re: If you live/lived in the hood, tell us crazy stores from your ghetto

With your username you are the one that should have tales to tell.

Grew up in sect 8 housing outside NYC

Watched an estranged husband fire 7 rounds into the living room window of my neighbor. He had just gotten out of prison and she refused to take him back.

Crack epidemic was awful. I found a guy ODing while riding my bike to school. He was 1/2 way out of his car, convulsing. Crack destroyed my neighborhood. We were sect 8 but it was mostly young families trying to get a start on life. By 1990, it was drug families and gangs.

Watched a girl slice another girls face with a razor blade at school

Had a classmate get shot while attempting to rob someone at an ATM. The guy wound up being an off duty NYPD

My parents got married in the Army, used section 8 to live while dad went to college. I’m really proud of my parents for how far they have come. It did come at a cost as I witnessed a lot of foul sh*t. Thankfully my siblings were much younger and do not remember NY

I grew up on the west side of Atlanta, ITP (Bankhead). Nothing you would not expect out of low- income area with what was, at the time, a truly horrific rate of violent crime. Just like any such area if you weren't engaged in criminal activity yourself it wasn't any worse than any other area. My grandfather owned a bar in the West End neighborhood and I kind of grew up in it. Mostly what takes place in such neighborhoods is about 90% of the adults get up early, go to work, come home and watch TV. On the weekends they do indeed get drunk and beat the shite out of one another and occasionally someone will shoot someone over their wife or girlfriend but mostly they struggle to earn enough money to keep the lights on.

I have seen cops investigating murders, never witnessed one until I lived in Athens. I have had crack heads try to get in the truck with me, being propositioned by hookers was a daily event, and have had to do some fighting in order to keep my shite but it wasn't everyday.

We were one of the few remaining white families in these areas. It was home, it was what we were accustomed to and it did not seem unusual at all. We moved in and out of the area a bunch, my dad followed work so we lived in north Georgia and the suburbs and the coast at times but west Atlanta was home. It wasn't as bad as many imagine. Unless of course you were a criminal and then it could get worse than one could imagine.

quote:

---

A guy OD’d on heroin down the street and was found in the stoop of a house. Not his house, or his neighborhood.

---

My maternal great grandmother lived in mid-town Atlanta, a couple of blocks from Piedmont Park, when I was a kid and in the 1970s that area was heroine central. It wasn't at all unusual to see people on the nod day and night and many times they were deader than a door knob lying in the street or bushes. Her upstairs neighbor was a pimp and hookers were everywhere in that area at the time. Those women, many of them not much more than girls, treated me like a baby brother....I didn't know nor did I care what they did for a living, they were constantly buying me candy and toys....it was actually a pretty good childhood. They saw my grandmother like their grandmother and would come to the door all hours of the night when they needed something.

quote:

---

I worked in the hood one summer as a life guard.


you must have been busy

---

If the right posters show up, this could lead to some bans/strongly worded PM's from admin

Lived near Gardere and Burbank in the mid 00's. It was more "hood adjacent" back then. Not a bad neighborhood mostly, but right next to a terrible area.

It was probably about 9 or 10pm. I was driving home from studying for finals in early May. I lived in a townhouse where the parking lot was shaped like a U coming off the main road in the neighborhood. I lived in the middle of the U. As I pulled in, there was a car in front of me that was just idling and blocking the way back to my apartment. I sat there for probably 20 seconds and finally 3 youths stepped out of the vehicle and began walking away from my car. Their car drove off.

I passed the youths in my car and parked near my townhouse. As I got out of my vehicle with my backpack full of study materials, the 3 youths were passing by. I gave them a friendly nod and one of them immediately pulled out a gun and pointed at me / my head. They told me to empty my pockets, drop the backpack and get on the ground. I did as told, and they took everything except my keys...telling me "we don't want yo keys." How nice of them. They told me to count to something and not get up until i was done.As soon as I saw that they were out of sight, I got up. I felt thankful that I wasn't hurt, but that ended fast after I realized that they took all of my study materials. I grew incredibly angry, grabbed my keys and set off after them in my car.

As I left the U shaped parking lot, I reached for my phone to dial 911, but of course it wasn't in my pocket any more. I pulled onto the main drive and spotted the vehicle about 300-400 ft ahead. I turned off my lights and began my pursuit. They spotted me and put their breaks on, and I did as well as I did not want to get too close since I knew they had a gun...I really had no plan other than trying to get their license plate. They turned south onto Gardere toward burbank and so did I. They aggressively drove toward oncoming traffic to pass people, and I tried my best to keep up. Eventually I started following the wrong car that looked like theirs and lost them. I gave up and went home. I must have reached for my phone that wasn't there 5-10 times, followed by "frick!" after again realizing I had no phone.

I got home and cancelled my credit / debit cards, not before they were able to purchase a $20 feast at McDonalds. I then called the police from my landline and they came out and I made a police report. about 2 hours later, the police call me and tell me that they found the car and some of the perps. They picked me up in their cruiser, and drove me to this ghetto as hell apartment complex just south of Burbank and Gardere. They asked me if I recognized the car, which I confirmed. They also pulled 3 guys in cuffs in front of the cruiser and shined a spotlight on each and asked me if I recognized them. I confirmed this as well. They took me back home and dropped me off.

I didn't sleep much that night...knowing that at least 1 of them got away and knew where I lived. I also had lost almost all of my study materials for finals...I was fricked. At dawn...so about 6AM, I hear a loud knock on my front door. I grabbed my Louisville slugger and peaked through the blinds, and saw an officer there with my backpack in his hands. Things were starting to look up! He said he found it right around the corner of the U parking lot from where I park my car. Apparently the perps ditched it, thinking that there was nothing of value. But I had just bought a new video iPod, so they thought wrong.

