Frightening urban no-go hell zones you've lived in

I used to live very near said Estate on the Caledonian Road (lets just call it the Cally and be done wit it) but luckily on the other side of the railway line / road (ie the nicer houses up the way into Barnsbury on Offord Road - near the Hemmingford, lovely pub). Anyhow we would always hear terrible stories of deprevation of the area but never see too much. I think it depended in which pub you drank in. The Edinburgh Castle always seemed a bit of a no go for me.

Now I live on the fifth floor of an estate on hornsey Road/Hornsey Lane. Looks a bit like the Jasmine Allen off the Bill. Ans with the exception of last weeks loud music riot police incident (which we have still to verify) I've had no trouble at all.

The Edinburgh Castle - a palace, compared to the Offord Arms up the road - which is no longer, I don't know if that's connected to the time I saw somebody get glassed at 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon on the pavement right outside the entrance.

The Luffbra Estate, Brixton. Those yellow "assault"/"rape"/MOIDER DEFF ROBBERY things just keep getting closer to our flat. Our "local" pub is called the Hero of Switzerland - fabulous. However, being a small town girl, ich habe das VEAR. And fear. We also have A Local Shop For Local People, which features its entire stock behind bars! Gr8.

Yes, I know I mourned the passing of the Offord Arms. When i first moved in I popped in there for a drink - it was my local pub after all (if you didn't count The Prince Albert which you could see through the windows was a shit hole). Things wrong with Offord Arms:

a) Interior blue with red velvet curtains hiding windows. b) Pub went quiet when I entered. Everybody looked at me. I have never drunk a pint of Lowenbrau (shitty Lowenbrau too) quicker and exited stage right. The rivers of blood outside The Offord Arms were legendary. That said - now its disused I would buy it at a shot and turn it into a gin palace of joy (I'd get Tanya to work behind the bar).

I lived in this tenement house-type place up westgate road in newcastle for 6 months. That was all I could stand. We had slugs on the carpet. One of the upstairs folks had a RAT jump into the bath - yes, when he was in it! The people directly above us had a rave, and we sat in fear of our lives as we watched the ceiling move up & down by 1". Final straw was when a near neigbour & friend had a gang on 10-yr olds invade his house & rob him. I am not making this up - they used force of numbers, tied him up & locked him in a cupboard while they ransacked his place. He was never the same again. The next week I moved out. A couple of years later, the place mysteriously burned down. Most of my neighbours now are pensioners. It's much better - living like that is only ok if you have NO POSESSIONS.

xoxo

The worst thing about the Jasmin Allen (name TM to my mum and dad):

The fact that NO LOCAL FAST FOOD EMPORIA will deliver with the exception of Pizza Extra. I have tried just about every pizza / curry / Chinese in the area who have delivered a leaflet to us but as soon as I tell them the address they back off in great terror as if I had said 'I am a psycho cannibal who will devour your delivery boy as well as the rogan chicken and keema nan'.

Apparently the local tearaways viciously attack the delivery boys' mopeds. That was the only excuse I have been given. I am sure there is a law somewhere against delivering your leaflet to someone's house with promises of free delivery of foodstuffs then refusing to bring the food around. Bastards. One bastard Chinese place even took my order then called back 15 minutes later to tell me they couldn't deliver! Just as my gastric juices were flowing nicely.

Perhaps I should have put "belongings" instead of pos, er, poss, er never mind.

One more thing was that there was a mysterious boxed-off area in a corner of one of the rooms. We never mentioned it, until a visitor said "what's in there?" then "I bet it's a BODY!!!" thus articulating what we'd been scared to say to each other.....

I've only ever lived in nice places in the UK. I mean, obviously, yeah, Swiss Cottage, West Hampstead, Hertfordshire, proper WARZONES there. Tooting, despite or perhaps *because* of its racially mixedness, is actually one of the quietest places I've lived.

However... NY stories, I could tell a few. The first time I lived in NYC, I stayed with my brother, who was attending Columbia. Rather than live in one of the overly expensive university-sponsored dorms, he discovered that there were tenemant houses a few blocks up that were literally half to a third of the price... yes, because they were North of 120th Street, and in a fucking warzone neighbourhood of Harlem. I remember the first night I slept there, fresh from the country, I was half-woken during the night by the sound of gunshots, and I remember thinking "Oh, how interesting, NYC has a different hunting season than upstate..." and drifting back to sleep. When I woke up, I realised there were no deer within 100 miles of where we were.

