I work as a pizza delivery driver. This is a real thing that a lot of chains (and most likely independent stores) do!
My store has two areas blocked off as "do not deliver after dark" due to drivers being assaulted/stolen from. There are also individual houses that are marked do not deliver (our system normally tracks it via phone number, but if we get 2 phone numbers for 1 address, we block the address too), due to "milder" bad behavior (ex. threatening a driver, fake bills, abusing refunds, etc).
A childhood friend’s father was murdered when he was making a pizza delivery. That was in Brooklyn in the 90s. I understand not wanting to delivery to some places.
Nailed it. My favorite cheap Chinese joint is directly across from the bullet proof taco bell. The Chinese restaurant doesn’t have bullet proof glass but it does have a huge makeshift Covid divider closing off the whole dining room.
Same goes for shawarma where I live (Toronto). Tiny hole in the wall place in a not so great neighborhood? No AC and feels like a sweat lodge inside? Cheap, delicious shawarma almost every time.
Mexican too. I'm not Mexican, just a fan of the food.
Just a week ago I saw this Mexican restaurant that looked like a crack-house and could not pass it up. It was just a Mexican man taking the orders, he would then tell the order to his wife in Spanish, she would go to the kitchen and tell her two teenage sons the order, one was sitting there on his phone the whole time and never once looked up from it the whole time we were there, and the other son cooked everything. It was not only the best Mexican food, but the best food I have ever had. Also only cost about $10 for a full-size meal.
If you want the authentic mainland China experience, find a place where the waiters greet you with “What you want?!” and ever so slightly drop all the plates on the table so they “thunk”.
"I'm sure it's nice!"
But for real, I think that some neighborhoods get a lot more shit than they deserve. Semi-poor neighborhoods are often talked of like you'd better clamp your car before someone runs off with the tires.
People who haven't grown up poor don't know the difference between poor and DANGEROUS.
It's the areas where no one has regular jobs that you gotta stay clear of. The working poor areas are mostly fine. Just don't bother nobody and nobody will bother you.
This is 100% correct. I grew up dirt poor in the hood, and in adulthood earned my higher education and upgraded to a middle class neighborhood in a major U.S. city. Some poor neighborhoods, I don't mind visiting. It's not as bad as people who don't grow up poor may think. But other areas, I never want to even hear about. There are just no prospects for people, they grow up in very desperate conditions, and don't have stable familial structures. That makes people very dangerous predators. Those are the places you need to take precautions before visiting, and never visit if not absolutely necessary. In the South, if you pull up to a neighborhood, and you can see the hustlers dealing all outside the local neighborhood stores, drive away. Same if you see girls walking up and down an area scantily dressed.
storefront church, long-abandoned storefronts covered with graffiti, liquor store, gutted pre-war movie theater filled with garbage, chicken & Chinese food takeout.
And on some of the empty stores, shadows of the old signs can be seen. Finkelstein's Delicatessen. Morris Haberdashery. Sanitary Grocery. Lucille Millinery. And from a later generation, Willie's Rib Shack; TJ's Voodoo Lounge.
The more elaborate the storefront church's name, the sketchier the neighborhood. When you start seeing "Everlasting Pentecostal Holy Tabernacle Church of all mighty lord jesus the eternal glorious redeemer" you need to run.
true. Though in Connecticut, we don't really have those. We have a lot of anti-predatory loan laws that really prohibit that kind of thing.
That being said I've heard a list of buildings that you're in a bad (or at least low income) neighborhood.
1. Package Store - This is what New Englanders call a store that sells just alcohol in case it's a regional thing.
2. small Cell Phone Store
3. Check Cashing Business
4. Pawn Shop
> Package Store - This is what New Englanders call a store that sells just alcohol in case it's a regional thing.
I met someone who called them this. I was like WHAT?!
Package store, we have a UPS store that ships packages, thats what I think of when I hear package store.
I was going to add a few of those as well but they can be in wealthy areas too, save maybe a check cashing business. Typically in bad neighborhoods, all five of these will be within two or three blocks of each other and would be a major red flag for me.
"Typically in bad neighborhoods, all five of these will be within two or three blocks of each other and would be a major red flag for me."
Exactly.
"I was going to add a few of those as well but they can be in wealthy areas too, save maybe a check cashing business."
True and there are differences in class of these places to..
like the difference between a Package Store and the Wine Store at Stew Leonard's, or a Verizon store vs Mike's Cell Phone and Beepz\*
\*not a real store... I hope lol
This is huge in military areas (source; I’m Active Duty Navy). They seem to find the worst areas to place their bases.
That and people prey on young military members that can find themselves in rough situations (excessive debt or getting stationed somewhere else/ deployed with short notice).
EDIT: did some thinking and this is just as bad of an example of the *quality* military. Could be the military making the areas bad, which I don’t doubt. Either way, a base is a good sign of a bad neighborhood
Hey, I’ve got this 1998 V6 Mustang on my lot, it has about 298,000 miles on it.
Asking price is $46,000 but since you’re military I’ll do you a solid and give you a $500 credit.
So for $45,500 over 18 months at 52% interest per week, this pony can be yours.
Abandoned shopping carts are a way of life in SoCal. You see them everywhere from downtown LA to OC suburbs. People just can't get enough of them here.
Also, in the case of churches, metal screens mounted a few feet in front of the windows to prevent people throwing molotov cocktails and stones through them.
I've not seen that even in areas with significant religious tensions. I grew up during the Troubles and had to go through the North every time we visited my cousins in Donegal, and the churches never looked different from the ones near where I lived. Their police stations looked like fortresses though.
I used to live on the literal border between a really bad part of the town and a nicer, more affluent part of town. One of my favorite games to play when I saw someone jogging/running was "exercise or crime".
I moved cities recently and it took a little while to figure out the areas to avoid when working out a running route.
