Nat, I lived in Lawrence for three years before waking TFU and moiving to Nashua. If Holyoke is tha Armpit, then Lawrence is the...well you get it...
And Holyoke is cleaning up big time. It's still a high-crime area, but a lot of the old, cockroach infested apartment buildings near High Street are GONE (either torched or condemned and torn down) and there is a KICK ASS Chief of Police, a Black man named (Damn if I remember his first name...Walter?) Scott who is extremely vocal. About Judges. "We round them up, they go to court, and the lienient judges in this area out them out on the street and we have to round them up again. The revolving door has got to stop!"
He can be heard quite frequently on the Howie Carr show
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as just another caller, but calls so much Howierecognizes his voice (Howie's from Boston...) There has also been a lot of cleaning up, and a lot of activities going on in the city. It IS a big home to the Latin Kings, but they rounded them up about 3 months ago. They'll probably do it again before winter.