I went to the DMV a week or so later to get a new driver's license. Not a day later, I open up a letter with my old ID in it that was in my stolen wallet. The perps threw it out the window of their car and someone found it in a parking lot. This person saw the address, and mailed it back to me. How nice!

Maybe a day after that, another officer shows up at my place with my phone. They said they were able to triangulate the signal and raided an apartment where they thought it was and caught one of the other perps (the driver?).

I later found out that these perps were ages 15-18, which is sad. At the end of the day, I only lost my wallet and a few dollars that were in it.

A year later I testified against one of them in court. I had to sit through his grandmaw's testimony as a character witness and lots of dindunuffin comments. It was infuriating to say the least. He did get put away but I'm sure not for long, since he was a minor.

My head has always been on a swivel since this happened. I was a naïve college student then. Now I try to stay aware of my surroundings as much as I can, especially when in vulnerable situations. I will not park or get out of my vehicle with strange people nearby.

Thats a nice collection of tumbleweave pics

Lived in the hood for 4 or 5 years, had a bus stop in my front yard about 15 ft from my bedroom window. I worked nights so I'd often get woken up during the day by rap battles.

Caught a fat lady hosing herself down with my garden hose while she was waiting on the bus.

My neighbor was pretty cool. I mentioned I was firing up the grill so come over if he got hungry. He showed up with about 10 family members to eat. They ended up going get some of those big bags of chicken quarters so there was enough for everybody. Was a pretty fun time

I was driving junk vehicles at the time so I was a frequent customer at the O'reilly's near me. There was a big green mile looking dude who worked there. I got to see him turn himself more and more into a woman every time I went. By the time I moved he was almost finished. Biggest triceps I've ever seen on somebody wearing a blouse.

eta: after reading some of the other stories I guess I lived in a more family oriented hood.

True story....as a teenager in the early 70s, I worked as a cook at an IHOP on Florida Blvd. After work one day, Tyrone (honestly) invites me to go shoot pool with him. So I climb in Tyrone's Javelin with the curb feelers and shag carpet on the dash and I'm "digging the scene with a gangster lean" as we head to Scotlandville. Tyrone decides to make a quick stop at 7-11. He gets out to go in and I follow. As I start to enter the store, a young well dressed black male steps in front on me and says "no white boys allowed". Tyrone looks back and sees the situation and tells the Muslim " he's good, he's with me". About that time a young thug looking guy steps up and says " hey Tyrone are you having trouble ". At the same time he lifts his shirt to display a hand gun tucked in his waist. The Black Muslim then steps to the side to let me in and everybody was cool. But man I was nervous as hell the rest of the day.

Quite a few in college. My rent was 95 dollars a month.

1. We always had crackheads come to our door after 12. Wrong house. Some of the wildest conversations ever happened behind the locked door. Funny thing is, our window on the door was broken so we covered it saran wrap. When we forgot the key, we just reached in and unlocked from inside.

2. Had a lady chase a naked guy with a saucepan into our backyard.
He finally just gave up and hid in our bushes. She kept cracking him with the saucepan in the bush until the cops came. He was caught verse in dogshit because our Rottweiler shat in those bushes. This occurred at around 2 in the afternoon which was odd.

3. Went canoe camping and parked my car in a guy’s yard 25 miles down river. He thought we were coming back that night. No cell phones back then. Guy where my care was parked called police because we were missing. Police came and knocked on my drug dealer neighbor asking if they had seen us lately. My family got next of kin calls.
Two days letter, Drug dealer came to my door telling me to never be responsible for cops coming to his door again.

4. Our house was the de facto fraternity house since the dean took our house from the fraternity. We lost it becasue Our Sargent at arms made a pledge jump off our roof on to trampoline into a hot tub. THe pledge willed himself over the edge into the tub. I still see it happen in slow motion in my memory. I really think he flapped his arms so hard that he slightly flew enough to make it just into the hot tub. Hot tub was broken and had frogs living it it with dirty as hell water. At the beginning, the Hot tub was really cool for about six months though. We didn't know how to keep it clear. Still don’t Know how he missed the edge of the tub.

Sororities stopped having mixers at our house until we rented a party house closer to the better part of town. We were asked to leave that house as well from rental manager.

5. Our neighborhood was called Ripple City.

6. After hurricane floyd hit us, we had numerous drug salesmen out of their homes and asked if they could live in our finished attic. Place actually got nicer after fema bought that land.

One was the weed guy that had paper grocery bags full of bud and would just scoop it into gallon ziplocks. He was like Justin Wilson. He didn’t need to measure it.
He had a boa constrictor that was like Arnold Schwarzenegger because my roommate went turkey hunting, cleaned the turkey and only washed the blood off his hands with water, one night. Guy came over with the snake and everyone held it. That snake flicked his tongue out as soon as Ed showed up with “clean hand”. Snake latched onto his hand and he would not let go. Ed pulls his hand out taking teeth with it. Hand swells up like a baseball. Goes to Er. Xray shows
Multiple teeth inside hand.

7. Interestingly, we had our cars booted numerous times. But not by the city. Randomly booted by someone. We would call the cops to unbolt it and they had no clue who was doing it. We used a hacksaw to cut them.

8. Crackhead named Jerry across the street would get a free tv from some foundation every month. His favorite thing to do was toss a brick at it RIGHT when they would give it to him. It became a monthly thing. Neighbors would sit on the front porches and watch him sling a brick at it. He would injure himself multiple times doing this.