WHY I left OAKLAND !!!!

5star_fish_general
5star_fish_general Banned Users Posts: 16
edited January 2012 in The Social Lounge
I would advise moving to a much more non-ghetto sort of area. I know it did wonders for my psyche.

IMHO, there is very little point in living in large metropolitan areas unless you are young and enamored with city life (as young people should be) and you don't mind putting up with the ? of it all, or if you have a decent enough salary/career to be able to sustain yourself in style. I definitely could have been living a lot higher on the hog than I did, but even so, I had quite a nice "funky" hip downtown place, a couple of luxury cars, nice meals out every week, etc... well, I miss it to death sometimes, but I'm done living in "up and coming" areas.

As much as Colorado Springs blows, and as much as I hate it with a burning passion and want to leave, PLACES like Oakland reminds me of why I bailed and moved down here. In hindsight, I probably shoulda just downsized and moved into a small apartment in a better part of town or something, but at the time, I just had to get out. Too many things were getting to me. I mean, I had half a notion to move, if not out to the worst parts of suburbia, at least a little in that direction. But then what would that buy me? Dealing with the traffic and all of that, sure, I'd be a little closer to the happening stuff but hell, everyone I knew was settling down and having kids anyway.

You live in the 'hood long enough and you just don't remember what "normal" is (or should be) anymore. I.e., walking your dog around the block at night and not getting tailed by a bunch of simians shouting racist epithets at you. Not having to suffer through nightly ghetto bird flyovers that sound like they're so close that you think cops are going to jump through your roof. Being able to leave, say, a ? ass bicycle that wouldn't fetch $20 at Goodwill on a good day in your backyard and not have some crackhead steal it by the time you come back from work. Knowing that there have not been multiple gang-related homicides within two blocks of where you live in the past year. The list goes on and on...

I remember a South African friend of mine telling me how many people in SA carry loaded firearms with them inside the house at all times. Insane, I thought.. how could one live that way? But it's incremental. After a while you just forget what life should be like. You "adjust". Well, my attitude was "? adjusting." At 33 years old living in an "authentic" urban environment just lost nearly all of its appeal to me. (And I love city life, but I'm done with being the first-wave of gentrification anywhere -- let the current wave of impressionable 24 year old liberal arts grads carry that torch.)

Comments

  • memphis2sacnicc
    memphis2sacnicc Members Posts: 2,033 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    U got ran out like Too Short and Yukmouth didn't u?
  • LOLCL
    LOLCL Members Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    My opinion is exempt because I'm a 20 year old living in an over-populated lower-class urban environment but it's really on how you look at where you're at. Ultimately you do just adjust, I get checked all the time by my friends outside of the area on things that I just think are normal.

    It makes me think, do I portray that ? to other people? Can they feel the hood in me when I speak?

    I was always on some new, innovating life for me and those around me and that's something I definitely don't want to do.

    When it comes to that violence though it's really on if you're involved, people die all the time we just don't see it or it isn't reported.
  • ThaChozenWun
    ThaChozenWun Members Posts: 9,390
    edited January 2012
    You said "? " you British fruitcake. You ain't from Oakland ? .
  • LOLCL
    LOLCL Members Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    The worst part about the hood is the Hate though... All my family is cynical misanthropes, I just thought all people are like that towards others.
  • 5star_fish_general
    5star_fish_general Banned Users Posts: 16
    edited January 2012
    I would advise moving to a much more non-ghetto sort of area. I know it did wonders for my psyche.

    IMHO, there is very little point in living in large metropolitan areas unless you are young and enamored with city life (as young people should be) and you don't mind putting up with the ? of it all, or if you have a decent enough salary/career to be able to sustain yourself in style. I definitely could have been living a lot higher on the hog than I did, but even so, I had quite a nice "funky" hip downtown place, a couple of luxury cars, nice meals out every week, etc... well, I miss it to death sometimes, but I'm done living in "up and coming" areas.

