Blackridge

The counterpart to Iron Point's squalor, Blackridge is pressed up against the industrial district like a babe suckling to its drug-addicted mother, and home to many of Iron Point’s employees. It’s a poorly planned neighbourhood with obsolete two-and-a-half-family homes jumbled next to dingy apartment complexes and crumbling starter homes. At any given point, half of the lights at the rail stations are burnt out or vandalised.
The district’s demographic is predominantly of African descent, followed by those of Eastern European origin, leading to the rise of ethnic street gangs, including the White Skull Crew. A dwindling population of original owners who bought homes in the neighbourhood back before Iron Point had decayed so irreversibly still live here, too.
The streets of Blackridge are forever under pothole repair, and the neighbourhood needs many new streetlights to replace the stop signs for traffic relief, but the money’s just not there. Here are yards with cars up on blocks and chain-link fences that corral dogs hungry with neglect, and persistent rumours of “the boogeyman” cling a little more tenaciously to the local culture than children’s stories usually do.