Mimi Smartypants likes to listen to the Chicago police scanner.
I had to do a project a few years ago which involved wandering around some particularly less-than-crime-free neighborhoods in Chicago on Google Street View noting various explicit indicators of crime that would not have been captured in crime stats. It was surprisingly easy, in a "hey, that dude who is totally failing to hide behind those bushes is smoking crack" kind of way. The best part, though, is that at an intersection noted for being particularly dangerous, some kids ran out in the street and threw a blanket over the Street View cameras. Ha ha!
Anyhow, yeah, it kinda made me feel shitty, although the ultimate purpose was a lot more noble than "saving white kids some nervousness".
Funny enough out here in NYC we have this, which just launched. (I'm vaguely acquainted with the founders)
3: I feel like you might not have clicked the link in the OP.
We need an app to tell us if clicking on OP links is safe.
I was under the impression, based on news reports and anecdotal evidence, that the murder rate in Chicago had increased a lot since I lived there. Looking up numbers, it in fact decreased a lot.
I was recently told by a U of C professor that "the university now owns 53rd street and is shutting down every restaurant that isn't upscale to try to drive the poor people away", which he seemed very proud of. He was clearly confused about the facts, but probably not about the overall trend.
I was under the same impression as 6. Recent reporting makes Chicago sound like a war zone.
(He then reassured me that he has some well-to-do black neighbors and that of course it's fine if they stay in the neighborhood. Good to know, dude! That sounds not at all racist.)
Isn't it all because Obama lived there before becoming president? That is, the reporting, not the murdering.
I didn't have a theory, but if pressed I would have said something about how the handgun ban got struck down.
Moreso than most other cities, everything about Chicago is kind of awesome and horrible at the same time. I've walked around various Chicago neighborhoods quite a bit, and only felt endangered by the CPD.
Chronic pulmonary disease is a big problem.
12: But it's an AWESOME problem!
The university is involved in at least some efforts to improve things (further south than 53rd) that will explicitly keep (some) poor people there. I don't know that their involvment in those efforts required zero community/student activism and/or pressure from the city, but anyhow they're involved now.
This was totally Ogged's app.
6-10: I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with what extraordinary decreases in the murder rate other cities have seen? Compared to other big, rich American cities Chicago is sort of an outlier crime-wise, no?
Hey, speaking of the University, when I went to the Seminary Coop bookstore, they had one big shelf of all the classical literature in matching editions from the same publisher. I think they were sorta blue and white? What publisher is that?
I haven't been there for twenty years, but I remember Chicago making me nervous, coming from NY. I don't know if it was so much that crime was higher (although I heard many more mugging anecdotes at U of C than ever back home) but that I didn't feel competent to read what was going on in a sketchy area.
17 was my impression. Also I feel like there was a ton of Chicago boosterism in the national media from like 1995-2010., so maybe they're just turning on yesterday's darling.
There should be an index that combines eliteness of school and abjectness of the surrounding neighborhood. I assume U of C and Yale would be the top two contenders, but maybe I'm missing some?
Creighton is near what used to be the bad part of Omaha, but I think gentrification is happening there.
Presumably Columbia would have had a shot a couple of decades ago.
I know what Nat is talking about but I can't remember the publisher.
22: There was probably a time when Columbia would have been a contender, but certainly not now, and not even really when I was a teenager. Right around Columbia was sketchy, but not scary. (Morningside Park was still pretty scary -- in the late 80s Buck was a country kid working at Columbia and his boss warned him specifically not to go into the park. Now, my kids hang out there.)
6/8: are there any nice physicists? Other than essear.
The university is involved in at least some efforts to improve things (further south than 53rd) that will explicitly keep (some) poor people there.
Ah ha! So they are trying to create a ghetto!
I thought they had sections like that for several different publishers. Like, a bunch of green and red Loeb books, and then... others.
And Buck's old boss warns new employees about your kids.
28: Lots of them! I guess I have a bad habit of only commenting on the rare not-nice things people say.
USC, I guess, though god damn it the neighborhood is improving aside from the murders.
I guess I'm the not-nice one, slandering the others pseudonymously on the internet.
Yale's surrounding neighborhood seemed significantly worse than Hyde Park to me, but maybe it's just a fluke that I've only spent about 3 days there and on one of those days witnessed people fighting in the street.
