I think my little 'hood has potential.. (pics)

[fierce_flawless]

Originally Posted by SanAntoQT

You need to go into the Northeast thread and tell one of the posters there about this.

Someone talking bad 'bout my hood??

It's really weird. That legendary "West Side Pride" is contagious. I never thought I'd have it, but here I am, a year later, and it's infected me. I guess it's just because I see/hear so many negative stories and so much of it just nonsense. What I see, living here, shopping here, interacting, even as a freakishly rare "guera", are people who are decent, hard working, and proud. People who do what they can to fix up their homes a little at a time, plant something pretty, work hard, and in general don't bother anyone.

I've seen my sons develop a fondness for an area that they were, at first, a little afraid of. My father's first wife was from this part of town, and he lived here for most of their marriage... so my half sibs are all "Westsiders", even though I don't have any contact with them I do feel some sort of connection that way, oddly enough.

My son (16) says that he feels this odd sense of "community" and belonging just by default, just by *living* here, that he hasn't felt in other places where we've lived... and even without knowing a lot of people around here. When we've lived in more affluent areas, he says, it felt different... something he can't put his finger on but there you have it from the teenager.

Now, these two articles in some ways were surprising to me. I knew the area was poor.. but wow, that's REALLY poor (and I've lived on that amount so I know! LOL!)... but the crime rates didn't surprise me at all. But wow.. poorest in the COUNTRY!? I had to read it twice, thinking at first it said "County", not COUNTRY.

The only noise is fire trucks because there's a station right around the corner, and fireworks around the holidays... and the usual, occasional all-day-party with obligatory Tejano music blasting, but they don't happen enough to be totally annoying to me

Largely I've felt that, aside from negative press, the area is basically ignored. Perhaps that's changing?

Now to nitpick; My, that first article (WOAI) was very poorly edited! Good grief! Advangages ?? So we have advangages and sangwiches, huh? LOL!

[sapphire]

WOAI is very difficult to read. Misspelled words, words missing from sentences--not conjunctions or prepositions, but really important ones like verbs and nouns sometimes. It's basically awful and makes your head hurt.

Very cool about your teenager feeling the connection.

[traveler guy]

I was actually shocked by the low crime rate fact. I mean I always hear stuff going on there from the news and just word of mouth so that really shocked me. But in a way it's a good shock cause that means it's doing better then I would of guessed.

[fierce_flawless]

Originally Posted by sapphire

WOAI is very difficult to read. Misspelled words, words missing from sentences--not conjunctions or prepositions, but really important ones like verbs and nouns sometimes. It's basically awful and makes your head hurt.

Very cool about your teenager feeling the connection.

Well apparently News 4 or whatever the other one linked to (on the NE thread) was no better. I find myself constantly yelling at the monitor when TRYING to read... "Don't these people have EDITORS!?!?" Argh!