One bad tooth ignored, that's how it starts. Urban Blight and Decay.

For those of you who have followed my previous Urban Blight series some of these buildings may look familiar. Every photo was taken yesterday. I revisited a couple of places just to see how much further they had deteriorated. Aside from one or two spots, the rest of the photos are new to this blog. I spent maybe an hour   yesterday searching these places out. In the span of an hour I took about 30 pics, wandered on to a police raid, and found that one of the city's most notorious apartment buildings had been boarded up again for at least the third time in the last 4 years. Unlike my last series on blight I wanted to show the progression of blight and urban decay rather than just a series of random shots taken in different neighborhoods. This series begins where I believe the decay and death of the inner city began.  As the series  progresses I'll try to follow the trail of decay as best I can in the order it's taken place.........Click the photos to enlarge them.

                      One Tooth At A Time.

That's how it starts. You neglect your teeth, ignore that occasional toothache. The decay begins. You lose one tooth. Then another. The neglected rotting tooth infects those on either side of it. The decay spreads. Soon there is nothing left. The first neighborhoods to go are the poorest. Low income, working class, plagued by poverty, gangs, and all that comes with it. Life still goes on here as does the spread of decay.  People are stuck. They can't move away. Who is going to buy a home no matter how well cared for when it sits beside one that is either falling down on itself, or being used as a dope house?  Many of these places have been handed down to sons or daughters. It's all the have. Walking away isn't an option. So they ride it out, stay put, and hope for a promised change that won't ever come.

Most of you won't wake up some lazy Sunday morning and decide " Hey let's take a drive down 31's and Jackson !"  Sure you might catch a glimpse as you drive by the outer fringes of a particular part of the city.  Give a passing glance at a few rundown store fronts, maybe see the tops of a few roofs in the process of falling in on themselves. But you can't really get a feel for the enormity of the problem until you drive up and down the streets. The decay seems to  start in the center and work it's way outward, just like that bad tooth.

Entire blocks are absent of homes, turned into dump sites. The trees and weeds taking back what was once theirs. The only signs of humans, old tires, trash, and utility poles turning gray and slowly being pulled sideways to the ground. No children play in these streets, neighbors don't stand on the sidewalks and share a minute or two of random talk.  Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and found that half the houses on your street were empty, boarded up, falling down. Imagine looking at it day after day.

You don't have to travel to New Orleans. No need to go visit Detroit. This is our Lower Ninth Ward. It didn't take a hurricane or the death of a particular industry. Just the slow erosion brought on by time, a disconnect from one another, a fucked up set of priorities. We, and by we I mean middle class folks, white, black, and any other shade you want to toss in, we moved away to safer, cleaner, newer areas. Now you don't move from one of these neighborhoods, you flee, you run for your life. Or you stay put because you have no other choice. As people leave, the storefronts go empty.

The schools shut down. Playgrounds go silent.

Theater marquees are replaced by gang tags.

The remaining people reside in a deteriorating war zone.

Meanwhile we become enraged and join together over a single building in a cleaner, sexier part of town.  The

Mayor walked the streets of the Plaza yesterday.

When was the last time he walked down Forest in the Urban core?

More to come...........................