Aw, I'm sure they're doing the same to you, essear.
36: I thought Hyde Park was the nice side, though. What about Woodlawn?
I've never been to Hyde Park or Connecticut (except Stamford). We should keep this conversation focused on places like Omaha that people are likely to be familiar with.
38: There was always kind of a big buffer in between since I never had much reason to cross the Midway when I was there, but I guess the university has been expanding a bit to the south.
Johns Hopkins maybe. Only been there once and years ago so maybe it's all gentrified all round it now.
I think U of C, when I was there, may have been unusually aggressive about its immediate neighborhood (in a terribly racist kind of way). Right around the campus, maybe north to 51st? (east to the lake, south to the Midway, and I don't remember the western boundary), was very patrolled by the campus police, and while there was still a lot of mugging, it didn't feel particularly scary. Walk a block over the line, and the neighborhood was entirely, disturbingly different. I don't know Yale, but maybe it doesn't do that kind of defending its perceived territory.
42: At least the areas to the north and east seem pretty harmless to me; I haven't been in the other directions. But the campus there also seems notably less well-integrated into its surroundings than most other urban campuses I know; you sort of walk through some gates and up a big hill or through a long tree-lined stretch to get anywhere, right?
35: You were very nice about my childhood friend when you realized you knew her. As far as I can tell she's still a decent person as well as a physicist.
I went to Bar/nard in the early '90s and it always amazes me how much things have changed around Columbia since then.
I don't think Pe/nn has been as successful at gentrifying the surrounding neighborhood, but I hear it was much worse in the 70s/80s/before I saw it.
Ooh, Hopkins. How are UPenn and Drexel's neighborhoods?
42: The area around the Homewood campus has certainly improved since the 90s. The neighborhood around the Medical school is still quite sketchy, though.
Even at Homewood, you don't have to go too far south before things get not so great.
47 not pwned so much as pre-answered.
The only kind of odd thing about visiting JHU which may reflect somehow on the neighborhood is that they usually put me up in some old apartment building instead of a hotel, and it seems like most of the residents there are really old and the furnishings are kind of shabby, so it feels like you're checking into a nursing home or something.
50: I know that building! That's where I stayed when I was interviewing for grad school. It is kind of an odd choice for putting up guests. I suppose it's cheaper than a real hotel.
43:
As a data point, my daughter's apartment is in what I would have called Woodlawn, South of Washington Park, near the 37 post office. She says there are call-boxes an UofC police, so the liveable student space has migrated South and West. With the scale of gentrification, it would have to have.
In my day people blamed Julian Levi, law professor and big brother of Edward, for the massive urban renewal the University undertook in the sixties & seventies, but the process had its serious defenders among people I respected. Michael Harrington's memoir of bohemian life in the neighborhood in the late 40s was my gauge of what had been lost, but I was used to Dresden-like urban renewal from Columbus and took it in stride.
Related, linking since it hasn't gotten near the publicity the opposite verdict would have (rightly, but still): the dog wasn't racist in the night-time, and Renisha McBride's killer was duly convicted.
46: I looked at Barnard. The Freshmen (first years?) are really protected there. I couldn't have handled the neighborhood when I was 18. It wasn't that it felt dangerous. At that age the sensory stimulation of most of New York was just overwhelming to me.
Chicago has always (for a long time, anyway, since Prohibition era at least) been an outlier among very large cities for crime. The reporting on the current crime rates has been unusually horrendous. I have been wondering whether Emmanuel forgot to bribe Trib reporters or something. Front page news every Monday is how many shootings over the weekend. Guess it beats the 90s when there were too many to bother with individual events.
35: I keep waiting for the awful physicist story where I recognize my father, but he just retired, so I think I'm safe. I mean, I don't think he's awful, but he might come off that way.
47: Drexel and UPenn aren't too bad (that I noticed, anyway). It's not very residential, and a lot of the previously empty buildings are now research incubators immediately nearby. Not sure about outside that area, but it seemed fairly nice when I was there.
Okay, I guess I need to start consciously starting to tell nice stories about people.
40: No, I think they were exclusively paperbacks.
I was googling around for something related to Saul Alinsky's part in fighting against the U of C's gentrification efforts mentioned in 52.2 and came upon Hillary Clinton's undergrad thesis. Wheels within wheels, man.
