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I'm from the boonies and coming to the city, it's it's been awesome. You know what I'm saying? It's everything's right where you need it to be. When you think West Virginia, you probably think rivers, mountains, and hollers. But there's another side, too. Urban Appalachia, cities in the hills. And there's no better example than Charleston. In West Virginia's capital, the city meets the country. On the one hand, people smile at each other, visit mom and pop stores, and go to church. Everybody looks out for each other. They're oriented around love. Small town, but everybody says hi when you walk down the street.
It's beautiful. I love it. I wouldn't trade it for any city. On the other, crime, drugs, and poverty are causing the population to rapidly shrink. How prevalent? Let's say like among like your high school class or drugs. 20%. Whoever let us get out on the street need to be shot cuz people are dying all the time or od number of abandoned houses. They started tearing a number of them down. What should we know about Charleston? Um it sucks. Homeless drug addicts all types of everywhere. If you want to know the beauty and struggles of an Appalachin city, come with us to Charleston, West Virginia. With its beautiful buildings, friendly
people, and local shops, the first thing we realized in Charleston is that they don't make cities like this anymore. What you say you moved here 12 years ago? Well, I've been doing this parking lot for 12 years in the county. I've grew up over in Webster County area, and that's back in the backwoods, you know, West Virginia and so forth. In the 12 years, it's changed, you know, I mean, like change for better or worse. Well, it all depends on how you would look at it, man. I mean, they need to bring in some more business like the mall area. You know what I'm saying? I'm blessed. I wake up every day and go, "All right, there's times for me to come
in here and do my job as a parking lot man and we'll see how the day is going to wind up being." I don't know. Ask him. He knows everybody. I've worked here for 36 years before that in Dunar. But yeah, I love it. I know everybody. It's like I'm planning to retire. Even mailman on quarter street is like, "Okay, I'm going to come visit you then if I can't see you out on the street." I expect everyone here to know that we're here making this video by tomorrow. Oh, imagine the word gets around like genuinely probably the 80s and 90s this was one of the best places to live in the world. Best places. It's a different environment than a lot of people think in the sense of people oriented. A lot of
like it's not knowledge based like it's very connection based. Everybody knows that there's a purpose for living a life here. And I feel like the collective unit of people when you see on the street, I feel like they have the same view as I do. You go to New York, like you saying, where you guys live there's rushing. Like they're rushing to get to everything. And it's just more of like a calm down like knowing that the goal isn't day oriented because they know everything that they do on this earth is for one goal and one goal only. And I feel like so many people get driven in their ideology and their mindset and they don't think about what the goal is and that everlasting.
See, that's the part of West Virginia you got to enjoy. Like you have that then you have it's just everything here 10 to 15 miles down the road. The best in my opinion athlete to ever walk on the face of this earth lived grew up. His mom still lives right there. Randy Moss. I cannot forget my small unincorporated community, Grand West Virginia. Then you have Jason Williams, who played basketball and football with him in high school, known as White Chocolate, played in the NBA. Pops it up right to Jason Williams. Williams crosses over, loses Gary, drives into the lane. So this has been 1950. Yeah. 75 years old. Third generation running and owned. Her husband is the current owner at the moment.
You're born and raised Charleston, West Virginia. Yep. Born and raised. What's it like here? small town but yet not big city. Everybody says hi when you walk down the street. I feel like this must be like the friendliest capital city in America. I agree. There used to be a lot of foot traffic here cuz a lot of shops. Um but over the years it's changed. Now it's a lot of attorney's office, state offices. It feels very authentic hometown USA type and that's mostly what you have here in downtown like Capitol Street and Summer Street. The next one over is
mostly small businesses. Now, if you go 10 minutes down the road, that's where you'll find all your large corporation um businesses. Thank you. What's your name? Candy. Your name is Candy. Yep. I'm married into it and I'm Candy. What are the odds of that? I know. I said the only thing would be better if my last name was bar. Then I could be candy bar. But once in a while when you're out doing this stuff, you find a place like this nut store behind us. Been here since 1950. third generation, family-owned,
the warmest, nicest people in the world. It is just purely authentic, raw, the real deal. And that is what we are trying to become with this page. Think about this. Family-owned nuts since 1950. We want to be the news company in 75 years. We want to be the news company that they're like, "Oh, they were started back in 2020." That's Roken News. Smash that subscribe button if you support it. So, pretty much everyone we talked to has talked about what Charleston used to be like. And you notice walking through here, the architecture on these buildings is incredible. I mean, just one after another, these really unique buildings and kind of unique designs. Downtown Charleston has few chains and a lot of friendly people and feels a bit like
what I imagine the 1950s would have felt like. And that's for a reason. The city's population peaked at 86,000 in 1960 and has declined in every decade since. It's now just 46,000, leaving a lot of empty streets and buildings. Almost everyone talked about population loss. Is it growing at all here? Yeah, I was born here. Spent most of my life here. Went to school here. Went to law school in Texas. I think the best thing about it is it's relatively affordable, you know what I mean? To live here. So, it's a cheap place to have your base and still be able to travel. This is totally different than
when I grew up here. When I grew up here, there was a legit 100,000 in the valley. Well, in the town, probably two or 30 hund,000 maybe in the valley. Totally different. The valley we produce, I think it was 1.75% of the chemicals in the United States in this area here. But at the time, the bigger employees in this valley were um Monsanto DA uh carbide chemical companies. How long have you lived here? Almost four years. Same house. Never had no problem. Leave my garage door open. Go my front door wide open.
