifles because the larger guns are significantly cheaper to purchase on the streets than a gun that can be easily concealed in your boxers. But gun culture in the American ghetto mirrors the gun culture in war-torn countries like Iraq with average civilians of all ages proudly touting huge guns that they are not afraid to use. Here is an interesting article chronicling the perpetual cycle of gun violence that continues to unfold daily in my old neighborhood of Lakeview in the rougher poorly publicized southern fringe of San Francisco, which can be very deceivingly nice looking and middle class:
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