If you are reading this, it means I have survived, I am out of there, and about time too, because for 9 months now I have been fighting a constant struggle over money, depression, frustration, and fear. I have seen people get hurt, and I have been hurt myself, all because of Perry Barr. This is my story.
I'm twenty years old; just about to start my third year of Visual Communication at Birmingham City University, and my story begins when I reached the end of my first year.
Living in the student bubble of the Coppice only a stone’s throw away from the main university campus wasn't so bad at all during my first year, everyone is friendly and they're all like-minded students, everything is clean, and has good security, and while the odd trip to the one stop shopping center allows for a quick peer into the depressing and scary real-life Perry Barr, it can be avoided by shopping at the convenient (albeit VERY expensive) shop in the student guild. At the time, I had a sweet thing going, good friends, good housing, good shops, and a healthy state of mind.
Then came the time to move, and me and a bunch of my friends from the Coppice start deciding on where to live, while I was at the BIAD campus in the city center (and more than content with traveling to uni via train every day) everyone else was at the main campus in perry barr and at the time, all we had seen of Perry Barr was the student bubble, and blinded by this, I chose to be indifferent towards where we lived. I allowed my friends to take the front seat of finding us a place, "as long as there is a roof over my head and a computer for me to sit at, I'm at home" were my exact words.
Then, we find a place, a 5 bedroomed terraced townhouse, big rooms, well decorated, and cheap. We view it a couple of times, there are a couple of dodgy looking groups of people hanging out on street corners and the like, the street is a little bit dirty, but at the time, we thought nothing of it and so we take the plunge, and take it.
Me and my best friend were the first two to move into the house, we decided against going home for summer in favor of getting jobs here. We moved into the house days after we moved out of student accommodation and we started to settle, I got a summer job working the evening shift at a casino in the city center to pay for rent over the summer until my student loan came through, and we started to work.
Except, when we were just about settled, that's when the problems started.
The first problem was 2 weeks after moving into the new place. It was time to go shopping, and so me and my friend decide to try out the Tesco that's near to our new house. We get there, get out of the car, grab some money from the cash point and head inside. And just as were about to step into the shop, an Asain kid, no older than 16, and his chubby 10 year old (what looked like his) brother step up to us, and the following scene unfolds: "OI MATE!"
I carry on walking, ignoring him "OI YOU, I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU GOT SOMETHING FOR ME?!"
I turn my head to see the 16 year old kid walking fast towards me, hooded, hands in pockets, he grabs me on the shoulder and turns me around, and attempts to grab my wallet from my jacket pocket. I wrestle him off but he continues to try and grab for my wallet, at this point I notice my friend is being distracted by the 10 year old pushing shopping trolleys quite forcefully into him.
Eventually I get the guy to the floor, and throw a couple of punches to his face, give him a bit of a nose bleed, he pushes me off himself and I fall into the store. Now the security guys at the store are restraining him and pulling him off the store grounds.
Me and my friend brush ourselves off after a quick word with the security guards and continue our shopping, but once were done, we leave the store to find him waiting for us, with a brick.
We run to the car as fast as possible, and jump in and speed out of the car park, unfortunately, we were stopped by a red light and the kid threw the brick at the car, making a loud thump sound, just missing the window and causing a huge dent in the side of the car:
My friends car after this incident
After this, we drove right to the police station and reported him, luckily he was found moments later still hanging around the store causing trouble, and was arrested. It was later found that he was wanted for a bunch of other successful robberies, break ins and vandalism and after a small court case, he was fined, and forced to apologize to a community panel, an inadequate punishment, if you ask me.
This scary encounter was the start of a slippery slope for me, I started to fear everyone, I felt out of place, I avoided going outside, at the time it felt irrational, just basic trauma. Then, not a few weeks later, something else happens...
I got a taxi from work at 4 in the morning, only I couldn't afford the fare all the way to my house, so I had him drop me off a couple of streets over. While walking back, I see a group of 5 black teenagers walking towards me, one of the group points at me, and whispers to his friends, and fear strikes me hard, no good can come of this.. They start shouting at me, and calling me over "HEY YOU COME HERE, WE GOT A ******* PROBLEM WITH YOU"
And then they start running towards me.
