Describe the nieghbourhood you grew up in..

[HEyHEY]

I grew up in a nieghbourhood on the side of a mountain in suburban Vancouver. The neighbourhood was built with regs that you had to leave a certain amount of natural greenspace on your property and you had to be a certain distace from your nieghbous house. If I walked down the hill I was on the shores of the pacific ocean. If I went up the hill, I was in a forest with nothing behind it but wilderness all the way to the arctic.

SO I spent my days playing in the woods, or playing near the ocean. The whole area was covered with trees, and not to far there was a deep lake where I would go diving for old pop bottles .

What was your nieghbourhood like?

[nini]

1. regular ol suburb type housing near the L.A. Harbor

nice town at the time It's a pit now :cry:

[tridim]

2. Suburban hell

Smack dab in the middle of the country in conservative Johnson County Kansas. There was never much to do so we'd always find new and creative ways to get into trouble.

[yardwork]

3. My childhood was a little like yours....

I grew up in a tiny college town in rural eastern Ohio. The town was surrounded by farmland, meadows, and woods, which is where we spent most of our time, when we weren't causing trouble climbing on buildings or bothering people on campus.

I remember collecting glass bottles around town to turn in at the store for nickle rebates.

[GOPisEvil]

4. From 12 - on...typical American suburbia

Cookie-cutter houses and the whole bit. Prior to that, it was one Air Force Base after another.

[Bluzmann57]

5. Think Mayberry on the Mississippi

Grew up in a small town on the Mississippi River. It was a nice little town, although when I was a kid there were morte bars than churches. We didn't have to lock our doors at night, we had no need for neighborhood watch, had a big field that several of us neighborhood kids made into a baseball diamond, at least until someone bought it and built a house there. Overall, a decent place to grow up, although it was absolutely imperative that every one had at least one auto, as it was a bedroom town.

[Cuban_Liberal]

6. Several places, but all more or less middle-class neighborhoods

I don't remember much about Miami, but Houston, Des Moines and Indianapolis were all pretty typical middle-class neighborhoods. The biggest difference was Washington, DC, where we had an apartment IN the hotel where my Dad was a chef. :D

[starroute]

7. Upper West Side of Manhattan

I don't know what it's like today, but in the 50's, it was a weird patchwork. Go 2-3 blocks west and you hit Riverside Drive and West End Avenue, where there were huge old apartments with views of the Hudson River occupied by doctors and Columbia University professors. Go a block or two east, and you hit the slums -- then replaced by housing projects -- on Columbus and Manhattan Avenues. In between, everything was mixed up, with "good" blocks alternating with "bad" ones or even "good" buildings with "bad" ones. My Brownie troop was a total mish-mosh of races, religions, ethnic groups, and income levels.

It was an interesting place to grow up, but I constantly craved green and open space and remote locations where there were no people. Since I've been an adult, I've always lived in either the country or a small town.

[Nikia]

8. A couple different ones, but this one from ages 4-10

We lived in a semi residential neighborhood a small city/large town in Ohio. I semi residential because there was a factory right behind us. The factory was privately owned by a family who also owned most of the neighborhood. It was a food processing plant so it did not produce toxic waste but it was ever present in our lives. Semi trucks drove through the relatively quiet neighborhood and we knew that we could be evicted at any time in order for the factory to expand. We lived in two differnt houses during during my time in the neighborhood. The first didn't even have a back yard. The back of the house was a few meet away from one of the outsdie walls of the factory but we had a small front yard, complete with flowers. We moved to the second house, about five doors down because it had a backyard. All the houses were two stories and around 50 years old.
There were lots of other children in the neighborhood. The neighborhood contained an elementary school that we'd walk to. sometimes, we went to the school playground on the weekends. Other times, my mother would walk us to the park which was further away.

[RebelOne]

9. Upper middle class in South Florida

[Kathy in Cambridge]

10. Ethnically and economically diverse small Northeast city

A mixture of single family homes, large apartment buildings, triple deckers, and historical mansions dot the city. Some are right next to each other (18th-century zoning wasn't the best). The families on my street growing up: African-American Harvard professor, Polish-immigrant family, Korean package store owner, local labor organizer for the teamsters, Italian-American brinklayers, CEO for a small high-tech company, MIT physicist, young Azorean family who worked multiple jobs, and a Greek widower who used to own a dry cleaners.

That pretty much sums up my experience in public schools-my Catholic high school was whiter and more Irish.

[NightTrain]

11. Which one?

I grew up in about 8 of them!

[HEyHEY]

14. the best one?

:shrug:

[slinkerwink]

12. I grew up in St. Louis, in one of the suburbs---Clayton, to be exact

My mother's apartment was close to Concordia University, and the big hill there---we'd use for sledding in the winters, or go biking down the steep hill during the summers. That always caused my heart to beat really fast!

I basically would bike anywhere in that small apartment neighborhood with my friends---the apartments were small brick buildings, about three floors high. We'd also rollerskate on the big black asphalt behind Ralph Captain middle school, and go play on the smaller playground a couple of blocks away from that.

