BREAKING: New Haven Not Shitty?
A reader alerts us to a shocking piece in last week's Yale Daily News, headlined "Elm City Attracts Yuppies":
To the average Yale student, New Haven may be just another small college town. But to some Connecticut residents, New Haven's downtown has established itself as a "hip spot" that increasingly draws the state's young people with fine dining and unique boutiques.
This revitalized downtown has caught the attention of young professionals who want to live in a city with an affordable but high quality of life, according to some city officials. But as more professionals have moved into the city, many original residents have been priced out of living in New Haven.
Wha? We haven't been to New Haven in nine months, but we were under the impression it was still basically the city from "Gears of War." This is, after all, the city that kicked off Back to School week with a West Nile Virus pandemic, and whose most venereable institutions (no typo) include Toad's. New Haven's crapitude is one of our geographic tenets, like Hanover's polar isolation, or how people in West Philadelphia have mustaches. Why -- if the Elm City is somehow on the upswing, we'll have to reevaluate everything.
Better click on over to the New Haven Register for some more familiar headlines. Let's see: manslaughter, no ... 50-year murder sentence, getting warmer ... OK, yep, Boy, 7, May Have Distributed Crack Cocaine to Classmates, that should do it.
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February 14th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Come on guys, downtown New Haven really does have a lot to offer — fantastic restaurants (Zinc, Roomba, Ibiza, Pacifica — hell, even Union League — all within a couple blocks of one another); posh clothing and shishi household decor shops, etc; the beautifully renovated Louis Kahn building, which houses the university art gallery, across the street. Give me a break — New Haven may be a relatively small city, but can you get Eritrean food in Ithaca or Hanover? And the retivalization of the area around the demolished coliseum will only further this trend. No, the daily news article rightly presents the attractions of downtown to certain crowds — where else will the hungry hedge fund manger go to eat when he doesn’t want to take the Jag across the GW bridge? The tragedy of New Haven is that while these exciting changes are occurring in the areas immediately adjacent to Yale, areas just a few more blocks away remain as depressed as ever.
February 14th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I believe the building in your photo was demolished some time ago (read over a year ago). It was next to Miso – which is hands down the best sushi restaurant in new haven – and a the j-mart (yes the J stands for Jesus) which caters to yalies asian goodie cravings.
February 14th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
“New Haven may be a relatively small city, but can you get Eritrean food in Ithaca or Hanover”
No, you know what else you can’t get in Ithaca or Hanover? Shot.
February 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
New Haven is a great city–and if you were in NH as recently as 9 months ago, you must have more than a mile from downtown if “shithole” is the impression you came away with.
I graduated from Yale College in 97, and even then the place was appealing and attractive, and it’s only gotten more so in the years since I returned for (and then finished) grad school. Frankly, even in ‘92, when I visited as a high school junior, I was surprised that the place wasn’t the ghetto I’d always been told it was; the real shithole days for NH were in the 80’s.
I do agree with the previous commentor that the city still has problems, and that gentrification hasn’t reached significantly beyond Yale’s borders. Still, when I was in NH I used to take the public buses into neighboring communities, or walk the mile to and from the train station through semi-vacant and industrial areas, all with no worries (and I’m a slightly built female).
February 14th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
There’s what my friends and I refer to as “club row” in New Haven. It’s basically a street in downtown New Haven with all the night clubs, bars and lounges. For those of you familiar with New Haven, it’s Crown street. You guys need to chill. I lived in DC so New Haven isn’t that bad.
February 14th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
You can get Eritrean food *and* get shot in New York.
Game, set, and match: Columbia
February 14th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Columbia kids are the ones to talk. Let’s not forget about your Washington Heights campus, a neighborhood where double-parking is the norm and the proprietors of the ghetto bottega operates from behind a bullet-proof shield.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
Washington Heights campus? Clearly you’ve never actually visited the campus or area. I feel safer in uptown ny than in new haven.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Notwithstanding where it’s been, New Haven is definitely on the upswing. Just today the city annouced the construction of a new skyscraper-apartment, which is set to be the tallest building in Connecticut outside of Hartford.
