It's a joke that I say frequently...that the sketchiest neighborhood is always right around the intersection of MLK/Caesar Chavez/Rosa Parks and Broadway/Main/Center. It is accurate for many places I visit.

Does anyone here live in a town and can confirm that their MLK Blvd or other street named after a civil rights leader is actually in the good side of town?

My hometown renamed a street to MLK Dr. It's 100% nice and it runs between a nice old folks home and a nice shopping mall. To be fair, it's only 1/4 mile long.

In all my travels and moves, it is the only nice MLK drive or blvd I have seen.

I can't think of any areas that encompass streets named after civil rights folks that generally are not ghettoey.

Renaming streets just means not having to solve any of the problems.

When I was in college, the southern side of the campus in downtown Austin was 19th Street. We ate at restaurants, took out clothes to the 19th Street Laundry, and bought our refreshments at the 19th Street Liquor Store.

When I came back to Austin several years later, 19th Street had been renamed Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Boulevard. I assume that the students of that day bought their refreshments at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Liquor Store.

In Berkeley MLK begins in a nice neighborhood and continues into Oakland where it terminates downtown. Even the rougher stretches of MLK in both cities are ok and compare favorably to the worst parts of town.

Funny (as in strange--nothing "funny" about the incident) you should mention this. The following happened this morning in the Socialist Workers Paradise of Seattle:

http://komonews.com/news/local...ing-in-south-seattle

SEATTLE -- A couple driving down a South Seattle street were both wounded by crossfire during yet another shooting in the region early Thursday morning.

Seattle police said the man and woman, both in their 70s, were driving south on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South at about 3 a.m. when they encountered two cars facing northbound at S. Charles Street, according to Lt. Seth Dietrich with Seattle Police.

The husband decided to drive between the two cars moments before gunfire erupted. Their car was caught in the crossfire.

Police and medics rushed to the scene after witnesses called 911, said Detective Patrick Michaud of the Seattle police.

The couple were rushed to Harborview Medical Center, where the husband is listed in critical condition with life-threatening injuries. The wife was treated for her injuries and released.

Photos from the scene showed more than a dozen bullet casings on the ground, and a witness tells KOMO News the victim's car was "littered with bullets."

Police don't have much to go on yet to look for the shooters.

"We are now looking for two dark colored sedans," Dietrich said. "That's pretty much all we have."

It's the latest incident in a string of shootings in South Seattle over the past 24 hours. A woman was killed and a man was wounded in a shooting outside a bakery on Rainier Ave. S. on Wednesday evening. Gunfire then erupted a few blocks away. No victims were found but police found additional shell casings.

Seattle police are increasing patrols in the area as detectives investigate the series of shootings.

Anyone with information about any of the shootings is urged to call the Seattle Police Department's violent crime tip line at 206-233-5000.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
...that the sketchiest neighborhood is always right around the intersection of MLK/Caesar Chavez/Rosa Parks and Broadway/Main/Center.

Pretty good rule to live by...

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ha. ours is not in a nice area.
it's usually where most pursuits end when the criminal crashes the car then bails and flees on foot.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig209:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
...that the sketchiest neighborhood is always right around the intersection of MLK/Caesar Chavez/Rosa Parks and Broadway/Main/Center.

Pretty good rule to live by...

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Yup

quote:

Originally posted by Chowser:
ha. ours is not in a nice area.

Same for Savannah.

Chapel Hill's "MLK Jr. Boulevard" is fine. Not a high-crime area, no blight, no warrens of Section-8 housing, none of the usual accoutrements.

Connects the town to I-40 so it's busy. Two lanes each direction, homes/apartments/offices and shopping centers.

It's not a street full of mansions, mind you - just a normal sort of small-town thoroughfare, going from the center of town to the interstate.

Jimmah Carter Blvd near ATL is kind of a shit hole

Atlanta's MLK, JR Dr is a long street. It starts on the east at Oakland Cemetary and is decent. It then goes by Georgia Capitol Building and a non-descript area of downtown office buildings. Then you cross Northside Dr and its downhill from there, although its not full-on ghetto or anything. More like run-down sprawl. Definitely not as bad as Savannah's MLK Dr.

Of course, we have a lot of streets named after Civil Rights leaders. Hosea Williams, Joseph Lowery, Ralph David Abernathy, Andrew Young, Donald Lee Hollowell, Hamilton E Holmes, John Wesley Dobbs, Jesse Hill Jr, etc etc etc.

I do not believe we are progressive enough to have a MLK Jr. Blvd. in Nashville.
But I'm sure it's in the near future, given the plethora of hipsters that
continually move here.
Yet, we do have a Rosa Parks Blvd. It's in an area that has always been pretty "rough", but
is quickly being overtaken by gentrification.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
When I was in college, the southern side of the campus in downtown Austin was 19th Street. We ate at restaurants, took out clothes to the 19th Street Laundry, and bought our refreshments at the 19th Street Liquor Store.

When I came back to Austin several years later, 19th Street had been renamed Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Boulevard. I assume that the students of that day bought their refreshments at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Liquor Store.

I was at UT in the late 80's/early 90s. Lived in a dorm then later a condo just off MLK. It was essentially the southern border of the UT campus. It was a fine neighborhood. It got sketchier as you went east of I-35 past the baseball stadium, but I don't remember being afraid to go out there.

MLK Blvd. in Houston runs north/south starting near the University of Houston (which is kind of a mixed neighborhood) and going south into some really bad parts of town.

MLK Blvd in El Paso wasn't bad.

Told a lady at work years ago that those areas are usually pretty shitty. She said yeah because they named the street in shitty areas on purpose.

Beat me to it



The end of MLK Blvd in Savannah is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, past the train station down towards Bay Street.

MLK used to be W Broad Street. And going west of west Broad or east of east Broad in Savannah wasn't really a good idea. So renaming it only confirmed what most already knew

quote:

Originally posted by ARMT Guy:

quote:

Originally posted by Chowser:
ha. ours is not in a nice area.

Same for Savannah.

quote:

Rosa Parks

Ha! Here's one for you:
We have an "adopt a highway" program where a group volunteers to clean up a stretch of highway and they put up a sign "This highway adopted by__(insert group name)__."

Well.... The Ku Klux Klan decided to "adopt a highway". This began several court battles with the state of Missouri after the state disputed its right to sponsor a stretch of freeway in Saint Louis County. In March 2001, after a U.S. District Court judge found that blocking the Klan's sponsorship was unconstitutional, the Court of Appeals ruled that the state must erect signs announcing the group's sponsorship.

So..., the Missouri Legislature, to counter the embarrassment of the KKK sign, voted to rename the stretch of I-55 the "Rosa Parks Freeway". The "Rosa Parks Freeway" sign was large and overwhelmed the little "adopt a highway" sign.

The Klan were eventually dropped from the program on the grounds that for the duration of their sponsorship, they had not once cleaned the freeway. But it's still called the "Rosa Parks Freeway".