maybe we should challenge this blog/neighborhood to some type of contest/duel – like a neighborhood clean-up or some demonstration of feats of strength? I am half joking, but it would be kind of cool to coduct some sort of neighborhood/blog contest. maybe we could have a contest in which 10 reps from each local blog get f@cked up at a neighborhood watering hole and then walk home with ipods on. whichever team has less people getting mugged wins and can claim best (better) neighborhood bragging rights. just an idea.

I feel safe here because we are 3 people with varying schedules so the house is fairly covered. We do not have bars on the windows. The garage has been broken into 3 times with loss of about 2K of bicycles and tools. A contractor working for me had his truck broken into on the street in front of my house while we ate lunch and 400$ tools stolen. It’s a mix.

The official robbery and assault statistics are a much more objective measure of your relative safety than some emotional “comfort level”. And the crime stats ain’t real good for CH.

Ignore objective evidence at your own risk.

That doesn’t mean I walk the streets at 3am with dollars sticking out of my ears and a fresh can of airplane glue.

Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

That happens a lot on this blog, too – people talking smack about certain blocks because it somehow makes them feel better about their own.

And, since when has airplane glue come in cans? I’ve missed so much.

Well, at least we can all agree that Petworth is scarier than Columbia Heights and H street combined.

there is a very good reason for this. im surprised nobody has touched on it. muggings are concentrated in areas with a lot of nightlife, drunk people, cash-ipods. This is why there are a lot in adams morgan and columbia heights but also in georgetown. H street has an up and coming nightlife scene. mark my words. 5 or six more bars open and a couple more good restaurants. and the muggings will rise. there are less muggins in deanwood and brookland and at this point H Street because there are LESS TARGETS. would you waste your time fishing in a river with five fish in it or drive a little further to one where they jump in your boat?

It’s apples and oranges. H Street is a solid 5-7 years behind CH on the gentrification curve, and it’s not planned for the same types of commercial use. Live where you want, go out where you want — the thugs are everywhere. You accept the hazard of being their target when you choose to live in the District, period. Anon @ 9:16 gets it, and I would add that, if you’re looking at thug-on-hipster/blogger/yuppie crime, my sense is the crime rates in both places are proportionate to the number of hipster/blogger/yuppie-types on the streets in each place. (CH probably has more thug-on-thug crime, however.)

Way of topic – but not sure where else to put it – the Solea add does weird things to my computer and slows loading PoP. Anyone else having trouble?

I’m with Anon 11:22pm, time for interneighborhood double dare. If we could manage to spread green slime throughout the city perhaps it would slow down the dope boys.

I’m with anon 11:22 too – we could do a combined cleaning – pick 5 blocks. I guess whoever gets the most trash loses… or see who has the most volunteers. I bet we would win.

Both neighborhoods have problems. If someone didn’t know that before signing a lease/title in either neighborhood, no amount of maligning the other one will make it any better.

That, and H street is just totally jealous of Columbia Height’s awesomeness. Obviously.

There’s no smack talk. This is a silly topic and unecessarily sensitive.
Where’s the door of the day?

You are WAY off, guy. Listing a couple crimes that have been committed in Columbia Heights does not unfairly malign the neighborhood. It’s stating a fact, and it’s doing so in a more tactful way than many people would. I, for instance, would say that Columbia Heights is a crime-ridden hell-hole. That can be considered maligning the neighborhood.

i think it would be a good idea to have an H Street / Columbia Heights showdown. The only problem is that the people from H Street can’t get anywhere b/c there is no metro so we’d have to go their home turf.

since i drink CH Kool aid, i like CH much better and if i had to place a $1,000 bet on which area will be more desirable in 10 years, I’d go with CH all day long and twice on sunday b/c of the metro, DC USA, and the eventual connection of CH to U Street along 14th street.

anon 1:44. It must be fact. my god look at sources you’ve cited. Who can refute such rock solid evidence. lol. “crime rates” lol.

say what? I dont think ive ever seen a hipster in flip flops. we. uh. i mean. they. dont roll that way. flip flops are def the footware choice of the preps. a quick toe count in CH vs glover park will tell you that.

Prince,
I did not mean to denigrate Columbia Heights in the post. I like Columbia Heights (really). I just get frustrated when people automatically assume that anything in NW is safer than stuff in NE. I only used Columbia Heights as an example because of the news story that day. I certainly don’t think the neighborhood is unsafe (I think my old roommate just acted in a way that made him prone to muggings). A lot of it is about feeling comfortable in places you live and frequent.

I think the comment (on Frozen Tropics) from a Shaw resident said it best:

Anonymous Caro said…

When I say I live in Shaw, I experience the same thing — people will look quizzically at me, or immediately ask, “Wow, do you feel safe there?” And yet, these same people will go out in Adams Morgan, U Street, or Columbia Heights late at night without much thought. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do this, or that AdMo, U Street, or CH are horrible places, nor do I think that Shaw couldn’t be a lot safer… I just find it odd how people draw little borderlines in their mind to say “This area is safe and this area is sketchy” with total certainty, even when they’re not that much different. I think people just want to feel in control of their safety, and so in order to go to the places they want to go, they decide that that area is safe enough to be worth the risk.

May 18, 2009 11:20:00 AM

I mention all the time that Petworth has less crime (especially property crime) than U St., Columbia Heights, or Adams Morgan (easily verifiable at http://crimemap.dc.gov). The point isn’t to put down the other neighborhoods, but I hear comments from people in AM, CH, and U St all the time that they wouldn’t live in Petworth because of crime. Honestly, I think they’re making assumptions based on race, not actual crime statistics, and that really makes me mad…so what I tell people is that if you’re comfortable living in any of those other neighborhoods, then there’s no reason to feel apprehensive about Petworth. And just for the record, while I love Petworth, I would have bought a rowhouse in any of those other neighborhoods if I could have afforded it – they are all great places to live.

PetworthRes: According to the mappy thing there hasn’t been a single terrorist attack within 1500 feet of my house in at least 2 years. No murders neither. There have been 5 robberies in the last year but they didn’t even use guns. What kind of American refuses to use a gun? Pinkos. I can’t tell from the mappy thing if the robbers used a frying pan instead or if their victim was a short feller sniffing airplane glue from a can whilst taking pictures of doorways.