Nobody bother nobody. Where are you from originally? Originally from Lebanon. Which part? I just got back. I was there last month. I'm from good part. I'm from the Christian part. I've been here since 77 in Charleston. I'm grateful to West Virginia because I made it in West Virginia, but I not very many at this time could make it. Too late for me to go somewhere else try to make it. Thank God I made it here. I'm grateful to West Virginia, to the people of West Virginia. It's a beautiful city to live in, to raise your kids. I hate to say it, but it's not the city to make good in your life.
Business is bad and uh people leaving. I had to see my son growing up and can't make it the way I did because he can't. There's no way. And cost of living is too high. People not making enough money to live. You have beautiful mall downtown. I don't know what happened. Closed down. Businesses shut down all over. People leave in Charleston for some reason. I don't know. I don't know why. Maybe there's no not enough work. Maybe the mayor won't like me saying that. Well, it does seem like a lot of the prosperity and growth that you see in Tennessee, parts of Kentucky, Georgia. Exactly.
It's kind of skipping here. We're West Virginia. We're not on top list of the states who makes money. It hurts. It hurts to see this city. It's beautiful. I love it. I wouldn't trade it for any city. On the one hand, parts of the city continue to prosper, often due to the state government. But the chemical, coal, and manufacturing companies that once employed this region have now largely left, leaving behind neglect, drugs, and poverty. What's the city like? It's active. Like, you know, you see a lot of people, and there's a lot of different sorts of stuff. I'm from the boonies and coming to the city, it's it's been awesome. You know what I'm saying? It's everything's right where
you need it to be. It's not like in the woods. We just come from the library which is like three stories. It's awesome. Rent uh laptops, anything in here. You move here or you just visiting here? Uh honestly, I tell you truthfully, we're in recovery. We're all changing our life. That's a big problem here, man. Growth, you know what I mean? For real. It's a big problem here in Charleston. We're all sober now and living a good life. We're stepping out of that way of Are there resources here? Stuff to help you guys.
Oh, absolutely. All kinds. Go to meetings every day, all night. And then we go like to uh Trinity, True Freedom Baptist Church through Harmony Ridge. Me and him at Harmony Ridge. I recommend anybody to go there for recovery. What's it take to get in there? I mean, obviously haven't been with you, but the will to get better, man. They'll get you in there if you want. It comes to time you just get sick and tired of being sick and tired. The thing I find kind of confusing about a place like this, very family oriented, very tight-knit communities, very religious people. On the other hand, you also have I mean
drugs have taken a huge toll on and those two things are so opposed. How do you make sense of that? Cuz I would tend to think that when you have a tight family network, when you're coal miner and some of my uncles were all coal miners, they were. And when they moved out of the area from the Appalachian Mountains, that's what took all the jobs out and that's what brought all the drug people back. Drug people to start with the drugs cuz they ran out of money, didn't have anything. So most of your coal miners that wanted to stay in the area got hooked on drugs. And after that, the people that did move tried to start a new life somewhere. So all the opportunity went down here.
