When I was in college, I came to KC one weekend. I got down in the West Bottoms near Kemper at night and took a wrong turn. This was before cell phones and GPS. Instead of backtracking, I was determined that I could drive out of it. I ended up underneath a bridge and getting funneled into an area surrounded by homeless people with a stereotypical trash can on fire.
As I came to a stop, some of them got up and started walking towards me. I panicked and was 90% sure I was gonna get killed or robbed. I got out of there in a hurry and eventually found the right path, but my heart was going at 100 mph.
Fast forward to today. I work about half a mile from there and know the area like the back of my hand. But I still wouldn't want to go to the area I ended up in by myself at night.
I have a similar story. Back 30 years ago, I used to make frequent trips on U.S. 71, in Iowa, which goes through Kansas City, on my way to somewhere else. Usually, when I got to Kansas City, I would take I-435 as the fastest way to get around Kansas City. But one time, in the middle of the night, I missed the exit for 435 and wound up following 71 all the way through Kansas City. I don't know how it is now, but back in those days, 71 used to go through some residential areas of Kansas City in a pretty sketchy looking part of town.
It got darker and sketchier the farther I went. At one point, a car comes screaming around a corner about half a block ahead of me with a cop car in hot pursuit and they sped off out of sight. I drove past several what looked like illegal clubs. There were no signs on any of these commercial type buildings, but there were groups of people hanging outside them smoking and drinking.
At one point, I came to a stop sign, where there were people hanging out on the corner. This black chick in a pure white body-hugging body stocking (that's the only way to describe it. It was like a leotard, but a full-body one and that's all she was wearing except for shoes) walked up to my car and tried to open the passenger side door. I know this because my interior light came on when she lifted the door handle. Happily, the door was locked. It was so dark outside, all I could see was this very shapely white leotard floating in the air. She was saying something I couldn't hear, but I sped off before anything else happened. I eventually made it out of the city, but I never missed the exit again after that.
Another time, I missed an exit in Dallas and wound up on a highway I had no idea where it was going. It eventually led me close to where I wanted to be, but it was sketchy for a while. I want to note that this was on a Sunday and the 6-lane interstate I was on was so packed with cars, I couldn't make it over far enough to take the exit. I saw it coming up, tried to get over, but couldn't because of the traffic, so just had to keep going.
