Tag: Travel

Reader pkudude99 provided this link about Ponte Tower in Johannesburg — actually in Hillbrow, which used to be to downtown Johannesburg as, say, the Bronx is to Manhattan.  (Interestingly, Hillbrow’s colloquial nickname for many years was “The Bronx”.)

Back when I lived there, Ponte was a very desirable address to call one’s own, and there was a mile-long waiting list for prospective residents.  (I was on the waiting list for a while, but gave up after a year or so and moved instead to Yeoville, the next suburb over.)  Ponte was literally across the road from my apartment, as can be seen from a pic I took from my back balcony:

Here’s a daylight pic:

…and from the inside looking up:

In retrospect, I’m rather glad that I didn’t end up living in Ponte.  I went to visit a friend there once, and while the apartment was very nice (in that super-modern style that was so trendy but that I now detest), the apartment building itself was terrible.  It felt like a prison block, and it’s small wonder that it was once suggested that Ponte should be turned into a maximum-security prison (never implemented, though).

Now?  You couldn’t get me within ten miles of the place — or of Hillbrow itself.  What used to be a glittering urban location with dance clubs, all-night restaurants, coffee bars and shops, late-closing bookstores and a permanent buzz of excitement is now… Third World Africa.

Like so much of what was once wonderful in Johannesburg is now just shabby, dangerous and… sub-Saharan Africa, no different from Mogadishu, Harare (another tragedy) or Nairobi.

Makes me sick just to think about it.