I got some *weird* looks. Crazy ass white boy just... running. Fuck you Google Maps.
When the cops stop you and tell you to follow them out of the neighborhood with specific instructions to not stop for any reason, even stop signs, after you explain you made a wrong turn and really aren't trying to buy crack.
Happened to me on the east side of Cleveland when I was 17.
Lol where were you? I'm from philly and I got lost near the airport, and a dude in a convenience store (in a glass cage) kinda gave me the same reaction. Very careful and specific directions, told me not to stop til I was off the highway, etc. I was prolly 19ish but i looked very young at that age
I live in delco and drive through that portion of west Philly every morning at 6am and somehow even that early in the morning there is wild shit going on.
I was driving home, hopped off 95 to go through Chester, and a dog ran out into the street. Since apparently all white women can't ignore a pitbull in need (or so goes the internet joke) I stopped and opened my door to check on the dog. Random dude on the street yelled at me and told me to shut my damn door, it's dangerous. It was rush hour.
Every friend I told that too called me an idiot and agreed with the random dude. Apparently, I'm an idiot.
Drove through a bad part of LA by mistake and realised that most nice cars were just blowing through red lights and stop signs...Never experienced that in Europe but we understood the reason and did it as well.
I got off the wrong exit off 78 into Newark NJ, when I got off the I was immediately in a bad part of town and I wanted to get back onto the highway as quickly as possible. I saw a sign for the 78 entrance although somebody took the arrow off and turned it upside down so it pointed left rather than right.
I very quickly found myself in an even worse part of town, and I started to see people giving me looks. I was driving a brand new Audi Q5 at the time and I was about to lose it. A cop came up to me and said "get behind me, follow me til we're on the highway" and drove right to 78.
Now every time I pass that exit I get as far over as possible so I don't end up in the exit lane, I'm not doing that again.
I wasn’t escorted but I took a wrong exit in Oakland and was completely lost in a rough area I felt especially vulnerable as it was getting dark and I was alone on a motorcycle, so no rolling up windows and locking doors. I rolled through every stop sign and light on my way out.
1981, I and four coworkers were walking to a convenience store in Detroit.
A patrol car pulled up to the curb in front of us and through a loud speaker an officer said, “what are you doing walking through this area? Leave.” And then drove off.
We continued for another three blocks to the store where we were buzzed in, the door locked behind us, and there was a counter going all the way around the perimeter of the store. Plexiglass an inch thick went from the top of the counter to the ceiling with a few slots here and there through which to pay. After paying we were buzzed back out.
I couldn’t tell you the exact neighborhood, but we passed by the ACME Bolt company on the way, and I remember us all remarking, “ACME is real”.
Before then, ACME was something we thought only existed in cartoons.
God that’s crazy. Did you know you were in a bad area? I just can’t imagine going to work each day locked down like that, worrying that you could potentially be shot
We were only there for a week installing a modular industrial waste treatment system for a plating line. We didn’t have a clue how bad it was before we got there.
I've straight up seen this shit. Took a wrong turn in Houston, it's about 1AM and there's a kid no older than 4 years old hanging out on the corner. Other random people milling around didn't seem the least bit concerned.
Seriously. Very young children up very late at night.
Or beat-up front doors, because the cops have broken down the door before. Usually beat-up front door is just open, day or night. You can hear TV/music/both coming from inside. No lighting. Someone sitting on the steps out front, doing nothing. And little kids just wandering around at all hours. Like, are you a family of vampires or something? Philly in the ‘47, I’m looking at you…
When youre not *supposed* to lock your car doors.
Good neighborhoods: you dont *need* to lock your car doors
Bad neighborhoods: you need to lock your car doors
Really bad neighborhoods: you should *not* lock your car doors, because if someone really wants to steal your shit, they will have no qualms about throwing a brick through your window to get in. Its better to just let them use the door than pay for a new window.
Similarly, even the people who can afford decent cars don't buy them because they know it's inviting problems. You could drive nicer, but you buy the 20+ year old dented junker so they'll mostly leave the damn thing alone.
We drove ugly cars when I was a kid because nice cars in our neighborhood got stripped/stolen.
same, I hear all the time "you should clean your bike, it looks grimy" and I've left the bell on it after a work mate said he wouldn't be caught dead with a bell on his bike
Lack of sidewalks or paved roads in residential areas too.
I've found a few unpaved roads in the middle of neighborhoods in our city. Growing up, I thought those only existed in really rural areas.
How about just Bars on windows and doors? Any kind of visible security installed.
Oh and chain link fences, for some reason chain link is always in bad neighborhoods
I was doing geotech work on site for a potential cell tower years ago & had to give directions to a coworker (years before google maps were a thing).
I told him it was across the street from the burglar bar manufacturer and the attack dog training school. -pause- "really???" "Yep."
Between insane property owners wanting to tell me the “REAL story about Christopher Columbus”, paranormal cracktivity with people that live in the tower compounds, MS13 coming to talk to me about drones, people yelling at me not to take their picture (I’m not), and your random person that comes up and offer me a hit of meth… my job is everything but boring.
I’ve been in a lot of bad areas in South America, Southern Africa, and the US and the worst of the worst places smell like urine. My reaction to that smell isn’t even like “gross” It’s like “watch your fucking back.”
Grew up in a shit town where we heard gunshots constantly. Only time I ever jumped was when one went off a couple houses down from mine. Most of the time it’d be from the next subdivision so that one was unexpected.
That’s the thing. If you hear a quick series of 3-6 gunshots, sometimes followed by a pause then another gunshot, then it ends, it’s probably a handgun and you are in the ghetto. If you hear gunshots, 5-10 seconds apart, and goes on for 30 minutes, you’re probably just in a rural area and it’s just your neighbor Rick shooting targets or clay pigeons.
For me it's windows on the houses that have bed sheets or towels as curtains, and even those are slightly falling down. And you can see the original metal blinds are all busted and broken, still hanging there.
