Rental Guide-Brown: Crow bar necessary for South Oakland living?

Popular lore would have you believe living in South Oakland, let alone across the Boulevard of… Popular lore would have you believe living in South Oakland, let alone across the Boulevard of the Allies, is about as safe as living in South Compton. A North Oakland landlord all but told me that when I toured his apartment complex some years ago.

But I’ve spent three years living on the more boisterous southern side of Forbes Avenue without much trouble at all. The worst thing I have experienced in South Oakland occurred when a drunkard tried to break into my apartment after mistaking it for his friends’.

And another time, a few idiots tried to flip my car after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in June 2009. Fancily enough, I discovered that walking out of your apartment with a large iron crow bar and asking them nicely to walk away goes a long way toward getting those people to stop.

My apartment situation this year drew a little more fear from me than in years past, though. With my old roommate graduating last year, I set out to find a new, cheap place to live. That place just happened to be located across the Boulevard.

Regarding living across the Boulevard, you never hear anything positive.

Case in point: Months before I would move to my current abode, a woman shot herself during a conflict with her boyfriend in a house right across the street from where I live. I questioned whether I should try to get out of my lease at that point.

But after living across the Boulevard now for almost five months, I have to admit that it’s been the quietest, safest-feeling place I’ve lived in since moving out of the eerily quiet Lothrop Hall after sophomore year.

Living across the Boulevard isn’t perfect, though. To start things off, it’s not exactly the place you live at if you’re the kind of person who usually leaves a five-minute window to get to class. Getting to class often involves playing Frogger across the street without a crosswalk.

And if houses on Atwood and Semple are considered rat holes, property values show that housing complexes across the Boulevard are significantly less, signifying their desirability. Other rumors that propagate throughout the “dirtier” South Oakland concern drugs, crime and various dribbles of delinquency.

Empirical evidence from my five-month stint across the Boulevard shows none of the latter, and I’m too afraid to go too far down Dawson or Juliet at night to see if the former hold any weight. Dan Marino and Andy Warhol might have grown up back there, but I wouldn’t want to live that deep in the “hood” at dusk.

Maybe I’m a victim of the neighborhood’s reputation, too, paying too much mind to the stories I’ve heard. It should be noted that I live just two blocks into my street from the Boulevard of the Allies.

It’s still an area consisting of mostly college-student housing. As I moved in at the end of August and looked around my new neighborhood, that consolation helped me adjust more than anything else.

It also helps that my rent per month is less than the cost of a new Playstation 3. My frugality has led to my saving more than $600 over one year’s costs, accounting for utilities.

The old realtors’ adage definitely applies here regarding my savings — location, location, location. It’s a bit out of the way, but walking distance to the Cathedral, for instance, isn’t much more than it was when I lived on Dawson before the Boulevard the previous two years.

Given my experience with the neighborhoods now, the biggest things I miss about living nearer to campus involve a feeling of connectedness with the South Oakland neighborhood and being within a short distance of any weekend festivity taking place. Only one place in the Pitt community has that.

Otherwise, I can’t say I miss much else about living in a dense college ghetto. With the appearance of early-onset senility striking me, let me explain.

Since moving across the Boulevard, my car has incurred no new bump-related damage. Back on Dawson, I discovered that Saturn’s dent-resistant panels didn’t mean they were crack resistant in 10-degree weather.

Hopefully none of you South Oaklanders take too much offense to this, but most of you are terrible drivers and worse parkers.

And during the warmer months at my current apartment, I could fall asleep to the calming sound of crickets chirping instead of belligerent schmucks yelling down the street in the wee hours of the morning. I found it so disorienting to my college student senses that I couldn’t sleep much of the first week after my move.

The area doesn’t come across as typical student housing. It’s calmer, less eruptive during campus celebrations and riots, too.

When checking out apartments for next year, it might not be in the most desirable location, as it’s nowhere close to the bars and restaurants surrounding campus. But if you’re in need of a change of pace from the college scene and still want a bus to pick you up for class, it’s worth a look.

Share your thoughts with an e-mail at jeb110@pitt.edu or visit his blog at thingsthatrhymewithcars.wordpress.com.