YouTuber brands Albuquerque's International District 'most frightful neighborhood in America'

Yahoo

28-03-2025

A YouTuber with a penchant for drama and more than 1.1 million subscribers recently toured Albuquerque's International District, and the end result was less than flattering.
"Oh God," Nick Johnson says in the opening lines of a nearly 54-minute video of an area that has long been known as the "War Zone" and more recently as "Zombie Land" due to the large number of drug users who can be seen hunched over in eerie positions on a daily basis after smoking fentanyl.
"Oh my God. Oh my God," Johnson says in the video, which has garnered more than 186,000 views in less than two days, as he records people loitering along a trash-filled Indiana Street off Central Avenue. "This is hoppin'."
Johnson, a conservative who on his "Unboxing America" YouTube page touts taking "captivating journeys across America, weaving tales of culture, lifestyle, and exploration," did not answer a series of questions submitted by The New Mexican via email Thursday, including whether he was exploiting people down on their luck for profit.
But in a statement, Johnson issued a warning.
"You can't save any of the people I witnessed on the streets of Albuquerque that day," he said. "But, hopefully every kid growing up in New Mexico watches this video and it scares them into never wanting to live their lives like that. This video should be required viewing for high school kids in your state."
Inside New Mexico's 'War Zone' - The Most Frightful Neighborhood In America
A spokesperson for Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said in a statement such videos have little purpose.
"Videos by out-of-state influences that exploit people in crisis for likes offer no real solutions to the complex, national challenges we're facing with addiction and homelessness," Shannon Kunkel said. "This area of town, home predominantly to people of color, has faced long-standing challenges dating back to the early '80s."
Kunkel said Keller, who is serving his second term in office, "continues to reverse decades of historic underinvestment in the International District," including by providing wraparound services for the homeless, hundreds of new housing units, more crime fighting technology and targeted crime operations, as well as new streetlights and pedestrian safety improvements.
"What is critical for the area now is stopping [President Donald] Trump's cuts to crime prevention, housing, and social services, and we will continue to fight for the resources needed to get people help and clean up criminal activity," Kunkel said.
Johnson branded New Mexico's so-called War Zone "the most frightful neighborhood in America."
"This is super bad," he says at one point in the video. "I don't think I've seen this bad since Austin, Texas, but this feel sketchier and more widespread."
Senate President Pro Tempore Mimi Stewart, an Albuquerque Democrat whose district includes the neighborhood, said Johnson is "making a lot of assumptions" that aren't based on fact.
"The implication is, 'Oh, this is a horrible place with murder and mayhem and crime,' and what you see is people milling about on the street in the middle of the night," she said.
"Yes, we have crime in this area. Yes, we have a homeless population issue. But it's not like they're all killing each other and creating all this crime," she said. "They are homeless, and they are parked near or by Central [Avenue] in part because that's where there are businesses, where they can buy food and water. So yeah, it's an issue, and we're working on it."
But Sen. Nicole Tobiassen, an Albuquerque Republican, said the video reflects reality based on her firsthand experience.
"There was someone that we knew that got an apartment a few years ago in that district, and we went to help them move," she recalled. "When we got there, I was like, 'What?' I was petrified. I'm like, 'I can't believe that you're going to live here.' There were, in the middle of the day, drugged-out people walking in the middle of the street, like where cars should be, walking in the middle of the street with shopping carts. There were people urinating and defecating in the street. That was a few years ago, and it's worse now."
The YouTube video shows homeless encampments, graffiti-covered walls, garbage in the streets and people milling about. At one point in the video, Johnson records a shirtless and incoherent man moaning and groaning on his hands and knees on a sidewalk.
"This guy is just totally wigging out on the side of the road," he says in the video. "That was about the most tragic thing I think I have seen up close, and I've seen a lot."
Johnson later remarks Albuquerque is at the "center for the drug trade" because it's where Interstates 25 and 40 intersect.
"That's part of the problem," he says. "They come here and cut the drug[s], split it up, bag it up and then distribute it off to the rest of the country."
Stewart noted the Legislature passed a bill to create a tax increment development district designed to support the redevelopment of the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque and inject the surrounding areas, particularly the International District, with an economic jolt of energy.
"The master plan is still in the works," she said. "It's still out with [a request for proposals], so we don't know what the options will be yet. But we have a group of primarily elected officials from this area that are tasked with trying to change the trajectory of this part of the city."
When Stewart presented Senate Bill 481 on the Senate floor, she said the measure would provide an opportunity for the state to undertake a "Marshall Plan" to reinvigorate and save the neighborhoods around the state-owned and operated fairgrounds.
"That area is now the state epicenter for crime, pedestrian fatalities, cartel activity, human trafficking, drugs, crime, tent cities," she told her colleagues. "It's gotten quite bad."
Stewart also pitched the measure as an effort to address the "horrific challenges" in the middle of Albuquerque.
"It's all there in my district," she said. "It's very embarrassing."
At the same meeting, Tobiassen said she only visits the area while accompanied by her husband or one of her two sons, who she said look like linebackers.
"It's hell on earth there," she said on the Senate floor.
In Thursday's interview, Stewart touted positive developments of the district, from a "phenomenal food program" run out of a local elementary school to active community involvement to try to improve living conditions.
Stewart said she lives right outside the boundaries of the International District and drives through it regularly.
"I am not afraid to walk through it and meet my community members there, so I do think it's getting a bad rap," she said. "There definitely are issues we are all working on, but you know, in a way, it's no worse than any other area of Albuquerque."
Tobiassen said she applauded Stewart for bringing forward "a potentially viable option" to revitalize the area. She said the neighborhood is ultimately under the jurisdiction of Keller, a Democrat.
"The fact that it's just allowed to continue is a tragedy," she said.
Stewart pushed back on some of the scenes in the video, including what appears to be a man holding a machete to the neck of another person on the ground.
"Are there issues? Yes. Are there issues all over Albuquerque? Yes," she said. "You can go anywhere in Albuquerque and find homeless. Everybody picks on us, and we resent it."