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

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.