Oso planning to go pro
Only 34 people shot last night in Chicago.
2’hours from downtown to western burbs on Friday. Just brutal.
We moved from Chicago to Charlotte 8 years ago this month.We miss a lot of things about Chicago, mostly:1. Our son, who still lives on the North Side and got married a few months back to a great young lady.2. Our friends. You live somewhere for 16 years, you develop many close friendships. I had a regular golf group, a regular poker group, and my wife and I had many couples friends.3. The walkability. I used to walk pretty much everywhere, including to work a lot of the time. My wife walked to work every day. Where we couldn't walk, we often took the el or bus. It was an easy town to get around without ever turning the key in our car, which we sometimes left parked for weeks without ever moving it.4. The vitality. I used to love taking a walk in Lincoln Park or just around our neighborhood. People everywhere, at all times of day. I always felt Chicago was "alive."5. The eats. Charlotte has improved but it is still not close.6. The sports scene and music scene.7. Proximity to MU. I didn't have season tickets because I couldn't go to enough games to justify it, but I could make the relatively easy drive to Milwaukee for any game I wanted to attend.There are a few things I definitely do not miss: the weather, the dirty politics, the cost of living, etc. ... but No. 1 definitely was the traffic.I HATED driving in Chicago. HATED IT! When we go back to visit our son and I'm driving around town, I can feel my blood pressure rise. And unlike a lot of big cities, the traffic is bad most hours of most days no matter which direction one travels. When folks would visit us, they couldn't get over how bad the "reverse commute" was: "It's 4 o'clock and I'm trying to drive into the city. It shouldn't be this bad!"There is rush-hour traffic in Charlotte, to be sure. It is one of America's fastest-growing cities and they have not figured out how to best move people. There is little public transit. But I laugh when I hear people complain about their 15-mile, 30-minute commute into downtown. That same trip in Chicago would take an hour - or maybe twice that some days.
Just built a brand new house in Chicago and wouldn't look back. Unless I'm moving to Denver or Portland I wouldn't want to go anywhere else.
Down 1 w 5 seconds left. Doable.
Chicago correctly gets kicked in the teeth about its many problems. So let's take a moment and note some the postive things that are happening.‘War-Torn’ Chicago Is More Popular With Tourists Than EverThe Windy City, poster child for urban violence, has welcomed a record number of visitors in the last two years.https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-22/chicago-is-more-popular-with-tourists-than-everChicago, described by President Trump and others as a hellish, dystopian crime scene akin to a “war-torn nation” and “worse than Afghanistan” is about to shatter all of its tourism records, including the one it set last year.An abundance of creative energy is driving this renaissance: The growing skyline is getting filled with increasingly stylish hotels, and a new Riverwalk that resembles New York’s High Line is daring locals to stay outside well past summer’s end. Its long-famous museums are gaining scrappy rivals, and two gleaming new theaters are reminding Americans of the city’s prowess on-stage. Add in the food scene—Bon Appetit named Chicago the best restaurant city of the year—and the only art-and-architecture biennial in the United States, which kicked off its second iteration last week, and it’s easy to forget that this burgeoning hub of 2.7 million is also making headlines for its homicide rates.
What I do find curious is why Chicago hasn't experienced the rapid and extreme gentrification that the outer boroughs of NYC has over the last 20 years. There are still small pockets of dangerous areas but in general there aren't many unsafe areas of Brooklyn or Queens anymore. The Bronx is basically the last frontier and although some say it will never happen, it's already starting to there as well.Why hasn't this occurred in Chicago?
TAMUI do know, Newsie is right on you knowing ball.
And just this morning another negative story.....https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/05/us/chicago-weekend-shootings/index.htmlIt's fantastic but hardly surprising that Tourism in Chicago is thriving. It's a wonderful city, particularly in the summer time, and sad though it may be to say, as long as the mayhem continues to be confined to the far south and west sides, I don't see that changing anytime soon due to the vastness of the city and the fact that tourists don't go these areas.What I do find curious is why Chicago hasn't experienced the rapid and extreme gentrification that the outer boroughs of NYC has over the last 20 years. There are still small pockets of dangerous areas but in general there aren't many unsafe areas of Brooklyn or Queens anymore. The Bronx is basically the last frontier and although some say it will never happen, it's already starting to there as well.Why hasn't this occurred in Chicago?
