Ten years ago, you wouldn't be caught dead wandering Atlanta at night. Today, it's wonderful.
Ditto downtown DC.
New York since the late-1980s is the big example. Used to be incredibly rough, even in Manhattan. Now even places like Harlem and the East Village are turning. Even Marek's neighborhood in Brooklyn sounds like it's turning around, and that's a notoriously rough one.
Baltiless is more like Detroit. The cancer may be terminal. The cops are all untrustworthy, being either racist pigs or on the take. The economy is gone and probably not coming back. Unemployment is out of control. All of the money has moved to the western counties outside the city. The schools are a joke. The government doesn't know its asshole from its earhole.
It's not safe. It's full of drunks and drug addicts, even in the "nice" areas (Camden Yards, Federal Hill, Inner Harbor, Fells Point, etc). The best you get are some not-burnt-out townhouses and a few trashy bars. Everything East of Johns Hopkins is a warzone.
It's sad. Baltiless is really just an awful place. This blog sums it up quite well in a series of bitter, sarcastic hits. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
As for my area - it never was the worst of places. Geographically and practically in between the buppieville that was Fort Greene and the byword for 'hood that was Bed-Stuy. So crackhouses next to solid blue collar buildings, next to some lovingly restored old houses inhabited by buppies, plus a few whites from the big art school (Pratt). Bullet proof glass filled bodegas and a couple nice restaurants and bars. Now - let's just say my closest wine store was a half hour walk when I moved in. Now there are a half dozen within fifteen minutes. The other day I saw a $5 packet of five small tortillas at the recently opened local high end supermarket.
Or to put it differently - this building is getting completed a block away from me.
But then, in fairness, Detroit (and Michigan in general) also doesn't have a bunch of wealthy cities nearby to pump at least some money into it. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