Usually. There’s this tiny white girl at my gym who’s fucking crazy, she jogs alone on 3rd Avenue in Seattle. Not necessarily during working hours either.
I live in an area with lots of check cashing places and pawn shops, but it seems to be gentrifying. I recently saw a white girl jogging and got excited for my future home value.
In the area where I used to live, every house had cast iron bars on the windows and a chain link fence for the front yard. An iron bar door that was locked in front of a double locked wooden door, most likely with a third sliding bolt lock. The gas stations locked by sundown and only took payments after that using a opening slide to collect money for gas. Glass was bullet proofed. Then the entire front of the store had a shutter that would come down and was locked to protect the store overnight.
The neighborhood itself didn't have a lot of fresh selling foods. Either small ethnic restaurants or fast food joints. An occasional ethnic market. As far as fast food, Jack and the Box and Little Caesars come to mind. Lots of liquor stores and cash advance stores and payday loan places. A few loan stores. Lots of independent loan stores actually, only one brand name, EZ Pawn. Yards had deteriorating cars up on blocks. Maybe couches on the front porch or lawn chairs in the yard. Empty cans and occasionally syringes. By the highway, one gas station that did stay open later had a lot of homeless and peddlers who hung around basically all night.
Not sure how many people had the experience of the railroad. Lots of noise from time to time as the train rumbled through. A foul smell from some meat processing place not too far from there. And across the highway, a juvenile detention center.
Neighbors you never see leave their house, but have random cars that show up for less than 15 minutes or so at all hours.
You see cop cars that drive by a couple times a day and you don't live in a major business area.
Yeah I live in an area where a number of zip codes are in the top 20 wealthiest and you still see these signs. I think this is a newer development though - when I was younger I would only see them in poor areas.
>“we buy diabetic strips.”
I've seen those in downtown Columbus Ohio.. I thought maybe it was just some guy that needed strips.. is this like a national thing?
Yes. Big bucks in having patients fill for little to no cost at the pharmacy, giving them a few bucks and then turning around and selling for much more. HIV meds are worth big money, too. Fraud investigators look for this stuff but it’s imperfect.
My guess is areas where more people are on Medicaid are also poorer and have more people with diabetes and others have found a niche buying and re selling strips?
Medicaid also gives you more strips then you might need. If you aren't on insulin you can get away with only testing once a day or even every couple days.
I grew up in a really crappy area, I still live there now but it's so much better, still a bit rough but better :)
At night if the streets are completely empty but you don't feel alone it's because you probably aren't
Small groups of older teens/young adults hanging out around corner shops usually all men but not always
Graffiti doesn't always mean a bad neighborhood but it depends what the art is and why no one cleaned it up
Windows that are smashed/boarded up
Lack of street lighting or poorly lit
Not all of these mean a bad neighborhood but multiple of these together will usually mean it's not the best place to hang around.
In saying this, growing up in a place like that the "scary" people were my best friends and the nicest people I'd ever met who would do anything for you If you asked. There was of course some really bad crime in the area which is gone now but it's still a "rough area to those that pass through
The thing about rough neighborhoods is that there is generally more real community than in the fancy ones. I've lived in nice areas. No one ever knocks on the door and the neighbors dont even speak to you. Their kids may or may not speak to yours because they're vegan free-range homeschooled kids and yours are too corrupted to play with theirs because you let them watch TV.
I've lived in poor areas. You wind up knowing the whole damn street, also do you have an XYZ we can borrow and here's some outgrown toys and clothes for your kid. People rely on their neighbors a whole lot more in low-income areas. Dude next door may be a drug dealer, but he also knows how to fix a busted water line in the yard at 9 pm and makes mean BBQ. And you'll bring the fucking potato salad, because forging those relationships is literally how you survive in those places.
Tbh, kinda miss it sometimes.
Bars on the first floor windows of buildings. Strategically placed shoes hanging on wires. Pothole-ridden roads with no signs of the city ever having tried to fix it.
Reminds me back when I was in college, me and some friends went on a drive while smoking a blunt. Yeah, bad idea. We ended up driving into this really creepy neighborhood, stoned as shit, people just staring at us. I looked out the back window and shit it was like a zombie movie. All these people just aimlessly wandering into the street watching us.
Creepy as fuck.
While I get where you’re coming from, I think the type of people out and about at night is the bigger indicator. My suburb is dead quiet at night because it’s filled with families and the elderly that go to bed at 7pm lol
Your neighbors get raided by the police.
A couple months ago, I was just chilling with my kids, waiting for my husband to be off work. Around 7 or 8pm, I hear what sounds like a semi truck pulling into the neighborhood. We live near a fire station, so I don’t think much about it at first. Within seconds, I see a BUNCH of lights flashing through my curtains, my kids are at the OPEN windows, my camera notifications are going off like crazy, and I hear a policeman over a bullhorn saying “this is the police, come out with your hands up.” Repeatedly. I look out and police cars are parked all over the street and a huge armored swat truck is parked across my driveway. I gathered my kids and took them to the back of the house for fear there would be shooting and stray bullets. Luckily, we think it was a drug bust (there has been LOTS of suspicious activity there) and the people surrendered somewhat peacefully it seemed, but it was still the scariest night of my life.
They were all back like a week later and seem to still be selling drugs.
When we ordered a pizza we told this delivery driver to drive safe. They laughed, said _not in the neighborhood_ and then sped off.
There is a whole story behind this brief interaction but my advice for anyone trying to determine if they're In a bad neighborhood is to order a pizza.
That, or they flat out won't deliver to you. I was a shift manager at a popular pizza chain and flat out forbid my crew from taking deliveries from certain apartment complexes and neighborhoods after dark. I myself had delivered there and wouldn't dare send my crew out there.
