CHICAGO—Highlighting increasingly dangerous conditions within the city, a new study published Monday by Northwestern University’s Department of Environmental Studies revealed that approximately 75 percent of the air in Chicago is now composed of bullets. “Far exceeding the levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and even oxygen, bullets now constitute three-fourths of Chicago’s air supply,” said atmospheric scientist and study coauthor John Molina, stressing that the dense and widespread deposits of jacketed lead and copper in the air pose severe and potentially fatal health risks to all Chicago residents. “According to our measurements, the proportion of bullets in Chicago’s overall air composition is significantly higher than that of other cities with comparable sizes and population densities. Frankly, if this trend continues—and there is unfortunately little evidence suggesting otherwise—living safely within the confines of Chicago will be almost impossible.” Molina went on to suggest that Chicago’s 2.7 million residents stay indoors whenever possible in order to minimize their exposure.
Hmmm, an onion article, must be Friday. Chicago has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, and dozens of people are murdered by marauding savage yuffs every week. Makes sense. Get out of the cities while you still can…..
I hope those savages burn that Damn place to the ground. They are reaping what they have sowed and I refuse to feel sorry for them.
Gee, bb, just think of how helpful you and your one bullet could be in helping clean up crime in Chee-Cah-Go. You should move there..serve and protect the shit out of them.
Kill Bill ,my sympathy level is very low this morning. Long night of drinking.In other words my head hurts.
The problem is you have too much blood in your alcohol system. You know what to do. =)
The north side of Chicago is having no problems, except in one certain nasty little pocket.
If you lopped off the south end and west side of the city, which contain perhaps 30% of our population at the most, the crime rate would drop by 90% and it would be one of the safest cities in the country.
We can thank WW2 with its migration of millions of migrant farm workers from rural America, to the big cities of the north to work in munitions plants in WW2, for the problems that plague these cities to this day. So that manufacturers could make money, our cities were trashed, and overburdened with millions of people who were unable to adapt to urban life, whose descendents remain mired in our ghettos. These people were OK until the war jobs disappeared in the late 50s ,leaving millions of these unskilled people stranded in Chicago, St Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Memphis, et al. While the children of the white “hillbilly” workers eventually assimilated with the larger population, the blacks were isolated in their ghettos and our welfare system enabled them to continue their isolation, especially as better off blacks moved away and left those possessed of the least brains and skill on their own.
By the way, I’m not blaming middle class and respectable working class blacks for doing this- they are not anymore responsible for their feckless ghetto brethren than we white folks are for certain types of white people.
But there is no question that the mass migration north during the great war, was a very important factor in the decline of our older cities.
Chicago, I assume you’re referring to Uptown or Rogers Park when you talk about “nasty little pocket”?
Those may have their problems, but I live in Lake View, right at Belmont Harbor, and we’ve had shootings here three times this week. We’re by no means a “nasty little pocket” in Chicago.
The problem is that many shootings never even make the news. In fact, it’s well-known here that strong-arm robberies are reported as “pick pocketing” and beat-downs are written up as “falls” if at all. People connected with the police department admit that they’re told to not report much of what’s going on. And you know the local media isn’t going to do it.
That’s how they keep Chicagoans from making more noise about it — they pretend it isn’t happening in the “nice” neighborhoods and make everyone think it’s only in the “bad” areas. Meanwhile, they take cops away from some of our neighborhood beats and put them 3-to-a-corner on Michigan Avenue to prevent the wildings that occurred last summer.
Don’t be fooled into complacency. It’s happening everywhere.
Draconian gun laws in Chicagostan…
I can remember reading somewhere or another that when the city council was comprised of WWI and WWII veterans, and anti-gun laws were proposed, the response was something like “No way! You want us to be like New York?! Fuck that shit! New York is a crime-ridden shithole!”
Anti-gun laws didn’t get any traction until after those WWI and WWII vets moved on or died out…
Damn shame…
It’s only going to get worse as this new wave of illegal immigrants make their way into the urban areas.You
Better have a way to defend yourself.
Yes, Thinker, I was referring to Uptown and Rogers Park.
I’m very upset with to hear of the shootings in Lakeview, my old neighborhood and still my fave neighborhood in Chicago. But I can tell you that you wouldn’t be having those problems if it weren’t for the Broadway Youth Center, a center for “troubled youth” that opened up there a few years ago and has been the locus of a lot of crime that never occurred in that neighborhood before, or at least only rarely. When I lived that area in the 80s and 90s, it was one of the cleanest and safest in Chicago. There was an occasional robbery, but no more often than in most suburbs, and I felt safe being on the streets whenever I pleased, while being vigilant, of course.
