Most Ghetto, SE Massachusetts Edition

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.

Household income levels
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.

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

Wareham

Wareham is sort of the WTF on this list, IMHO. I feel badly knowing that she'll be 4th once I start a whittlin' everything North and West of Bristol and Plymouth County out of the master list.

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.

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.

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!

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."

Kingston

15) weymouth_town 152.8 59
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

Duxbury

Content Reblogged from roadsnacks.net

July 3rd 2019 Bonfire Tides

Cranberry County Magazine urges you to follow any and all laws and permitting processes regarding celebratory July 3rd bonfires.

However, we also have a responsibility to inform you of the tides for that day, just in case.

Building a bonfire requires more than just setting fire to a stack of wood. You have to time it properly, while working with a Mother Nature who cares not for human affairs.

You also have to at least try to have the fire early enough for little children to see it, while allowing enough time that the party doesn't end at 8:15 PM.

Sometimes, nature cooperates. Other times, she doesn't. Duxbury Beach had a 4 PM high tide on July 3rd last year. That is as good as it gets for bonfires. The tide had dropped enough for construction by 7 PM, the fire was lit at dark and the incoming high tide didn't extinguish the fire until Closing Time... in Chicago.

This year? Not as good, but not crushing.

High tide for Brant Rock is at 12:12 PM on July 3rd. Low tide on July 3rd is 6:08 PM. There is what they call a Slack at low tide, where no tidal stressors are influencing the water. Then, the tide starts to come in. High tide on July 4th is at 12:21 AM.

Note that there will be a New Moon in effect on the 3rd and 4th. There will be a 10.4 foot high tide on July 4th when the midnight tide arrives. It will most likely reach the seawall, and will have drowned the fires long before then.

Another timing issue with bonfires is how played out they are by the time the tide reaches them. Ideally, the tide hits a fire that is nothing but embers. You get a charcoal high tide line drawn on beaches south of the fires (South Shore coastal currents basically run north/south) for a few days.

If the tide hits the fire too soon, you end up with charred wood littering the beach for a generation. If said piece of wood is of bonfire-height length, it can lodge into the sand at a boat-sinking angle.

Tidal information is important for any beach activities, not just pyromania. That's why you may be seeing this even if your town doesn't do bonfires. People also sunbathe, drink, picnic, cook out...

Anyhow, we'll hit you up with some July 3rd /4th tide information. Do with it as you will.

Duxbury Bay: 12:53 AM, 12.0 feet

Scituate: 12:39 AM July 4, 10.8 feet

Hull: 12:44 AM, 11.3 feet

Weymouth Back River, 12:42 AM, 11.5 ft

Cohasset: 12.41 AM, 10.71

Plymouth, 12:49 AM, 11.8 ft

Westport Harbor, 9:22PM 7/3, 3.9

New Bedford, 9:20 PM 7/3, 4.9

Mattapoisett: 9:33 PM 7/3, 4.46

Marion: 9:25 PM 7/3, 6.0

Sandwich (Canal East): 12:38 AM, 10.6 ft

Barnstable: 12:48 AM, 11.6

Falmouth Heights: 12:21 AM, 1.6

Poponesset: 2:40 AM, 2.79

Sesuit Harbor: 12:39 AM, 11.87

Wychmere: 1:29 AM, 4.54

Chatham Harbor, 1:45 AM, 5.59

Nauset Outer Beaches: 1:15 AM, 5.59

Wellfleet Cape Cod Bay: 12.51 AM, 12.22

Provincetown CC Bay: 12:52, 11.06

Top Car Crash Locations On Cape Cod

Cape Cod is very traffic-driven, as most tourist places tend to be. I lived in Duxbury and Monponsett, and neither one counted traffic as a major town issue. Bourne, where I live now, is dominated by our traffic. Our traffic dictates how residents live their lives on several days of the week, especially in summer.

Our traffic is unique compared to other towns, in that we get people from other states in large volume. Pull out onto Rte. 28, and you'll be surrounded by Massholes,  smattering of New Yorkers, some Connecticuts, a few northern Yankees, and a mixed nuts ensemble of people from various other states and countries.

These people are dumped onto a variety of Suicide Alleys, make-your-own-law rotaries, narrow bridges, visibility-cluttering business districts and windy cow paths.

Of course they are going to crash into each other now and then.

