Rough areas/people in your town.

Mr Fatherland

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Nov 10, 2008
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There are two rough places in my hometown of Crewe, England. And they are Derby Docks and (one half) of Alton Street. Unfortunately, my dad lives in Derby Docks and I live on the "alright" part of Alton Street.

Firstly, Derby Docks is a mish-mash of council flats for mostly down and outs. I've been visiting my dad there every weekend for 9 years, so I'm kinda used to it. But just last month someone was attacked by a machete on the nearest street next to it.

Alton Street is a strange case, pretty much exactly one half is fine. There is a large park on the other side of the street and the centre of town is only 10 minutes away. But there is another street that cuts it in two, and the other side is literally like something from Mad Max. I go there when I run and I once saw a small boy, probably about ten, riding a tricycle eating a very large chocolate bar in nothing but his underwear. He was very dirty.

So, do you live in scumsville or in a walled off suburb? I'd like to know.
 

Ambi

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Oct 9, 2009
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No, but I'm interested in reading about them.

I had to hang out in one of the relatively rough suburbs for a couple of weeks to go to a job agency. There was a flannel-clad disheveled bogan next to me who was trying to use the computer, he was clicking the picture on the dialogue box multiple times, and he said he didn't even know what it said and couldn't for the life of him use a computer unless it was a playstation. I couldn't fix it either >_<

There were a lot more people smoking and arguing and wearing flannel shirts with ugg boots or thongs. All the overpasses and public walls were covered in graffiti, and plenty of the stores looked shabbier and less professional, in contrast to the shiny corporate shopping malls I'm used to.
 

Jonluw

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May 23, 2010
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I live in a nice place, but there aren't really any slummy places around here.
There's this area with houses along a highway or something, so everything's pretty crappy and covered in dust there. They're redirecting traffic now though, so that area will probably become nice again in a while.
 

Padwolf

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Sep 2, 2010
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I used to live in a place called Tooting, where someone gets mugged everyday, a few weeks ago there were 3 stabbings in one day, one resulting in death, it was a really rough area also there are a lot of cases of people being stabbed because of mistaken identity. One of my neighbours there, who is an old man was pulled off his bike and beaten on the ground, in the middle of the day too, it was a place filled with scum and chavs. Last year I moved to Warlingham, which seems quite safe, until just the other day my mother was nearly attacked with a knife by 2 boys because they wanted my puppy rotweiler.
 

master m99

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Jan 19, 2009
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yes, theres a large cousil estate called maesgeirchen by where i live , which was built in world war 2 in the shape of a target, thats what i call planing! =)
 

SckizoBoy

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Jan 6, 2011
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A Hermit's Cave
First thing I thought of:

Fred MacAulay: Y'know what that rough part of Glasgow's called? ... Glasgow!

Anyway, I'm Londoner born and bred... so: part of the East End (i.e. around Stratford), the south east (saaf o da riva), the north, the extreme south west... well everywhere except Chelsea and Kensington... *hrk*

Seriously though, London doesn't really have any genuine bad neighbourhoods, just small bad patches that bleed into several districts. But I think if anywhere qualifies, it's the East End/South East.
 

Pariah87

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Haha, great thread. Certain areas of my town have quite the reputation. To be fair, the whole town is pretty scummy anyway.

In the 60's a large new area was attached to one side of the town to house all the unemployed coming up from London. The same reason Milton Keynes was built except not as nice. Known locally as the Eastern District it had quite the reputation. Large parts of it are council houses/flats. It's not as bad now as it once was but 10-15 years ago if someone said they were from certain areas of the Eastern District you'd have a pretty good idea of what they were like.

We then have an area called Spencer, which is the main hard drugs/prostitution area, a 5 minute walk to the west of the town center. That is connected to Semilong which again is seen as pretty run down, low cost/council housing and more prostitutes.

Kings Heath is chav central, it has a small industrial estate in the middle of it. We even have a joke about it, although I'm sure it's transferable from town to town. " A massive Earthquake hit the area of Kings Heath today causing £3.50 worth of damage. Local resident Tanya, 15 year old mother of two was shocked by the incident saying "Everything was shaking so much I dropped my can of Stella and my son could barely roll his spliff"".

Then we come to my favourite place, a place I used to live near and learned was bad from a very young age. All that divides the area I used to live and the place called Briar Hill was a railway line with a bridge at the top of the road and an underpass at the bottom, so the kids from Briar Hill would often walk into my area to go hang out down the park. Briar Hill has a lot of flats, again council owned buildings and for some reason the crime rate there was really high. Burglaries were a common occurrence, car thefts happened daily, it had random arson, high levels of drugs. Busses stopped running there far earlier than other parts of town and the police ended up on first name terms with alot of the local youth.

It should be mentioned that I have nothing against council houses or those that live in them, I myself am working class and come from a working class family, it just happens that those areas are often have the most crime and unless you know where you are going or you live there anyway we generally stay away from them.

Oh, just thought of another one. The Racecourse, a large park in the town center. Don't go on it at night, especially round the edges. Packs of chavs prowl the area. Alot of people I know have been attacked there, a friend of mine getting a beer bottle to the back of the head, another getting attacked with a 2x4.

Hard to believe 60 year ago this town was called one of the nicest in central England. That's what happens when you turn a market town with a 45k population into one large industrial/warehousing hub with a population of 300k over the space of 20 years. I cannot wait to leave here.