This Says a Lot
Even though there's a lot of things about Virginia I can't stand, I always really liked Clarendon and wished Silver Spring would develop more in that direction. Anyway, after yesterday's incident I was curious if Clarendon ever had any gun violence, and I think my search results (or lack thereof) from Google speak volumes:
Silver Spring's results are unfortunately not so innocent.
Posts
29 comments:
Sadly, the difference between Clarendon and Silver Spring is that Clarendon is not right next to D.C. or P.G. County.
OUCH... very OUCH.
Results 1 - 10 of about 396,000 for silver spring shooting. (0.44 seconds)
Don't be so down; a more specific search for "silver spring" shooting (the quotes eliminate potential confounders like someone being short with a silver bullet in the spring time) returns 196,000 results, while a search for clarendon shooting returns 263,000.
Also, Clarendon is lame. That is all.
Perhaps, but if you compare "Silver Spring Shooting" to "Clarendon shooting", the former returns about 3,000 while the latter only returns 6, none of which have to do with Virginia. To be fair, Silver Spring is a lot bigger than Clarendon, which is really just a neighborhood. I think my point stands, however.
And while yes, certain parts of Clarendon are a tad lame, they have lots of things Silver Spring does not: lots of good bars, restaurants with outdoor seating, Gelato, a flea market every Sunday, etc etc etc.
Clarendon is just a neighborhood in Arlington. Comparing "Arlington shooting" with "Silver Spring shooting" would be more appropriate (or "Woodside shooting" with "Clarendon shooting").
Well, either way, downtown Silver Spring is up 2-nil vs. Clarendon this year.
Virginia also has the Mount Vernon area, Springfield, Columbia Pike (ew) and let's not leave out the Springfield interchange and 95. And I'll never forget that crazy guy that kidnapped the 8 year old out of his front yard in Alexandria and murdered him. It was quite a few years ago.
We do seem to have many more carjackings recently in our SoCo neighborhood next to Langley, Adelphi, and other bucolic P.G. neighborhoods.
Anonymous says: Clarendon = no Tyrones.
If this means what I think it means then I am very disappointed to read such an ugly comment on this blog.
This still doesn't say why the heck these people were coming out of a night club three and a half hours AFTER last call. I think 2 am is pathetically early, but if I have to stop drinking at McGinty's or Quarry House by then, everyone else in the county should have to also!
The "no Tyrones" comment is unacceptable.
Dave Murphy said...
This still doesn't say why the heck these people were coming out of a night club three and a half hours AFTER last call. I think 2 am is pathetically early, but if I have to stop drinking at McGinty's or Quarry House by then, everyone else in the county should have to also!
6/30/2008 3:07 PM
Just because you go to an unknown wack bar that close way to early doesn't mean that all of the other clubs have to stop operating early too.
The last time I checked The Maryland/DC area is a Heavily Populated Region and not some Junction with the population of 500 in the middle of No Mans Land of Alabama where everything closes at 5PM 7 days a week.
There are Several Night Clubs in other Major Regions(Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Houston, etc.) the size of the DC/MD/VA that stay open til 7AM and never had any issues with Shootings/Stabbings.
Sligo, I like the blog and read regularly, but I'm considering stopping due to the disturbingly frequent racist comments. I know you don't agree with the posters, so please police and remove them. Thanks!
I'm not a big fan of censorship, but I'll consider it.
What's a "wack bar"?
What he/she meant to say was "whack" (i.e. bad).
Apparently, almost all bars in Montgomery County are "wack" since they close by 2AM.
Sligo--It's a tough call, but policing the posts will likely drive the offenders away. If they can't get a rise out of this forum, they'll look elsewhere. Depending on the flow of intolerance, either hand-deleting (slow) or disabling anonymous comments (rapid-fire) will do the trick.
Nice little discussion by another blogger with the same issue: http://chrisuggen.blogspot.com/2006/10/censorship.html
Anyone who considers the Quarry House a bad bar simply has no taste in bars.
Silver Spring is a victim of geography. We are close to poorer neighborhoods in the District and we have closer proximity to blighted Prince Georges county communities. Many thugs from DC and PG County consider Silver Spring an up-and-coming community where opportunities exist for muggings, robberies, and auto theft. By the way, many crooks from DC and PG have made criminal visits to affluent parts of northwest DC and Bethesda. Silver Spring is not the only target for the predators.
--IHateYuppies--
Despite Anonymous complaints of racist speech, I dont think you should censor unless the comment actually involves racist epithets or personal attacks. If you exclude all the views you find objectionable you find yourself in a self re-enforcing false nirvana.
The fact of the matter is there is a signifigant underclass in the Silver Spring/Wheaton area that makes life unpleasant for the rest of us in public venues that we both share (for instance Ive never had a problem at the Borders, but avoid the Majestic) This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that SS/Wheaton is on metro and therefore an easy trip out of the District for a greater population of miscreants who will not go to the Bethesda/Rockville side of the line because they have to toe the line there (many more rent-a-cops, real cops, merchants willing to eject loiterers, etc) On the plus side the lower income levels and less homogeneity make this area far more interesting to live in than the white bread of west county. A similar analogy could be looked at as the east of the park/west of the park split in DC.
To sum up what became a ramble. Diversity comes at a cost, but to censor those who would point out that cost is as silly and narrow-minded as those who chose to portray that cost timeworn racist phrases
In response to Anonymous at 2:56, I'm not quite sure what "underclass" means. Anonymous, are you talking about low-income people? Or college freshmen?
