Places you felt most on edge in your life

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A brothel in Budapest. Taxi dropped us off, went in and the doorman were carrying guns. Thought 'fuck that' and left.
Again in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Left the port and over 50 big, black brothers hassling you to take their taxi. Very intimidating.
 


chunkylover53 said:
Parts of Moscow and Riga were dodgy as fuck

Lagos is a bit unsettling
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The two that came straight to mind for me when I saw the thread title were Lagos and Moscow, spent time working in both. Lagos just felt I had a target on my head and everyone was out to get me, kidnapping was rife and all security was corrupt. Moscow was a better experience due to the people we were working for and while with them we were fine, if we went out on our own at night though it could get interesting, travelling back to our hotel from the area round red square after a night out could be terrifying.
 
club in sheffield where we needed to go through a metal detector like at a airport to get in. We were in 5 minutes before my mate started with a group of gentlemen
 
Sana'a Yemen. Out of a string of shitholes I have visited including Erbil, In Amenas in Algeria just after the refinery massacre,and the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, Yemen is the only place where I was convinced I wasn't going to make it out alive.
 
Was in Hollywood back in 1992, less than a week or so, after Rodney King was beaten to a pulp by police.
Our hotel was a couple of blocks from the gangland ghetto's, and there was a lot of unrest and rioting in the area, and a definite air of menace about the place.
I was expecting the place to go up at any moment.
 
rudd said:
Lived in Nottingham for three years for my first degree. Clifton for a year then into West Bridgeford.
My first day in Nottingham I was at a crossing on the outskirts of the meadows, one car stopped. Just about to step into the road and another car screams round and slams into the back of the first one. The first one pulls about 20 metres forward then puts it in reverse and crashes back into the other. Then all hell breaks loose. Both cars empty and there about ten people, most with masks, all tooled up scrapping in the road. Everyone else stood there in silence.

The gang culture back then was terrible. After a few months began to realise that if you weren't involved in the gang side it there wasn't any more to be scared of them the average city. By all accounts the meadows is much improved.

Was a canny city to study forensic science!
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went to Trent Poly Clifton, lived in Hyson Green for a year just missed the summer riots in 1981
 
Stevie Freestein II said:
We had friends who lived in sneinton in Nottingham and we often stayed overnight on a Saturday in the 1990s.

For whatever reason we decided to walk back from a night out and I was expecting gangs from out of the ‘warriors’ to be lurking around every corner.

Apparently the Meadows isn’t too bad if you’re a local. Most of the gun crime was on the bestwood estate iirc. The Gunn family, ironically.
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Nee shit, but one of the mechanical engineers who came to dawdon pit from horden or blackhall, was called Tommy Gunn.
 
Malloy said:
In the san siro.

Got tickets and lad who got us them told us we were in with the inter fans as it was classed as their home game. Turned out we were right in the middle of the AC fans in their away end.

Very on edge I was, we managed to leave and make our way to the very top of the stadium where there were mixed fans and was a lot calmer.

The walk back to the car was also a bit scary.
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Interesting how experiences differ. I went to the Milan derby about five years ago as an Inter fan (if you can call it that), AC were the home team. Obviously AC one end and Inter the other but I was down one of the sides which were predominantly AC but plenty of Inter about. Felt no qualms at all about celebrating Inter's last minute equaliser and saw no bother at all.
 
New Orleans and Memphis both have some very grim sections that I've seen in person late at night (both with locals so not really dangerous, but I'd be shitting myself otherwise).

Antalya outside of the tourist areas is scary as hell. Marrakech also was ugly, especially as I was alone. Trinidad and St. Lucia have some parts that got my skin crawling a few times.

The worst, though, was in my hometown about 20 years ago in a neighborhood that is fine now. There used to be guys who stood in the median of NY Ave with spray bottles. They'd wash your windows for a dollar while you sat at the light. That was one option. The other was the brick in their other hand.

One every block for about half a mile, with the dudes who sold the drugs and provided the real muscle on each side of the street. And that was the safest way through that area of DC back then.

