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I've spent a lot of time on Prospect--in fact, I finished the last essay for my college degree (in 1988) by pulling an all-nighter on a computer in a friend's family printshop on Prospect, just north of 31st. My parents live just east of Paseo, not all that far from where the former U.S. 50 (Swope Pkwy) crossed the former U.S. 71 (Prospect) and my high school sits on that big hill just south of the 18th and Vine district and just a little west of Prospect. I've had fairly extensive experience with that street all through my schoolboy days, from about 1971 through 1984, and intermittent experience with it since then, which is only a fraction of the interval between when a big midtown freeway (the new US 71) was first proposed and when its first section opened. That decimated a lot of areas around Prospect and exemplifies the kind of powerlessness that exists in poor neighborhoods. Crack was just plain devastating: it would be very hard to overstate what that drug did to KC's inner-city and its kids' plans for the future.
Anyway, I don't believe the folks there are much different than anyone else, not in any fundamental way. I think we have Prospect Avenues for the same kind of reasons we have rough neighborhoods in Northern Ireland--poverty, ignorance, segregation, etc.
[Edited by DanT on 02-21-2001 at 10:58 PM]
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