See Logan Square, Wicker Park, East Humboldt Park, South Loop and Pilsen. All have dramatically changed over the past 20yrs. Notice outside of the south loop every other neighborhood has been traditionally Hispanic before gentrification. So that's different than say NYC
Interesting Thanks. Porky is from and currently lives in NYC so not as familiar with Chicago although has spent plently of time there visiting alum friends over the years, some of whom have lived in these areas you mention so I guess what I meant was yes change has occurred there, but generally in neighborhoods much closer to downtown. Does anyone see this extending to the far south sides areas like Englewood, Back of the Yards, Austin, etc. There are areas of Brooklyn that 20 years ago you couldn't walk 10 feet without seeing syringes that have completely transformed, and what's interesting is that these aren't just former industrial areas right over the river from Manhattan where you would expect that, but areas very far out that are over an hour subway ride to midtown Manhattan.I would add that it would be great if this gentrification can actually benefit the existing population and doesn't cause massive displacement as it has in NYC. That's been a major downside, here but I suspect this might be easier to accomplish there. I know the former President Obama is working on some projects realted to this but there has been backlash apparently which doesn't make much sense assuming his intention isn't just to improve the place for college educated folks to patronize artisanal mayonnaise joints and their ilk. SNL even addressed this in a sketch with Kevin Hart. The neighborhood they're referring to in this sketch has completely transformed.....much more so when this sketch first came out a few years ago.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAsBta25OGQ
And just this morning another negative story.....es to be confined to the far south and west sides, I don't see that changing anytime soon due to the vastness of the city and the fact that tourists don't go these areas.What I do find curious is why Chicago hasn't experienced the rapid and extreme gentrification that the outer boroughs of NYC has over the last 20 years. There are still small pockets of dangerous areas but in general, there aren't many unsafe areas of Brooklyn or Queens anymore. The Bronx is basically the last frontier and although some say it will never happen, it's already starting to there as well.Why hasn't this occurred in Chicago?
I would add that it would be great if this gentrification can actually benefit the existing population and doesn't cause massive displacement as it has in NYC.
Purely a guess as I am not too familiar with Chicago, Chicago, and the metropolitan area is far more amenable to sprawl and is a more car friendly city than NYC. NYC regentrification is also driven by housing costs. Groups of people couldn't afford to live in Manhattan anymore, so they went to Brooklyn. Now they cannot afford Brooklyn so Queens is the next frontier for affordable housing and it is often clustered around transit stops. The midwestern mindset is that people want more room, they want a yard, they don't care about driving to work. I would venture that is the difference.
You have a much dicier potential experience going from the highway at North Ave to Lakefront Brewery than you would going into Chicago.
Brother Pork, it's possible that the gentrification could continue southward to the city line. As someone else pointed out, President Obama's library will be along the south shore near the University of Chicago. There is a large patch of lakefront real estate formerly the home of US Steel's South Works plant that mostly is unoccupied. It's partially redeveloped and is waiting for the right circumstance, meaning, the right payoff. Mass Transit and highway lines from much of the South Side to the Loop and Near North Side are outstanding. Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens (the beehive public housing projects that used to be along the Dan Ryan) are gone. As a consequence, neighborhoods like Bronzeville, east of the DRE, are coming to life again.There's also the Pullman neighborhood, which is an urban national park on the south side. The buildings date to more than 100 years ago when the Pullman Company built sleeping cars on the south side. George Pullman built a wide range of housing near his plant so his workers could live close to his plant and rent from the company. Only recently has Pullman begun to be rediscovered. The neighborhoods around Pullman are, charitably, somewhat rough. There are significant cultural institutions along the South Side, including the University of Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology and the Chicago White Sox, as well as the Museum Campus and even McCormick Place/Soldier Field that can be a huge driver of change.Keep in mind that in the early 1990s, the area just south of the University of Illinois at Chicago was skid row and generally a serious threat to life and limb to traverse without an armored personnel carrier. Now, the area is a growing and attractive community. Bridgeport, home to the Irish Political Mafia that ruled Chicago forever, has found itself with $750,000+ houses. Many of the close-in communities that have exceptional links to the city have started to go upscale.Brother Pork, there are two huge issues if the gentrification is to continue southward. First, the political will at city hall has to be there. The Rahmfather and his team have to push it and want it. Candidly, that desire is really not there outside the core center city. Since Richard I (1955-1976), the city has focused on the downtown and the buffer communities and not really pushed south. That kinda changed with R2D2 but nobody wants to challenge the African American power base on the south side. Especially with an election next March and the Rahmfather's chances in doubt due to the cover-up of an awful police murder video.Secondly, the local alderman have to want it as well and I guarantee you, they do not. Many of these aldermen are well entrenched in their positions, have strong community support and know that if the community's demographics change, so too does their chance of automatically being re-elected. These are the descendents of the people who opposed teardown of Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens on grounds it would dilute their political base.Everything in Chicago is highly political and nothing gets done without aldermanic blessing. This city is violently corrupt and hides its venality behind a facade of progressiveness.As Mike Royko once wrote, the motto of Chicago needs to change from Urbs in Hotro ("City in a Garden") to Ubi Est Mia ("Where's Mine").