They call Hell's Kitchen "Clinton" now. A one bedroom will set you back about $2500 a month minimum. It's artsy fartsy and coffee shops have taken the place of all the old Irish bars. It's the personification of the word gentrified, or as I like to put it, yuppified. The "toughest" kids to come out of that neighborhood today have to go to Brown because they can't get into Harvard .

But years ago, yeah, that was one storied and tough neighborhood .

I'll go along will TB and SC about Brownsville/East New York. That area brought up a lot of tough guys. Even as recently as the 60s, Mike Tyson came out of that general area. But I'm surprised that no one mentioned the Lower East Side of the early 20th century. That area was legendary for being hardscrabble. There were loads of Italians and both Russian and Eastern European Jews that had to claw there way out of that neighborhood. Lansky, Siegel, Luciano and Costello grew up together down there, and loads of others like them (albeit not as well known). Also, you had a plethora of boxers come out of the area. Most notably Rocky Graziano.