Perez said:
I had a very similar experience of San Francisco, never visited a place with so many people living on the streets.
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It's really only a few areas, but they form a kind of belt near a lot of the touristy shit and the Financial District, so you kinda need to be local to know how to avoid them. Took me a month or so to get to that point.
chunkylover53 said:
Pretty racist that pal
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It's not the color of the faces, mate, it's the looks you get in certain neighborhoods when you're white.

Stevie Freestein II said:
We had friends who lived in sneinton in Nottingham and we often stayed overnight on a Saturday in the 1990s.

For whatever reason we decided to walk back from a night out and I was expecting gangs from out of the ‘warriors’ to be lurking around every corner.

Apparently the Meadows isn’t too bad if you’re a local. Most of the gun crime was on the bestwood estate iirc. The Gunn family, ironically.
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Grim as fuck if you're not. I saw a dude getting the living shit beaten out of him there once, racial slurs and stuff included. Wasn't even really in the Meadows proper, more like right down by the river. I got my non-English ass out of there rather rapidly. It wasn't even late or anything, like 5 pm and not even completely dark.
 
Wood Green Mackem said:
parts of NYC are similar. LA is a different level
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I found with LA, Because it’s so spread out that everybody drives so it’s only the real oddballs who use public transport. Most tourists hire cars but we couldn’t drive.
New York I found subways a lot less intimidating.
Paris metro also rough in both stations and trains.
london easily safest public transport of the major cities I’ve been to.
 
SYB_DC said:
New Orleans and Memphis both have some very grim sections that I've seen in person late at night (both with locals so not really dangerous, but I'd be shitting myself otherwise).

Antalya outside of the tourist areas is scary as hell. Marrakech also was ugly, especially as I was alone. Trinidad and St. Lucia have some parts that got my skin crawling a few times.

The worst, though, was in my hometown about 20 years ago in a neighborhood that is fine now. There used to be guys who stood in the median of NY Ave with spray bottles. They'd wash your windows for a dollar while you sat at the light. That was one option. The other was the brick in their other hand.

One every block for about half a mile, with the dudes who sold the drugs and provided the real muscle on each side of the street. And that was the safest way through that area of DC back then.



It's really only a few areas, but they form a kind of belt near a lot of the touristy shit and the Financial District, so you kinda need to be local to know how to avoid them. Took me a month or so to get to that point.


It's not the color of the faces, mate, it's the looks you get in certain neighborhoods when you're white.



Grim as fuck if you're not. I saw a dude getting the living shit beaten out of him there once, racial slurs and stuff included. Wasn't even really in the Meadows proper, more like right down by the river. I got my non-English ass out of there rather rapidly. It wasn't even late or anything, like 5 pm and not even completely dark.
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Trent embankment? There were some ok pubs down there, close to the Trent bridge.
 
Milanos said:
Interesting how experiences differ. I went to the Milan derby about five years ago as an Inter fan (if you can call it that), AC were the home team. Obviously AC one end and Inter the other but I was down one of the sides which were predominantly AC but plenty of Inter about. Felt no qualms at all about celebrating Inter's last minute equaliser and saw no bother at all.
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It's mostly down to me tbh, I suffer from social anxiety disorder and other anxiety issues, can't stand crowds anymore. Haven't even been to see the lads play for over 10 years because of it.
 
Stevie Freestein II said:
We had friends who lived in sneinton in Nottingham and we often stayed overnight on a Saturday in the 1990s.

For whatever reason we decided to walk back from a night out and I was expecting gangs from out of the ‘warriors’ to be lurking around every corner.

Apparently the Meadows isn’t too bad if you’re a local. Most of the gun crime was on the bestwood estate iirc. The Gunn family, ironically.
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I've read the book (The Cartel) it's a cracking read.

I was working with a lass on Thursday & Friday, who's from Bestwood (now living in British West Hartlepool) and is a friend of the Gunn's.
She got out of Nottingham because of the problems with gangs, guns, and drugs blighting a lot of neighbourhoods there.
 
China town in New York about 20 years ago, got into a ‘disagreement’ with restaurant staff (we had done absolutely nothing wrong) it felt like every member of staff from every restaurant was out on the street as a group of 9 of us legged it, chefs with cleavers the lot, utterly terrifying.
 
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