College Hill (Clay style)

Well, as you can tell from my blog title this time, I will be comparing the College Hill neighborhood to Clay descriptions like beats and strips. Hopefully, my Kodak Share Program is working today. We'll see. Now, College Hill has had a great history with its ilustrious buildings and its strips and other spots of interest. Now, let's begin, shall we?

We'll start with the beat of College Hill. College Hill has many popular streets. Two that come to mind is West Market St. and Mendenhall St. This is where I believe the beat is for College Hill. Now, West Market is the street for College Hill where they can access downtown easily and go to many places like Friendly Center and other special areas. Mendenhall is the main residential street for College Hill, in my opinion. Mendenhall is the longest street compared to Tate St. and the most houses reside there. I believe through this, we can see that many people cross this intersection especially which allows me to consider this a beat. Now, from what you can see, this street is very clean and the pavement is very, very well done. Keep this in mind when I go on to the other spots in my blog about College Hill.

Now, the next place to talk about is Tate St. Tate St. fits the bill of a strip in my opinion. This strip is the biggest developed area in College Hill. There's shops and restaurants. There's a laundromat and even the security building. Tate St. Tate St. is truly the strip of both UNCg and College Hill.

Now, once again, think of Tate St in a modifed way now. It is cleaned by the streetsweepers. It's renovated by the city for a better use of the community. Even the buildings are reused to further keep the popularity of Tate St. Again, keep this in the back of your head. What will happen next is that I will talk about the stack and sink next. This is where this blog will get interesting.

Let's start with the stack first. I consider this alleyway my stack. It is an alleyway on Walker St. that has been used from time and time again. Now, from before, you remember that a stack is a piece of junk that goes upward. In this case, I call this a man-made horizontal stack. It's horizontal because it does not stack up. It stacks out like a fallen down building. That is what this alleyway reminds me of. It's a fallen building that has been left aside for other streets. Sadly, this cannot amount to anything else because it won't be paved or made safe. It's just piled in the back of the neighbrhood where it can not become anything more useful like Tate St. and West Market St. Now, why does this happen to a very useful, but somewhat unsafe alley? There was nothing to begained from this alley, moneywise. Tate St. had an opportunity to be useful because it was right beside UNCG, which at the time, was rising to fame. The alley, of course, did not have an use. It was not useful to society and its growing desire, so it was left to just die away. The only reason it did not get turned into a set of houses is because the people have found a use for it. This is why I consider this a stack.

Now, onward to the sink. This is the apartment complex placed up in the back of College Hill on McGee St. Now, from what you can see, this place is so amazing looking that how can this be put to the back of the neighborhood? Well, once again, space becomes a key issue. McGee St. was not very useful to the public due to its location away from Tate St. and UNCG. It was poorly taken care of and I thought that it would have been soon turned into something that is not a road anymore. With the apartments added in, I believe that McGee will become a better-known street, but because of its size, sadly, a sink is all that it will be.

Now, the districts are a little tougher. I can split College Hill up into two districts. There is the UNCG district and the outer rim (the forgotten district, figuratively). The college-dependent district would be, for me, from Tate St. to Mendenhall St. Now, there are a few little streets there, but it is mostly filled up by these two streets. With these, this is where the strip, the beat, the front, and even the vantage points are. It's been taken care of a lot better because it is more public and it has more development than the other streets. With this, I can safely say that this is the college-dependent district. Why? Well, this district is right beside UNCG, the big powerhouse for College Hill, and Greensboro College. It has a reason for being developed due to the fact that it is right beside two growing colleges with a reputation. Now, there's also the forgotten district, as I call it. Why? This district composes of most of the little streets. Now, I call this a district with a split called Mendenhall St. The little streets, as you can tell, are not paved as well and itis not as taken care of. There's no development there, but just houses. These houses are very nice, but they are only improved by the patrons. Plus, there is nothing that can be fixed there unless some of the houses are taken down. Now, I don't want that to happen. Plus, to finish the districts off, this district has only two city spots in the districts: the sink and the stack. These are not like the beat and the front, but only seen as junk.

The front of the College Hill district is Spring Garden St. Spring Garden is the cut between the college residential district to the regular family residential district. Also, if you go out past Spring Garden, you will hit parts of downtown which is different from College Hill. The front represents a fall off from one area into another, so this fits perfectly. Also, you can see that it continues down the street to be more developed. There's also more stores and more buildings that have nothing to do with college or anything like that.

Finally, we have my turf. One turf on College Hill is the church on Mendenhall St. More specifically, I would say the fellowship Hall is a turf. The church represents a meeting point for all people whether it be a less fortunate person or a richer person. Also, it is at a big residential area like Mendenhall St. and it is on an intersection of Walker Ave. which leads to Tate St. This gives the college students a place to meet which makes it more of a turf. Therefore, everyone has a way to get there. So, this is my turf.

Well, feel free to put in feedback on your opinions or your critiques. I always enjoy them. I welcome them and await the challenge you send me through these. Thanks for being so curious!