LONDON -- I've lately been analyzing what it means to feel safe, an introspection I'm sure I'm not alone in indulging in as a Duke female these days.
On campus, I can fully emphasize that I've never felt unsafe. Ever. Even as I would walk across campus at 3, 4, 5, 6 a.m., every day of the week. Even in the last few weeks of school, while driving and walking around Durham in the dark, sourcing the origins of a gang-violence threat, I felt only mildly ill at ease.
I'm not sure if it's my biologically ingrained sense of invulnerability as a young person, or if Durham and Duke are truly safer than these pages often assert.
I've lived in an urban and brisk suburban areas my entire life, but even being in Durham necessitates having at least your basic street smarts. Before the lacrosse brouhaha, I'm still not sure I would have snapped up a ramshackle-but-architecturally-innovative house in Trinity Park if I had other options-including a dreaded fourth year on campus.
I often wonder if not wanting to live in rough areas makes me a worse person. Am I denying rough areas the influx of goal-oriented and timely rent-paying tenants they need to improve? More to the point, is gentrification in my job description as 20-year-old girl?
About ten days ago, I arrived in this city (London) for the summer with the intent to rent a room in a flat I found on Craigslist. The interior photographs of the place were adorable-a cute garden, a sweet cat and loads of great, artsy antique furniture and cool vintage knick-knacks. Crossreferencing on my map, the address of the place put it in a cool borough of London-a supposedly up-and-coming, artsier area about a 25 minutes tube ride away from my office.
That's all truthful, but not the truth. The flat and my flatmate are great. My only concern, which took a few days of walking around to surface, is with the area where we live. While the interior of our flat looks like a product of Architectural Digest's and Urban Outfitter's conjoined decorating efforts, the neighbors haven't quite the. refinement of my posh flatmate. Some of them scare me.
Cases in point: the people above us have a kitchen right above my room. Welsh Girl Upstairs broke a wine glass or a dish, and North-England Boy Upstairs went at it. "You stupid twat!"he yelled on repeat for about 30 minutes, as he ran after her. She was screaming.
Or the other day I was walking to my nearest tube stop, asking a friend on the phone for directions to a theater in Islington where we were meeting. I might as well have taped an American flag to my ass, and in my neighborhood, this makes for a bit of friction. A group of guys speaking Arabic passed me, and one of them dumped a contained of water down the front of my dress. They didn't run away, but instead ambled past, as though daring me to question their decision. I didn't-and felt strangely guilty.
I've been harassed on my way home. I've been grabbed. I've gotten lost and scared. There's been a shooting and a stabbing down the road.
I've thought about moving.
My parents wanted me to live in quieter, more residential, admittedly more "posh"parts of town, either with family friends or friends-of-friends. I balked. I wanted my own experience, my own place without the watchful eyes of stodgy parental types monitoring my every late night out.
Sense? Maturity? Yeah, I think I have them in here. Somewhere.
Still, I'm coming around to accepting my fate. It's urban but that's London. It's kind of grisly, but not everywhere is going to be the whoop-de-friggin'-do Gothic Wonderland. Thank God, anyway. And though I've found the safer ways to navigate the area and have a cab service to rely on when I'm coming home late, there's something kind of sickening about worrying every single day if you're going to make it home unharmed.
Yet if I move into the basement somebody's fantastic-yet-stoic neoclassical mews, I can't help but think I'll miss out on some of the edgier, zanier character of this city. The "real London,"as a guy friend and Londoner put it over a pint. How healthy is a comfort zone, anyway?
To be continued.
Sarah Ball is a Trinity junior and features editor of The Chronicle. Her column runs weekly during the summer.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.