Gourmet Ghetto

My Top 3

When I was younger I lived in some pretty dicey places. At one point I lived in a little town called Bayshore on Long Island’s South Shore. This was the first place I ever smelled people smoking crack, the first place I was ever asked if I wanted to buy an uzi, and the first place I could sit in my living room and watch hookers give blowjobs to the perverts that ceaselessly prowled the neighborhood. My apartment, despite being in a horrible war zone of a neighborhood, was a in a beautiful brick post world war II era building that housed only 4 enormous apartments. The rent was cheap, but the apartment was great. This set the tone for many years to come where I would deliberately scope the news for stories of bad neighborhoods besieged by prostitutes, drug dealers and bad schools. These stories were always fertile ground when it came to finding cheap housing. When I was in my 20’s, I could give a rats ass about the caliber of my neighbors, but times change, paychecks rise and one begins to desire a better experience when walking at night.