No, don't take any pictures of me. I have uh criminal proceedings pending. First of all, I don't like cloud seating. I have a level of corruption against me. I got hurt in New Mexico 2009 because my husband had a hit on me. My husband turned out to be organized crime and the Vatican's been covering up. So, one thing we've noticed in just the brief time that we've been downtown is there are a lot of people who look either homeless or just quite rough walking around. I start to talk to this one lady not realizing she was homeless and she started telling us about lasers, about a lawsuit she's filing against New York's attorney general, against her husband for being an organized crime.
One thing after another. uh clearly mentally unwell, but there's a lot of people around here just kind of walking around to kind of look similar to that. The city's decline became more apparent as we left downtown. You see all these homes and you look at them and it's like it might you can feel what it that it was a thriving place at one time. So you say your parents were the first black people in this neighborhood? People have to go to stores up here. Oh yeah, they should cuz they had a store down on the block. You could have the store.
It was segregated here. It wouldn't wouldn't they just prejudice. They wouldn't use the same black family. The entertainment for the kids, the recreation center for the kids. Ain't no more that growing up. See, when we were kids, you had all of that. The kids mostly out here on the streets. So, another family. My son lives in Kentucky. So, he went to Kentucky. Oh, yeah. He would never been unless you don't like it here at all. If I came today, I would be gone, too, to work with my mother. Yep. Me, too. Even though you live here your whole life, you know. Oh, yeah. I'm gone. If you work for my mom, I'm out of here. That's basically what we do right here.
Sit on this porch. Go nowhere. I have nowhere to go. I can't. It's just It's It's hard to kind of wrap your head around. I mean, just like again, like sitting out here like beautiful yard, beautiful porch, beautiful home. A lot of other homes that you can tell were at one point really beautiful. Oh yeah. And then to hear you saying though, gunshots. I mean, people bullets landing in your front yard. It's not what you would think. I mean, you would think. You wouldn't think. No. It's still here on the porch here at night. You've been moving around all night long.
What should we know about Charleston? Um, it stuck. This is the west side. This is where bad things happen. It's wild and wonderful. But it's boring and slow. Homeless, drug addicts, all types of everywhere. No, but it can be fun. You just got to find the right things to do though. Well, we've heard two things. We've heard people saying what you're saying that there's a lot of problems, you know, the homeless, drug addict, stuff like that. We've also heard a lot of people say it's a good place to raise a family. You can work. You can
buy a house. What part you go to? There's some fun things to do, but not really. They took them all out. Sucks ass. There's nothing to do here as far as entertaining. I mean, not even for kids. Unless time's hard. The West Virginia is great. It's a good state to live in. If you have if you're retired or you got a good job, if you're looking for work or something, there's jobs here, but not like we are a It's rough. It's been rough here since the virus co. Yeah. You agree with that? Yeah. See the hill, Billy. Can't you look at it? It feels a little bit country here. Kind of lowkey.
You can get out in the hollers now, but it's not like Ron tombs. the wrong tomb turn movie. It's not that's not here. Deliverance. I don't know why they put it like that. Yeah, but there's hollers you can go out to. It's beautiful out there. I mean, further you get the better it is. I mean, beautiful it is. This is the west side. This is where bad things happen. So, the west side is kind of like the rougher side of Charles. Yeah. You can get anything you want on the west side. You know, you're practically in the hood. But, um, it's changed a lot.
Has it gotten better? We like We've been So, we do this all over the country. In a few places we've been lately, they've said that like fentanyl, there's less fentanyl now than there used to be. Is that the more fentanyl than there used to be? Really? It's bad here. It's bad. People are doing it. I wish they get away from it. Whoever let it get out from the street need to be shot cuz people are dying all the time or doing that. It's not right. I believe drugs are brought into this into the United States from the United States government. 12 f you know cuz things like that should be easy to get a hold of. I mean West Virginia know from heroin and fentanol you know a little bit everything but that's that's what's killing West Virginia.
Is it stable and a good place to have a family or is it kind of declining? I think it's declining, but I see a lot more like emancipation type of things. Like I don't really see a lot of 16 or uh like 16 with the parents. You mean like more kids running around that kind of thing? Right. So, it's pretty much just school and um like retirement people. Why did you choose to stay here and other people leave? Um I would have I probably would have, but the thing is, you know, just having something to sit on and hope to rebuild. I had to take it slow. Had some setbacks. How's it doing?
