Need answer fast. Dude named Leroy Brown wants to shoot some pool…
Sometimes, depending on who you ask. Chicago is one of those “good block, bad block” type of towns. We have beautiful new townhomes being built across the street from the last remaining unit of the infamous Cabrini Green housing project, and neighborhoods like Wicker Park, which were truly dangerous places to be 20 years ago are now hubs of housing and hipster bars and eateries. There’s not really a good side or a bad side though the north side tends to be the safest if you discount rowdy Cubs fans peeing in lawns after night games.
Would it help if I brought my own two piece custom made cue?
Until you get to Uptown (crazy homeless people) or Rogers Park (crazy drunk people). But, again, block by block. I looked up the stats on my block (in West Ridge, the part of the city everyone thinks is Rogers Park, but isn’t), and there’s been something like 2 arrests for violent crimes here in 7 years. The next block north has more than a dozen in one year. I warn my guests to park south of the street in question. You wouldn’t think that a minor side street would be that much of a barrier to crime, but apparently it is.
I was just going to add Uptown, but I see my work has alredy been done for me.
I lived on the south side for a while. Then I lived up near Uptown for a while. Then I moved to the west suburbs. Driving from my suburb to the Loop by using a regular street instead of the expressway is the scariest thing I have ever done in the city.
Ha! When we were kids and someone in our group had just gotten the first drivers license someone told us that the Ogden avenue that ran right by our house in Naperville went all the way into the city. Of course we had to check that out. Baaaaad idea. I believe at one point Ogden avenue actually passes through one of the upper circles of hell on it’s way into the city.
Well, they were right, it DOES go right into the city! Right into the part of the city where you are most likely to get killed by stray gunfire!
I think we drove in on Lake Street. Never will I do that again. Ever. And I have driven around in some pretty crappy parts of town.
That’s not all he wants to shoot. Dude’s got a .32 gun in his pocket. Word on the street is he also carries a razor in his shoe.
So how deserved is Chicago of its famed mean streets? Who peoples these mean streets? Why is it dangerous to drive through, I may not be welcome by the locals but is it suicide? However my impression is that it is very segregated in Cook County, its villages and suburbs too. Pretty strong racist language actually from people I visited in the south suburbs. Though they also had strong words for their newly arrived Polish neighbors, but strangely all about hanging with the upscale Indian’s ntl still in disparaging tones behind their backs.
And the waitstaff at a few downtown bars, mean bordering on surly seemed to be in, I was one tourist who didn’t get it?! Am. I. talking. too. slow.
FIB’s all of ya! 
Eh, it’s bad, but it’s not that bad. I routinely drive through Englewood and its environs and, while I might not recommend somebody not familiar with the area to do so, it’s rather unlikely anything will happen to you, especially if you’re in a car. Hell, my parents used to take 55th street down from Pulaski to the Dan Ryan all the time when we went to Indiana or Michigan (why they didn’t just hop on the Stevenson, I don’t know), and that passes through some of the nastier areas of the city.
Ogden isn’t that bad either, although I may say that the West Side of Chicago can get as dicey, if not dicier, than Englewood. As long as you’re on a main artery driving through the neighborhood, the likelihood of anything happening to you is very, very slim. I’ve walked through Englewood and Austin as well, without incident, although perhaps I would be cautious about doing that at night.
Heh. I live on the South Side (SOUTH SIIIIEEEDDDDEEE!!) and yeah, it’s pretty ghetto. Ghetto enough that when I was in college and I told people who don’t even live in the country where I was from, they were all, “Damn, that’s ghetto. So where do you keep your piece?”
Seriously though, it depends on the area, and conditions can vary block to block. Personally, I think the West Side (e.g. those long scenic drives along Lake Street) is much worse than the South Side.
But if you want true danger, you can’t beat the East Side. It’s completely underwater.
Both of which seem reasonable precautions. I heard the guy was an adulterer…
Well, I go to school in Uptown. It’s not at all unusual to have to take a detour around a few cop cars with lights on and an ambulance or two. I’ve heard gunshots (not movie ones, real ones). There was a dead body found in our school’s basement last winter - scuttlebutt was it was a shooting, but I never bothered looking it up to see the truth. A student was caught in what was believed to be gang crossfire this May and died.