That's not even the worst place that I've lived- that was actually in Albany, I lived in a converted crackhouse which someone had bought and turned into a commune/squat, in the middle of the worst neighbourhood that was left in Albany. (Notoriously, in the 60s, Governer Rockefeller had had *the* worst slum torn down in order to build the state Capitol complex.) We had a crack dealer on our corner and everything. It was pretty scary.

I live 100 yards from a road called MURDER MILE by every newspaper in the land. But I have always found Hackney to be quiet and friendly. Except for the bears.

I used to live in a slightly rough part of Camden. Now, I didn't think it was that bad, but the upstairs neighbour decided he didn't like me and used to play music so loud the walls shook, jump up and down on the floor, and shout through my doors and windows. It all got too much when he made a few attempts on my life, once trying to get his friends to beat me up, and shooting at me. I had to move out because of him, in the end. I lost my deposit on my flat and was sued by the landlords, but it was better than being killed...

Live in Tooting now, and it's actually rather nice. Never thought I'd say that...

You take your life in your hands if you venture near Sainsbury's in Chadwell Heath after dark. Well, not really, it's just a bunch of smoking 13 year olds. The Cooper's Arms is pretty bad though, full of junkies apparently.

Masonic Boom!@ I am from albany! DId you live i n Arbor HIll? Thats a nasty little place, but not so bad really. I,m sure NYC is worse! I had lots of hippie freinds who lived there.

Long Island, home of serial killers (Joel Rifkin), mass murderers (Colin Fergunson), trashy wannabe murderers (Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuco) and sadly, the Baldwin Brothers.

Yes, Mike! It was Arbour Hill! Wonder how you guessed... could it be cause it's the only "bad hood" left in Arbour Hill. Or probably not any more, the last time I was back, it was all being gentrified from Lark Street sprall- all the artists and poets who can't afford the Center Square side of Lark St. I was living there in... erm... 92? 93? Can't remember, I was only there for about 4 months between moving out of Manhattan and into Queens. But it was pretty rough, probably mostly because the house was in such apalling crackhouse condition. People got shot a couple of streets over. I guess that's what made it scarier than living in NYC, even though Harlem was probably technically a worse neighbourhood, Arbour Hill was just more the bad shit was *in my house* rather than something you could lock outside.

I've lived in LS6 in Leeds, but not the hip studenty bit - the iffy area below Hyde Park where the riots were in 1997. Also suburban Barnsley and on a Wakefield council estate were both far more genuinely scary than anywhere I've been in London.

Albay could sure use some gentrification. Talk about white flight. After 1985 Albany was abandoned

chris, when did you live in LS6? and wakefield on a saturday night is very scary indeed.

Central Albany, yeah. And it's getting worse since whassisface moved the government basically all down to Poughkeepsie. Reason? So his kids education wouldn't be disturbed. Yeah, real family man, what about all the kids of the state workers who were displaced?

Rockefeller though after he built that Capitol Plaza, that it would revitalise "downtown". Boy, was he ever wrong.

However, it was good because it meant that the bloke who started the commune bought said crackhouse for something like $10,000.

I lived on 11th Street between B & C in Manhattan in early 1980. What a scary block that was--bodega on the corner which was a front for the neighborhood heroin dealer, menacing types hanging out at all times, a shooting gallery down the road, that sort of thing. Still, nobody ever bothered me if I walked on the other side of the street. A friend from my hometown moved in with me and after a couple of weeks she just took her bags and headed back to Connecticut. I couldn't get it together to pay the entire rent (something like $250) and was evicted. Couldn't scrape together 250 bucks! God, I was pathetic when I was 18. I guess I just didn't give a shit, I'd move in with a friend in a tonier neighborhood, like First and A. It's all totally gentrified now, of course.

