What didn't you realise was a rough place until you became an adult?

[YourAvidOpalPoet]

Parts of Bolton

Earth

Crewe

B&M

Second this 😆

Everywhere can be rough.

Washington DC. Ds visited years ago and told me it was really rough with lots of homeless and drug addicted people. I imagined it would be nice and clean with shiny buildings and sparkly pavements.

As a kid, I'd have said Bolton was rough.
But we only used to go the water park place there (now closed).
As an adult, it's lovely for a long walk with the dog and a pint or pub lunch.

But places change over time. Growing up, I regularly went to the Arndale centre in Luton to shop and thought nothing of it. I had friends living in Luton. Yes, some areas were rough (riots in Marsh farm, for example ), and it wasn’t never push, but it wasn’t all bad, and yet it was mentioned several times on the ‘worst place’ thread.

Incidently, the ‘Blinded by the light’ film got the feel
of eighties Luton pretty well, I thought.

The Houses of Parliament

When I was a kid I couldn't get in to my first choice of secondary school. Instead I had to go to the local school that had a bit of a reputation and not as good as the first choice school. My mum filled my head with horror stories that the kids were rough and came from rough areas outside our town. I was petrified these rough kids were going to kick my head in and all be horrible bullies. Then I found out that these kids were just normal kids like myself and were all really nice. It was just my mum being a snob.

Roughest place I've been was a council estate in Rochdale. Wasn't too far from Littleborough but can't remember where abouts exactly. But they had shutters on the inside of the windows that they'd pull over and lock if they were going out. To be fair the people seemed ok but I was shocked at that.