Eastern Massachusetts is not without her faults. However, one thing we are not is Ghetto.
Granted, we have Fall River. You can get the Fear nice and easy in Fall River. It's a tough town. Most famous resident? An axe-murderess. Most beloved? Probably the same girl.
Taunton, Brockton and New Beddy are no walk in the park, either... or they're a walk in the park where you get beaten up by a gang of thugs for no reason. After that, there is what skiers call a precipitous drop-off.
Some of the tougher parts of our region aren't THAT tough. I'm not taking about individual citizens. I'm sure there's at least one bad-ass Kennedy (found him!) drawing breath somewhere, and you can get beaten up at the Bia Bistro in Cohasset just as badly as you can get handled at South Side Annie's in New Bedford if you cross the wrong opponent.
Still, if you put on NWA and drive around Brockton, it sort of makes sense as long as your eyes don't go to the your-reflection part of the rear view mirror. Try going down King Caesar Road in Duxbury with Bring The Ruckus playing. Your own silliness might strangle you.
There's nothing wrong with this. "Escaping an urban nightmare" is a top reason for moving out to the countryside. "Good visual environment for my Nasty Nas CD" isn't.
Still, if someone establishes a scale for Ghetto, and if the numbers on that scale can be applied to any town anywhere, you can rank towns with it. Lo and behold, that's just what someone did.
They used a simple formula.
High school graduation rates
Number of convenience stores
Number of drug stores
Number of discount stores
Crime
Twitter mentions of #ghetto
It's a flawed formula, but it should be fun to play with.
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| Run run run from the Ghetto Bird |
Here's their Top 15:
Lawrence
Springfield
Chelsea
New_Bedford
Brockton
Holyoke
Lynn
Lowell
Fall River
Worcester
Everett
Revere
Boston
Fitchburg
Wareham
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| Wareham |
There are definitely some flawed criteria. Twitter references are worrisome. I was a teacher for a while, and I heard kids describe every town on earth as "ghetto." Kids own Twitter, I suppose, and may lack the seasoning to know True Ghetto and why Marion doesn't qualify.
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| Brockton |
I was very much looking forward to the bottom of this list, as I wanted to see how the silver-spoon towns fared against each other. It'd be fun to imagine a couple of stockbrokers arguing about whether Hingham is more thugged out than Sandwich. Alas, the list plays out before we get to the Blue Bloods.
The convenience store angle seems to be ranked right up there with Poverty and Crime, which would to throw a wrench into things. I think that if a Cumby's opens up near the Tedeschi's in your cow town, it shouldn't suddenly make you more Gangsta than someone from Lowell.
The discount store thing may be a bit unfair, although you don't see a lot of (Holla Holla) Family Dollar stores in Duxbury.
However, only my love of Wareham and the lower ranking of Boston makes me really have any issue with the Top 15.
I may get a bit of static from my readers, and I just ask them to remember that I am merely passing along the information on this list. I'm not smart enough to factor that many variables into an equation, even with My Damned Aunt Sally helping. I am smart enough to take a Top 100 list and chop it down to show just the towns in our region, and that's what we're about to do.
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| More Brockton |
Regional Rank City Crime Score Original Rank
1) new_bedford 161.7 4
2) brockton 146 5
3) fall_river 190.3 9
4) boston 155.6 13
5) wareham 115.4 14
6) quincy 169.1 26
7) taunton 143.5 33
Well, maybe they have some points after all. Some people might flip Fall River and New Bedford, Most people might see the flaws in not having Boston as the anchorman. Larger towns suffer a bit in the ratings, as the sheer number of people make for lower rates.
Wareham seems to be ranked too highly, but maybe they just try really hard. I worked Boston in mostly to knock the 'Ham down a spot.
Our coverage area showed well, taking 4 of the top 14 spots.
Now, remember when I said "precipitous drop-off" earlier. Here we are!
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| Middleboro |
8) bridgewater 172.5 39
9) west_yarmouth 124 41
10) attleboro 116 42
11) middleborough_center 154.3 43
12) fairhaven 117.3 46
13) barnstable_town 168.1 48
14)plymouth 149.9 52
I went to college in Bridgewater, and it's more bucolic than ghetto. A great bit of the town is structured around the fact that there is a college in town. The college is not the only entity in town that may be weakening the stock. As someone on a Bridgewater Facebook page said, "The nuthouse down the road lowers our ratings, as does the mental hospital."
Just kidding, I went to BSC. Class of 2000, blogga!
West Yarmouth? How? You could put on a shirt made of $100 bills and walk down the toughest street in town at midnight screaming racial slurs, and probably survive. Try that in Roxbury.
Fairhaven has castles for the high school and the library, much of the town looks like Washington Street in Duxbury, and the school is 300 yards away from (the former) Temptations gentleman's club in New Beige. Fairhaven may be ghetto-by-proximity.
Plymouth and Barnstable have their rotten parts, but rarely would one fear to stroll through them. They do the service of grouping their poor into certain areas. Bourne is good at that, too. They stash them right by the highway.
Barnstable and Wareham trade the "Brockton-by-the-sea" nickname back and forth whenever someone is murdered. Wareham has sole ownership of the catchy "Sea Lowell."
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| Kingston |
16) middleborough 69.3 60
17) nantucket 115.8 61
18) east_falmouth 149.7 64
19) foxborough 62.9 64
20) south_yarmouth 105.9 66
21) kingston 80.3 69
Foxboro is plummeting down the list now that Aaron Hernandez Inc. has gone to his Reward. They should sign Tyreek Hill.
I wonder if Nantucket is America's most ghetto island? I suppose that Long Island has them beat.
Middleboro has a urbanesque center of town, but much of it is woodsy. It is somewhat as if somebody started building Brockton South, before stopping expansion and saying "Know what? Let's just keep it as a cowtown." Rockland sort of has the same look.
I have no idea what Kingston is doing there, unless the guy who made the list counted Halifax and Plympton's dropouts from Silver Lake as all being from Kingston. Halifax, which is also in Silver Lake, is considerably more ghetto than Kingston.
25) yarmouth 136.5 76
26) mashpee 115.7 77
27) somerset 154.1 78
28) abington 85.9 78
29) hull 166.3 81
30) harwich 71.8 83
31) rockland 112.4 88
32) mansfield_center 49.4 96
We're really reaching here, and I sort of understand why the list gets cut off where it does.
Conspicuous in their absence....
Sandwich
Marshfield
Chatham
Rehoboth
Dennis
Freetown
Halifax
Rochester
Wellfleet
Marion
Truro
Swansea
Plympton
Mattapoisett
Norwell
Eastham
Scituate
Lakeville
Provincetown
Acushnet
Carver
Brewster
Hanover
Dighton
Whitman
Hingham
Cohasset
Duxbury
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| Duxbury |
Content Reblogged from roadsnacks.net
Straight outta Little Compton
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