How's the city? Is it People have said it's shrinking a little bit? Oh, yeah. They've lost a lot of population. Uh, a whole lot of stores have left the Town Center Mall. I lived here since the end of two 2000. I bought a house at auction that was the newest house on the block. Paid 76,000 for it. It's a beautiful area just sandwiched here with the river over there, the mountains all around. There are a number of abandoned houses. Uh they started tearing a number of them down recently. Uh there one caught on fire a few days ago.
I tell you the truth, I'm really homeless right now. They're letting me use that little room in there, but uh I've been here a little over 70 years. I'm trying to get VA and senior citizens group to help trying to find me a place. They don't give nobody a ride. It's a miserable life when you ain't got a place to live. I lost my house. I lost my property. Two cars. Cops don't like me for some reason because I was living in the car for a while. When did you become homeless? About a year ago, something like that. Is that your first time being homeless or? Yeah. Really? 29. I do pretty good. A little bit of army helped me through a lot of stuff. I was in 82nd Airborne. I had a couple electric wheelchairs.
They disappeared. Stolen. Yeah. There's one riding around over here somewhere. Blue. Yeah. Brand new. This is about a cal section through here, but when you go up there, the red light, turn left. It's pretty bad over in there. Yeah. Someone said that's kind of like the ghetto. They got drugs and all kind. Somebody needs to straighten this town up. I'm telling you, it's bad. Despite these issues, parts of Charleston are thriving. And as West Virginia's largest city, it remains a hub for West Virginiaians who want to stay close to home but live in a city.
Yeah, it's it's kind of rough. Um, I am from Boone County. So, um, I moved here about 4 years ago and it's a lot different here versus living in rural Appalachia. Like two 3 weeks ago, there was actually somebody in that house and the police had to pull them out of the attic of the house. Um, drugs are a major issue here. Um, and there's not many there are resources for the homeless people here, but if they're not well known. So, I think that's one of the biggest issues in Charleston. You do feel like you're in Appalachia while also being in the city? Yes. You think that's accurate? Yes, absolutely. Because I can drive 20 minutes and be in the middle of the woods in nowhere and not see a person around. So, that is nice. But I also
enjoy being downtown and being able to just walk along the river and go to the city. But I enjoy living here. I mean, there are downfalls, but I think everywhere has those. I think the good outweighs the bad here. Like where you grew up, were drugs a huge problem, too. Um, not specifically in the neighborhood that I grew up in now. Well, Holler that I grew up in now, they're not bad there, but in the town, yes, we need more treatment for people. That's actually what um I did in my previous position. I was a um opioid addiction treatment and I've had a passion for that since I've gotten older. Um because I know that's like one of the biggest struggles in this area because you know this area has always been taken
advantage of. The opioid work you've done. What have you learned that you think people should know? The stories that I've heard from people firsthand. I'll be honest with you. I'm like, I am so surprised that you are still physically standing here in front of me because the things that people have went through is unimaginable. And it's it's no wonder that they get hooked on drugs because they have the most have been dealt the most awful cards in life and that's the only way that they know how to cope. I think once people get sober, um I think a lot what I've noticed is a lot of them will give back to their community. They will
become recovery coaches and they will be active in support groups for other people that are in active addiction in the area. I think that's probably the most appalachin way that we could do it around here. You talk about corporations. Someone told us today that this whole area used to be a lot of chemical companies through here. Yeah. This was called the valley. Yeah. Actually, at one point there was no the Canal River could not support aquatic life. Again, it's just all of these corporations come in, they make money, and then when they're done making their
money or things move to the next trend, they just pack up and leave. And then we're just left to clean up the mess. Is anything do you see anything new coming in here to kind of fill the void jobs wise, economically? a lot of the fast food restaurants, I think, employ people that are going through that um to try to help get them back on their feet. Um but yeah, other than that, there's not been anything like major as far as like to the scale that these companies were at. Um it's just really sad because Charleston used to be beautiful. I mean, it still is beautiful, but you know, the
people, there were more people here that were happier with living here, and there were more opportunities for people to stay here. The younger generations won't have what the older generations did have, which was opportunity. Charleston has what all struggling cities do, a lot of drugs, crime, and population loss. Yet, it also has something else. Warmth, beauty, and an undeniable charm. In reality, Charleston is an old school city struggling in the modern world. It's easy to see the flaws, but hard not to love it, too. Real quick, if you're enjoying this video, make sure to subscribe. We have one of our favorite videos we've ever shot coming out for West Virginia next.
Set in a holler deep in the hills of West Virginia. You won't want to miss it. So, smash that subscribe button while you're here.
