Flamewar

For some reason yesterday I had a headache and sent a rather rude mail to fifty or sixty people after one of them suggested that Jackson Square might not be the safest part of Boston. I’m annoyed by people’s fear of particular neighborhoods, because fear leads to flight and flight leads to decay and decay leads to more fear. Because I think that for a lot of people the fear of particular neighborhoods is an irrational and repressed fear of the residents and all too often of the color of their skin. Also, I wanted to vent about something, and urban decay and stratification was as good a topic as any. I said, more or less:

College kids are getting gentrified out of Mission Hill right now and you think JP is “sketchy?” You Bostonians have no idea what a rough neighborhood is.

Jackson Square, Dudley Square– I’ve been to them and wandered around and gotten lost and never felt uncomfortable. Some people think that a little graffiti or loitering teenagers make a neighborhood rough. Let me tell you about rough neighborhoods. A rough neighborhood is the one where daytime gunfire is a regular occurrence, where more than 20% of the buildings are abandoned or burned-out shells, where the police are afraid to venture after dark, and where driving down the same street twice in the same day without making a drug buy is likely to get you shot.

Now, I know I’m a guy and I can throw my shoulders back and look tough, and I’ve never been mugged either so I’m probably naieve and prone to romanticize the down-at-the-heels parts of town. I know it’s not the same for everyone– a friend of a friend of mine told me she moved out of Eastie because she just got tired of hearing the word “mamacita” a half-dozen times on the way to the train every morning. That’s legitimate– but a piropo is not the same thing as dangerous. It sucks and it’s degrading, but it’s not dangerous.

Common sense, people: if a street has people out and about, you’re probably fine. They may not be people you know, they may not walk or talk or act like you, but they are human beings and they are probably not going to hurt you. Avoid walking alone, avoid dark alleys and huddles of young men on doorsteps. If you avoid entire neighborhoods because you’re a little afraid or a little nervous, you’ll miss the whole city.

Jackson Square, Jamaica Plain, Dudley Square, South or East Boston, the Washington St. Corridor– they’re working-class areas, places where students and artists and immigrants and young families live. If you fear that, you risk giving in to suburban sprawl and isolation, structural classism and subtle racism. That’s not a sketchy neighborhood you’re missing. That’s a portrait of everything that makes our nation great.