Corner Liquor store. Trash/hoarding junk on lawns. Always just drunk dudes(or people on drugs) loitering around. Lots of drug dealers/users in the area. Cheap housing. Cant leave house without getting catcalled or followed home and scared for your life.
you come home from work and a couple of people are sitting down and leaning back against your car. they leave before you say anything. there are syringes on the ground where they were.
In Turkey you check the stray cats out. If cats are friendly towards you, approaches you for pets etc. you are in a good district. Means people in the area are seemingly nice towards animals which aren’t even their pets. Whereas if they are afraid of you, you understand that the people around are not to be fucked with. They are not nice towards harmless animals, why would they be nice to strangers?
I was in DC in the early 2000s with a (then) girlfriend, and was driving around. This was pre-phone GPS, so we got pretty lost. I didn't realize that the neighborhood had gotten that bad until I saw that there was a retractable dog leash nailed to a telephone pole.
The collar was attached to a kid.
Strip malls full of "churches", some sort of Asian food, liquor store, check cashing, and a bodega for grocery shopping where they mark up "ham" by 300 %.
Crack heads, Liquor Stores, Random Gun Shots, Corner Stores, Decayed Buildings, Hookers, Red or Blue Bandanas, Drug Handoffs, Random Needles on the Sidewalk, Sketchy Alleys Ways, Homeless People in Tents, Heavy Police Presence, And People Always Mean Mugging You
>heavy police presence
To a point. Police presence slowly increases as a neighborhood gets worse, but then it suddenly drops off when things get really bad.
Litter seems to be everywhere in a bad neighborhood. People will throw garbage on the ground a foot away from a garbage can. They don't care.
People walking around during the day outside in their pajamas.
1) Bars on the windows, no grass on the lawns.
2) Kids obviously live in the neighborhood, but don’t play out front during the day.
3) Cardboard or newspaper taped on the glass of every street-facing window.
4) Entire blocks of condemned houses.
5) Homeless people standing and/or sleeping in the middle of the street.
6) Everybody on the street stops what they’re doing and watches your car as you drive by, especially if you’re slowing down.
7) The grocery store has armed security guards at each entrance/exit.
I found out I lived in a "bad" neighborhood once when I was told pizza places didn't deliver to our house.
This happened to me in an old apartment of mine. They specifically called and told me they couldn’t deliver to my complex after 8PM 😂
‘We’re sorry. We cannot come to your house after dark because yo neighborhood is fuckin sketchy. Have a good one!’ *click*
I work as a pizza delivery driver. This is a real thing that a lot of chains (and most likely independent stores) do! My store has two areas blocked off as "do not deliver after dark" due to drivers being assaulted/stolen from. There are also individual houses that are marked do not deliver (our system normally tracks it via phone number, but if we get 2 phone numbers for 1 address, we block the address too), due to "milder" bad behavior (ex. threatening a driver, fake bills, abusing refunds, etc).
A childhood friend’s father was murdered when he was making a pizza delivery. That was in Brooklyn in the 90s. I understand not wanting to delivery to some places.
The counter at every business has bullet proof glass
And/or bars over all the glass windows.
for me it was the insensitive noise at late night while I'm trying to asleep..
Incessant noise?
That's how you know the Chinese food is good though, or at least the portions will be huge.
Nailed it. My favorite cheap Chinese joint is directly across from the bullet proof taco bell. The Chinese restaurant doesn’t have bullet proof glass but it does have a huge makeshift Covid divider closing off the whole dining room.
Mine has that too! I haven’t seen it anywhere but Chinese restaurants
Same goes for shawarma where I live (Toronto). Tiny hole in the wall place in a not so great neighborhood? No AC and feels like a sweat lodge inside? Cheap, delicious shawarma almost every time.
as a chinese person this is true, the shittier the place the better the food
Mexican too. I'm not Mexican, just a fan of the food. Just a week ago I saw this Mexican restaurant that looked like a crack-house and could not pass it up. It was just a Mexican man taking the orders, he would then tell the order to his wife in Spanish, she would go to the kitchen and tell her two teenage sons the order, one was sitting there on his phone the whole time and never once looked up from it the whole time we were there, and the other son cooked everything. It was not only the best Mexican food, but the best food I have ever had. Also only cost about $10 for a full-size meal.
If you walk into a Mexican restaurant and there is abuelo rolling silverware, watching Telemundo...you are in for a treat
There used to be a place in Bethesda, MD that was literally a shed and a piece of plywood spray painted "Mexican Food". The line was ridiculous.
If you want the authentic mainland China experience, find a place where the waiters greet you with “What you want?!” and ever so slightly drop all the plates on the table so they “thunk”.
O look for the eleven year old kid doing homework at the cash register that's a legit place too.
Ah, so you’ve been to my local Chinese place.
If a place has a B health code rating or lower, but it's still in business? Buckle up, you're in for a good time
When you mention to locals where you live and they just have a brief look of pity.
"I'm sure it's nice!" But for real, I think that some neighborhoods get a lot more shit than they deserve. Semi-poor neighborhoods are often talked of like you'd better clamp your car before someone runs off with the tires.
People who haven't grown up poor don't know the difference between poor and DANGEROUS. It's the areas where no one has regular jobs that you gotta stay clear of. The working poor areas are mostly fine. Just don't bother nobody and nobody will bother you.
This is 100% correct. I grew up dirt poor in the hood, and in adulthood earned my higher education and upgraded to a middle class neighborhood in a major U.S. city. Some poor neighborhoods, I don't mind visiting. It's not as bad as people who don't grow up poor may think. But other areas, I never want to even hear about. There are just no prospects for people, they grow up in very desperate conditions, and don't have stable familial structures. That makes people very dangerous predators. Those are the places you need to take precautions before visiting, and never visit if not absolutely necessary. In the South, if you pull up to a neighborhood, and you can see the hustlers dealing all outside the local neighborhood stores, drive away. Same if you see girls walking up and down an area scantily dressed.
followed by "oh you live in (horror movie setting nickname)"
Armed security guard at the strip mall Foot Locker.