I really loved to go rollerskating around that neighborhood. My best friend and I would stop by the small grocery next to the laundromat to get a drink, and we'd go back out. My mother would also give me grocery errands to do. For example, she'd be cooking pasta, and she'd need some pasta sauce. She would give me money, and I'd take off on my bike to the grocery store. It felt so good to be needed and to do important errands for her.

That neighborhood I grew up in had to be one of the most perfect neighborhoods. It was very diverse, and I'd see kids everywhere, and it almost was like paradise in that neighborhood. With a video store that later turned to a pharmacy, a laundromat, a small grocery store, a couple of restaurants, an antique store, and the middle school.

Damn, I had a great childhood there. :-)

[Champ]

13. Okaaaaay!!!!!

The neighborhood I grew up in was the West Side of Mesa, Arizona. Alot of low-income housing and apartment complexes in my area. There are lots of Liquor stores, gas stations, a burger king, and a Jack in the Box. The area I lived in was the nicest, a townhouse complex modled after many houses in Madrid, Spain. Hence the name Mesa Madrid. Lots of Palm Trees, hot weather, and is flat. Basically the entire city is flat, you won't find to many hills or bumps.

Alot of kids including me(just a little bit) spent their childhood getting into trouble, those were the type of people you mostly knew(trouble makers). The theft rates are high here and I know why, it is easy money. There are lots of pot smokers here and quite a few hard drug users but most of them live across University(the big street in my neighborhood). That is where I spent most of time growing up during the teen years, it is wierd place to "discover yourself". But I like it here and wouldn't change a minute of my teen years I spent here, well maybe a few hours I'd change.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

15. Cragin...industrial suburb engulfed by Chicago.

The neighborhood is now known as Belmont-Cragin. It started as a working-class industrial suburb at the junction of the Belt Railway of Chicago & the Milwaulkee Road, was annexed in the 1890s, and was engulfed by urban developement in the "Roaring 20s". So most of the place predates WWII.

I lived in the older part of this neighborhood, closer to the railroads and factorys.

The place was pretty much rows of brick & frame "two flats" & "three flats" and one story frame cottages, with a few newer bungalows thrown in. And, since this was sort of semi-rural at one time you saw "alley houses"...houses set way back on the lots next to the alley..all front yard, no back. Also, in in the alleys there where old horse stabels and chicken coops and such... There where corner stores (which you could run errands to..the one near me had a pickle barrel and a butcher) and corner taverns. And a big Catholic church & shool..St Stanislaus B&M, and a high school and rectory/chapel for the Congregation of the Resurrection that filled up one whole block. Almost every house or apartment bldg had a front porch where everyone hung out on hot nights.

The big noticeable feature was how wooded this neighborhood was...all the backyards had apple trees, and in front where mostly sugar mapes and other tall trees..it was like living in a forest with these treelined streets.

A block to the north was the busy street..Fullerton Avenue, with shops and such (drugstore, baker, toystore, auto shop, hardware store, insuranc agent, S&L, etc) interspersed w. vacant lots..nicknamed "prairies"... that where being turned into parking. Three blocks to the south was the old "downtown", "Whiskey Point", where Grand Avenue & Armitage met, with the little "Cragin Department Store" with its creaky wood floors, a soda fountain (the "Point Grill") all done up in aqua and pink, the post office, and the "Cragin State Bank"...abandoned since the Depression.

A block south of Whisky Point was the railroad station and the big railroad yard and all the factorys. Industrially the neighborhood was dominated by the huge Central Soya grain elevators and the Torch Fuels coal silos...and lots of metalworking and machine shops...Ecko, American Can, and also Glidden & Motorola was there. Central Soyas soyabean smell wafted over the place, and you could set your watch by Central Soyas factory whistle.

Parks..the big one was Hanson park, wich was just a bunch of playing fields and a big stadium, but also they had a small playground with a sandbox, swings, etc. Blackhawk Park was another park, closer to Whisky Point...more pleasant and wooded, with an indoor swimming pool. Part of the park was flooded for an icerink in the summer.

People. This was an urban villiage. In my part of Cragin the folks where mostly Polish and Italian. When i was growing up there 30% of the population was foreign born, and you could hear Polish and Italian spoken across the fences between older neighbors...the "language of secrets" that the kids werent supposed to here.

Transport. When i was a kid we go around by bus and the "L". People had cars, but my dad had the only car which he used to work. Buses where easy to catch..wait 10 minutes and one would show up. The end of the Grand Avenue trolly bus, and Laramie Avenue line was here, and the Fullerton bus was pretty good to catch to shopping areas like Six Corners and Belmont & Central, where all the department stores where at.

This was a safe place. No crime that I knew of. Actually it was a pretty good place to grow up. Nostalgia does make for sepia tones, true. But I liked it.

[EstimatedProphet]

16. 2 words

Trailer park.