    As much as Colorado Springs blows, and as much as I hate it with a burning passion and want to leave, PLACES like Oakland reminds me of why I bailed and moved down here. In hindsight, I probably shoulda just downsized and moved into a small apartment in a better part of town or something, but at the time, I just had to get out. Too many things were getting to me. I mean, I had half a notion to move, if not out to the worst parts of suburbia, at least a little in that direction. But then what would that buy me? Dealing with the traffic and all of that, sure, I'd be a little closer to the happening stuff but hell, everyone I knew was settling down and having kids anyway.

    You live in the 'hood long enough and you just don't remember what "normal" is (or should be) anymore. I.e., walking your dog around the block at night and not getting tailed by a bunch of simians shouting racist epithets at you. Not having to suffer through nightly ghetto bird flyovers that sound like they're so close that you think cops are going to jump through your roof. Being able to leave, say, a ? ass bicycle that wouldn't fetch $20 at Goodwill on a good day in your backyard and not have some crackhead steal it by the time you come back from work. Knowing that there have not been multiple gang-related homicides within two blocks of where you live in the past year. The list goes on and on...

    I remember a South African friend of mine telling me how many people in SA carry loaded firearms with them inside the house at all times. Insane, I thought.. how could one live that way? But it's incremental. After a while you just forget what life should be like. You "adjust". Well, my attitude was "? adjusting." At 33 years old living in an "authentic" urban environment just lost nearly all of its appeal to me. (And I love city life, but I'm done with being the first-wave of gentrification anywhere -- let the current wave of impressionable 24 year old liberal arts grads carry that torch.)



    oh i didnt write this i'm from the south..i just thought it would bring or rather start a good discussion
  • LOLCL
    LOLCL Members Posts: 1,039 ✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    oh i didnt write this i'm from the south..i just thought it would bring or rather start a good discussion

    You're about to derail your own thread with those south insults lol
  • waterproof
    waterproof Members Posts: 9,412 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    YOU SHOULD OF JUST MOVE TO THE OAKLAND HILLS, all oakland aint bad mayne. even though im from the bay but not from oakland, i spend some time there for i got folks that lived there since the 60's. there is some ugly ass parts but oakland hills is just as nice as any place in the US. And i love going to Jack London Square for the night life.
  • Cake4real
    Cake4real Members Posts: 815
    edited January 2012
    Living in places like that can be uninspiring.
  • proud_babydaddy
    proud_babydaddy Members Posts: 361 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    Allergens wrote: »
    i feel what your saying, im still getting use to not having to contiguously check my rearview when in a park car...get out of my car to use a drive up atm..lock my front door to my house even though im cleaning out my car in the driveway..put out non see through bags of trash on the curb and being surpised they havent been busted open and looked through..having random cats ask my for 10 dollars to cut my grass in the dead of winter..but the ? solicitors in the burbs got no ? shame, my white neighbor put me on the hanging a sign out front saying no solicitors ...im like , that ? works?....in the hood ? ill tear that ? down, come to ya door like"you sign fell off, but why i got you hear would you like to by some steak out of the cooler on the back of my 92 pick up"

    sometimes thats some good meat. They used to be posted outside the package store in augusta, ga. Also the Swason truck I stayed buying ? from them. When its a weekend in the Summer and that truck come by i instantly wanted to get on the grill.
  • heavyrelish
    heavyrelish Members Posts: 476 ✭✭✭
    edited January 2012
    My girl is from Oakland, she tells me its wild out there. Im from Philly so I know all about living in a warzone. Im in ATL now and its slowly becoming a trashcan. My mother lives in VA, its nice and quiet but its ? BORING!!! Another problem with living in small towns is that the blacks tend to think that in order to be 'city like' they have to be SUPER GULLY SUPER GHETTO and take things to the extreme. Its very important for young black kids to c an empowered class of 'us', i.e. lawyers, doctors, executives, students, etc, which generally cities have in abundance and small towns have few if any at all...so what am I gonna do? Two story house in Tyrone, GA. A cool, middle class suburb about 30-45 minutes outside of Atlanta, within the next two years...