Urban Blight Tour 08..............Marlboro Blight

The Marlboro area has gone through several transformations over the past 25 or 30 years, none of them good. Inhabited in large part, by lower middle income, blue collar whites, and low to mid level blue collar type criminals during the 70's and 80's, that followed by a slow but steady integration of African American blue collar types , along with street level young black dope slingers. Don't let anyone ever tell you that the proliferation of black criminals has caused Marlboro's decline, it was in the basement before the first thug ever rolled through on his dubs. Long before the first Fiddy wanna be cooked up a piece of crack, there was a long line of whiskey tango petty thieves and stringy haired dope dealers. While I'm at it, please if you are from Marlboro, please refrain from telling me how great the street you live on is. One or two blocks of yards that get mowed twice a month, doesn't make you Mission Hills. Your neighborhood as a whole, is a shit hole, but you knew that already.

Two of the city's most notorious Motels call Marlboro home. There has been more coke rocked up, and more clandestine meth labs in the 4 Acres Motel, than an Independence trailer park. The only reason the city hasn't condemned the joint is containment, keeps the riff raff from fanning out through the city.

So Marlboro, we have a history, I lived there for a couple of years, grew up west of there by a mile or two, knew a large number of nefarious characters from Marlboro. There really isn't anything special about the area. It's just another section of the city, that is largely ignored, save the occasional drug bust, lab fire or random murder. I think that is the most troublesome thing about Marlboro, and all of the other rundown areas in the city, there's nothing special about them.

I'll let you in on a little secret, this whole Urban Blight series has been the easiest thing I've ever done. I never had to drive far or look hard to find run down, ragged neighborhoods. I never really gave it much thought, but this city really is on the skids. Sure there are still nice areas in Kansas City proper, but for every good one, I can show you an equally piss poor one. And not for nothin, but the whole thing has been a little depressing. Driving around as much as I do, looking at all of this decay eating away at the city, all bullshit aside, it saddens me. I've said it before, I really love this city, my city, even though she ain't nearly as pretty as she once was.

This is my last Urban Blight post, at least for now. I have only skimmed the surface, and in the not too distant future, I'll be back with more. The thing is, I feel like I might be typecasting myself. Writing about prison, ragged neighborhoods, crime, all negative shit. So I'm going to brighten things up around here. I'm working on a series about garden gnomes , it should be a hoot.

Just kidding about the garden gnomes, I hate those fuckin things.

Urban Blight Tour 08...........East Side

There is no way I could cover every corner of what most of us call, Kansas City's East side. East of Paseo, or Troost, or even as far as Prospect, pick your jump off point. The most bleak area in the city, is centered by Prospect Ave, and runs from 39th north to the 20's. If you live in a better area than this, and you most likely do, then spending twenty or thirty minutes driving around here will depress you, and make you feel like the love child of Donald Trump and Oprah. After spending some time driving through this war zone, I feel rich beyond measure, and trust me, if it cost a quarter to shit, I'd have to throw up.

The first thing you notice when you drive through these neighborhoods, every single person you pass, they look at you and the look says you don't belong here. Like the black guy said to Edward Norton in American History X, "Just remember, in here, you the nigga. Not me." That is true in practically every prison in the Nation, and equally true east of Troost. If you are white and prowling these streets you are either a cop, a victim, an addict, a trick, or a mildly retarded blogger. I don't mean to sound crass or insensitive, but the unicorns of Brookside, don't venture east of Holmes road. So I cant write about the East side in a sensitive and politically correct tone. It wouldnt ring true. It's a hard place, and it begs for the hard truth. Not every single home is run down, there are people who take pride , who bust their humps every day, and who live there by choice, or circumstance, doing the best they can. That said, you don't have to look far to find blight, poverty and whole lot of shit you are better off not finding. In fact you would be hard pressed to drive down any side street and not find at least a couple of boarded houses every block or two.
If you pay much attention to the News, you know that the majority of killings happen to the east, you also might see some local Politician on the news, selling the latest war on crime, or guns, or weeds, or the latest revitalization effort. Judging from these pictures, I'd say the weeds and blight are winning the battle. With a murder rate that is on target to be one of the highest in the city's history, and a city hall mired in a quagmire of bullshit and incompetence, things are going to get worse in the city's poorest area.
I stepped outside about halfway through writing this post. There was a police helicopter circling around outside, I can never resist going outside when I hear one. Around here I hear a lot of them. They fly low, all you can see is the lights, hear the trees whipping up. It's not particularly smart to stand outside in the dark when a police helicopter is searching for suspects. You could get shot by the cops, or who ever they are looking for. So when I'm standing out in my darkened driveway, watching it all unfold, I'm never totally relaxed, my eyes are always scanning my surroundings. Driving around the east side of Kansas City today, in broad daylight, is a lot like that feeling, multiplied by 50. In most every single post on urban blight I have cracked several jokes at the expense of what ever area I was writing about. But I've got to tell you, I got nothin. This shit just isn't funny, not on this level.

