I have a friend on the east coast who is a Paul McCartney fanatic. I noticed he has playing near her and so I forwarded her a link. She wrote back:
“Yes, I saw the news about the Get Back Tour. Macca will be in Chicago for 2 nights. However, I would not go to Chicago even if I had FREE tickets. The city is completely out of control. The police are attacked. Business are constantly being looted, and many have moved out. The crime, robberies, teen takeovers, car jackings, random drive by shootings (“point and pop”) gang initiation is …well, it is what it is. The mayor doesn’t care.
Chicago is a sanctuary city and it’s being abandoned. Walmart is gone. 6 of 10 McDonald’s in the downtown business district have closed are due to close this month.
Even the Magnificent Mile on North Michigan Avenue is 75% vacant. They can’t even rent upper level office space.”
My questions are, is Chicago out of control? And I googled it, apparently it is a sanctuary city - but is that a bad thing?
I haven’t about that stuff so her response kind of shocked me.
No, Chicago is not “out of control” by any definition such as your friend claims. Whatever retail issues there may be are unrelated to safety. Ask her for reliable cites. No negative implications - WRT safety at least - related to its status as a sanctuary city.
She is WAY off base. I suspect getting her news from Fox and similar sources.
Born and raised in Chicago. Now live just west of the city. Was downtown most of the day Sunday.
Looking at Google Maps, it looks like there are a few Walmarts in Chicago. I’m not sure why that was some kind of measure of a city, but there you are. It’s not surprising that there aren’t too many Walmarts in a crowded, expensive city like Chicago.
I would agree that the number of McDonald’s in a city can be correlated to how much of a shithole it is, but maybe not in the same direction as your friend would measure it.
Her political bias is that she listens to too much right-wing news sources, because they are the ones screaming about cities all the time, especially cities in blue states. Sorry for the non-FQ answer.
FQ answer – Chicago is number 92 in terms of violent crime. Cite here, sort by violent crime:
Non-FQ again – maybe ask if she would be afraid to go to Phoenix or Salt Lake City.
Reported crime in Chicago has been on an upswing since being somewhat depressed during COVID but except for carjackings and vehicle theft is but is not generally higher than historical trends (although reported assaults are somewhat up). However, arrests and convictions are down which can be somewhat attributed to restrictions on policing following 2020. (Law enforcement in Chicago has been noted for excessive violence, abuse, and corruption which is a long-standing problem.) It should be noted that there is always a discrepancy between reported and actual crime rates (not withstanding intentional ‘juking’ of crime stats by law enforcement) as many people don’t report property crimes or minor assaults (and sometimes major assaults like rape) because they are as concerned about the response from law enforcement as they are from criminals, especially if they have outstanding warrants for minor crimes.
While crime is a problem in Chicago, plenty of people live in the city without constant fear of being raped, shot, or stabbed in the course of daily activities in most areas. However, the delineation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ neighborhoods in Chicago is often not clear to people who don’t live around those neighborhoods and it is easy to find yourself in a higher crime area by just walking a few blocks. None of this has anything to do with being a ‘sanctuary city’; aside from domestic violence, crime rates among undocumented immigrants are lower than the population at large. The ‘sanctuary’ aspect actually facilitates law enforcement and compliance with court orders as undocumented immigrants are more likely to report crimes without fear of being informed upon or handed over to immigration authorities to be deported.
As a business strategy, Walmart traditionally opened stores in suburbs and smaller towns that were underserved by high volume, low cost retailers serving lower and middle class families. While they’ve moved into urban areas in the last couple of decades, especially with their low cost grocery business, these are often not high yielding and have larger loss rates with theft and vandalism, which, frankly, comes with operating in any city. In general, retail and grocery stores have been abandoning higher crime areas which just exacerbates the blight and leaves ‘food deserts’, making these areas even less desirable. As a correlate to non-property crime I don’t think the density of Walmarts is a very good metric, as a corporation like Walmart makes store decisions on the basis of multiple issues affecting profit/loss ratios and just the difficulty of staffing and maintaining retail stores.
I have heard several mildly right leaning folks announce some real whoppers about various American cities in the last month or two.
Apparently they’re being fed a steady diet of misinformation that the big cities are overrun by roving gangs of baddies, mostly resemble Gaza in terms of the level of destruction, and need to be occupied by an army that will go door to door capturing anyone who’s not righteous (white, cis het male natural born 2nd generation citizen).
My mother -in-law freaked out when we told her we were going to NYC and bringing some of our children and a grandchild with us. We didn’t understand why at first, but it turns out she has been hearing a constant stream of lies about the dangers of the city. [We had a great time, and never once felt unsafe, even on the subway]
Seattle too, of course. Was there both Monday and Tuesday this week. Everything is fine.
The only thing that makes me feel unsafe in NYC vis a vis other cities is the constant scaffolding everywhere. When you’re walking through one of them on the sidewalk it feels like you’re going through a dangerous construction zone. In addition to the primary dangers of falling crap and machinery, it also feels like the sidewalk gets too cramped and that I could run into or trip the scaffolding and its paraphernalia, not to mention the chance that this is actually an active construction zone, which would add to the danger and crampedness. Plus it looks like crap.
Even lil’ ol Cleveland gets the same treatment from the suburbanites. My idiot ex-cop friend was taking his grandson to an NBA game and was not too happy about having to go into a “two gun situation.”
Good friends of mine have both their kids (in their 20s) living in Chicago for a couple+ years now and neither of them has been shot or mugged or deported, nor have they taken part in the looting of some businesses. Go figure. And they are always going on about how great the city is for young people, which I have no reason to doubt. They were talking about buying a place there so they can live part of the year near their kids. Sounds like an awful idea, right?/s
I have two grandchildren who went to college in or near Chicago and then settled there. Neither of them has said a word about violence. They each live in the city near the Loop.
Chicago’s had the highest number of murders in the US for a while now, but that’s mostly because it’s the 3rd largest city. Going by murder rate I think it peaked at like ~11th. However, Chicago codes as very Democratic. If you think about Chicago you think dem machine politics, Daley, Obama, etc. Which makes it a propaganda target. You do not hear about New Orleans or Memphis or Jacksonville or Little Rock because there’s not propaganda value in them.
I visited Chicago for a few days last summer. I was a woman traveling alone, and I stayed in a hostel near Wrigley Stadium. It was delightful. Your friend is missing out on a fun time due to her fears.
