What does Malcolm love about Roxbury, Boston in the book, X: A Novel?

Malcolm is immediately impressed with Roxbury; the hipsters and their hustles, like Three Card Monty and the numbers game, and the jazz played at the Roseland Ballroom where he is hired to shine shoes. To Malcolm, Roxbury is the opposite of Sugar Hill, not "a buttoned-up polite sort of place...It's tough and energetic and makes my senses come alive," (86) he says. If Sugar Hill is a symbol of the phony respectability Malcolm does not pine for, Roxbury is a symbol of the outsider, criminal underworld Malcolm longs to join.