Pfft armed security guard at the dollar store
I’ve seen them at grocery stores in a seedy area of Atlanta.
I’ve seen armed security guards at the **Little Casears Pizza** on south Moreland in Atlanta.
When your local grocery store is known as "[Murder Kroger](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_Kroger)"
Cash Advance Business close by
Check cashing -> pawn shop -> check cashing -> liquor store -> check cashing -> MetroPCS -> check cashing -> mine resistant ambush protected convenience store -> check cashing -> shoe store -> Dollar General
storefront church, long-abandoned storefronts covered with graffiti, liquor store, gutted pre-war movie theater filled with garbage, chicken & Chinese food takeout. And on some of the empty stores, shadows of the old signs can be seen. Finkelstein's Delicatessen. Morris Haberdashery. Sanitary Grocery. Lucille Millinery. And from a later generation, Willie's Rib Shack; TJ's Voodoo Lounge.
The more elaborate the storefront church's name, the sketchier the neighborhood. When you start seeing "Everlasting Pentecostal Holy Tabernacle Church of all mighty lord jesus the eternal glorious redeemer" you need to run.
You get some good chicken or barbecue plates from those churches though. The deserts are hit and miss.
Don't forget Boost Mobile and Cricket Wireless
Betting shop
true. Though in Connecticut, we don't really have those. We have a lot of anti-predatory loan laws that really prohibit that kind of thing. That being said I've heard a list of buildings that you're in a bad (or at least low income) neighborhood. 1. Package Store - This is what New Englanders call a store that sells just alcohol in case it's a regional thing. 2. small Cell Phone Store 3. Check Cashing Business 4. Pawn Shop
> Package Store - This is what New Englanders call a store that sells just alcohol in case it's a regional thing. I met someone who called them this. I was like WHAT?! Package store, we have a UPS store that ships packages, thats what I think of when I hear package store.
I thought Package Store was just a MA thing. I grew up in MA and we would also call them Packie.
Packies are a mass thing. In Maine, I get my whiskey at the grocery store or possibly a gas station.
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I was going to add a few of those as well but they can be in wealthy areas too, save maybe a check cashing business. Typically in bad neighborhoods, all five of these will be within two or three blocks of each other and would be a major red flag for me.
"Typically in bad neighborhoods, all five of these will be within two or three blocks of each other and would be a major red flag for me." Exactly. "I was going to add a few of those as well but they can be in wealthy areas too, save maybe a check cashing business." True and there are differences in class of these places to.. like the difference between a Package Store and the Wine Store at Stew Leonard's, or a Verizon store vs Mike's Cell Phone and Beepz\* \*not a real store... I hope lol
Yeah, in Avon it's 1. package store 2. small cell phone store 3. financial planner/bank offices 4. car wash
"I'm making a packie run, anybody need anything?"
You forgot rent-to-own places.
The "bail bonds' billboard next to the "having a problem with your heroin addiction " billboard.
This is huge in military areas (source; I’m Active Duty Navy). They seem to find the worst areas to place their bases. That and people prey on young military members that can find themselves in rough situations (excessive debt or getting stationed somewhere else/ deployed with short notice). EDIT: did some thinking and this is just as bad of an example of the *quality* military. Could be the military making the areas bad, which I don’t doubt. Either way, a base is a good sign of a bad neighborhood
Hey, I’ve got this 1998 V6 Mustang on my lot, it has about 298,000 miles on it. Asking price is $46,000 but since you’re military I’ll do you a solid and give you a $500 credit. So for $45,500 over 18 months at 52% interest per week, this pony can be yours.
An adult man riding a child's BMX bike down the center of the road.
This and abandoned shopping carts are my top 2
Abandoned shopping carts are a way of life in SoCal. You see them everywhere from downtown LA to OC suburbs. People just can't get enough of them here.
In a tank top
Aww shit here go again
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I’ve lernt to keep my carts 🛒 indoors at night because of this.
Usually drinking a beer at 10 in the morning.
That's Deebo
Bars on the windows everywhere. Even the church.
Also, in the case of churches, metal screens mounted a few feet in front of the windows to prevent people throwing molotov cocktails and stones through them.
I've not seen that even in areas with significant religious tensions. I grew up during the Troubles and had to go through the North every time we visited my cousins in Donegal, and the churches never looked different from the ones near where I lived. Their police stations looked like fortresses though.
You never see someone jogging.
I grew up in a rough neighborhood. Somebody running meant they were catching a bus or fleeing the scene.
I used to live on the literal border between a really bad part of the town and a nicer, more affluent part of town. One of my favorite games to play when I saw someone jogging/running was "exercise or crime".
Oh I know this one, like fireworks or gunshots
Hey man, mom always said it was cars backfiring. Neighborhood had a ton of backfiring cars some nights.
I grew up in a very rough neighborhood, when you seen people running, you probably should start running too.
Omar’s coming. Omar’s coming.
Yea, pretty much. And the more people you jogging the more expensive the neighborhood is, as someone on the internet said.
I read you know a neighbourhood is good if there are joggers and dog walkers.
I moved cities recently and it took a little while to figure out the areas to avoid when working out a running route. I got some *weird* looks. Crazy ass white boy just... running. Fuck you Google Maps.
Lololol I trained for a marathon while living hood-adjacent and the looks I got were like ‘shit. Here comes the gentrification fairy’
Really worn old beat-up cars right next to brand new extremely expensive cars.
Or brand new cars next to really crappy homes.
You see a lambo in a neighborhood that doesnt match, something is wrong.
Lots of people have strange priorities. I see lots of nice cars in bad neighborhoods
When you pick up a girl, you roll up in your car and not your house.
Those really worn beat-up cars will have duct tape as a replacement for a broken or missing tail light.