I liked New Haven and thought the city was improving. This was in the late 90s and early 00s and I haven't been back since.
54: I went to Bar/nard mainly because it was in NYC, but I did feel overwhelmed at times. I think most of my problems there stemmed from the fact that I had very little money, and it was hard to fit in both on campus and in NYC in general. I always had the sense that I was missing out due to lack of time (working) or money.
56: Right around both campuses is not bad at all. The "sketchy" neighborhoods are west of @ 40th Street, and north, too, maybe?
Isn't Temple pretty awful in the forced-gentrification-of-surrounding-neighborhood stakes?
Pepperdine probably wins the flip side contest (elite area/abject school). That one's harder.
When I first visited UofC about 6 or 7 years ago, the area south of the Midway was just beginning to be gentrified, for one or two blocks worth. We stayed in a B&B there which was lovely but were told that a block or so south of it wasn't very safe. More recently UofC has been building just south of the Midway (even dorms, IIRC), but nothing south of 61st (allegedly by some sort of agreement with the neighborhoods that dates back many years).
Hyde Park always felt safe to me, but of course it was full of cops warning you away from Obama's house.
All of the UofC area except the actual campus has a lot of non-whites, but that's by no means a useful definition of "sketchy," unless you are a racist.
All the somewhat funky restaurants near UofC are indeed dying. I remember whining about that when it happened to Harvard Square.
I was at UPenn for an intensive summer language program in the early 90s. There were muggings and an attempted rape on my street that had me bolting out of the sublet I was staying at to intervene in the very early AM hours. I can't recall the address though.
54: Oh, and at early-90s Bar/nard, it was definitely "first-years." I still use it that term reflexively even though no one else seems to here.
62: I have heard Tem/ple described as a "war zone," but I've never been there.
More recently UofC has been building just south of the Midway (even dorms, IIRC)
B-J has been there for decades.
All the somewhat funky restaurants near UofC are indeed dying.
Presumably Valois will remain, if nothing else.
Really? Man, my memory is shot to hell, but I didn't know that. Maybe I didn't know anyone who lived in B-J. Coming in as a transfer, my sense of dorm life was weak.
63: ooh, that's definitely trickier, but Pepperdine is a strong contender. There has to be someplace in Hawaii, right?
The first thee google hits for "see your food", no quotation marks, all pertain to Valois.
What do you know, there it is right by the Law School (where I certainly spent enough time going to the movies). I must have been thinking of a different dorm.
There should be an index that combines eliteness of school and abjectness of the surrounding neighborhood. I assume U of C and Yale would be the top two contenders, but maybe I'm missing some?
Is College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine at the bottom of the list?
67: Yup. There is a new residence hall south of B-J and a grad student residence (at 60th and Kimbark) that might be new.
68: ... and the new-ish version of Medici, and a few others. There's a whole new shopping center-esque development going in on 55th, IIRC, which lots of chain stuff: Five Guys, Chipotle, etc. (Probably done by now, I haven't been there in a year or two.)
And the dorm I lived in my first year, Max Mason, appears to be no more. That always seemed kind of lousy to me, putting all the transfer students in the same dorm, a longish walk off campus. Way to integrate us into campus life, guys!
74: I think Snitchcock has been there forever. Unless I'm mistaken it's the UofC version of MIT's Senior House (or at least the old version of Senior House).
At least according to the statistics I've been able to find with a quick google search, Baltimore still has Chicago beat by a comfortable margin in terms of (per capita) violent crime.
Go Charm City!
77: They want to maximize their chances of getting laid at least once in their college careers. Once you are on the U of C campus, surrounded by U of C students, the chances drop to zero.
66: 62: I have heard Tem/ple described as a "war zone,"
A friend of mine transferred out of there to a much crummier (IMO) school after witnessing a shooting one evening.
I'm hoping Chicago crime gets bad enough that the Freakonomics guy gets mugged.
77: Shoreland was even further away, right on the lake, but they converted (are converting?) it into condos.
80: They used to say that about MIT, too, with some of the same jokes. I don't think it's true of either school any more.
82: I'm hoping Chicago crime gets bad enough that the Freakonomics guy entire department of Economics gets mugged.
FTFY.