Everyone has their own personal opinion about why the east side of Kansas city is in the shape it's in. I think there are plenty of guilty parties, but that's not what this post is about. This just gives you a quick glance of a place. the east side is like Humpty Dumpty; And all the kings horses, and all the kings men...........well , you know the rest.

Urban Blight Tour 08.......Midtown.

Mention Midtown Kansas City and it will automatically evoke a response, a perception, an opinion. Say what you will it is the most diverse area in the city. It is also one of the most blight ridden areas around. Unlike KCK or neighborhoods east of Paseo, midtown doesn't have a high number of vacant and dilapidated homes. What we do have is an overabundance of, empty , condemned, and dangerous apartment buildings. Commercial buildings that have long been passed over by commerce. Click on the small pictures to enlarge.

Midtown also has more than its fair share of registered sex offenders. Thirty one baby rapers and tree jumpers in an area that encompasses a couple of square miles. For some reason we also have an overabundance of crazy people. Take the intersection of 39th and Main for example, at any given time you are likely to see some crazy modern day John the Baptist railing from his pulpit, even if his pulpit is a trash can next to the bus stop shelter. There is an old woman I see around the area often, hair dyed a bright orange red, lipstick smeared from under her nose to her chin. There is the Plasma center on Broadway, one of my readers once commented that they felt like they were in a video game every time they drove that stretch of Broadway. Wack jobs, crack heads and morons, darting out in to traffic, walking slower as your car approaches, as if they are daring you to hit them.

The churches cover their stained glass windows with Plexiglas, yellow from time, the color and beauty of the artisan glass obscured from the outside. Life is cheap in certain parts of Midtown. This particular building , one of my pet peeves , a den of scumbags and vipers, the building should be torn down, all evidence of its existence erased. The bright and oddly placed fiberglass umbrellas mark the building like beacons. Mothers leave their toddlers alone here while she goes to sling dope or sell her ass, she leaves her kids to fend for themselves. They find her stash and end up in the hospital from ingesting crack cocaine. When dusk approaches you will always find 3 or 4 raggedy popcorn pimps and small time drug dealers in front of this cesspool. You can see street walkers who long ago lost any semblance of attractiveness. They come and go, about the business of spreading god knows what disease or virus, neglecting their children, chasing the glass pipe. What you rarely , if ever see in front of this building, is the police. This place is 3 blocks from the police station on Linwood, I have yet to see a cop car posted out front of this shit hole, to discourage the scumbags who use it as a base of operations.

These two buildings directly across from the police station where Federal Halfway houses. When I got out of the joint, I spent 6 months here. the feds eventually shut the place down, not sure why. And this building, one of, if not the first Russell Stovers candy stores in the city. It has been everything from a tobacco shop to a bonding agency. Now it sits waiting for some new tenant, some new business, that will almost surely fail, just like most new businesses from Troost, east.

There are still traces of what once was a thriving commercial and retail area. Much of Midtown is booming, 39th street west of the Trafficway is thriving, the neighborhoods clean and over priced. The farther east you travel, the more blighted and stagnate the area becomes. Even the old historic signs, like ghosts of better days, are being slowly erased. My family and friends wonder why I stay, why anyone capable of getting out would stay. There are moments I wonder about that myself. The truth is, I cant imagine living anywhere else in the city. Dirty, dangerous, rundown, Midtown is all of those things, but it's home.

Urban Blight Tour 08.......The Ghosts of KCK.

