Daniel Herrington and Allison McGuire and a sketchy brick wall. Photograph courtesy SketchFactor.
As the latest entry in the mission to crowdsource everything, an iPhone app called SketchFactor claims to be building a comprehensive guide for city-dwellers who want to avoid “sketchy” areas. The app, which is publicly available Friday, is the creation of a pair of DC ex-pats now living in New York who say they just want to help their users find safe streets by assinging them “sketch factors” on a scale of 1 to 5.
Nice veneer, but the early data collected by SketchFactor reflects more urban paranoia verging on outright racial profiling. The developers, Allison McGuire and Daniel Herrington, started testing it more than a year ago when they were still living in Washington and working out of downtown tech nest 1776. According to what they gathered from their beta testers, DC’s sketchiest neighborhoods are:
Columbia Heights
Adams Morgan
Bloomingdale
H Street, Northeast
Downtown
In other words, many neighborhoods where one is likely to find a racially mixed crowd, while most of upper Northwest DC—sometimes referred to as “Upper Caucasia”—is largely sketch-free. Many of the entries are broad dismissals of entire city blocks without much detail to them. The intersection of 14th Street and Columbia Road, Northwest, rates a SketchFactor of 4 thanks to “a lot of people hanging around” in the evening. The entry doesn’t say who those people are, but anyone who knows Columbia Heights knows it’s a decreasingly diverse neighborhood where working-class black and Hispanic populations have decreased while wealthier, often white residents move in.
“As far as we’re concerned, racial profiling is ‘sketchy’ and we are trying to empower users to report incidents of racism against them and define their own experience of the streets,” McGuire told Crain’s New York Business earlier this week. It’s nice that McGuire and Herrington take a dim view of racial profiling, but if their app takes off—and it’s currently a candidate to win $20,000 in a New York City-backed app contest—it’s tough to see McGuire’s claim panning out. In a brief phone call with Washingtonian, she admits sketchiness is an “entirely subjective” quality.
“If you ask anyone if they’ve experienced something sketchy, they’ll probably say yes,” McGuire says. “And then they’ll tell you a long crazy story.”
So far, the story seems to be one of avoiding places where you might run into someone who looks different. On their website, McGuire and Herrington say their app is “exclusively focused on improving city exploration on foot.” But with McGuire openly saying there cannot be any objective conclusions derived from SketchFactor, it’s tough to see how this app actually helps anyone.
Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.
New Smartphone App Is Designed to Help You Avoid “Sketchy” Neighborhoods
Most of those neighborhoods happen to be some of DC's more diverse areas, but app’s developers swear it’s not racist.
As the latest entry in the mission to crowdsource everything, an iPhone app called SketchFactor claims to be building a comprehensive guide for city-dwellers who want to avoid “sketchy” areas. The app, which is publicly available Friday, is the creation of a pair of DC ex-pats now living in New York who say they just want to help their users find safe streets by assinging them “sketch factors” on a scale of 1 to 5.
Nice veneer, but the early data collected by SketchFactor reflects more urban paranoia verging on outright racial profiling. The developers, Allison McGuire and Daniel Herrington, started testing it more than a year ago when they were still living in Washington and working out of downtown tech nest 1776. According to what they gathered from their beta testers, DC’s sketchiest neighborhoods are:
In other words, many neighborhoods where one is likely to find a racially mixed crowd, while most of upper Northwest DC—sometimes referred to as “Upper Caucasia”—is largely sketch-free. Many of the entries are broad dismissals of entire city blocks without much detail to them. The intersection of 14th Street and Columbia Road, Northwest, rates a SketchFactor of 4 thanks to “a lot of people hanging around” in the evening. The entry doesn’t say who those people are, but anyone who knows Columbia Heights knows it’s a decreasingly diverse neighborhood where working-class black and Hispanic populations have decreased while wealthier, often white residents move in.
“As far as we’re concerned, racial profiling is ‘sketchy’ and we are trying to empower users to report incidents of racism against them and define their own experience of the streets,” McGuire told Crain’s New York Business earlier this week. It’s nice that McGuire and Herrington take a dim view of racial profiling, but if their app takes off—and it’s currently a candidate to win $20,000 in a New York City-backed app contest—it’s tough to see McGuire’s claim panning out. In a brief phone call with Washingtonian, she admits sketchiness is an “entirely subjective” quality.
“If you ask anyone if they’ve experienced something sketchy, they’ll probably say yes,” McGuire says. “And then they’ll tell you a long crazy story.”
So far, the story seems to be one of avoiding places where you might run into someone who looks different. On their website, McGuire and Herrington say their app is “exclusively focused on improving city exploration on foot.” But with McGuire openly saying there cannot be any objective conclusions derived from SketchFactor, it’s tough to see how this app actually helps anyone.
Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.
Most Popular in News & Politics
The Missing Men of Mount Pleasant
Another Mysterious Anti-Trump Statue Has Appeared on the National Mall
Muriel Bowser Defends Her BLM Plaza Decision and Looks Back on a Decade as Mayor
Yet Another Anti-Trump Statue Has Shown Up on the National Mall
8 Takeaways From Usha Vance’s Interview With Meghan McCain
Washingtonian Magazine
July Issue: The "Best Of" Issue
View IssueSubscribe
Follow Us on Social
Follow Us on Social
Related
How Would a New DC Stadium Compare to the Last One?
The Culture of Lacrosse Is More Complex Than People Think
Did Television Begin in Dupont Circle?
Kings Dominion’s Wild New Coaster Takes Flight in Virginia
More from News & Politics
Guest List: 5 People We’d Love to Hang Out With This July
The Washington Nationals Just Fired the Manager and GM Who Led Them to a Championship. Why Has the Team Been so Bad Since?
FBI Building Now on Track to Leave DC After All, Whistleblower Leaks Texts Suggesting Justice Department Planned to Blow Off Federal Court Orders, and NPS Cuts Leave Assateague Island Without Lifeguards
Families of DC Air Disaster Victims Criticize Army’s Response, Trump Settles His Scores Via Tariff, and Police Dog Kicked at Dulles Returns to Work
This DC-Area Lawyer Wants More Americans Betting on Elections
Trump Threatens DC Takeover, Says He’d Run the City “So Good”; Supreme Court OKs Mass Federal Worker Layoffs; and You Should Go Pick Some Sunflowers
Trump Pledges Support for RFK Stadium Plan, Ben’s Chili Bowl Will Strand Us Half-Smokeless for Months, and Pediatricians Are Suing RFK Jr.
Muriel Bowser Defends Her BLM Plaza Decision and Looks Back on a Decade as Mayor