A waitress at the IHOP was so kind to give me Splenda out of her personal stash from her purse. I knew by this that she was among the kind strangers that we would meet. I asked her: "is this a nice neighborhood?" and she said "oh, yes, I stay just right over here, close enough to walk, but of coarse I drive." I then said, "is there a lot of crime here, like a crack house every other block." She says: "oh, no definately not. This is one of the best neighborhoods. My kids go to school over here."
Another waitress when asked the same question answered: "I am not trying to sound racist, but this area is really going down hill. My parents want to move because it's gotten so bad....I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I don't think you should move to this part of town."
Yet another person, the cab driver, says "I wouldn't live in that part of town because the police are racist." Then continued, "it's a conservative area of town, lots of people move their to raise their families and they basically keep to themselves....you have to be assertive in order to make friends there."
It is amazing that three different people can have such a huge variety of opinions on one part of town. As strangers traveling through and observing for ourselves, we felt a warm welcome by the locals and given all that we saw thought it may be a nice place to live. They seem rather open to tolerating strangers.
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