When the bike lanes appear, there goes the neighborhood...

Welcome to 'Bad Neighborhood'.

A reclaiming of the term 'bad', a reclaiming of 'denigration'.

Yes, this site is intentionally "blackened", "darkened".

As is the majority of people on this blue planet---various shades of brown and black and red and yellow. As for those of you reading this who are not in the melanin-gifted department, better load up on the strongest SPF you can find with the ozone layer going going gone....

I employ no reverse-'paperbag test' here. All are welcome---as long as you have compelling 'bad neighborhood' stories to tell and have a deep abiding love, solidarity with and respect for the bad neighborhoods of the world. Some of my best friends are white folks.

This is not a 'poverty pimping' place. No glamorization of suffering and neglect and violence and environmental poisoning.

Because some neighborhoods truly have had the life beaten out of them and left for dead. These neighborhood are the unkempt toddlers standing wailing in the street left to fend for themselves. These neighborhoods are the aged left by themselves alone in dilapidated structures ---who are so dehydrated and disoriented that they don't know where or who they are.

This 'bad neighborhood' is harkening to James Brown's "I'm Superbad" kind of 'bad'.

A place where those of us who love/hate 'bad' neighborhoods, grew up in 'bad' neighborhoods, survived 'bad' neighborhoods, went to school in 'bad neighborhoods', received and gave love in 'bad' neighborhoods---can share our complex stories and experiences of these times and places.

These are the 'bad neighborhoods' that WMWFs---Well Meaning White Folks (no, not weapons of mass destruction, altho some would beg to differ...) refer to in polite conversation when I, often the lone person of color in the mix, am rendered either invisible or draped in honorary 'whiteness' (ie, 'goodness').

I have to thank the members of the Food Justice Group for whoever made that off-the-wall but oh-so-true comment and about white folks and bike lanes. We were having a discussion about neighborhoods we grew up in, live in now, what kinds of foods were available, etc.

Someone made a comment about the appearance of bike lanes as an indicator of neighborhood whiteness.

Forget about the absence of fried chicken joints, protestant churches on every block, brown and black folks hanging out on the corner and on porches, trash in the streets, hip hop blaring over speakers, run-down schools, dollar stores, taco trucks....no that's not how you tell whether you're in a 'bad' or 'good' neighborhood.

Look for the presence of bike lanes.

That's how you know that you're in a a 'good' neighborhood. With 'good' mostly white people. With 'good' brown people who care for their children and keep their lawns and pick their organic produce. With 'good' schools for the 'good' children who will grow up to make a lot of 'good' money. With just a sprinkling of black and brown folks, who receive the title of 'honorary good' just so that their presence can add to the urbane urban-ness, edgy potentially-but-not-quite 'bad-ness' of the neighborhood.

And of course, there are many many neighborhoods that flip this race and class divide cockroach on its back, with all six legs and antennae just scrambling!

So let's here about your bad neighborhood...with or without the bike lanes.