Is it just me or do poor neighborhoods of the US have a safer vibe now and the suburbs like a distinctly threatening vibe? I live in a poor neighborhood and these days being somewhere like this and seeing like a gangbanger-ish car roll down the street doesn’t make me nervous but a cop car definitely does kind of like how those same types of gangbanger-ish cars made me nervous when I was a middle class kid growing up in a nice neighborhood in the 2000s but police cars made me feel safe and protected. Like it’s all switched for me. A few days ago I stayed a few nights at my dad’s huge house in nice neighborhood and I was alone one night and felt extremely unsafe. I was so relieved to get back to my apartment alone in a poor neighborhood. Has anyone else had this experience of such a transition over the last twenty years or so?
We tend to adapt to our environment and treat that which becomes foreign with distrust. This also applies to the evil we know and the one that we don’t.
My inner-city neighborhood is way more neighborly and has more social cohesion than the suburbs I grew up in ever did. We also have neighborhood festivals and stuff, so that’s pretty cool. Although we do have some drug houses and some homeless people who hang out near the commercial area and the crime rate might technically be higher than the suburbs (I haven’t actually checked), it feels safer because of the camaraderie.
When I lived in a poorer neighborhood it was more neighborly, but there was four shootings within a block of my house leading to three deaths, my garbage can was used as target practice, there were needles constantly found in the park on the corner, someone got mad and blew up their apartment building and muggings nearby were frequent.
I’ll take the nicer neighborhoods where interactions are less frequent thank you very much.
I didn’t say my neighborhood is poor; I said it’s inner-city. In actuality, it’s rapidly gentrifying. It’s still got some poor-neighborhood characteristics left (or perhaps just characteristics endemic to any place dense enough for good panhandling opportunities), but I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here if I had to buy in today.
When I lived in that nice middle class neighborhood growing up there was a drive-by shooting (which we all completely panicked about and made a huge deal), a meth lab that was discovered one day three doors down (the police came with hazmat suits and everything), my drug-addicted uncle was often wandering into the house drugged up on heroin, and there was this longstanding story about a guy a few houses down the other street who killed his wife then went up to a nearby mountain and shot himself. People had been warning me about poor neighborhoods all my life up until I was 21 saying they were even worse. But since winding up constantly in poor neighborhoods I’ve never been mugged, developed a generally thick skin, basic street smarts, learned who not to look in the eye, what not to do, how to react, how not to react, stay out of people’s business, what situations lead to what other situations, don’t be such a stickler about every little crime or suspicion of crime, listen to some gansta rap, know the greats, vibe, and everything is gravy. Seems simple to me now. Now I just enjoy the neighborhood. Birds chirping. Trees swaying. Haven’t heard about any murders, meth labs, and I can afford a place of my own, or at least a room of my own. It’s better than being a thin-skinned suburbanite who finds themselves walking on eggshells the minute a wild crime-ish energy appears.
I’m with you. Police and gangbangers are the same group, with the only notable difference in that police are empowered to ruin your day by the government, while bangers will face consequences for shooting people while they’re asleep in their bed, or flashbanging an infant in their crib.
A few neighbors including myself had our cars broken into in our driveways. None of us called the police, I personally didn’t because I have a car in my driveway that is unregistered and I was worried they would give me a hard time. My neighbor just shrugged and said what’s the point they’re not going to do anything anyway. It’s crazy that the cops are scarier than the actual criminals.
I would feel less at ease in an expensive house, thinking that it would be a good target for robbers. It’s not entirely true though. Robbers tend to target neighbourhoods that are less well off then their own link
Being paranoid about getting robbed wasn’t exactly my anxiety though. It was a lot more so the physical proximity to locally powerful people who make decisions every day that ruin dozens or even hundreds of lives in big ways with total impunity making me wonder how they are actually willing to entrap and hurt me or to have me be hurt. I hardly ever go to my dad’s house anyway. Material possessions aren’t a big factor in my sense of security. I have very little social competence in dealing with powerful people aligned for whatever reason in whatever way against me let alone physical competence (i.e. police), but there is a sense of social competence I have with people who would rob in a poor neighborhood. It’s like a different bioregion and I feel like it is increasingly separating from the entire rest of America like a checkerboard. I have seen so few police cars lately, it’s strange.