76.2: That's 53rd. Also a hipstery looking place called "Porkchop" with not-so-good Yelp reviews, an Asian fusion place called "Chant", and a Hyatt Place hotel. 55th looks mostly the same, although there was a pho place I didn't remember.
72: They had movies at the Law School? Was Doc Films there before it was in Ida Noyes?
Although maybe this line in one of the Yelp reviews is unintentionally revealing:
When I first walked into the restaurant and saw Teresa [a waitress] I knew I'd return to Pork Chop no matter what just because of her butt now I'm happy to report that I plan on returning also because of the food.
gets bad enough that the Freakonomics guy gets mugged
Martha Nussbaum was, walking across the Midway, and of course wrote about it.
Once you are on the U of C campus, surrounded by U of C students, the chances drop to zero
I've testified before, that my experience was the opposite. Perhaps I was relatively less nerdy in that context than I had been in Columbus, but the bigger factor was that the girl had a fighting chance of knowing what I was talking about, and therefore not concluding I was from Mars.
The law school had its own movie club -- Doc Films was recent movies, mostly, but the law school movies were old black and whites. I can't remember the name; I'm coming up with LSC, but of course that's MIT, not U of C.
83.2: My sense was that U of C had MIT beat for grim sexlessness when I was an undergrad, but that may have been an artifact of my personal experiences.
movies at the Law School? Was Doc Films there before it was in Ida Noyes?
Different series. Really nice auditorium, saw beatiful prints of 30s movies there, like Preston Sturges.
Hey, speaking of the University, when I went to the Seminary Coop bookstore, they had one big shelf of all the classical literature in matching editions from the same publisher. I think they were sorta blue and white? What publisher is that?
Sounds like the Bristol Classical Press design. Like so?
These were the editions we used most often when I was studying Latin.
I took a bus through Holyoke, Mass not too long ago, so I'm going to say Mount Holyoke.
The term "sketchy" has racist connotations at least 90% of the time. Is that enough to ban it?
92: Mount Holyoke isn't in Holyoke, MA.
I feel like MIT now is as likely to be crazy furry designer drug arduino nerd orgy as it is to be grim sexlessness.
This thread demands that I tell this story, but I've told it before -- probably more than once.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_9625.html#993393
93: Do you think it does? I'd take it as a fairly straightforward synonym for "person/situation/neighborhood which makes me a bit nervous". That's very susceptible to being used in a racist way -- like, above, when I called the neighborhood around Columbia in the eighties as sketchy but not scary, I was thinking of it as a lot of poor people, badly maintained buildings, insufficient garbage pickup, and so on, but of course in NY all those things also go with being a black or Latino neighborhood. But I can't think of a usage of 'sketchy' where I'd assume a racial valence if I didn't have context supporting it -- that is, I can't imagine 'sketchy' provoking a double-take when I realized the referent was white.
Mount Holyoke isn't in Holyoke, MA.
Meh. Close enough that the bus drove past it on the way in.
98: by your definition Hartford is in NYC.
Which is to say Holyoke (and Chicopee, and Springfield) is a pretty depressed post-industrial city that is also quite small in extent and surrounded by a ton of bucolic countryside, in which Mount Holoke is situated.
If Clark wasn't a shitty school it could compete.
Some buses avoid Hartford on the way to NYC. Wouldn't you?
That is, a post-industrial city that is to some degree depressed, not a post-industrial city that is both pretty and depressed, urple.
Why did the pretty post-industrial city depress urple? And did the city depress him emotionally, or sort of physically squish him down into the ground?
Also, you've got an extra comma in there. You should write more clearly -- maybe hyphens would help?
Hyphens are unnecessary; it is much more parsimonious to follow a Teutonic concatenation rule. When we talk about depressedurples or prettyguysguykindofguys, you'll understand it without issue.
97: I agree with your "very susceptible to being used in a racist way." And I think the term is mostly used by white people. So in practice, yeah, I think 90%. Probably not among the enlightened unfoggetariat, of course. The problem is, it does have a very useful non-racist meaning, and I don't know if there's a good replacement. Particularly because any replacement would probably quickly take on the same white-people-uncomfortable-around-minorities usage.
106 beat me to it. I don't see how any word occupying roughly the same place as "sketchy" wouldn't quickly acquire racist connotations in much of its use.
93: That's "gritty", not "sketchy".
