I used to live in downtown LA and some of my morning runs would take me through skid row. Worst not in terms that I felt unsafe, but of the deplorable conditions that place transforms into at night.
I used to live in downtown LA and some of my morning runs would take me through skid row. Worst not in terms that I felt unsafe, but of the deplorable conditions that place transforms into at night.
The Canyon.
dsafdafasdf wrote:
Oakland my azzz... There are streets the Detroit PD themselves don't drive down.
Did I say it was more dangerous than Detroit? He asked asked the worst area "you" have run through.
La junta, colorado
suburbia.
so many racist, ethnocentric, soul-less...people, with well-manicured lawns!
AHHHHhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!never again!
Memphis, at least back in the 90s. On my first visit there, there were 17 murders in 11 days. I went for a run and came to an intersection. The driver waved me across and then tried to hit me when I reached the middle of the intersection.
Downtown Dallas: I was running there one night when some guy asked me why I was running. I gave him the standard, "Cuz I'm the only white f___ker in this town." He laughed and I kept going. I worked in a downtown office building, and you would constantly find homeless people bathing in the restrooms or passed out in the hallway.
Not running-related, but South Norwalk, CT was scary back in the 1970s. I heard that it got cleaned up and became pretty nice. My parents owned a laundry that got robbed dozens of times. Gangs of teenagers would beat on the windows and doors and threaten to get us when we left after closing. Nothing like needing a police escort to walk the 10 feet from the door to your car.
I ran though the slums, drug dens, and vast red light areas of Leipzig, Budapest, Moscow, Warsaw. Eew, they should blast those hell holes.
North of Mexicali in the Imperial Valley,CA. Ran the ditchtops one night after dark. Smelt weed and perfume coming from the salt cedar clumps.... then helicopters with beacon lights approached, along the border... really didn't want to talk to coyote's, Border Patrol,or transients. Got my sorry ass home with no incident, but ran North for the rest off the stay.
jackjohnson wrote:
Along the Washington, DC/PG County border. Like a war zone in there, with drug deals going down in broad daylight. "Keep on running, you cracker Forest Gump" yelled one of them at me. I took their advice.
Absolutely. The area near Fort Totten is a hellhole
South Bend, Indiana is arguably the most segregated, white racist redneck town in the United States. I was a band member for a Big 10 school and would do my 7-8 mile runs through the black part of South Bend. The police would patrol to keep the blacks in their place. What a disgusting experience.
When I went to grad school at Mills College I sometimes ran between school and home in San Leandro. It took me right through some bad parts of town. Hookers on the street during broad daylight, bullet casings on the ground, etc. Four guys of a different skin color than myself tried to knock me down and push me in front of an oncoming car once. I mostly biked or drove on the freeway after that.
Roland Park, Baltimore
Terrifying
I've had a couple indoor meets at the PG Sports Complex and that area is just down right scary. Definitely a good place to get kid napped or worse
My work brings me to the tougher parts of DC and MD at times. I can't imagine wanting to run through these areas but I can't really imagine that anyone would deliberately want to do any harm to someone running. Most of the crimes are black on black and these thugs probably have the common sense to know if they mess with a white dude running they will have the cops on their ass so fast they're not going to want to leave their house. The only situation I would avoid in these places are the packs of teens that will probably mess with joe runner just to entertain themselves.
dsafdafasdf wrote:
Oakland my azzz... There are streets the Detroit PD themselves don't drive down.
There are streets in Oakland the Oakland police don't drive down. These are the same streets Cal Trans won't go re-pave and so they are dirt roads. Oakland, in its worst parts, is worse than LA and every bit as bad, and most likely worse, than Detroit.
a female POV wrote:
north memphis
east side of detroit
southwest detroit
new orleans 6th/7th/8th wards
oakland
Will second North Memphis.
As a naive limey with no concept of how quickly you could go from an ok neighborhood to a scary one in an American city I set out from mid-town Memphis and headed north......big mistake. A group of young men saw me coming down one street and stepped out into the road to try and prevent me from passing, I had to run into oncoming traffic to avoid them and ran like hell to get out of there. Still thank my good luck that they didn't chase me down.
DETROIT WORST RUNNING CITY! I can only run down woodward to the river front in Detroit. The river front is 1.5 miles long. If you run off of that path you get harassed and threatened every step. On a run in the winter I had 50 kids throwing snow balls and ice balls at me as if it was out of a movie. I have had teens tackle me into the snow or throw punches as I run by. One of my running buddies has actually gotten punched in the face while just running down the street. He does not run anymore in Detroit. All I can say is that I am happy when I am done with college and can get the hell out of Detroit.
Once in the early 80's I had a business trip in Newark (NJ) & ran in the South Ward -- surprisingly, I wasn't hassled, as I think the few residents who were up & about were so surprised to see me they didn't know how to respond.
In the late 70's I moved to Chicago & had a loop that went through some of Cabrini Green, at the nadir of its infamous existence. I didn't realize how bad it was until a CPD squad car stopped me & told me "Even we don't go through there." Not surprisingly, I stopped using that loop!
In the US, it would probably have to be the outskirts of New Haven. At one point, I had to loop back forth on a 200 meter stretch of road while waiting for my friend to finish using the bathroom. Needless to say, I was harassed by everyone.
Outside of the US, I would go with Dharamsala, India. It wasn't a bad area in the morning, just weird. I ran when all the drunk and blazed revelers were amok. And once I got out of town, I had to dodge every car that came my way.
When I was 13(1979), I went for a "group" run with the NYRRC from the YMCA(around mid-town)to the GW bridge and back, after dark, about 17 miles. Well, on the way back, the group started thinning out and I ended up alone, no one in sight in front or in back, running in Harlem, with these painful large blisters developing under both of my arches from my leather orthotics. I was a scrawny little white kid, 4'10", wieghed about 85lb. and was scared out of my mind. Suffice it to say, the adrenaline was pumping really hard and stopping was not an option.