Questions for South End Residents

dshoost88

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Hello. I'm a Northeastern University undergraduate student and need to perform interviews for the term project in my "Sociology of Boston" class. The question I need to address is:

"Why do various types of South End residents over the age of 25 feel as they do about potential problems in upcoming years with Boston city services (police protection, public education, etc.)?"

The responses I receive are confidential and exclusive to my "Sociology of Boston" research project and class. If you live in South End and are over 25, it would be very helpful if you could please take a few moments to answer some of these questions. And feel free to send them in a private message if you do not want other Arch Boston members to see your responses. If you decide to skip one of the questions, just put the question number and an "X" next to it. Thank you, and here we go.

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#1) Do you think you are fairly taxed, given the services available to you and your neighbors?

#2) Do you feel Mayor Menino and other elected officials address all of the issues you care about in your community? If not, what can they do better?

#3) Do you feel safe at night in your community?

#4) Are you a parent? How many people live in your household?

#5) How would you rate the quality of the public schools in your district?

#6) Are you concerned about the quality of police and fire safety, education, and medical care in the South End today? How do you think you'll feel about it five to ten years from now?

#7) What ethnicity do you most closely identify with? About how old are you (30's, 40's, etc.)?

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Thank you to anyone that takes time to help me with my assignment. I look forward to hearing from you South End residents.
 
#1) Do you think you are fairly taxed, given the services available to you and your neighbors?

No, taxes eat away a significant portion of the rental income from our garden level unit. Police response time is a joke, the local branch library quality isn't the greatest, the local schools are terrible and quite the eyesores.

#2) Do you feel Mayor Menino and other elected officials address all of the issues you care about in your community? If not, what can they do better?

No, they appear for photos and promote their social personal agendas. They could care less as long as their tax revenues continue to increase. They sell the chic and slowly approve beautification projects for the happy tourists but ignore the festering infrastructural/social problems which have existed for decades.

#3) Do you feel safe at night in your community?

I personally do, but there are many instances of armed robbery, sexual assaults, and burglary for a neighborhood considered to be Chic. Most of these incidents are related to the location of public housing and those in the neighborhood for drug treatment or homelessness.

#4) Are you a parent? How many people live in your household?

Yes, twin daughters, one son, all university age. I live with my wife and the kids visit occasionally. A couple lives in our rental unit.

#5) How would you rate the quality of the public schools in your district?

One could confuse the zoo for humanity for a public school based on the quality. Aesthetically and urbanistically the facilities function akin to industrial parks.

#6) Are you concerned about the quality of police and fire safety, education, and medical care in the South End today? How do you think you'll feel about it five to ten years from now?

Police response is a joke, unless blood or bullets are involved they can take several hours to never showing up on one phone call. Fire safety is reasonable unless one lives adjacent to an abandoned building, their response time is consistently good. Education is terrible as mentioned before. Medical care is good in the city, however the medical center is a dumping ground for the city's homeless and habitually high. These transients tend to then migrate through the neighborhood. Five to ten years from now it'll likely be the same if the same policies and funding continue.

#7) What ethnicity do you most closely identify with? About how old are you (30's, 40's, etc.)?

Ukrainian, Mid 50s
 
Whoa.

Talk about differing perspectives.

I don't know what neighborhood you actually live in, but it's definitely not the South End! Are you sure?

If I lived in a neighborhood anywhere close to that which you just described, I wouldn't leave my house after dark!

BTW, I just got back from Foodies; I'm amazed I'm still alive!
 
^ Why don't you fill out the questionnaire, John?
 
I didn't mean to take this off-topic; anyone who has an opinion who lives in the South End should respond.

I did, ablarc, I sent it a couple days ago, by email.
 
Lurker's responses seem plausible. Most refer to Boston in general, and Boston is extremely badly governed. And the police seem about as bad as they can get.
 
Boston's police "as bad as they can get"? I'm dying to hear an explanation for that one.
 
I live near Villa Victoria and closer to Washington Street than Tremont to put things into perspective.