Before they can get too close, I run across the MAIN ROAD to escape them, I narrowly avoid being hit by two cars, as they beeped at me and swerved out of the way. When I reach the other side, they leave me alone, and I run home.
A couple of months pass, by this point, I hate this place already, I stay over my friends houses in the nicer parts of Birmingham whenever possible, just to take in the fresh air and the freedom of being able to walk the street and not feel like you're being sized up, sometimes I'd stay away from home for up to 3 weeks at a time. Then I meet my current girlfriend, she lives in a nice house in Harborne, one of the nicest parts of Birmingham, it’s leafy, calm, friendly and quiet. After 3 months of dating her, she asks me why I seem so clingy, and so reluctant to leave her house, and that's when I send her an email telling her my true feelings about where I live:
"Perry Barr is an unsightly place, its Grey, its miserable, it’s always cold and bleak, not to mention dirty scummy and horrible.
It feels like a ghetto of sorts.
As you know I unfortunately came to Birmingham City University, which is in the heart of Perry Barr, and I live round the corner in a student house. What a place to put a university....
Perry Barr mainly consists of Asian chavs, fat chav girls in tracksuits and muggers and thieves, I would know, I've had my experiences here.
It’s a really dangerous place to live. You can’t go out at night, you can’t walk down the street without having something sleazy shouted at you, The houses get robbed because their student houses so I'm literally waiting in fear to be burgled because my room is on the bottom floor.
Everyone spits on the floor, drops their litter, vandalizes everything.
I hate it here"
My girlfriend helps me, and is really supportive, she lets me stay at hers as much as possible.
Then, some more time passes, and my fear of being burgled becomes a shocking reality...
Me and my housemates are all in my friends room watching a movie one night at about 3 am, when we hear some rattling and scraping downstairs. Once again that familiar feeling of dread strikes me hard in the chest, as I turn to everyone in the room and say "Can you hear someone downstairs? I thought we were all up here".
My housemate says "Oh, I'll go check",
I hold her back for a moment and say "we should all go, I have a bad feeling about this"
My friend grabs a wrench from his drawer, I assume for protection, and we all head downstairs.
When we get there, we're confronted with two hooded Asian teenagers in our dining room, one with his foot still half way through the window. My friend with the wrench yells at them "WHAT THE **** DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?"
The kids look stunned, not expecting a full house of students to assemble on them from nowhere, the one already inside opens his mouth and says: "OH ****, I'm sorry, don't hurt us! Don't hurt us! We've broken in to the wrong house"
My friend screams "ANY HOUSE IS THE WRONG HOUSE, NOW GET THE **** OUT"
While waving his wrench in the air.
The kids leave and run away, we call the police, but they were never caught.
Event after event is really starting to get to me, at this point, I'm unintentionally racist and scared towards Asians, back people, and Muslims, I just can't help it. I'm having nightmares about people killing me in the street, and since my course has just finished for the year, I NEVER leave the house, ordering all my food online for delivery, and barely leaving my room, for fear of someone breaking in. I'm on the verge of breakdown, I'm losing friends, and my girlfriend starts to worry about me. I was miserable.
My girlfriend calls me on the phone one evening, and I spill my guts out to her:
"I just can't do this anymore, I feel trapped, I really do feel like I'm going to die here, I need to get out of here, but I can't... I signed the stupid contract for the house, so I'm stuck here until my 12 months are up, it’s like prison"
She says to me "it’s only 3 months now until you move out of that place, then me and you will get a place together here in harborne, It'll be nice"
I say "I don't think I'm going to be able to stay here for that much longer..."
A few weeks pass, and one day, my friend knocks on my door and says "Dude. My cars been trashed, the tires have been slashed and they've kicked it in, dented it, and smashed the lights..."
I say "Probably just kids, you know this neighborhood"
Later that day, the landlord pays a visit, and my friend is talking to him about his car, I walk in to the room halfway through the conversation "...Did you park outside of number 35?"
"Where’s that?"
