what metropolitan area that you've been to has the most poorly define ghettoes?

[Torie]

NYC has some areas like that. The bluffs along the Hudson in the Bronx are chic, and you go a few blocks to the east, and you are in the barrio. And then there is Williamsburg in Brooklyn (the hipsters on one block, the Hispanics on the next, the blacks on the third, and the orthodox Jews on the fourth).

In Chicago, you have Oak Park (parts of which have gracious homes, a fair number designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), and it is right next to one of the roughest neighborhoods in the US. When I lived in Hyde Park in Chicago, between 60th and 61st street, south of 61st was one of the worst ghettos in the US (Woodlawn). That neighborhood largely burned down while I was there (it dropped in 5 years from about 60,000 in population to 20,000).  Every night you could listen to the fire engines racing around.  About once a week you heard gun shots. I remember walking two blocks south to 63rd street to go to a Chinese restaurant with about 8 guys, and it was like walking through a Fellini film at night. About 200 teenagers and young adults were on the street, smoking dope and drinking, with broken glass everywhere, and about half the apartment structures burnt out hulks. I remember that two block walk like I did it yesterday. The images will be forever etched in my mind.

In LA, the most dramatic change that I can think of is from Los Feliz to Hollywood. North of Franklin it is million dollar homes, or two million dollar homes, and on the Cecil B. DeMille hill behind gates, homes worth quite a bit more than that (I once was privileged to tour an 8,000 square foot art deco home up there that is probably the most magnificent exemplar of that style in the world bar none - owned then by a famous gay photographer, exquisitely furnished in a Japanese themed decor which goes very well with the art deco style), and then you have two blocks going south to Hollywood Blvd, and it is OK apartments, and then south of Hollywood Blvd, Hispanic apartment blocks. And Santa Ana, CA has north of 17th street (where the OC gentry once lived), and south of 17th street  (totally Hispanic).