I grew up in the rural south in the 1960s/1970. If you had approached me to define a no-go area....I mostly would have responded....'such-and-such area near the creek, where copperheads roam'.
The first time I ever heard the no-go chatter? Around 1980....when 'Sarge' wanted us to know a certain bar or two in the Tacoma area were on the forbidden-list of the base.
In the 1990s, I was sent to a training school in Kansas City, and the hotel folks gave me a nice map of the region. I would be there for two weeks, and wanted some restaurant ideas. The kind lady at the desk circled five or six places for great food....then took the red marker to indicate three regions to avoid. Yes, she used the term 'no-go'.
I asked what the issue was, and the response....'drugs, crime, assault, etc'.
By the mid-1990s, I came to realize in the Frankfurt area of Germany....an area or two had become a no-go zone.....mostly over hard drugs.
Over the next two decades, I came to realize the same label being applied to Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Prague, etc.
When you travel these days....people use the term a good bit.
When I go back to Alabama? Well....yeah, the term has started to pop-up occasionally. Just about the entire region around Birmingham (except the airport) is a no-go area now.
All of this happening in one single generation.....that's the hard part to accept.
What happens over the next twenty years? That's the thing I tend to ponder upon. To suggest I need to carry a pistol when I go to get an ice cream, or pick up a case of beer? How far will this go?
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