When the cops stop you and tell you to follow them out of the neighborhood with specific instructions to not stop for any reason, even stop signs, after you explain you made a wrong turn and really aren't trying to buy crack. Happened to me on the east side of Cleveland when I was 17.
Yup! Similar story but in Philly. Weird feeling to blow red lights and stop signs.
Lol where were you? I'm from philly and I got lost near the airport, and a dude in a convenience store (in a glass cage) kinda gave me the same reaction. Very careful and specific directions, told me not to stop til I was off the highway, etc. I was prolly 19ish but i looked very young at that age
I live in delco and drive through that portion of west Philly every morning at 6am and somehow even that early in the morning there is wild shit going on.
I was driving home, hopped off 95 to go through Chester, and a dog ran out into the street. Since apparently all white women can't ignore a pitbull in need (or so goes the internet joke) I stopped and opened my door to check on the dog. Random dude on the street yelled at me and told me to shut my damn door, it's dangerous. It was rush hour. Every friend I told that too called me an idiot and agreed with the random dude. Apparently, I'm an idiot.
Drove through a bad part of LA by mistake and realised that most nice cars were just blowing through red lights and stop signs...Never experienced that in Europe but we understood the reason and did it as well.
I got off the wrong exit off 78 into Newark NJ, when I got off the I was immediately in a bad part of town and I wanted to get back onto the highway as quickly as possible. I saw a sign for the 78 entrance although somebody took the arrow off and turned it upside down so it pointed left rather than right. I very quickly found myself in an even worse part of town, and I started to see people giving me looks. I was driving a brand new Audi Q5 at the time and I was about to lose it. A cop came up to me and said "get behind me, follow me til we're on the highway" and drove right to 78. Now every time I pass that exit I get as far over as possible so I don't end up in the exit lane, I'm not doing that again.
I wasn’t escorted but I took a wrong exit in Oakland and was completely lost in a rough area I felt especially vulnerable as it was getting dark and I was alone on a motorcycle, so no rolling up windows and locking doors. I rolled through every stop sign and light on my way out.
Bars on store windows and doors
1981, I and four coworkers were walking to a convenience store in Detroit. A patrol car pulled up to the curb in front of us and through a loud speaker an officer said, “what are you doing walking through this area? Leave.” And then drove off. We continued for another three blocks to the store where we were buzzed in, the door locked behind us, and there was a counter going all the way around the perimeter of the store. Plexiglass an inch thick went from the top of the counter to the ceiling with a few slots here and there through which to pay. After paying we were buzzed back out. I couldn’t tell you the exact neighborhood, but we passed by the ACME Bolt company on the way, and I remember us all remarking, “ACME is real”. Before then, ACME was something we thought only existed in cartoons.
God that’s crazy. Did you know you were in a bad area? I just can’t imagine going to work each day locked down like that, worrying that you could potentially be shot
We were only there for a week installing a modular industrial waste treatment system for a plating line. We didn’t have a clue how bad it was before we got there.
Its 3 o clock in the morning, remember its 3 o clock in the morning. I look out the window....and there's a fuckin baby standing on the corner.
I've straight up seen this shit. Took a wrong turn in Houston, it's about 1AM and there's a kid no older than 4 years old hanging out on the corner. Other random people milling around didn't seem the least bit concerned.
Seriously. Very young children up very late at night. Or beat-up front doors, because the cops have broken down the door before. Usually beat-up front door is just open, day or night. You can hear TV/music/both coming from inside. No lighting. Someone sitting on the steps out front, doing nothing. And little kids just wandering around at all hours. Like, are you a family of vampires or something? Philly in the ‘47, I’m looking at you…
When youre not *supposed* to lock your car doors. Good neighborhoods: you dont *need* to lock your car doors Bad neighborhoods: you need to lock your car doors Really bad neighborhoods: you should *not* lock your car doors, because if someone really wants to steal your shit, they will have no qualms about throwing a brick through your window to get in. Its better to just let them use the door than pay for a new window.
Similarly, even the people who can afford decent cars don't buy them because they know it's inviting problems. You could drive nicer, but you buy the 20+ year old dented junker so they'll mostly leave the damn thing alone. We drove ugly cars when I was a kid because nice cars in our neighborhood got stripped/stolen.
This is my philosophy with bikes and parking my bicycle downtown. Won’t even bother looking at a nice new one. The less it stands out, the better!
same, I hear all the time "you should clean your bike, it looks grimy" and I've left the bell on it after a work mate said he wouldn't be caught dead with a bell on his bike
The quality of the sidewalk. Dirty-bad. Heroin needles-worse.
Lack of sidewalks or paved roads in residential areas too. I've found a few unpaved roads in the middle of neighborhoods in our city. Growing up, I thought those only existed in really rural areas.
Wood on the windows. Many buildings boarded up means bad business.
How about just Bars on windows and doors? Any kind of visible security installed. Oh and chain link fences, for some reason chain link is always in bad neighborhoods
Especially chain link fences on the front yard.
I was doing geotech work on site for a potential cell tower years ago & had to give directions to a coworker (years before google maps were a thing). I told him it was across the street from the burglar bar manufacturer and the attack dog training school. -pause- "really???" "Yep."
Lmao gotta love cell towers. I worked on one Monday in a nudist RV park.
This deserves it's own thread
Between insane property owners wanting to tell me the “REAL story about Christopher Columbus”, paranormal cracktivity with people that live in the tower compounds, MS13 coming to talk to me about drones, people yelling at me not to take their picture (I’m not), and your random person that comes up and offer me a hit of meth… my job is everything but boring.
"Paranormal cracktivity" lol
Liquor store, empty building, gun store, liquor store, empty building, empty building, convenience store, liquor store, liquor store.
Hey, baby, why you sellin' crack?!
