I’ve lived in Hyde Park and Uptown, and have had unpleasant experiences in both areas, but both incidents involved me being somewhat careless. It really is true that it varies wildly from block to block. In Uptown there were several shootings just a few streets down in the course of the summer but my block was always pretty quiet.
Oh God yes, Lem’s! I’ve never eaten there (can you believe it?), but in high school I passed that place practically everyday on the way home. It smells sooooo good. Seriously, I’d pay for the scent alone.
Yep! Lem’s is one of 'em. Great ribs, and they have a very interesting sauce that has a strong clove note to it. I model my own sauces after Lem’s sauce: tart, with a little bit of sweetness, and the spice of cloves and/or allspice. Also, Barbara Ann’s and Uncle John’s (the pitmaster from Barbara Ann’s opened up a place on 69th about two years ago.) Uncle John’s is clearly my favorite barbecue in Chicago.
Yeah, those wimpy New York mobsters act like it’s a big deal when somebody sleeps with the fishes.
East Side, Chicago. It’s just north of Hegewisch, east of South Dearing.
On the contrary, my neighborhood The new Eastside is decidedly above water
I grew up a south sider. We were always warned not to go Englewood/Hyde Park/Roseland as my parents were both denizens of those areas the year it “turned” (67-68, years of intense civil unrest, I might add) into a violent place, which it is to this day, but not wrong-turn-movie violent. You shouldn’t drive through there if you’re not familiar with the place and you should definately not walk around if you’re not street smart, but same goes for Uptown and the west side, north of the medical corridor.
Other posters are right about the block-by-block nature of it all though, because taking Halsted St. the entire way from the south 'burbs will guide you through some pretty rough areas, but those areas will be punctuated by the stretches of new malls/stores and city buildings, few blocks down the road it gets ghetto again.
Like any big city, it requires you to pay attention.
Nah. I preferred the Mighty Mighty West Side when I lived in ChiTown. Magic Sam & Otis Rush RULED !!!
Badder then an old king kong, meaner then a junkyard dog,
Wherever I happen to be is the baddest part of town at that time.
I have to wonder if the “patchwork neighborhoods” is a Mid-West thing, or just something that happens everywhere but visitors don’t pay attention.
Amusingly I lived in/near Logan Square while I was living there. My neighbors were friendly, my car was left alone, I walked everywhere and worked nights. I was outside waiting at 10 pm for the bus most nights and no one ever bothered me.
Sure the buildings looked a little run-down, and there were lots of bars on doors and windows (signs both of a sketchy neighborhood) but the people around didn’t act afraid to walk around and talk to people they didn’t know. Children played in the parks and sidewalks openly, even without roving in tight groups.
The most trouble I got were from other Chicagoans who balked at my living location and made jokes about sidelines in car-jacking.
There were, however, two memorable incidents that were, suffice to say, a bit unusual.
Once we had a near riot in the street which left the phone banks to the police department on fast busy. When I took a surreptitious look through a window, I didn’t recognize a single person in the mob. I found out later it was a student protest of some sort, and that not a single person who was in it was local.
So I guess we had to borrow our trouble. 
The second event was a bit more telling. I was waiting for the bus one night, and the bus was running late. I checked my cel-phone for the time, and looked up and discovered a police car pulling up to me. They offered me a ride to the train station. I thought about saying no, but they were… persuasive. I go there without incident, and they were careful to ask when I’d be back. They seemed visibly relieved that I was going to work and would be away for the whole night.
However, I find that there are much sketchier neighborhoods in Gary than there are in Chicago. I sometimes tour bad neighborhoods recreationally.
It’s a habit I picked up while growing up near Detroit.
The South side actually looks perky in comparison… and things seem to be improving there even despite the economic down-turn. That’s got to mean something.
I grew up there. It’s not as bad as it’s made out to be.
I just have to echo the experiences in everyone else in the thread, natch–it really does depend on which block you’re on. For example, from 79th on south, you’re not… standard disclaimers apply… likely to run into much danger, as long as you’re not ON 79th itself and near the major streets. It gets dicey again once you get to the Hundreds. In general, once you start heading toward the SW side and Ford City things get a bit more … shall we say… upscale. But Chatham is nice, and that’s on the east side of state.
