Yesterday they found two 11 year olds breaking into homes stealing.......I know it's bad everywhere, but Memphis is very high in crime.
I go there a couple of times a year on business trips and if I make a wrong turn it can get scary very fast!
The nice Marriott hotel I have stayed in a couple of times is just a couple of exits past the nice area I have business in but it has a ten or twelve foot wrought iron security fence around the entire perimiter of the hotel and parking lot. Looks like a fortress. The gas station / convenience store near the hotel has bullet proof glass for the clerks and just a tiny slit where you slide money through. They don't even scan the products you are buying. They just look at it and ring it up. I guess a hole big enough to slide a coke through is big enough for a gun.
I know there are nice parts of Memphis but I absolutely would not want to live so close to where there are so many bad parts of a town.
I am spoiled because the crime rate in Austin was very low and for the first 7 years we lived in the Nashville area the county right outside Nashville where we lived also had a very low crime rate. Where we have lived the last two years is a bedroom community outside Nashville but with a lower socio economic mix of the population than where we lived before so it has a higher crime rate. Nothing like Memphis though!
I'm glad he's okay, CC1. That's a frightening story.
Two places I NEVER stop at night:
Memphis, TN
St. Louis, MO
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"God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours."
--David Livingstone
"To see no being, not God’s or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it—enjoying all without labor or purchase—
abstracting the feast, yet not abstracting one particle of it;…."
--Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Song of the Open Road
Here are a few more details. As he was getting in his car leaving Beale Street three men approached him and pulled out a gun.
They held the gun to his head and forced him to get in the car. They told him to drive to an ATM and take all of his money out. He told them that his wife was 7 months pregnant and that all he had was $60 in the ban. They said to take that out then.
He did and then the men, still holding the gun to his head, told him to drive them somewhere else in town. It was during this time that his wife called several times and he was telling her not to call back that it was a matter of life and death. I think he was afraid the assailants might get nervous that he was on the phone and just shoot him.
When they reached the place they told him to drive they got out and in the process stole his company laptop.
What is weird is that they left the $60 they had made him take out of the ATM machine.
I am just thankful he is alive because Memphis is a high crime rate area with a lot of
racial hate crime. More times than not someone in his situation would have been killed just on the basis of their skin color.
My SIL has a masters degree in business but not a lot of common sense sometimes. I would never have been on Beale Street alone at night. It is a pretty safe tourist area but only a couple of blocks from ghetto and even if you were safe on Beale Street walking alone back to your car in a dark parking lot a block or two away is just screaming "rob me!!!, kill me!!!".
The really bad thing is that this is the second company laptop he has had stolen in three months! Like a moron he actually checked his last one as baggage on a business trip that included changing planes in Atlanta, an airport known for problems with baggage handlers stealing things, sure enough when he got to Denver no laptop.
Last Christmas we went home to San Diego and had all of our presents packed, someone stole my son's WRAPPED digital camera from our luggage... Sick
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Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
"You will be hated for my sake-Just remember that it should be for MY sake and not YOURS-
Do NOT act in such a way as to be offensive, and then blame it on me"
A little over a year ago Mrs. Pianoman and I were going to Memphis and we thought we would visit our old stomping ground near the Hickory Ridge Mall. Before we left, a black gentleman warned me that if we were to visit that area, our lives would be at risk! The whole area is now infested with gangs! He told us not to even visit during daylight!
A lot has changed in Memphis in the last 17 years!
I remember when I first moved to Memphis, I wasn't sure if I should feel safe or be concerned that there were security guards at the grocery stores and video stores. The neighborhood I live in has a private security firm that patrols 24/7. It's just something you sort of get use to.
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