"Just down the road there, a couple of houses down"
"I did actually, yeah"
"S**t... I'd avoid them if I were you, them and number 24, they've been in trouble with the police for all sorts, gang crime, gun crime, drug dealing, and robbery, to name a few... They’ve kicked your car in for parking outside their house"
And once again, my heart sinks, and fear strikes. Only this time, It cannot sink any lower. I start shaking, feeling sick, my vision blurs... after all this time, all of the crap that has happened to me over the 9 months I have been here, the attempted robbery, attempted burglary, attempted assault, and vandalism, having gang members, drug dealers and potential gun owners living at BOTH ENDS OF THE STREET was the final nail in the coffin.
I call my girlfriend, and I tell her what’s happened, I'm panicked, I feel sick unsafe once again, I say to her "I have to get out of here... there must be something I can do..."
My girlfriend tried to calm me down, and thought I was over-reacting. After explaining to her how I felt, she agreed to help me out with a plan.
The plan was, I get out, ASAP, and I grab my stuff and leave this cesspool behind me forever. So that night, I grab everything I can, hire a taxi, and take all of my belongings to my girlfriend’s house.
That was three months ago.
Now I'm writing to you from my girlfriend’s laptop, in this single room, with a small single bed that we have shared for 3 months. We have worried about money, about where we're going to live, and we have made plan after plan and watched them all fail. But FINALLY, after scraping all the money together that we can, we have secured us a new house, with a double room, double bed, in Harborne. One of the nicest places in Birmingham.
For the first time in over a year, I'm excited, I'm happy again. Because I know I won't ever have to see that god forsaken place again.
Perry Barr.
Don't make the same mistake I did, when you come to choose where you want to live after you finished living in the student bubble of the Coppice or Oscott, DO NOT live in perry barr, it’s just not safe for us students.
Thanks for reading.
Last edited by EierVonSatan : 18-09-2009 at 22:08.
I'm unintentionally racist and scared towards Asians, back people, and Muslims.
Yeah once this polish guy bumped into me quite hard and said sorry like 'zorry'
Now I'm scared of all Polish people and unintentionally racist.
I'm sorry for what you've been through but your above comment is in no way justified. People of all races and religions do bad things you can't tar everyone with the same brush. You sound like a mega idiot. Harsh but true. ****.
That is a very long post, unless you're offering it on Audio CD, can you summarise it in one paragraph?
I lived in Perry Barr for 9 months, was the victim of attempted robbery, attempted burglary, assault, vandalism, racism (being picked on because I'm white in a mostly black part of town), was witness to gang violence, until i finally had a nervous breakdown and lived with my girlfriend for 3 months until we moved into a new house together.
Yeah once this polish guy bumped into me quite hard and said sorry like 'zorry'
Now I'm scared of all Polish people and unintentionally racist.
I'm sorry for what you've been through but your above comment is in no way justified. People of all races and religions do bad things you can't tar everyone with the same brush. You sound like a mega idiot. Harsh but true. ****.
I already explained that I wasn't racist before this happened. And i hate the fact that i feel that way sometimes.
But if enough dogs bite you, you'll be afraid of dogs, if enough chavs call you names, you be annoyed at all chavs. The same thing applies here, as i said, not intentionally racist.
Also your polish analogy holds no water because he only bumped into you, I don't know abut you, but if several polish people all tried to rob me on several different occasions, I'd start to get pretty warey of the polish. Any sane human would. Stereotyping is a common method of human survival. Its as simple as that.
I lived in Perry Barr for 9 months, was the victim of attempted robbery, attempted burglary, assault, vandalism, racism (being picked on because I'm white in a mostly black part of town), was witness to gang violence, until i finally had a nervous breakdown and lived with my girlfriend for 3 months until we moved into a new house together.
Avoid perry barr.
Summed up
now that wasnt hard was it!
when u went to bcu on open days....u can clearly get an idea of what the area is like....didnt u?????
I no many students who ENJOY living there and havent experiecned what u have!
Yeah once this polish guy bumped into me quite hard and said sorry like 'zorry'
Now I'm scared of all Polish people and unintentionally racist.