The Cape Cod Commission was nice enough to post some stats on accidents that occur on Cape Cod roads. They gathered stats by Number Of Accidents, Property Damage, Crash Rate and Property Damage rate. Long story short, they tell you where you are most likely to have an accident on Cape Cod.

The info is old (2010, updated  in 2012), so take anything we say here more as a guideline than as current, absolute truth. The numbers themselves are small enough that a good multiple car crash or two could suddenly jack a middling contender up the rankings into a Trump-like leadership slot.

Rather than slogging through 100 entries with me trying to riff on particular roads, we'll just cherry-pick good stuff for you.

- Remember, the Cape and Islands lay claim to one of America's most notorious car crashes... the Chappaquidick bridge departure that essentially put a ceiling of "Senator" on post-JFK Camelot.

- I don't know which car crash would be the most notorious in American history.

James Dean's death was huge. Jayne Mansfield's scalping is why those little bars on the lower rear end of big trucks are called "Mansfield bars." Lady Diana ate some car parts as a last meal, but that was in Old England (editor's note: France), not New England.

I'm sure that if some drunk smashed into a church group bus somewhere sometime, that would get up in the rankings, even sans celebrities. I know what "affluenza" is because of a car crash.

Sam Kinison died in a car wreck, as did Paul Walker. Dale Earnhardt Sr. (even I, a non-NASCAR fan, refer to this man conversationally as "Dale Senior") and Kenny Irwin Jr also died in the saddle.

Any Southern snowfall threatens to add to the list.

- I also found this map with little dots representing car crashes. Just looking at that, you get the sense that the worst spot is the run of Route 28 from Falmouth through Yarmouth. Hyannis, which actually owns cluster-dots, rules the roost.

- Suicide Alley is not impressive at all on this map.

- I consider shattered brake light glass to be a viable addition to a sea-glass collection, as long as the glass somehow made it to the ocean and then the beach somehow.

- These maps need to be viewed in the Gestalt to get the true vibe. There are differences between a love tap and a crash that, say, drowns your secretary. There are also highly-used roads that have lots of accidents, but you then see side streets representing hard if they feature a tricky intersection.

- No one, to my knowledge, has managed to drive off of the Sagamore or Bourne Bridges. Some old-schooler may be able to contest this claim, however.

- Our leader for Number Of Crashes is Route 6, the Mid-Cape Highway. Various sections of this road hold #1,4,5,6 and 7 spots in the Total Crashes rankings.

- Exit 6 on Route 6 (sorry, I don't know which direction) had 128 crashes in this period of measurement. The next highest, Exit 9, only had 99. You're dropping into the 50s and 40s before you leave the top fifteen.

- Bourne, which is the feeder tube for Cape Cod, represents hard. This is even more of a truth when you start getting into Rates rather than Totals. Bourne has the #3, 8, 9 and 13 spots in Number Of Crashes rankings. Her spot with the most crashes is the Otis Rotary.

- I could be wrong, but the rotary Most Crash rankings go the Otis Rotary, the Bourne Bridge Rotary, the Belmont Circle Rotary (Bourne owns the top 3 most dangerous rotaries on Cabo Coddo), the Airport Rotary and the Eastham Rotary.

- Sandwich Road is a dangerous place, even after I realize that there's one in Falmouth, too.

- Yarmouth moves up in the rankings once you factor in property damage costs. Hyannis and Bourne wreck more cars, but the outer Cape wrecks nicer cars.

- Property damage costs also may be where Suicide Alley asserts herself. They only had 36 deaths there in 10 years or so, but they were head-on, total-the-car sort of deaths. I don't have a Fatality list for all of Cape Cod, which is where Sue might also assert herself.

-  Crash Rate is where the rankings get shook up. It is my opinion- and remember, I just started studying this stuff a few hours ago- that Crash Rate is the best indicator of a dangerous road. Busier roads have more accidents, but they might not be as dangerous.

- The Otis Rotary seizes the top spot for Crash Rate, knocking Exit/Route 6 down to 3rd place. Little-used (17 accidents) Route 39 is second. Route 124 is 5th.

- The exit in Sandwich at Chase Road, #9 in property damage totals, is just #47 in crash rate.

- The worst crash I ever saw was the fuel truck that flipped over into the Bourne Rotary last winter. It had the huge-truck-crashing props, as well as the spilled-fuel aspect. I only moved down here in 2005, though.

- Feel free to tell us about the worst accident you have ever seen on Cape Cod in the comments below.