Unlike the awful LA neighborhood I once lived in near MacArthur Park. I don't know how you feel about this particular pop landmark--in my Jimmy Webb world I pictured never ending birthday parties in the rain with melting cake and beautiful balloons and such--but the surrounding neighborhood has, I believe, the highest incidence of violent crime per capita in LA. And the corrupt cops of the notorious Rampart Division. But you wouldn't really know it walking down the block I lived on, with it's cute little Spanish-style courtyard apartments. LA's insidious like that.

The plaza is like a huge spaceship that landed on Albany. Neighboorhood s were destroyed. And to show for it? "The Egg" which features such fine acts as "The Yugoslav National Juggling Team". And the State Museum full fo scary dead-person wax displays. PLus, most of the riverfront is beautifully tangled with overpasses and ramps.

Is there any place in the UK remotely as dangerous as the average american city?

But The Egg is KEWL!!! The only reason that Albany was great for me to land in as a teenager was cause I was obsessed with architecture, and the downtown area is so perfectly preserved (ie never gentrified and filled in with office blocks) that it shows every layer of American architecture from the Dutch Colonial to Post-modern as you walk up the State Street Hill! And the Capitol itself... did you know each floor was built by a different architect as they were fired and hired by whichever politcal party came into favour? (this was before the Democratic machine) That's why the basement starts out Romanesque, goes through gothic, and ends up being high, flowery Rennaissance by the time you get to the top floor. And it's the only State Capitol that doesn't have a dome. I could tell you loads of obscure architectural oddities about Albany. Probably cause it's the only thing the city has going for it!

Erm... Tom, yes. I think that American cities are just publicised as being "worse" while the British still like to keep this idea that they are more "civilised" because, you know, guns are banned and all.

I was gonna say that this is why American tourists are regular victims of anal rape when abroad, but I realized that I was pulling that factoid out of my ass.

Gareth: I was on Harold Walk from about Aug 96 - May 97.

As long as you lik e your architecture all spraypainted and covere d in crack.

Tom - having lived in New York(pre-1994) and London, I'd have to say London is infinitely worse. NY I think has/had more Mafia-type crime (i.e. the type that doesn't really bother anyone), while London is full of angry, desperate, bonehead drunks all "giving it the large one" as people say. Still, there never was a problem that wasn't solved by a huge influx of firearms into the community!

i lived in a room in a 1913 rooming house in vancouver .
Water was out 3/4 of the time, wireing caused fires randomly, the stoves were gas and all of us were afarid to use them because they looked like they would blow up
The fridge leaked freon and the roof leaked rain. There was no parking and it was 2 blocks from smack central. There were roaches and rats.
It cost 213 a month .
I stayed a year before i made it into the dorms.

What people say 'giving it the large one'?

Grew up in Dublin and went from shitty area to shitty area. North Dublin....Ballybough to be precise is definitely the gateway to Hell. The crap bus service in Dublin stops at 11:00pm so if you're on the piss, you got a choice run to the bus stop before last orders or walk home. Through Ballybough most of the time and there was only once that I didn't come accross a burning car with 10-year olds dancing around it and that's because the fire brigade got there and put it out so it was just a hissing smoking shell. From there moved to Clapton in London for a while .. 16th floor of a high rise. Favourite pastime was watching from afar the night before bin-day and watching my "neighbours" throw their rubbish bags from the multiple stories of this concrete prison into the streets below! After that moved to Jackson Heights New York...not too bad .... plenty of drugs, prostitution and killing but avoidable if you knew where you were going. Live in Amsterdam now and all is serene.

We also have A Local Shop For Local People, which features its entire stock behind bars! Gr8.

The Off Licences in Manchester keep their stock behind BULLET PROOF GLASS. Where I lived in Manchester wasn't too rough - it was quite studenty - but people did tend to get shot occasionly. There was a club round the corner from me where the BOUNCERS were bundled into the back of a van and driven off and then someone ran in and shot the manager (though obviously he shot like a girl because the manager survived)

I could never decide whether it was SCARY or reasurring to see armed policemen walking around the streets (I settled on reassuring because it was less scary)

Where I live now is pretty dicey, due to people who lurk nearby who are shopping for crack. There were communal basement areas that became crack dens earlier in the autumn, but they were shut down. There are also two flats in another stair that are similarily occupied but the people who live in them don't hassle the residents. Their customers are really filthy and can't even do monosyllables, but truly depressing because some are recognisable to me as people who were a little bit more 'together' when I first moved here. What's really gross are the teenage thugs who hang out here after school when it's dark, looking to buy a little bit of ANYTHING and I always see some kind of Crack Ho scuttling out when I go to buy the papers of a morning. This is because King's Cross has been Zero Toleranced and a lot of the drug traffic has moved down this way.