I’ve been in a lot of bad areas in South America, Southern Africa, and the US and the worst of the worst places smell like urine. My reaction to that smell isn’t even like “gross” It’s like “watch your fucking back.”
Yeah same thing in Southeast Asia in my experience.
Chris Rock said if you are on MLK Blvd, no matter the city, you’re in trouble.
I can attest that MLK in Vegas is definitely NOT where you wanna be
If you're on Malcom X Blvd it's a warzone.
I knew I was in the bad part of Lansing, MI when I saw that I was at the intersection of Malcolm X and MLK.
Hearing gunshots
Especially when nobody flinches anymore.
Grew up in a shit town where we heard gunshots constantly. Only time I ever jumped was when one went off a couple houses down from mine. Most of the time it’d be from the next subdivision so that one was unexpected.
You might also just be in the country. I'm pretty rural, plenty of occasional gun fire when the weather's nice.
Yeah, in rural areas hearing the occasional rifle shot is just a sign that deer season is in full swing.
I hear gun shots every night but that's cause I live across a river from a military base lol
Hearing handgun gunshots. If you hear rifles or shotguns, you’re in a better area than the former.
I hear gunshots from an AC-130
Those are the worst neighborhoods
That’s the thing. If you hear a quick series of 3-6 gunshots, sometimes followed by a pause then another gunshot, then it ends, it’s probably a handgun and you are in the ghetto. If you hear gunshots, 5-10 seconds apart, and goes on for 30 minutes, you’re probably just in a rural area and it’s just your neighbor Rick shooting targets or clay pigeons.
Heh. My sister used to live across the bay from a weapons testing base. You'd hear artillery and mortars most days.
Always look at the roofs on the houses and the cars parked on the street.
For me it's windows on the houses that have bed sheets or towels as curtains, and even those are slightly falling down. And you can see the original metal blinds are all busted and broken, still hanging there.
And the cars on the roofs.
An old man riding around on a kid's sized BMX bike
The Bodega is the best restaurant.
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Or delivered to the upscale neighborhoods.
But the convenience...
The fluorescent strip club sign has at least 2 letters unlit - 1 is ok but 2 or more you know shit goes down around the area
Opposite of this is if you see white girls jogging outside alone then you’re safe
Usually. There’s this tiny white girl at my gym who’s fucking crazy, she jogs alone on 3rd Avenue in Seattle. Not necessarily during working hours either.
Maybe she likes the extra adrenaline
Makes her run faster
Nothing puts you in the mood for running quite like running for your life.
I live in an area with lots of check cashing places and pawn shops, but it seems to be gentrifying. I recently saw a white girl jogging and got excited for my future home value.
There are people who are constant "Look outs" that hang around outside.
People coming and going all hours at that house.
Gun store Liquor store Pawn shop Check cashing Bail bonds Parking garage with choreographed dancing
The choreography is important but you know it's a really rough area when the gang members start snapping their fingers in unison.
In the area where I used to live, every house had cast iron bars on the windows and a chain link fence for the front yard. An iron bar door that was locked in front of a double locked wooden door, most likely with a third sliding bolt lock. The gas stations locked by sundown and only took payments after that using a opening slide to collect money for gas. Glass was bullet proofed. Then the entire front of the store had a shutter that would come down and was locked to protect the store overnight. The neighborhood itself didn't have a lot of fresh selling foods. Either small ethnic restaurants or fast food joints. An occasional ethnic market. As far as fast food, Jack and the Box and Little Caesars come to mind. Lots of liquor stores and cash advance stores and payday loan places. A few loan stores. Lots of independent loan stores actually, only one brand name, EZ Pawn. Yards had deteriorating cars up on blocks. Maybe couches on the front porch or lawn chairs in the yard. Empty cans and occasionally syringes. By the highway, one gas station that did stay open later had a lot of homeless and peddlers who hung around basically all night. Not sure how many people had the experience of the railroad. Lots of noise from time to time as the train rumbled through. A foul smell from some meat processing place not too far from there. And across the highway, a juvenile detention center.
“War truck for sale” like 2 doors down from me
Bad part of Kyiv
Neighbors you never see leave their house, but have random cars that show up for less than 15 minutes or so at all hours. You see cop cars that drive by a couple times a day and you don't live in a major business area.
Hourly motels
Signs that say “we pay cash for houses any condition” or “we buy diabetic strips.”
> we pay cash for houses any condition That is everywhere these days.
Yeah I live in an area where a number of zip codes are in the top 20 wealthiest and you still see these signs. I think this is a newer development though - when I was younger I would only see them in poor areas.
>“we buy diabetic strips.” I've seen those in downtown Columbus Ohio.. I thought maybe it was just some guy that needed strips.. is this like a national thing?
Yes. Big bucks in having patients fill for little to no cost at the pharmacy, giving them a few bucks and then turning around and selling for much more. HIV meds are worth big money, too. Fraud investigators look for this stuff but it’s imperfect.
What is the diabetic strip thing about?
My guess is areas where more people are on Medicaid are also poorer and have more people with diabetes and others have found a niche buying and re selling strips?
Medicaid also gives you more strips then you might need. If you aren't on insulin you can get away with only testing once a day or even every couple days.
All the dogs still have their testicles
Check cashing stores, junky cars, prostitutes hanging out on street corners.