Finding blight in Kansas City isn't difficult, to be honest the finding is the easy part. Writing something to go with the photos, a message that fits the picture, that's the hard part. Sure, it's easy enough when I'm wisecracking on a place like the Mayfair. There is no feeling of history in the Mayfair. Kansas City Kansas, specifically the older neighborhoods that run along State Avenue, or Quindaro, are a different story. These dilapidated houses were once homes. People lived and died, raised families and flower gardens, sent their children off to college or war. Now they sit silent, falling down around themselves.Pound for pound, block for block, there isn't a more hardscrabble area in the entire metro. There are streets, some several blocks long, where there is nothing. The houses are gone, torn down after years of neglect and abandonment. I think in another post I may have compared this part of the metro with pictures I had seen of Chernobyl. When you drive through here, even where houses still exist, there is a pervasive feeling of decay, emptiness, loss of hope. Most of the people who originally lived in these homes have either died or moved on. They moved in when the houses were bright. They were full of hope, they had youth on their side. If they lived their allotted average number of years, they were witness to the slow decline of their neighborhoods. They saw their children and grandchildren succumb to drugs, gangs, prison, and a million other ills that always find the poorest of us. They probably had a defining moment, an epiphany, when they realized that their young had turned a corner and taken different paths, had become predator, prey or both.

When you come up in a time where a man leaves for work with his steel lunchbox and worn coveralls, it must be hard to relate to some young guy who leaves for work in over sized clothes and gold chains, a bag of dope in place of a lunchbox, a pistol rather than a hammer or wrench. Most of them won't ever see 70, 60, or even 30. We can all point a finger, we can blame it on society, race, poverty or politics, but at the end of the day, we all are responsible for our choices, and shifting the blame in one direction or another doesn't change that simple fact. While much of Kansas City Kansas grows and flourishes, the sections that run between State ave. and Quindaro stagnate and die at the hands of its young.

When a neighborhood begins to die, the businesses are the first to go. They might have once been a destination. A place families stayed at. When the crime chased the visitors away, the businesses had to change with the times or get left behind. Families in the 60's and 70's played in this pool, kids laughed and splashed around. With the crime and vice came the steady deterioration. Eventually, as if from a cancer, the place succumbed, now there are just ghosts, no wet footprints temporarily staining the concrete around the pool, no more blood staining the walls and floors of the rooms. There is just this.
I apologize if you were expecting me to do my usual wise ass commentary, but I just can't find much to be flippant about here. I'm not sure why, trust me I can go to a million neighborhoods , every bit as bad as this area, and a barrage of smart ass comments will spew forth. And believe me when I say, there are more than a few of those posts coming. But there is something that tugs at me when it comes to this part of KCK, for the life of me I don't know what it is, but I cant ignore or deny it. Still among all of the blight and decay of this place, there are moments. A brightly colored house, some crazy guy arguing with someone only he can see. And pictures like this, that for some reason make me smile.

Next Monday....North East.

The Urban Blight Tour 08

Ask anyone from Kansas City which area of the metro is the most crime ridden , blight filled part of town. Most will say the East side, or KCK. While both of these areas are definitely contenders, there are countless smaller pockets throughout the city. Over the next few weeks, I am going to take you to some of them. So lock your doors, roll up your window, and put on your best fake cop face. Here we go.

Forty Highway, maybe you drive it on your way to work, or to the Chiefs and Royals games. Unless you are completely unaware of your surroundings, which makes you an excellent target by the way, then you have probably noticed a few rundown motels and trailer parks scattered among the mostly commercial section that runs east from Van Brunt. Hopefully you have never had an urge to explore the interior of these trailer parks, and if you felt the urge you were smart enough to not act on it. Lucky for you I'm neither particularly smart or easily frightened. I really love the grit and grime that stubbornly clings to the city.

