Author’s note: In my last post on the ineffectual intellectuals of the alternative bourgeioise and the inherent gayness of the American New Right, I used the term “good neighborhood” (with scare quotes) which brought some interesting discussion to my inbox.

Sparks, 2017

Over the last fifteen years I’ve dated a lot of women whose parents I remember used the term “bad neighborhood,” although I had never heard this term prior to my high school years. Probably because my ma grew up in Norristown, PA and my dad was a tough guy from New York. Neither of them had ever used the term “bad neighborhood,” so this was a new thing for me as I began meeting the families of the prettiest girls in high school who lived in the Summerlin area / south west of Las Vegas and whose families would say things like, “oh, that’s a bad neighborhood.”

Those of you who know me IRL know I lived on Charleston and 4th Street in Vegas which is as gutter as it gets (few blocks from Naked city) and I was also homeless for 23 months which isn’t anything to brag about, but to understand where I’m coming from, you should know this, because I’ve lived in black neighborhoods, Mexican neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, mixed neighborhoods, rough neighborhoods, and poor neighborhoods, but I have never lived in a “bad neighborhood.”

Read the whole thing.