Uptown not only has sincerely crushing poverty and gang activity going for it, but several Community Centers and Group Homes in the area which provide housing and/or services for the mentally ill, the homeless and the HIV/AIDS communities. The alderman there is really into serving those communities and so encourages the creation of these services in the area, which is GREAT…except that, of course, it means you have a lot of unbalanced, poor and desperate people wandering around getting into each other’s space. And some of them have guns or knives.
What do I do? I go to class, I go home. I walk in groups and in daylight whenever possible. I might go to the Jimmy John’s which is between the front door of the school and where I park my car, and once every two weeks, I go down a block to the sketchtastic nail salon on the other side of the tracks (only literally “the other side of the tracks”; same neighborhood, same problems), but I drive the block and repark, because going into or coming out of that salon, I get approached for money or drugs at least three times in the 15 second walk.
Keep your head down, keep walking, and always look like you have somewhere to be and people who are expecting you. If you’re approached and you get a skeevy vibe, act crazy first and you’ll often scare them away. (Not always. Once when I started quoting *Hamlet *really loudly, the crazy person joined in. That actually ended up being kind of fun.)
You just learn to live with it, I guess. We all become a little numb to the dangers we live with everyday. I can’t imagine raising children on a farm, where they could fall off lofts or break a bone miles away where I wouldn’t see and there’s all that dangerous heavy machinery with sharp metal bits lying around and people actually let 8 year olds drive tractors?!
There was a thread just a little while ago about “do you make eye contact with people” and I mentioned in there that keeping your hard crazy eye stare on people in the city will often cause them to leave you alone, because the only people who make solid staring eye contact are cops and crazy people, and street folk don’t want to mess with either.
That Hamlet bit is priceless though. A girlfriend and I were once approached by a very drunk and quite disturbed guy one evening while walking through the city who insisted, strongly, that we were in fact Captain and Tennille and he was mad because we hadn’t been performing lately. All attempts at dodging him weren’t going anywhere and he was becoming pretty agitated at us, so not knowing what else to do I broke into “Love Will Keep Us Together”, at least what I knew of it. He was delighted and let us go with a warning to be careful because there were a lot of bad people out on the streets. The best part is that neither I nor my girlfriend at the time could have passed for Captain or Tennille in even the slightest way.
Anyone who’s spent time in the city has stories like that in some way though, and not all of them are as light hearted. I’ve had knives pulled on me, and have chased a rip off artist for blocks before coming to my senses and realizing that I didn’t want to really follow the guy wherever he was going.
When I lived in Hyde Park, I worked down in the south suburbs, so I would take 55th street to the Dan Ryan every day. When the older ladies I worked with heard that, they almost had the vapors…but it really wasn’t that bad. I used to take 55th out to Midway, as well. I can understand how they felt, though…some of them were from that neighborhood (out on 55th past the Dan Ryan), and the changes there were hard for them.
Yeah, like I said, Lake Street is the worst I’ve seen. Probably the only place I’ve been in the city where I felt like people would look at me and wonder what the hell I was doing there.
And this is the town of Al Capone, the St Valentine’s Day Massacre, Dillinger gunned down leaving the Biograph, and the Outfit?
Sheesh, don’t you Chicagoans believe in keeping the old traditions alive? 
BTW I read that they’ve transformed the Biograph and surrounding area into looking exactly as it did in the 30s for the upcoming movie with Johnny Depp as Dillinger. Any Chicagoan Doper been down to take a look?
Some people have weird perceptions of the city. When I was dating an au pair in college, her (North Side) host parents quizzed me incessantly about the (South Side) neighborhood I was taking her to. They were convinced that the Lindy/Gerties in McKinley Park (Archer and Western) was in a dangerous neighborhood of some sort. Funny, as the only place I’ve ever had my car’s side window smashed out and shit stolen from it was in their neighborhood (Logan Square). The other time I had a car radio stolen (which, oddly enough was only four days before the Logan Square incident) was in Evanston, although there was no window damage, as I forgot to lock the car door.
That said, my current SO is adventurous enough that she’ll go with me to areas like 76th and Cottage Grove, 69th and King, and 75th and King, for my late-night ribs fix. God bless her.
Oooo…the Number Streets! Sounds like she’s a keeper! 