There is a mile or two stretch of 40 hwy that stand as testament to vice in its most base form. Sex and Drugs, and Rock, minus the Roll. While the hookers don't stroll through here in the same numbers as Independence Avenue or even Troost or Prospect, they are here. It is a safe assumption to say that hookers and smokers use the small No Tell Motels as their base of operations. You don't have to be Mike Hammer to figure out the appeal of cheap motels that don't require, or probably even accept credit cards. The smaller motels , I'm gonna go out on a limb here, are family owned, probably East Indian families. Some of the bigger hotels have not fared so well. The largest motel on 40 hwy, the old Stadium Inn, later named the Sunset Inn sits abandoned, and probably stripped of its copper pipes and wires. I'm willing to bet, its empty rooms are home to a few of the nocturnal inhabitants of this area. The only way to be sure is to walk inside the abandoned building, and that just ain't gonna happen. Now, crack and prostitution are just two of the three deadly sins that are a mainstay of the 40 hwy strip. In fact, as ragged and filthy as these motels and the occupants may be, they are living in the Ritz Carlton in comparison to what you are about to see. So make sure the boss isn't looking over your shoulder, put down that donut, trust me you don't want to be eating right now. Let's take a ride through Bunker Hill and Mayfair, hands down the single most filthy place this side of the landfill, where Meth is surely the drug of chioce. Bunker Hill and Mayfair trailer parks sit side by side, nestled 100 feet or so off of 40 hwy. Strangely enough this may well be the most integrated area in the city. Whites and Blacks live in harmony. Okay, that bit about harmony, was bullshit. I doubt peace and harmony have ever set foot in this rats nest that passes for a trailer court. In fact, trailer park residents everywhere may file a class action suit against me for defamation of character. These two parks are cesspools, pure and simple. When I turned in to the Mayfair, the first thing I noticed was the absence of any dogs, and thankfully, children. I should say that I heard dogs barking, several of them, but I didn't see a single one. As I idled through the park , I passed a wire thin guy in bibs with a bushy beard that clearly hadn't seen comb nor soap since it was a 5 O'clock shadow, but more about him in a minute. Here are a few of the classier places in the Mayfair. Actually, this Is hands down the cleanest looking building in the two parks. And the only one that doesn't have a hitch and wheels, I might add. As I rounded the bend on the far end of this horseshoe shaped park, I came across this airy and spacious custom painted home. Someone has really put a great deal of time and effort in to the place.

As you can clearly see there is an open area toward the rear of the home, it reminds me of the homes in Southern California and Hawaii that have entire rooms that open up to the outside environment. Now I know you are trying to figure out what the hell the spray painting on the front says. I was going to get out of the car and move that bush to make it clearer to read, unfortunately, the Princess of the Park came out of a trailer directly across from this one, and she was giving me the stink eye, no pun, so I thought I should move along. I did blow it up and here is what I came up with.

There are letters that have been changed, the two L's look like they were N's, and the S was also covering another letter. I have no idea what this means, maybe bad spelling, or perhaps a cover up by this Mark the Murderer fella. So back to the Princess, who was rubber necking the middle age white guy, with the flashing black box that steals your soul. We call it a camera, but the natives of the area don't seem to understand what it really does, you will soon see why. The princess , much like the emperor, had no clothes, well she had no shoes, and was sporting coochie cutter shorts which displayed a tattoo that looked like it was done by an epileptic in full grand Mal seizure. Her hair was died a flat black, and she could have used a bra, or else she had twin tumors poking mid torso out the front of her t shirt. Either way, it wasn't a pleasant sight. As I drove on , I passed this place Which is private property and marked accordingly. And this place which needs a little work. And I found the source of the earlier mentioned barking dogs. This RV was literally rocking back and forth and the dogs were raising hell. I was almost tempted to free them, but didn't want to end up eaten by hungry pit bulls. So, as I'm making the last turn that leads out of the Park , to my surprise, Bearded Bib Guy, Trailer Park Princess, and a black guy with a big plastic sack, are standing in front of bib guys trailer. Princess was doing the Meth inspired Ozark high Step. Meth users have this funny thing they do with their legs when they have been up too long. Like the Funky Chicken or the Jed Clampett dance. Well she is pointing at my car and then back up to the trailer, and I swear to god, she makes a sign language gesture of me taking pictures. That was my cue to leave, but how could I without one last parting shot for posterity. I stopped the car, leaned out the window zoomed to the best of my ability, and fired away. Bib guy was a whole lot smarter than the other two. He understood that if someone is snapping pictures, and you don't want to be captured on film, you move out of sight. He was smart, the other two, not so much.

Well there you have it, installment one of my bi state expose on Blight, Crime and little known corners of the Kansas City Metro area. Thursday we will journey to the Kansas City Kansas area along Quindaro Blvd. I would be remiss if I didn't give proper thanks to JOCO SOB who originally came up with the idea for a top ten list of the worst blight in the area. I thought it was a great idea, and he told me to run with it. I decided to change it from a list, and instead will do my best to give you a feel of the areas, and let you the reader draw your own conclusions as to the best of the worst. Also I'm going to set up a flicker page so you can peruse all of the pictures Ive snapped of these areas, these are just a small sampling. I'll post a link when it's ready.