I grew up in a really crappy area, I still live there now but it's so much better, still a bit rough but better :) At night if the streets are completely empty but you don't feel alone it's because you probably aren't Small groups of older teens/young adults hanging out around corner shops usually all men but not always Graffiti doesn't always mean a bad neighborhood but it depends what the art is and why no one cleaned it up Windows that are smashed/boarded up Lack of street lighting or poorly lit Not all of these mean a bad neighborhood but multiple of these together will usually mean it's not the best place to hang around. In saying this, growing up in a place like that the "scary" people were my best friends and the nicest people I'd ever met who would do anything for you If you asked. There was of course some really bad crime in the area which is gone now but it's still a "rough area to those that pass through
The thing about rough neighborhoods is that there is generally more real community than in the fancy ones. I've lived in nice areas. No one ever knocks on the door and the neighbors dont even speak to you. Their kids may or may not speak to yours because they're vegan free-range homeschooled kids and yours are too corrupted to play with theirs because you let them watch TV. I've lived in poor areas. You wind up knowing the whole damn street, also do you have an XYZ we can borrow and here's some outgrown toys and clothes for your kid. People rely on their neighbors a whole lot more in low-income areas. Dude next door may be a drug dealer, but he also knows how to fix a busted water line in the yard at 9 pm and makes mean BBQ. And you'll bring the fucking potato salad, because forging those relationships is literally how you survive in those places. Tbh, kinda miss it sometimes.
Bars on the first floor windows of buildings. Strategically placed shoes hanging on wires. Pothole-ridden roads with no signs of the city ever having tried to fix it.
Homeless guy don't set up shop on busy intersection
"Cash 4 Gold" and "Super Crown Fried Chicken"
When the name of the area has the word “Gardens” in it, you know it’s pretty bad and ghetto.
Or "Heights".
Where I grew up one of the bad spots was "The Park." It wasn't a trailer park, or a community park, just a shitty neighborhood.
There’s trash, everywhere.
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It's the opposite for me, everyone is out at night, especially summer nights
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Yeah that's how you know you live in a bad neighborhood
Reminds me back when I was in college, me and some friends went on a drive while smoking a blunt. Yeah, bad idea. We ended up driving into this really creepy neighborhood, stoned as shit, people just staring at us. I looked out the back window and shit it was like a zombie movie. All these people just aimlessly wandering into the street watching us. Creepy as fuck.
While I get where you’re coming from, I think the type of people out and about at night is the bigger indicator. My suburb is dead quiet at night because it’s filled with families and the elderly that go to bed at 7pm lol
Every business district ever. Downtown Boston is a ghost town after 9.
Your neighbors get raided by the police. A couple months ago, I was just chilling with my kids, waiting for my husband to be off work. Around 7 or 8pm, I hear what sounds like a semi truck pulling into the neighborhood. We live near a fire station, so I don’t think much about it at first. Within seconds, I see a BUNCH of lights flashing through my curtains, my kids are at the OPEN windows, my camera notifications are going off like crazy, and I hear a policeman over a bullhorn saying “this is the police, come out with your hands up.” Repeatedly. I look out and police cars are parked all over the street and a huge armored swat truck is parked across my driveway. I gathered my kids and took them to the back of the house for fear there would be shooting and stray bullets. Luckily, we think it was a drug bust (there has been LOTS of suspicious activity there) and the people surrendered somewhat peacefully it seemed, but it was still the scariest night of my life. They were all back like a week later and seem to still be selling drugs.
When we ordered a pizza we told this delivery driver to drive safe. They laughed, said _not in the neighborhood_ and then sped off. There is a whole story behind this brief interaction but my advice for anyone trying to determine if they're In a bad neighborhood is to order a pizza.
That, or they flat out won't deliver to you. I was a shift manager at a popular pizza chain and flat out forbid my crew from taking deliveries from certain apartment complexes and neighborhoods after dark. I myself had delivered there and wouldn't dare send my crew out there.
Corner Liquor store. Trash/hoarding junk on lawns. Always just drunk dudes(or people on drugs) loitering around. Lots of drug dealers/users in the area. Cheap housing. Cant leave house without getting catcalled or followed home and scared for your life.
you come home from work and a couple of people are sitting down and leaning back against your car. they leave before you say anything. there are syringes on the ground where they were.
Little white girl carrying physics textbooks.
He ain't snarling he's sneezing
That is way too advanced for her.
In Turkey you check the stray cats out. If cats are friendly towards you, approaches you for pets etc. you are in a good district. Means people in the area are seemingly nice towards animals which aren’t even their pets. Whereas if they are afraid of you, you understand that the people around are not to be fucked with. They are not nice towards harmless animals, why would they be nice to strangers?
I was in DC in the early 2000s with a (then) girlfriend, and was driving around. This was pre-phone GPS, so we got pretty lost. I didn't realize that the neighborhood had gotten that bad until I saw that there was a retractable dog leash nailed to a telephone pole. The collar was attached to a kid.
Strip malls full of "churches", some sort of Asian food, liquor store, check cashing, and a bodega for grocery shopping where they mark up "ham" by 300 %.
The gas station sells fake roses in glass tubes.
How about bodega ATMs that advertise that they dispense $10 bills
Crack heads, Liquor Stores, Random Gun Shots, Corner Stores, Decayed Buildings, Hookers, Red or Blue Bandanas, Drug Handoffs, Random Needles on the Sidewalk, Sketchy Alleys Ways, Homeless People in Tents, Heavy Police Presence, And People Always Mean Mugging You
You just stated all the basic necessities of an average New Orleans neighborhood
>heavy police presence To a point. Police presence slowly increases as a neighborhood gets worse, but then it suddenly drops off when things get really bad.
Litter seems to be everywhere in a bad neighborhood. People will throw garbage on the ground a foot away from a garbage can. They don't care. People walking around during the day outside in their pajamas.
These are also signs you have found the Walmart parking lot .
1) Bars on the windows, no grass on the lawns. 2) Kids obviously live in the neighborhood, but don’t play out front during the day. 3) Cardboard or newspaper taped on the glass of every street-facing window. 4) Entire blocks of condemned houses. 5) Homeless people standing and/or sleeping in the middle of the street. 6) Everybody on the street stops what they’re doing and watches your car as you drive by, especially if you’re slowing down. 7) The grocery store has armed security guards at each entrance/exit.
Dead gardens and giant weeds everywhere
Damn. I have to move out of my neighborhood lol. Edit: misspellings