But all takeaway places still deliver.

Have to agree with MB and PS about Tooting - very mellow place, as indeed is Streatham (but then I again I live in the nice Leigham Court en route to the Common bit).

Oamaru, where the sewerage meets the sea. Home of the eternal bogan and pestilential crop of terminally old.

Where we live now is pretty bad. We hear close gunshots a couple of times a week. There's a crack empire directly behind our house and lots of little thugs wandering the streets. But we have a big dog who will rip someone's throat out before they get near us and we know our neighbors so it's not too bad. We just don't walk outside after dark.

Demesne Road, Whalley Range, which had reg'lar shootins in the pub up the end of the road. And it was great fun visiting mates in Moss Side, one of whom was mugged - he had no money, so they took his dole card. Woodhouse, Leeds - some seriously scary kids round there The edge of St Anns, Nottingham - crack hos, crack shootings, loony men carrying lengths of meaty chain Hyson Green, Nottingham - surprisingly quiet given its reputation and the gangs of dealers, but far too many burglaries given that nobody round there had anything to nick Am now in Kentish Town. It seems really quiet and rural after all the other gaffs.

"No-go" zone would be an exaggeration, but I moved into DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood...in the wake of a series of anti-police riots. It was only after I settled in that I discovered that the park where the whole incident started was half a block from my new apartment.

That said, it wasn't terribly onerous, once you got used to the bulletproof glass in the liquor stores and fast-food places. I'd go for a few weeks hardly noticing the area's grimmer aspects, until something--like hearing gunshots from the alley--happened. Still, the period of the Shotgun Stalker was unsettling...especially because my mother heard about the series of shootings before I did, and of course she did the motherly thing and gave me a call telling me to get out of the area.

My mom used to worry when I lived in Cambridge's Central Square, but it never really bothered me. Then when I moved out here, we had the WTO riots right outside my door- that was most definitely the definition of urban no-go hell zone; I retreated to a friend's place in Ballard (teensy corner of Seattle that's north of the ship canal and basically a sleepy suburb) for the rest of the week. I was living across the street from the Westin where Clinton & the other attendees were staying, so I figured it was best just to leave.

-Chapeltown, Leeds. I'd deliberately take the bus a halt further to avoid getting out near the local pub (see below). Thanks to the 'baby robbers' 90% of street muggings in West Yorkshire occured within a 500 metre radius http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/talk/images/violent_city_main.jpg -Toxteth, Liverpool 8. 3 locks on the front door, circular hole in the window where someone with a glass cutter tried to break in, being told to avoid Granby Street day or night...warned off falling for flirtatious red-headed beauty because local gangster was sweet on her..

-Govenhill Glasgow, addicts forming cues in the stairwell for the heroin dealers flat downstairs, first the neighbours being burgled by having the front door kicked in...then ours.

cues = queues (ffs!)

Whalley Range

So what did you get for your trouble and pain?

This year there are police in stab-proof jackets patrolling the route between my university and the Halls. On the local news last night they explained how they've opened up 4 safe corridors for moving between the different campuses, and they're meant to have a Police helichopter monitoring the situation from the air, though I haven't seen that yet. It's like Kosovo or something.

another case against bloody Manchester, then.

I moved just out of college into DC's Petworth neighborhood just off Georgia Ave.. before the metro station opened.. One month after the move I went to drive to work and found that overnight, some junkie took a power drill to my car door & didn't succeed in stealing either the stereo or the car, but did cut him/herself in the process and bleed all over the place. Got mugged at gunpoint once at 9:30am, and the cop taking the report asked if we knew about the crackhouse across the street..
Last night before moving out heard a shooting nearby, some poor Columbia Heights woman getting her laundry was killed in the crossfire.