That other word will temporarily serve as a shibboleth for real true liberals and thus has value for the sanctimonious.
One could say "a neighborhood that makes me nervous". A bit more cumbersome, but also more accurate.
While Mt. Holyoke is in a town next to depressing, possibly crime-ridden Holyoke, MA, it doesn't rate on this list - it's not surrounded at all at the campus level, and only bordering less-nice places, not surrounded, at the town level.
But that'd be precisely as susceptible to racist use. That is, if the listener puts their finger to their nose, looks wise, and nods, understanding that you're nervous because of the non-white people, racist communication has happened just as it would have if you said 'sketchy'. In either case, the listener could say "what's sketchy about it" or "why does it make you nervous", and disrupt the coded communication, but the wording doesn't help or hinder.
Although now that I think of it (after reading 105), "teutonic" might work. It would both insult the Germans and discourage the usual quasi-racist usage through cognitive dissonance.
"After all the storefronts closed that neighborhood started looking pretty teutonic."
106: I feel like there is a very common, and useful, additional meaning among the lady-bros which is "harass-y guy". It seems like, as you say, white people are the problem rather than any particular adjective. Also, it beats "ghetto" by a mile.
Doesn't owning the emotional response rather than ascribing it to the neighborhood mitigate that somewhat?
"Ratchet" seems to have some of the meaning I would use "sketchy" for, but I don't have a solid enough grasp of the connotations to use it myself without fear of being tragically wrong or offensive.
102: 100 was perfectly clear.
(Serious question: was I the only person confused by Sifu's phrasing in the other thread?)
114 is right. Also I think I heard the term used a bunch of times to describe certain hostels and trains in Europe about 15 years ago.
Yes, that confusion was just you.
(More on 'ratchet' -- I'd love to know if the etymology is from 'wretched' or from 'rat shit', either of which seems possible, or if there's some connection I don't understand to ratchet as in wrench.)
WHAT IF WE CHANGED IT TO SCRAPPY LIKE SCRAPPY WHITE BALLPLAYER OR SCRAPPY DOO NEIGHBORHOOD?
That wasn't supposed to be all caps.
I'd never heard of "ratchet" as anything other than a mechanical device until reading comment 116. Google, however, informs me that it is indeed an established piece of slang.
LB is apparently much better at keeping up with the Kids These Days than I am.
119.1: that seems implausible, and anyway I don't think you've done the survey work necessary to state this so authoritatively. Let's let the other commenters speak for themselves.
The Kids These Days infest my living quarters, spend my hard-earned money, and pester me beyond my patience (and admittedly cook me dinner and are affectionate and snuggly, although occasionally in a way that's rather like being mauled by adolescent lion cubs). I should at least get some insight into current slang from them.
I disagree strongly with ratchet/sketchy overlap. Ratchet pretty explicitly replaces ghetto as a descriptor of behavior. I'm having a hard time imagining a location being described as ratchet, though its decor certainly could be.
"the university now owns 53rd street and is shutting down every restaurant that isn't upscale to try to drive the poor people away"
Nooooooo not Rajun Cajun! (I know the traditional thing to get misty about is Valois but I was never that into it.)
126: Yeah. I get my info from the DE's kid and his friends. "Ratchet" is for people, not places.
I'd agree that it's a pretty close synonym for ghetto (which is basically why I don't use it). And you're also right that it would sound weird describing a location -- mostly, I hear it describing someone looking unkempt in a disreputable kind of way (usually Sally talking about what's wrong with her hair on any given occasion).
(More on 'ratchet' -- I'd love to know if the etymology is from 'wretched' or from 'rat shit', either of which seems possible, or if there's some connection I don't understand to ratchet as in wrench.)
If urbandictionary can be trusted on etymology, the word is "a horrific mispronunciation of 'wretched'".
What I was thinking is that a location with a lot of ratchet-looking people hanging around is probably one I'd call sketchy.
"Ghetto" is used for places, tho.
I've heard the "wretched" claim and that it's from Louisiana makes that maybe plausible accent-wise. This 2012 article on sources of the word ends with a prediction that in 5 years white girls will be using it to describe their hair, so.... (It also links to the comprehensive Ratchet Girl Anthem, which I know I've linked to before, possibly when Apo was smanging.)
I assume U of C and Yale would be the top two contenders, but maybe I'm missing some?