If you’ve been in CT a while, you’d notice that the “Westportification” of the south shore is slowly moving east. Skipping Bridgeport, God Willing.
February 14th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
oh, YEEEAH. New York is MUUUUUCH safer than New Haven. Especially Morningside Heights. What a wonderful, crime-free, safe area, where no murders/rapes/muggings EVER happen, just like the rest of new york. please. don’t say stupid shit in defense of the area around your school. Much of New Haven is a hole, agreed, but the area around Yale is pretty damn nice. Muggings are common to every city. And Ithaca? You might not get shot, but how bout that collegetown creeper? Or those rapes? Or that pesky little gorge where people just keep thinking they can fly?
Every ivy campus has ups and downs, and in the end they all come out about the same. Princeton- picturesque, safe, and booooring. Columbia- urban, thriving, lil dangerous, lil small. etc.
February 14th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
New Haven is definitely still shitty, the only reasons CT citizens like it is because CT is shitty altogether. PROVIDENCE RULES
February 14th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
When I want on a recruiting visit to Yale, I saw a homeless guy at one of the parties. I was assured this was the first time anyone ever saw this ever happen.
Unlikely
February 14th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
We haven’t been to New Haven in nine months, but we were under the impression it was still basically the city from “Gears of War.”
That’s because you two are idiots. Look, New Haven is a small, post-industrial city. Yes, it has crime. Yes, it has poor people. Yes, you may see some people who don’t look like you walking next to you on your way to campus. (Also, yes, it’s smaller and less cosmopolitan than New York.) But only ignorant doofuses would harp on its absurdly, and unfairly, bad reputation.
February 14th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
D10 — so you ended up at the parties with the homeless guys? That explains why you’re currently at Dartmouth.
February 15th, 2007 at 2:03 am
New Haven sucks now and forever. As a wise man (myself) once said, New Haven is like West Philly without the rest of Philly to redeem itself.
February 15th, 2007 at 2:27 am
um… no, i’m definitely not a CT resident. i’m from LA and i love new haven. for those of you who say it sucks, have you spent a significant amount of time there in the last five years?
February 15th, 2007 at 3:14 am
People who are instinctively afraid of non-posh urban areas will always point to New Haven or Morningside Heights or any urban campus neighborhood and cry, ‘oh you’ll get shot if you step foot there,’ or ‘Mommy I saw a homeless person yesterday.’ Some individuals just need to live in little towns far from civilization in order to feel safe and cozy. No point arguing against them.
Morningside Heights, by the way, is one of the safest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Which means it’s one of the safest neighborhoods of any large American city. It may still look grungy and have its share of homeless, but based on its crime rate, it’s no less safe than many wealthy, perfectly manicured neighbhorhoods in other cities.
February 15th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
- Columbia’s undergrad campus isn’t in Washington Heights, it’s in quiet Morningside which is very safe.
- As Goo said, NYC was rated by the FBI last year, again, as the safest (lowest violent crime rate) big city in the US. It is also one of the few places in the US where crime continues to drop.
February 15th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Just because Washington Heights isn’t considered an “undergrad” campus it’s automatically excluded from the rest of the university? No Columbia undergrads ever ventured onto the terrain? Or does a blue-collar neighborhood really scare your UWS mentality so much? Or do med students and grad students receive 2nd class citizenship at Columbia so we need not to worry about them?
For the record, I’ve seen more homeless people in Morningside Heights than in New Haven. Besides, what kind of sheltered pussy is scared of a homeless person? Damn, does homeless guy haunt you in your nightmare?
February 15th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Do any Yalies still make the trek to Sally’s and Pepe’s pizzeria? The latter may be the popular favorite, but I’ll take Sally’s divey charm any day.