I'm sorry for what you've been through but your above comment is in no way justified. People of all races and religions do bad things you can't tar everyone with the same brush. You sound like a mega idiot. Harsh but true. ****.
no you're the one who sounds like an idiot
this polish guy "bumped into you" this black/asian kid tried to mug OP, trashed his mates car for parking in front of the house, broke into his house, and caused hell to his life.
How can you not expect anyone to feel slightly racist to people if **** like this happens? I'm not white myself but if my kinda people were causing this kind of **** towards people, i'd understand why they'd feel that way. OP hasn't said he hates them, he says he feels unintentionally racist. Feeling unintentionally racist and full racial hatred/inciting racial hatred is a different thing
Last edited by abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz : 18-09-2009 at 19:05.
If you are reading this, it means I have survived, I am out of there, and about time too, because for 9 months now I have been fighting a constant struggle over money, depression, frustration, and fear. I have seen people get hurt, and I have been hurt myself, all because of Perry Barr. This is my story.
I'm twenty years old; just about to start my third year of Visual Communication at Birmingham City University, and my story begins when I reached the end of my first year.
Living in the student bubble of the Coppice only a stone’s throw away from the main university campus wasn't so bad at all during my first year, everyone is friendly and they're all like-minded students, everything is clean, and has good security, and while the odd trip to the one stop shopping center allows for a quick peer into the depressing and scary real-life Perry Barr, it can be avoided by shopping at the convenient (albeit VERY expensive) shop in the student guild. At the time, I had a sweet thing going, good friends, good housing, good shops, and a healthy state of mind.
Then came the time to move, and me and a bunch of my friends from the Coppice start deciding on where to live, while I was at the BIAD campus in the city center (and more than content with traveling to uni via train every day) everyone else was at the main campus in perry barr and at the time, all we had seen of Perry Barr was the student bubble, and blinded by this, I chose to be indifferent towards where we lived. I allowed my friends to take the front seat of finding us a place, "as long as there is a roof over my head and a computer for me to sit at, I'm at home" were my exact words.
Then, we find a place, a 5 bedroomed terraced townhouse, big rooms, well decorated, and cheap. We view it a couple of times, there are a couple of dodgy looking groups of people hanging out on street corners and the like, the street is a little bit dirty, but at the time, we thought nothing of it and so we take the plunge, and take it.
Me and my best friend were the first two to move into the house, we decided against going home for summer in favor of getting jobs here. We moved into the house days after we moved out of student accommodation and we started to settle, I got a summer job working the evening shift at a casino in the city center to pay for rent over the summer until my student loan came through, and we started to work.
Except, when we were just about settled, that's when the problems started.
The first problem was 2 weeks after moving into the new place. It was time to go shopping, and so me and my friend decide to try out the Tesco that's near to our new house. We get there, get out of the car, grab some money from the cash point and head inside. And just as were about to step into the shop, an Asain kid, no older than 16, and his chubby 10 year old (what looked like his) brother step up to us, and the following scene unfolds: "OI MATE!"
I carry on walking, ignoring him "OI YOU, I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU GOT SOMETHING FOR ME?!"
I turn my head to see the 16 year old kid walking fast towards me, hooded, hands in pockets, he grabs me on the shoulder and turns me around, and attempts to grab my wallet from my jacket pocket. I wrestle him off but he continues to try and grab for my wallet, at this point I notice my friend is being distracted by the 10 year old pushing shopping trolleys quite forcefully into him.
Eventually I get the guy to the floor, and throw a couple of punches to his face, give him a bit of a nose bleed, he pushes me off himself and I fall into the store. Now the security guys at the store are restraining him and pulling him off the store grounds.
Me and my friend brush ourselves off after a quick word with the security guards and continue our shopping, but once were done, we leave the store to find him waiting for us, with a brick.
We run to the car as fast as possible, and jump in and speed out of the car park, unfortunately, we were stopped by a red light and the kid threw the brick at the car, making a loud thump sound, just missing the window and causing a huge dent in the side of the car:
My friends car after this incident
After this, we drove right to the police station and reported him, luckily he was found moments later still hanging around the store causing trouble, and was arrested. It was later found that he was wanted for a bunch of other successful robberies, break ins and vandalism and after a small court case, he was fined, and forced to apologize to a community panel, an inadequate punishment, if you ask me.