THINGS ARE MUCH BETTER than in the 80s, for instance the trash is picked up and not dumped waste deep in the back alley nor is every streetlight on the block burnt out, however it isn't the happy Bowfront Brick Disneyland that the city tries to sell to tourists yet.

When you have cars broken into or vandalized and the police take four hours to show up, it's terrible. It's also awful to have some crackhead trying to break down your front door from 1am to 4:30am with no response from the police. I shouldn't have to clobber someone, disturbed whom attempted break into my home for several hours, with a truncheon, and hope they never come back, because the D4 can't bother to do its job.

Read the weekly police blotter highlights posted in the Courant if you don't believe a significant amount of crime doesn't occur in the South End.
 
Tobyjug, use of those taser type devices, even in self defense, would probably result in a lawsuit in this state.

My wife and myself usually either carry an asp or pepper spray in a purse or long coat when coming or going late at night. She has had to defend herself three times in twenty five years of living here. My son was a moron, couldn't walk away from some fools, and got himself mugged six years ago.

PaulC, I respectfully would rather not give my cross street.
 
Repeat after me tovarich: "What stun gun, officer?"
 
I cannot contribute to the survey. Sorry. (Taking this further off point??)

Whoa. Seems as if the South End hasn't changed much in the twenty years since I've been there, eh, because I got the impression it became an urban utopia.

Boston Police have changed, though?
I never had any negative associations or issues with BPD. (Astounding revelation, eh? :)) And I'm probably equally, if not more anti-establishment, I guess you can categorize it, than you Lurker, if I can be so judgmental.

Plus, Villa Victoria was considered the 'good' part of the hood, even in the late 70s early 80s.

I started on Columbus near Mass Ave during the early to mid-Eighties, then moved to Worcester near Shawmut for the latter part.

I never had any problems on the streets. As you may have guessed, I was out at all hours, too. I know others who were not so lucky. I'm just not somebody even the street trash would consider messing with. That's why I can survive the big, bad streets of Oakland so well, too. Heh
 
I think the issue people are having in this thread is thinking that there is one South End when there are in fact many South Ends. On one end of the neigborhood you might as well be in Beacon Hill or the Back Bay, but on the other end of the niegborhood, you might as well be... well let's just say you wouldn't want to be there. So, to think that the South End as a whole is completely cleaned up would be completely wrong, but to think that the South End as a whole was a complete dump would also be completely wrong. As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I get the felling that the middle is also where Lurker lives (aka you can get mugged the usual way, or you can get mugged by paying $100 a head for a $50 a head meal).
 
underground:

Yeah, that was always the case with the South End. It didn't (doesn't?) have the neighborhood or village square designations that equally large neighborhoods like Dorchester or Roxbury have.

When I lived there, people would categorize the South End in three distinct ways: Boston Center for the Arts area was everything east of West Newton street (that's a mind fock, eh) and to the Pike; the Mass Ave Corridor encompassed everything from NU and behind (south) of St. Botolph; City Hospital area which even stretched toward the cathedral and had Shawmut as its northern boundary.

SOWA (I'm shuddering) was not considered the South End. Washington Street at that eastern end wasn't classified as such either. It was always referred to as 'that area by The Pine Street Inn.' Some old-timers called it the New York Streets, too, which might be inaccurate.

Sorry, dshoost88. I'm taking this thread away again.

Lurker, and all:

By coincidence, somebody sent me this joke today.

It's relevant to my experiences here in Oakland, too.


How to Call the Police When You're Old

An elderly man was going up to bed. His wife told him that he'd left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. He opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked, "Is someone in your house?"

He said, "No, but some people are breaking into my garden shed and stealing from me."

Then the police dispatcher said, "All patrols are busy. You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available."

He said, "Okay."

He hung up the phone and counted to 30.

Then he phoned the police again.


"Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now because I just shot them," and he hung up.

Within five minutes, six police cars, a SWAT team, a helicopter, two fire trucks, a paramedic, and an ambulance showed up at the residence and caught the burglars.

One of the policemen said to the homeowner, "I thought you said that you'd shot them!"

He said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"

Alleged to be a true story.
 
^ A very enjoyable story.

Has anyone seen Grand Torino?
 

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