February 15th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
I left New Haven in 98 then came back for another 3 years ‘03-06 and was surprised at how much the town has changed. There definitely is a revitalization / commercialization of the neighborhood close to campus as well as 9th square. New Haven will never be a big metropolis like New York, but it has its small city charm. My girlfriend lived in Washington Heights a block from Columbia-Presbyterian. It wasn’t a terrible neighborhood either. As with any big city neighborhood you just have to be aware of your surroundings and don’t take chances.
Urban problems like poverty, homelessness, and crime are real problems. Ivy League students should realize that and not be afraid to confront it.
February 16th, 2007 at 1:32 am
The reasons behind the mention of the homeless in my post above were twofold – (i) it was in reference to an earlier post in which someone pointed out a homeless person sighting at a Yale party, as if that were to be taken as proof of NH’s wretchedness, and (ii) to illustrate that, while based on an often employed, if not-so-accurate, visual cue of an urban neighbhorhood’s safety – the number of transients walking about – Morningside Hts might seem quite unsafe, the opposite is true.
My comment about Morningside Hts was just that – a comment about that particular neighborhood. I don’t know how one can go from reading a description of MH to ranting about how a ‘blue-collar neighborhood’ like Washington Hts must scare one’s ‘UWS mentality’ followed by speculation on the ill treatment of grad students by the CU administration.
I don’t have anything against NH, but apparently, the need to defend it must really be fraying some people’s nerves.
And for the record, the part of Washington Hts near the CU med complex has improved quite a bit since its grim days in the ’80s (like most urban neighborhoods). Lots of great, inexpensive food to be found in local eateries there.
February 16th, 2007 at 10:55 am
First of all, fellow students and alumni are going to defend the neighborhood surrounding their alma mater. That’s just the way it is. Second of all, arguing on the internet is really dumb. Like Joe Rogan dumb. New Haven, Morningside Heights, or Washington Heights must really NOT be all that bad since all of you are still alive and typing, and I assume none of you found the neighborhood disasterous enough to transfer. So let’s just chill and move on to the next episode.
BTW, in reponse to Columbiate I prefer Pepe’s over Sally’s but Modern is my drug of choice.
February 17th, 2007 at 2:21 am
Great article. New Haven has done a total about-face in recent years. The fact that people are lining up years in advance to get into the downtown’s luxury apartments – some of which now have rents approaching Manhattan’s (e.g., $1600/month for a small studio) – is evidence of that. Basically what’s happened is a huge growth in the area’s economy (with hedge funds moving into New Haven as well as major expansions at United Technologies, etc.), and the young people being hired by those firms are choosing to live in New Haven rather than any of the other smaller cities or towns in the State. The result? Within the past year or so, about 70 new restaurants and stores have opened, and there are no longer any empty storefronts. As far as crime goes, it is limited to a few neighborhoods in New Haven and the perpetrators all know each other. Very different from the random crime you get in larger cities like New York, Philly (which had over 400 murders last year), and Boston. If you consider the fact that tens of thousands of people live in them, New Haven’s downtown neighborhood and many of the immediately surrounding neighborhoods that are now gentrified (peppered with organic groceries and high-end restaurants) are significantly safer than your average suburb.
February 17th, 2007 at 2:33 am
I’ll also add that I spend a lot of time in both NY and New Haven, and New Haven’s high-end restaurants are now significantly better, and more expensive, on average than New York’s. At least a dozen new ones have opened in the past year, and you need to make reservations several weeks in advance to get into some of them. Entrees will set you back $25+, wines (if you can choose from sometimes upwards of 40 wines by the glass), $12. Of course, there are still dozens of amazing places geared more towards students where you can get a complete meal for $3-$4, or less. Frankly, nowadays if I were a student choosing between Yale and any other Ivy League based on the surrounding college town, New Haven would easily trump the others. Columbia and Harvard are in larger cities, but you have to schlep very far on the subway to get anywhere – the result is that those two campuses are totally dead on weekends, which is pretty damn depressing.