This scary encounter was the start of a slippery slope for me, I started to fear everyone, I felt out of place, I avoided going outside, at the time it felt irrational, just basic trauma. Then, not a few weeks later, something else happens...
I got a taxi from work at 4 in the morning, only I couldn't afford the fare all the way to my house, so I had him drop me off a couple of streets over. While walking back, I see a group of 5 black teenagers walking towards me, one of the group points at me, and whispers to his friends, and fear strikes me hard, no good can come of this.. They start shouting at me, and calling me over "HEY YOU COME HERE, WE GOT A F**KING PROBLEM WITH YOU"
And then they start running towards me.
Before they can get too close, I run across the MAIN ROAD to escape them, I narrowly avoid being hit by two cars, as they beeped at me and swerved out of the way. When I reach the other side, they leave me alone, and I run home.
A couple of months pass, by this point, I hate this place already, I stay over my friends houses in the nicer parts of Birmingham whenever possible, just to take in the fresh air and the freedom of being able to walk the street and not feel like you're being sized up, sometimes I'd stay away from home for up to 3 weeks at a time. Then I meet my current girlfriend, she lives in a nice house in Harborne, one of the nicest parts of Birmingham, it’s leafy, calm, friendly and quiet. After 3 months of dating her, she asks me why I seem so clingy, and so reluctant to leave her house, and that's when I send her an email telling her my true feelings about where I live:
"Perry Barr is an unsightly place, its Grey, its miserable, it’s always cold and bleak, not to mention dirty scummy and horrible.
It feels like a ghetto of sorts.
As you know I unfortunately came to Birmingham City University, which is in the heart of Perry Barr, and I live round the corner in a student house. What a place to put a university....
Perry Barr mainly consists of Asian chavs, fat chav girls in tracksuits and muggers and thieves, I would know, I've had my experiences here.
It’s a really dangerous place to live. You can’t go out at night, you can’t walk down the street without having something sleazy shouted at you, The houses get robbed because their student houses so I'm literally waiting in fear to be burgled because my room is on the bottom floor.
Everyone spits on the floor, drops their litter, vandalizes everything.
I hate it here"
My girlfriend helps me, and is really supportive, she lets me stay at hers as much as possible.
Then, some more time passes, and my fear of being burgled becomes a shocking reality...
Me and my housemates are all in my friends room watching a movie one night at about 3 am, when we hear some rattling and scraping downstairs. Once again that familiar feeling of dread strikes me hard in the chest, as I turn to everyone in the room and say "Can you hear someone downstairs? I thought we were all up here".
My housemate says "Oh, I'll go check",
I hold her back for a moment and say "we should all go, I have a bad feeling about this"
My friend grabs a wrench from his drawer, I assume for protection, and we all head downstairs.
When we get there, we're confronted with two hooded Asian teenagers in our dining room, one with his foot still half way through the window. My friend with the wrench yells at them "WHAT THE F**K DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?"
The kids look stunned, not expecting a full house of students to assemble on them from nowhere, the one already inside opens his mouth and says: "OH S**T, I'm sorry, don't hurt us! Don't hurt us! We've broken in to the wrong house"
My friend screams "ANY HOUSE IS THE WRONG HOUSE, NOW GET THE F**K OUT"
While waving his wrench in the air.
The kids leave and run away, we call the police, but they were never caught.
Event after event is really starting to get to me, at this point, I'm unintentionally racist and scared towards Asians, back people, and Muslims, I just can't help it. I'm having nightmares about people killing me in the street, and since my course has just finished for the year, I NEVER leave the house, ordering all my food online for delivery, and barely leaving my room, for fear of someone breaking in. I'm on the verge of breakdown, I'm losing friends, and my girlfriend starts to worry about me. I was miserable.
