[Indentured Servant]

Welcome to the hood!!!

[michmoldman]

And the purpose of this thread is.......

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by michmoldman

And the purpose of this thread is.......

No different than the purpose of the thousand of other threads. I grew up part of my life in a couple of those neighborhoods (the latter set of photos). Its partly where I come from and its generally the view I have of the city when I go back.......as I just did over the Thanksgiving Holiday. To be honest....I am rather taken aback by the tone of your comment. Do people ask you the purpose of your thread when you post pictures? Do you give the purpose or let the pictures speak for themselves? So I guess the purpose of this pictures is simply REALITY.....the one I knew while living there. Sorry that I did not get to your neck of the woods to take some pictures that need no purpose when presented, but none of my family lives there.

[danielj72]

I lived in the heritage hill historic distric of Grand Rapids for a couple of years when I was 20 years old. There are some really nice homes in that area. GR is Michigans best big city, there are still nice areas within the city limits. Some of these pics look to be of the south side of GR, probably not far off of wealthy street, or division street. Not all of GR looks like these pictures.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by danielj72

I lived in the heritage hill historic distric of Grand Rapids for a couple of years when I was 20 years old. There are some really nice homes in that area. GR is Michigans best big city, there are still nice areas within the city limits. Some of these pics look to be of the south side of GR, probably not far off of wealthy street, or division street. Not all of GR looks like these pictures.

No....I presented other views of grand rapids in the past.....not the places that I lived (although I would have liked to have)....but idealic places people like to see. I lived in Grand Rapids and Detroit. People like to just show one side of Detroit....the blight.....but all of Detroit is not blight either. One can choose to show different sides of cities. In West Michigan people like to look down on the East side of the state for its blight and problems......like West Michigan does not have its own....

Its amazing to me is that all I do is present MY PERSPECTIVE.....what I see and have seen.....where I lived.....and people feel the need to defend Grand Rapids from those images or ask me what my purpose is. To be honest.....my perspective is a minority perspective....particularly an African American perspective because the tracks in these photos are majority African American areas. This is primarily the view that African Americans have of Grand Rapids on a day to day bases.....not the views of the pictures generally posted on this forum by whites...which represents the world that you live in. We largely live a different reality and that is why Detroit is not that much different from Grand Rapids from an African American perspective.....because we have seen it here too.

[danielj72]

People in Michigan defend Grand Rapids because it is one of our better cities. It is not about slamming Detroit, but rather about wanting to say something positive about one of our cities. Many in Michigan are ashamed of Detroit, we all get a bad name because of the conditions of that town. You say the only thing people want to show about Detroit is blight, well unfortunately that is the most common thing you see in Detroit. I know there may be a FEW exceptions, but Detroit is in REALLLY BAD shape. Grand Rapids is not perfect, but it is a much nicer city. Even the run down areas on the south side are in much better shape than Detroit. The ghettos of Grand Rapids are more compareable to those in Saginaw, Flint and Lansing than they are to Detroit. Detroit is so bad that 1/3 of it is said to be abandoned. I was born in Detroit a few years after the riots. At that time my entire family lived inside its city limits. Now I know no one who lives there, only a few of my relatives are even in its suburbs now. I live 100 miles away from that place and I would never consider living anywhere near southeast Michigan. The whole area is depressing to me. I visited the downtown for the first time in 15 years this summer and I was shocked by the decay. I expected bad areas, but I saw abandoned skyscrapers, whole blocks empty, total decay. The shear hopelessness of the place is overwhelming. I wish something could be done to change it, but its just so overwhelming. The people who live there dont care about it, those who live in the suburban ring dont care about it, the rest of the state just wants it to go away and any discussion of Detroits issues turns into a racial blame game. It would take a miracle to fix it.

[Indentured Servant]

Originally Posted by danielj72

People in Michigan defend Grand Rapids because it is one of our better cities. It is not about slamming Detroit, but rather about wanting to say something positive about one of our cities. Many in Michigan are ashamed of Detroit, we all get a bad name because of the conditions of that town. You say the only thing people want to show about Detroit is blight, well unfortunately that is the most common thing you see in Detroit. I know there may be a FEW exceptions, but Detroit is in REALLLY BAD shape. Grand Rapids is not perfect, but it is a much nicer city. Even the run down areas on the south side are in much better shape than Detroit. The ghettos of Grand Rapids are more compareable to those in Saginaw, Flint and Lansing than they are to Detroit. Detroit is so bad that 1/3 of it is said to be abandoned. I was born in Detroit a few years after the riots. At that time my entire family lived inside its city limits. Now I know no one who lives there, only a few of my relatives are even in its suburbs now. I live 100 miles away from that place and I would never consider living anywhere near southeast Michigan. The whole area is depressing to me. I visited the downtown for the first time in 15 years this summer and I was shocked by the decay. I expected bad areas, but I saw abandoned skyscrapers, whole blocks empty, total decay. The shear hopelessness of the place is overwhelming. I wish something could be done to change it, but its just so overwhelming. The people who live there dont care about it, those who live in the suburban ring dont care about it, the rest of the state just wants it to go away and any discussion of Detroits issues turns into a racial blame game. It would take a miracle to fix it.

I understand that such is YOUR perception of Detroit. Its not MY perception of Detroit. Again, as an African American, the statistics of Detroit become a microcosm of Black America, to a degree, given that its an 85% black city. If you take an area of SE Grand Rapids and make it an independent city that is 85% black, you will find that statistically it will match up with Detroit problems pretty good....on a per capita metric. I see a lot more black wealth in the city of Detroit than I do in the City of Grand Rapids. I can go to Palmer woods, Indian Village, Boston Edison and a host of other predominantly black communities in Detroit that are Upper Class......there are ZERO such communities in Grand Rapids of blacks. All concentrations of blacks in Grand Rapids are POOR areas.....which is depressing to see. In Grand Rapids black communities are associated with Poverty which is pyschologically self perpetuating. In Detroit their are wealthy black communities as well as poor black communities.

I LOVE Michigan....Grand Rapids and Detroit. I want to move back to Michigan from Minnesota....and MY choice would NOT be Grand Rapids....but rather.....DETROIT. Why.....because as much as you find things that you don't like about Detroit.....as an African American I find a whole lot to like that Grand Rapids cannot come close to offering. Again....beauty is in the eye the beholder. A women that you might thing is not attractive someone else may find attractive or not that bad looking. When you hear people talk about Detroit....its really a culturally biased opinion. Granted....there is nothing in Detroit attractive to most white folks.......but there is plenty in Detroit that is attractive to black folks....and black folks are attracted to white areas too. You can say that we can find the good and things to like in racially different areas....where whites are more narrow in scope. Detroit has more abandoment because the city once had nearly 2 million people and now it has about 800,000. Thus, that few people cannot maintain a city constructed to house 2 million people...especially given that the people who live there now are poorer. Grand Rapids did not suffer such a mass exodus.

[dutchinnd]

OP--(sorry, but it feels really weird to address someone as "Indentured Servant")
Looking at photos 18-20 or so--are they taken on the SE side? They looked rather familiar and reminded me of the Oakdale Park/Fuller & Hall neighborhood where my grandparents lived.
Solid working class neighborhoods can be really neat places. Gated communities and the Adas of the world aren't all they're cracked up to be.
And despite being white & Dutch, after having lived in other parts of the country, I don't think that I could move back to GR either.

[skyl4rk]

Thanks for the pics

Its always good to go back to the old neighborhood.

Some may not appreciate it, but its still home.

[brandon5101983]

Yea I left the old neighborhoods from the SE side and went to bigger and better things, but it will always be home!!!!