Columbia in the 90s? I'm just pretending there aren't like 100 comments I haven't read yet in which I'm definitely pwned.
I mean, "though". And places in addition to people. Unless TKTD only use ghetto for people now.
135: Sally's always been ahead of the curve (and is somewhat socially confused about her ethnic identification.)
This post and video make a pretty convincing case that "ratchet" is from "ratchet wrench." And this is fucked up and racist and stupid and fuck that guy, whoever he is.
135: I believe it is I who introduced the blog to smanging.
I apologize, nosflow. You guys all look alike.
On the blog, all cats are grey.
Anyway, I think I only use "sketchy" for white guys where "skeevy" would also work or talk about a sketchy situation as one where something bad seemed truly about to happen. I wouldn't personally use "ratchet" either in its negative form or as it's supposedly being reclaimed and rehabilitated because I think it's sexist and classist, but it's mostly going to be applied to women or gay men of color or just poverty-related making-do in general.
I blew the sale with my all caps, but I really like "scrappy" for a bad neighborhood description. It's accurate -- you might get into a fight! But it's also upbeat, positive, in a David Eckstein way. "Hey that guy mugged me! No hard feelings, what a scrapper."
Another use of "sketchy" for people.
Rajun Cajun is/was so great.
I had a dreadful but funny gay Lithuanian acquaintance who deliberately referred to it as ruh-JOON cuh-JOON and now I always think of it that way.
What was the deal with Valois? I always felt like U of C kids loved it for down-with-the-gente reasons. It was otherwise basically a sub-par diner breakfast with fewer options.
DBFGLA in 147.1 also spoke about himself in the third person.
If you don't think sketchy often refers to places with sketchy white people, you clearly don't live somewhere with a meth problem.
When I was recently in Hyde Park, at dinner one night I overheard a conversation among a young African-American couple on a date at the next table who at one point were describing someone and the guy said "well, she's just, well..." and the woman said "yes?" and the guy said "I don't want to say the word, but you know what I mean" and the woman said "yeah, she is that" or something along those lines, and (knowing the word only because of Thorn's comments here sometime in the past) I kept wondering if "ratchet" was the mystery word that would fill in the blank, because my sense of its meaning would fit with their previous remarks, but I'll have to remain forever uncertain. Which means I've still only heard the word via Thorn.
A friend of mine, a year or so after graduating from the U of C, told me one day "I just realized it's not Ragin' Cajun! It's actually Rajun!"
What role is "one day" playing in that sentence?
I'm going to keep posting comments and then complaining about them.
153: I believe it's functioning as a temporal adverb.
53
and Renisha McBride's killer was duly convicted.
This bit of that article jumped out at me.
Family of Renisha McBride: "Justice was served today... [Ted Wafer] is a cold blooded killer." @Fox2News pic.twitter.com/4uGPOG3XR8 -- Erika Erickson (@FOX2Erika) August 7, 2014
93
The term "sketchy" has racist connotations at least 90% of the time. Is that enough to ban it?
I've definitely used it and heard it used to describe white people and predominantly white places. I get that anecdotes aren't data, particularly anecdotes about racial issues from a Vermonter, but still.
110
One could say "a neighborhood that makes me nervous". A bit more cumbersome, but also more accurate.
The meanings aren't the same though, at least not the way I'd use them. I didn't feel nervous most places I'd describe as "sketchy." I guess some people might have, but in some cases, not reasonably.
If I were playing fill-in-the-blank with the conversation in 150, I can think of at least two terms which a polite man would be hesitant utter aloud to describe a woman, even if the shoe fit, and neither term is "ratchet".
I'm not saying she's a Craftsman ratchet, but I don't see her without a quality, chrome plated socket attached.
Yeah, I don't think anyone who'd want to use 'ratchet' would hesitate to use it; it's not a dirty word. If you wanted to express the same thing politely, it'd be easy to use politer vocabulary.
just happen to gravitate to Fox
Fox 2 News Detroit, in this case.
158: But the context didn't seem to suggest those.
143: "Skeevy" strikes me as an admirably non-racist pejorative. But that may vary regionally.
I'm more in favor of this military operation than just about any other one from my adulthood.