Generally, it’s between the forties and sixties where you’re likely to be eaten by a grue.
But that’s way oversimplified. Bottom line is… the south side is not a patch on the west side when it comes to sheer danger. Sarahfeena… you’re one brave woman.
Thank, but STUPID might be a better characterization of me than brave! The truth is, I had driven pretty much all over the south side, so I kind of assumed I’d seen the worst of the city.
Daddy was a cop On the East Side of Chicago Back in the USA Back in the bad old days…
Oh no, you just gave me a science fiction idea…
Not being a Chicagoan myself (I’ve been to that fair city all of once, but to my disappointment it appears to be shut on Sundays) I can advise that patchwork neighborhoods are part of Texas big-city life. I am vaguely aware of them in Houston but I’m keenly aware of them in Austin – some parts of East Austin are beautiful areas with happy, usually lower-income families and bohemian folks and artists and the like, but crossing the street is definitely not recommended. There was sadly a bit of creep of crime that ended up being one of the factors pushing us out of the neighborhood.
I think it’s largely a geographical function. I live in Chicago now but grew up in Pittsburgh, and the two cities actually had pretty similar Public Housing Experiments (ie disasters) in the mid-late 20th Century. The difference? In Pittsburgh, you could plop all the poor people down on the other side of a hill, or in a valley, or elsewhere out of sight, out of mind, where everybody could pretend they were being “rehabilitated” by their situation (because of course that was the goal all along, ha ha ha).
In Chicago, where the tallest hill is a speedbump, you don’t quite have that option. So, it’s much harder to get an “effective” separation, and the gridlines of the city become the only real dividing lines. Once development crews come in, you wind up with kind of a hopscotch game of crime rates, where Cabrini Green faces fancy-schmancy townhouses.
I’ve found it very interesting that most “bad” neighborhoods (on the North side, especially), tend to follow a similar pattern: rough neighborhood, then the gays move in, then the hipsters move in, then the hipsters start families, then the other families move in. It’s happening sporadically through Uptown now (Andersonville is probably the most further along the spectrum right now; I’d say it’s about ten years post-hipster now).
There ain’t nothin good or worth saving north of Route 80 or East of Route 45.
Cook County needs to be a State of it’s own, So they don’t feel the need to cram there goofy gun control laws down our down state throats.
First they pass laws that give our rights of self defense to the criminals, Then since that doesn’t work they think they can fix it by stripping us of more of our Constitutional rights.
They need to check their facts and find out when & where gun control has been successful in reducing crime & conversely when and where empowering the citizens & protecting their civil rights has resulted in less crime.
When will the NAACP & the UCLA figure out that gun control is discriminatory since it is most frequently implemented in areas with a high minority population?
Also downstaters also do not feel a need to pay for northern folks public transportation. It seems that was a big issue in the last budget negotiations.
Users do not pay their fair share. We don’t have a problem supporting public transportation as long as that money is spent wisely and universally throughout the sate. Maybe a real high speed train syatem linking all of the major cities.
It costs people .50 per mile to drive a vehicle. It should cost public transpertation users at least .30 per mile. Maybe they should give people a card and they can pay by miles logged? The argument that people will stop using public transportation if the rates are raised is rediculous. LIke they are really going to save a lot after they get there & pay a minimum of $20 to park.
Join me in doing your best to boycot Cook County And boycot any purchases from companies headquartered in Cook County, Illinois.
Uh…huh.
Right…
So, uh, Jester… how 'bout them Bears, huh?
(I got nothin’.)
I like that UCLA part, That was supposed to be ACLU but UCLA makes a better post. Maybe it should have been YMCA? I can’t figure out how to edit a post here so there you have it.
True Story - I went to jail with Whynott oncet upon a time. The cops got pissed at good ole Whynotte. Every time they asked him his name he would say Why not? Cop said
’ I 'm not Fxxxxxn with you I want to know your name right now. He said Why not? There were several of us laughing at the cop who was getting madder and madder. Mr. Whynotte Didn’t have his billfold cuz he wasn’t driving and couldn’t produce any identification. When the cop would look at us and ask his name & we would say Why not? also. It was in the olden times when they didn’t even make you empty your pockets. We actually followed the cop to the jail in a separate vehicle while drinking beer and throwing the empties out the back window.