Either way, it's a rather large (and unpleasant) leap to assume that "sharing" public venues with these groups would "make life unpleasant." For one thing, the phrase "that we both share" seems to assume that the writer-- and anyone reading the comment-- belongs to a different class, whatever that might be.
What makes life unpleasant is crime, violence, and disrespect for other human beings. Granted, there may be a statistically larger proportion of these actions committed by lower-income people, but "sharing" of public spaces by richer and poorer people does not automatically make for an "unpleasant" experience. (Some would argue that just the opposite is true.)
Anonymous, the remainder of your comment suggests that maybe you didn't really mean the first part the way it sounded. Maybe you could clarify? I guess I just find "underclass" a pretty loaded word. . .
Who are the underclass? It depends where you are. The underclass encompasses not just poor people, but people who are unemployed, dysfunctional, and/or criminal. Who makes up a particular area's underclass is not hard to fathom: just look at the crime statistics.
In Silver Spring, the underclass is black and hispanic. In other parts of the country it's white, or Native American, or Asian, and so on.
Of course, we're talking about street crimes and such; for larger crimes, such as illegal wars and torture of prisoners and corporate rip-offs, look to the overclass. We know what color they tend to be.
A quick trip to Wikiland can give a brief description of underclass via Karl Marx definition "This scum of the depraved elements of all classes ...the dangerous class, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society."
There are many different ways to slice the “class” pie race/income/education/etc, and I'm enough contradictions to be hard to place, but I do know that I am not of the same class as the “urban” (to use the current PC term) teenagers who consistently ruin public spaces in East County.
And how do I know that I’m from a “different” class and sharing makes life unpleasant? Well most classes don’t feel a need to throw rocks/bottles/etc at cyclists; nor have loud and profane conversations in restaurants, during movies, or around children; nor condone loitering, truancy, and petty harassment of passers-by.
I’m all in favor of a variety of incomes and backgrounds sharing space-I think it provides part of the dynamic that makes places like SS/Wheaton, Columbia Heights, Del Ray, etc such wonderful places to live. Retreat into gated communities in far suburbia is as much of a thought-crime as wallowing in the self-reinforcing cycle of poverty in the ghetto. That however does not give entitlement to any group or class to breach the social contract without consequences. When you share a public space with someone from my "class" or myself we both can enjoy the space. When I have to share it with the underclass its about as pleasurable as sharing it with a tribe bonobo chimps. I wish that the county/merchants/someone would do a better job of enforcing that social contract in this area so we could all enjoy the space, because the more you allow tolerance of misbehavior, the fewer “decent” folks partake of the space, creating a repetitive cycle that brought DTSS to the point it was 10 years ago.
Anonymous said...
Silver Spring is a victim of geography. We are close to poorer neighborhoods in the District and we have closer proximity to blighted Prince Georges county communities. Many thugs from DC and PG County consider Silver Spring an up-and-coming community where opportunities exist for muggings, robberies, and auto theft. By the way, many crooks from DC and PG have made criminal visits to affluent parts of northwest DC and Bethesda. Silver Spring is not the only target for the predators.
--IHateYuppies--
7/01/2008 11:54 AM
I hope this is not some secrete code of refering to criminals as African Americans since most African Americans and a Sprinkle of Latinos live in DC and PG County.
BTW- If you don't like the enviroment of Silver Spring and Bethesda you can always go back to Northern Virginia.......
Anonymous,
Sorry, but most of the street crime in Silver Spring and, in fact, the D.C. region is committed by African Americans and a sprinkling of Latinos, especially in D.C. and P.G.
In Appalachia and elsewhere, it's probably different, but we're not talking about Appalachia.
Its not a secret code....see the following links
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Apps/police/2008_Weeklies//3D052808.pdf
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Apps/police/2008_Weeklies//3D061108%20.pdf
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Apps/police/2008_Weeklies//3D061808.pdf
Do you see anything other than African Americans and Hispanics noted at suspects?
And why is it that the inevitable response to "people should behave in public spaces" is go move back to XXX whitebread area? If I wanted to live in bland I'd go live in Kentlands....thats not what I want in the slightest, I just want people to behave like decent citizens and not a tribe of marauding Huns. I think thats within my rights as a taxpayer to as for.
Sadly, in DC anyone who calls for the upholding of generally accepted social standards is immediately denounced for racism.
Of course, 90% of overt racism encountered in DC is blacks against others (principally whites and Hispanics), but only honkies bring that up.
I was called a "white trash motherfucker" for no apparent reason one time in the now-defunct Silver Spring Jerry's Subs. I still laugh about that.
I've been called "faggot" and "honky" countless times by random people in the steret in the 2.5 years I've lived in DC/SS. Prior to moving here, I didn't even know the word "honky" was used by anyone except George Jefferson.
The people in this city have major issues. I can't wait to leave.
Anonymous said, "I hope this is not some secrete code of refering to criminals as African Americans since most African Americans and a Sprinkle of Latinos live in DC and PG County.
BTW- If you don't like the enviroment of Silver Spring and Bethesda you can always go back to Northern Virginia".
I was citing geography...not race. The geography of poverty. There's happens to be a good number of blacks living in Montgomery County but I didn't reference that, did I? I don't hear of suburban middle-class black kids committing crimes. But I sure see plenty of urban ghetto black kids come across the crime blotter. Poverty is a bigger indicator of criminal activity than race or ethnicity. Unfortunately, in the DC metro region, the overwhelming number of people living at or below poverty line are African Americans and Latinos.
--I Hate Yuppies--
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