Albuquerque, Portland or San Antonio are far safer than Washington DC.
I walk around at midnight all the time here. I frequently take the last bus
to UNM and walk to my office when the library closes at midnight. I have
never been accosted, robbed or felt even slightly unsafe. And it isn't as
though I live in some rarified suburb. I ride the bus down Central Avenue,
a main east-west artery notorious for drug sales and prostitution. I take
night classes at UNM, in the heart of town. I hear a lot of people bemoan
how "bad" it is here and I am highly amused by this. I see drunks and lots
of homeless people but they are either friendly or minding their own
business, which is all that I ask.
The difference between here and DC as I see it is in the nature of the
"badness."
The District of Columbia has an underclass society for whom there are very
few options outside of drug sales and robbery. Schools do not educate them
and and because of poor skills many of them cannot get jobs. Women really
do have babies to get the welfare money.
Imagine a mentality in which $300 a month is your best option. These people
have no hope for their own future and therefore they have few qualms about
shooting you for the ten dollars in your pocket. This may also be true of
other east coast cities like New York or Philadelphia. I am honestly not
sure. I would say it was (somewhat less) true of Jacksonville Florida at
the time I was there.
The main avenues of Dupont Circle and Georgetown are fairly safe primarily
because they are well-lit. If you park a car on a side street there is
always a chance that someone looking for a few bucks will be waiting in the
dark for someone like you, affluent and possibly a little drunk. Obviously
size and gender will also play into whether you are selected as a target.
But if you think that there are no predators there you are simply fooling
yourself.
I do not think that a new city administration, however honest and
well-meaning, can have given hope to all those people. Not in three years.
That is the bottom line -- the DC projects are full of people who do not
see any opportunity for themselves and for whom jail is not that bad an
option.
While Albuquerque has outbreaks of violence, they have a different
character. There have been two or three shootings in the immediate vicinity
of UNM. All involved mentally ill homeless people. Prostitution takes place
in stylized transactions which are invisible to those not in on the code.
There are no women standing around in bikinis and high heels like you see
at 14th and R. Drug sales take place in hotel rooms; again, drugs are there
if you are looking but there are no open air drug markets like 10th and M,
or whatever corner they are on this year. Above all the sellers do not
shoot it out on street corners. When they do attack one another, which is
rare, it takes the form of a home invasion. Granted that is a pretty severe
sort of violence, but it does not affect you if you are not in the drug
trade.
Gangs are a problem in some parts of town, yes, but they attack one
another. They do not rob random bystanders. I live on the West Mesa in an
allegedly "gang" neighborhood. The fact is that if you are not a gang
member, you are neither good nor bad for those people and you do not exist
for them. Their presence in the area reinforces my decision to continue
home schooling rather than use public schools -- I have a thirteen-year-old
son, and the local school has had gun incidents in the past few months --
but gangs here affect me otherwise not at all.
I think that there are cultural reasons for the difference. The local
Hispanic culture is family centered and entrepreneurial. While New Mexico
is a very poor place demographically there is no economically isolated
underclass as there is in many east coast cities.
Dana
> Wait you live in Albuquerque right? My grandmother and two uncles have
> lived there for years. Central is disgusting. The gang problem is insane.
> You really think it's better there than here?
>
> Tim
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry C. Lyons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2003 6:53 PM
> To: CF-Community
> Subject: Re:CF-Community: Digest every 8 hours
>
>
> At the same time you can say exactly the same about many places in the
> South west.
>
> larry
>
> At 02:24 PM 11/30/2003, you wrote:
> >people get mugged all the time in Georgetown. And the houses in NW have
> >bars on the windows for a reason. Just cause the real estate values are
> >high doesnt mean it's safe :P Didn't we go through this once? My sister
> in
> >law got mugged and beaten in front of the Smithsonian....
> >
> >Just cause the guys with guns live in Anacostia :) there is no law that
> >says they have to stay there yanno
> >
> >Dana
> >
>
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