My girlfriend calls me on the phone one evening, and I spill my guts out to her:
"I just can't do this anymore, I feel trapped, I really do feel like I'm going to die here, I need to get out of here, but I can't... I signed the stupid contract for the house, so I'm stuck here until my 12 months are up, it’s like prison"
She says to me "it’s only 3 months now until you move out of that place, then me and you will get a place together here in harborne, It'll be nice"
I say "I don't think I'm going to be able to stay here for that much longer..."
A few weeks pass, and one day, my friend knocks on my door and says "Dude. My cars been trashed, the tires have been slashed and they've kicked it in, dented it, and smashed the lights..."
I say "Probably just kids, you know this neighborhood"
Later that day, the landlord pays a visit, and my friend is talking to him about his car, I walk in to the room halfway through the conversation "...Did you park outside of number 35?"
"Where’s that?"
"Just down the road there, a couple of houses down"
"I did actually, yeah"
"S**t... I'd avoid them if I were you, them and number 24, they've been in trouble with the police for all sorts, gang crime, gun crime, drug dealing, and robbery, to name a few... They’ve kicked your car in for parking outside their house"
And once again, my heart sinks, and fear strikes. Only this time, It cannot sink any lower. I start shaking, feeling sick, my vision blurs... after all this time, all of the crap that has happened to me over the 9 months I have been here, the attempted robbery, attempted burglary, attempted assault, and vandalism, having gang members, drug dealers and potential gun owners living at BOTH ENDS OF THE STREET was the final nail in the coffin.
I call my girlfriend, and I tell her what’s happened, I'm panicked, I feel sick unsafe once again, I say to her "I have to get out of here... there must be something I can do..."
My girlfriend tried to calm me down, and thought I was over-reacting. After explaining to her how I felt, she agreed to help me out with a plan.
The plan was, I get out, ASAP, and I grab my stuff and leave this cesspool behind me forever. So that night, I grab everything I can, hire a taxi, and take all of my belongings to my girlfriend’s house.
That was three months ago.
Now I'm writing to you from my girlfriend’s laptop, in this single room, with a small single bed that we have shared for 3 months. We have worried about money, about where we're going to live, and we have made plan after plan and watched them all fail. But FINALLY, after scraping all the money together that we can, we have secured us a new house, with a double room, double bed, in Harborne. One of the nicest places in Birmingham.
For the first time in over a year, I'm excited, I'm happy again. Because I know I won't ever have to see that god forsaken place again.
Perry Barr.
Don't make the same mistake I did, when you come to choose where you want to live after you finished living in the student bubble of the Coppice or Oscott, DO NOT live in perry barr, it’s just not safe for us students.
Thanks for reading.
Wtf is Visual Communication and why do you waste your time studying it?
Dude, that's a horrible story! I feel for you man, just glad I'm going to Loughburough! You must have a pretty damn awesome girlfriend as well, you should feel extremely lucky to be with her and that should of made you happy.
Sowee but I had to give up reading that all half way through - although I have the general jist of what you are saying.
But yea I had a place for Perry Barr several years ago and I turned it down - that under-pass to the one stop shopping centre put me off straight away!! I visited the uni twice to try and like it, but I hated it on both occasions.
Sowee to hear about the trouble you have had, but it really isn't fair to tarnish all black, asian people with the same brush and not all students endure what you have.
EDIT: Just come back to read the rest which I didn't read before - glad you've moved into a place with your GF and I hope everything works out fine. .
Last edited by DancinBallerina : 18-09-2009 at 21:41.
I lived in Perry Barr for 9 months, was the victim of attempted robbery, attempted burglary, assault, vandalism, racism (being picked on because I'm white in a mostly black part of town), was witness to gang violence, until i finally had a nervous breakdown and lived with my girlfriend for 3 months until we moved into a new house together.
Avoid perry barr.
Summed up
I read your entire opening post, and found it really scary. There were tears in my eyes at some points too. I am so very, very glad that you are free from all of the trouble that you have endured during your time living in Perry Barr. I too was at UCE, although I studied at a different campus, and had to go to PB for an exam....obviously I wasnt around long enough to see any bad things.
I have to say that I too like Harborne, I live just up the road from there
I would like to wish you and your girlfriend all the best
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Perry Barr - Hell on earth. My story
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