People and things that are sketchy, not in a racist "black neighborhood" sense:
1. Illegal taxis aggressively soliciting fares
2. This B&B in the middle of damn nowhere in Puerto Rico where the owner unexpectedly demanded payment in cash (like $600 or something), told us not to go near his office or the dog would maul us, alluded repeatedly to his "volunteers," and bragged at breakfast that he owned the smallest import/export company in North America.
4. The unmarked van that drives you across the tarmac at O'Hare to the teeny-tiny planes
5. My neighbor who has various nervous-looking and demographically surprising visitors at all hours (drug dealer? fence? amateur pornographer? not sure, but definitely sketchy)
145: Sorry, but "scrappy" AND "gritty" are registered trademarks of the New England Patriots.
I think I have mostly used "sketchy" to refer to things like drug deals/dealers.
145: I'm not sure how I feel about substituting "scrappy" for "sketchy". I think because it sounds so strange when done in reverse:
"It's a movie about a rag tag band of sketchy underdogs who manage to succeed against the odds."
If you can see one check-cashing store or pawn shop from the front door of another check-cashing store or pawn shop, the street is sketchy.
If the area has sufficiently curved streets, it can't be sketchy by definition.
People who draw pictures of you without asking and then ask you to buy them: scrappy.
I went to Bar/nard in the early '90s and it always amazes me how much things have changed around Columbia since then.
A friend of mine went to grad school at Columbia starting in 1998. She bought a condo near the campus when she started, and sold it when she graduated 8 years later. $$$$$!
OT: In my travels through God's creation, I have seen many odd things, but I never expected to see a Subaru wearing a bumper sticker announcing the owner's Robert Ludlum fandom. Who hungers to advertise his (I assume) regard for The Matarese Circle in particular? And why? Why on earth?
I wish I'd gotten a picture.
176: Right? The most likely explanation is pre-production chaff from the now-foundered movie adaptation, but still.
That wasn't one of the better ones.
When using Wikipedia to refresh my memory as to which book that was, I learned that a movie was supposed to have been made but that things fell through in 2010. Maybe it was about that. Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, and David Cronenberg were attached.
Was TMC the one where a protagonist was codenamed "Beowulf Agate"? If so:
Hrothgar Feldspar
Galahad Chert
Quetzalcoatl Flint
Ishtar Magma
Jimmu Igneous
Rama Granite
and so on
150: I'm going to disagree with LB again, I think because she's used to talking to NYC teens and I'm getting my take from midwestern black 20/30somethings, but I absolutely think the guy would have started to say "ratchet" or something similar and then thought, "Wait, what if she doesn't know that and I have to explain what I mean? Or what if she thinks it's racist/sexist/classist?" and then trailed off. In more middle-class or mixed-race contexts I've heard people drop their voices to say it more surreptitiously. It's considered basically ratchet to call people ratchet (see the song I linked above, basically) and so sometimes people want to signify that they're using it semi-ironically or at least with self-awareness.
Wait, what if she doesn't know that and I have to explain what I mean?
I completely missed when it was explained here, so I'd think this would be a concern.
Rama Granite must be sad because whenever he says his codename people think he's talking about a fruit.
Oh, I can see that -- sort of a code-switching issue, where the speaker is a little uncertain about which code they want to be using.
This is a hilarious screed against "ratched," that thinks it's being knowingly fuddy-duddy, but still managed to miss the point.
Also, if it's in the Sun-Times, it's not cool anymore.
Teach me to read a thread backward. Guess how I feel!
190: You may want to head over to the ocsicnarf thread.
Care to invest in my hedge fund, Flip?
WALKING DOWN THE ROAD WITH A RATCHET IN YOUR WASTE JOHNNY YOU'RE TOO BAD
183: The Kid and his friends, a real rainbow coalition of too many factors to list here, use "ratchet" all the time. I get the impression it isn't terribly loaded, at least on the Left Coast, it's just another way of saying "beneath me".
Ironic considering the uses for ratchets.
My sense of how "ratchet" is used by under-25 y/o poor and working-class people of color in Philadelphia seems to be relatively gently pejorative, more a vivid descriptor than outright insulting.
I don't often hear it used by anyone else, although I have the vague sense that hipster white people would view it as trendy and hipster black people would view it as trashy.