February 18th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
how great can the thrill possibly be of constantly trying to one-up each other, whining on likepreschoolers about how “my school is better than your school” and “my school’s area is better than yours.” are you never satisfied? LAME. stop being so freakin’ bitter and get over yourselves!
February 19th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
its better, but still the same. i live in the rapidly gentrifying wooster sq (Pepes!) and my car has been broken into 4 times in 1.5 y. Four. 1-2-3-4. the problem with yale-downtown new haven is that its squeezed between 2 very poor neighborhoods and you get the cross-traffic/ black-vs-hispanic battles.
February 20th, 2007 at 10:02 am
believe it or not, Ithaca has a lot of really good food, and a lot of variety- lots of great Japanese, Thai (Thai Cuisine has been described as the best Thai restaurant in New York state), Mexican food that my Texas/So-Cal friends raved about, New Orleans/Creole (don’t miss out on Maxie’s Supper Club if, for some reason, you should ever visit Ithaca)… amongst others. Don’t forget about the wine touring in the Finger Lakes.
Eating in Ithaca is an amazing experience. It’s not a sprawling metropolis by any means, but the restaurants are most definitely on par with (in some cases, better than) the restaurants I’ve been to while living in Boston.
February 20th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
to first ‘yalie’: if you graduated from yale in 1997…why on earth do you still read this blog?
March 15th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
new haven is a city run by magic. our mayor, john destefano jr. is master of coming up with mystery money. did you know that in the summer if you ride your bike to work he gives you free breakfast. i bet you didnt know that he also builds schools constantly, there are so many schools here that you can drive one minute in any direction and you are guaranteed to hit one. he has schools for every kid’s interest. there are art schools and fuckin acting theatre schools, and science schools. one that he just built supplies itself with its own power, and it has tunnels. also when summer comes around he gives everyone free concerts on the green, and our green is fuckin huge. you also cant forget about blowing up buildings, cause when he blew up the colesuem, he threw everybody an even bigger party because it was so early in the morning. by the way new haven is getting loads of art galleries, they are opening up like coffee shops, they are all over the place now, so if you are an artist that it is wonderful to be here. on top of that he has electric trollies that will take you all around downtown and some other places for nothing. so new haven isnt that shitty and there is more stuff to offer here besides food
August 19th, 2007 at 11:30 am
New Haven IS a shithole, I agree. Not so much architecturally but due to the shitty people there. I COULD be a nice city if it lost the following:
1. Vagrants inundating the Green (most with sever mental illness)
2. Guidos. Go out in New Haven any night and have of the guys are roided machismo, orange fake baked guidos. They are obnoxious and stupid as one would expect…I thought I was in a taping of Sopranos in Jersey.
3. Overrated: Yale students. Half are Mommy and Daddy rich kids who never worked a day of work in there lives and the other half are low-income granolas. Both are ridiculously left-wing (bordering on socialist) and extremely ignorant to the real world. High priced education does not teach worldly experiences.
4. Crackheads & Ghettos. When I moved to CT I thought it would be nice. Except for a few wealthy counties near NYC the rest of the state is run down with ghettos…including you guessed it New Haven’s ‘hoods’ outside (and partially inside) of the 9 squares.
5. 90% of the people are MISERABLE. Is it because of the weather? The idiotic auto property tax that begs you to leave ASAP? Or just the proliferation of more misery by being surrounded by miserable people? When someone says hello. You look them in the eyes and say hello back. Not folks in New Haven. They either cower and think you’re about to mug them or believe you to be insane. Lighten up folks…don’t be so damn pessimistic!
August 20th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
And there you have it folks – the many varied descriptions of New Haven. If you peel back some of the emotional commentary New Haven does in fact have guidos, spoiled rich kids, decent culture, great food of all types, bad neighbors, good neighborhoods. It’s not for everyone clearly, but for those that tolerate the bad with the good, it’s a decent place to lice.
I’ve lived in many small cities and college towns and it’s not unlike any those. In fact my friends and family wonder why I’ve bothered to move because it feels like I’ve never moved. So if you hate New Haven – go. If you like it, please stay.