I did get on the (otherwise very clean) regional rail train the other day to see a trail of sunflower-seed debris all over the floor. I did an amazed double take, and exchanged shocked eyebrow-raising with the senior-citizen African American couple sitting across, as the female half of the couple looked meaningfully at the sketchy white guy who has just exited the train. I said, loud enough for them to hear, "No home training, I see."
I use "sketchy" often in talking to other women about a man who is creepy. I don't often use it in mixed company or when referring to a place, because people do seem to assume there is a racial component to it.
|| Show of hands: does anyone think the people in charge have even the first fucking clue what they're doing in bombing Iraq again? |>
Probably not. I mean, I don't know what they should be doing enough to be certain that this is a bad idea, but the odds that it's a good one seem very low.
This is the first time I've ever heard of this 'ratchet' slang.
197 & 114: I think I first heard it applied to a creepy guy, only later to a neighborhood or "ratchet" person.
My sense of the word is what L. describes at 166. In fact, I think I first heard it describe an offer that sounded like a scam. So it could be sketchy (originally)=lacking detail and thus best avoided.
I had never heard of ratchet, either. Still not too clear on its meaning.
Apparently it just means hoochie mama.
I still haven't figured out if `ratchet' describes something it's unacceptable to say, or if it's an unacceptable way to say something `everyone' is OK with saying.
Thorn is the person who first brought "ratchet" to my attention, though I've since read it elsewhere. Many people I know use 'sketchy' to refer to creepy guys, most notably in the case of this one academic we've un officially banned from our regional academic conference, who we all refer to Sketchy McSketcherson.
205: I am not the authority here, obviously. But my sense is that what the word means as I've seen it used is untidy/unkempt/shabby/otherwise visibly lower-class/particularly lower class black. So, kind of classist, at a minimum, and used across racial lines, with real potential for being racist. "Ghetto" is a pretty good substitute, with the same problems.
But not necessarily offensive - if the speaker and audience are appropriate, it might not be any worse than saying someone 'looked like hell', or something like that. Sally and her friends (mostly Dominican or other Latino) use it that way indifferently of anyone in their peer group. It's maybe a little less racially weighted than 'ghetto', I think, but don't hold me to it.
What 149 said. "Sketchy" is so not a racial term. I think I've even used it to describe animals. We're up in Yellowstone until the 16th and today some of those bison were definitely on the sketchy side.
Never heard ratchet outside of unfogged. Checked with Jammies and he hadn't either. So we are conclusively out of touch with the teens.
I always thought the rule was the guy had to die within a year and a day.
198: which is a change how? Iraq has been a continuous series of policy fuck ups since the 70s at least, last count.
Shark officially jumped: http://lastbestnews.com/site/2014/08/petition-pushes-the-dude-for-montana-senator/
I've never heard "ratchet" used in person, but I have seen it many places on the internet aside from Unfogged.
Sketchy means questionable in my aged argot.
Ratchet I heard first wrt bball stuff, and I believe they were using it in the "he's so BAD" way (I.e., "that move was amazing")
Bewildering, from NY Magazine
Like that last one, the term is sometimes used by young gay men in a complimentary context, something akin to "hot mess."
That's complimentary?
For Ian Bradley, a stylist and NYC nightlife maven, the word has quickly past its due date in gay culture. "The word is hella last year," he says. "The ones who say it are the ones who are ratchet."
Stop trying to make ratchet no longer not be happening!
And the article is from April 2013. Needless to say, I had never heard of it.
211 -- It's not binary; there are degrees of fucking up. This "long term project" is full of known knowns.
126, 128 "Ratchet" is for people, not places.
Unlike, say, Essex.
The word is hella last year
And "hella" is hella, what, 1993?
What's wrong with being Essexy?
219, Essex girl in context ( 2001 ):
The Essex girl's existence and her style make nonsense of the Labour rhetoric about "social exclusion".
She does not see herself as outside society; she sees herself as belonging to the real world of family
loyalty, sexual unpredictability, underemployment and petty crime, and the Blairs as pious,
condescending and self-deluding.
The new (to me anyway) season of Sherlock is very different from the first two. It's annoying me a bit.
Dear Siri etymological explainer, trace from hood rat chick to ratchet.
Ok, this is great: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/dc-news-crew-robbed-while-reporting-on-sketchy-neighborhoods/
Creighton is near what used to be the bad part of Omaha
That would be the beach.