At least your neighbors are fighting back aggressively and trying to get the center’s special use permit revoked. Keep fighting. The bad thing about Uptown and Rogers Park is that these neighborhoods have too many liberal-socialist types who try to inflict a guilt trip on anyone who doesn’t want his neighborhood polluted with gangbangers and delinquents. Lakeview yups at least have no guilt or conflict about their distaste for having criminals and lowlifes thrust on them and will fight it aggressively. Good luck to you.
I wish I could edit that post. I meant to type “your neighbors”.
Another interesting weekend… a large riot at Montrose Beach got media attention (finally), but I found the following play-by-play interesting, if only because it shows the police are incapable of stemming this kind of problem, and will likely hide in a true economic collapse situation:
The trouble began brewing around 6:50PM when a 911 caller reported someone had been hit with a bottle in the 4500 block of Simonds Drive, near Montrose Harbor.
Ten minutes later, a 911 caller reported a fight involving 50 people in the same area.
Then, at 7:38PM, a 20th district police unit announced that a man with a gun was reported to be within a “big party” near Wilson and Simonds. From there, the situation spiraled out of control:
7:45PM – Unit 2004F: “They’re throwing things at us…Need more cars.”
7:46PM – Sergeant: “Get out of the park. Get all policemen out of the park NOW.”
7:47PM – Unit 1905: Vehicle has been damaged
7:48PM – Unit 2004F: “Get us some fucking help over here!”
7:49PM – Unit 1901: Pull units from other districts
7:49PM – “We got an officer hit with a bottle. He’s bleeding.”
7:50PM – Shut down all roads into lakefront from Foster to Montrose.
7:51PM – Estimate the size of the crowd. “It’s quite a few hundred people.”
7:51PM – They’re still throwing bottles at the police.
7:52PM – 19th District Tactical Lieutenant: “Put in [an emergency plan] and.. get us a helicopter.”
7:55PM – The 19th district does not have any [tear] gas. If it’s needed, the only gas team would be in [SWAT].
7:55PM – Respond to bait shop. We’ll stage there and go in as a large group.
7:56PM – 2 arrested at Wilson and Simonds.
7:58PM – 18th, 17th, and 16th districts will meet you at the bait shop.
7:59PM – Just so you know, the 20th district has a 10-1 [Officer needs help] at Jarvis and the lakefront right now, too.
Oh, and here’s one you just have to read for yourself:
ROBBER HOLDS BABY AT GUNPOINT
http://crimeinboystown.blogspot.com/2014/07/robber-holds-baby-at-gunpoint-but-there.html
Ya, I read all about the fracas at Montrose Beach.
And, yesterday in the broad daylight, some young guy was shot at Devon & Glenwood, which is WAY to close to home. It sounds like a personal vendetta, which most of these shootings are- the shooter walked right up to his victim and shot him point blank in front of dozens of witnesses, then quickly cleared the scene.
This is a part of Rogers Park that I always liked and felt good in, until this.
Ald. Joe Moore, that Poverty Pimp in the 49th Ward, happened to witness it, and he made a big deal out of personally cleaning up the blood with his own two hands. Then he sent an email blast out with the usual liberal pap about how we must get the guns of the streets and end poverty.
Poverty, my ass. I have met hundreds of people living in real poverty, yet somehow manage to avoid committing crimes, and somehow raise their kids to be civilized, productive people. You never read about these people in the news. They live very quietly and carefully, pay their bills, somehow stay off the public dole, and often manage to run their own businesses. I can introduce you to a dozen business owners in the Hindu- Arab business district on W. Devon who are living one notch above the poverty line with all members of their families working in their struggling businesses, and none of these people have any problems governing their kids or avoiding becoming burdens to the public. I have met hundreds more people struggling to make ends meet on straight commission, part time jobs, and minimum wage who also manage to get by without producing crime, and who volunteer in the community and avoid taking food stamps, Section 8 subsidies, and other government assistance. They keep their kids in hand and you never hear of problems in their communities. However, they are easy prey for the scum and thugs enabled by our socialistic do-gooders and criminal-coddlers.
I want these scum AWAY from the north side. I want every goddam Project Section 8 building and every building that is the locus of crime and has multiple housing violations, shut down and vacated, and its residents moved elsewhere. I don’t care where, as long as its not the north side.
About the robbery in Lincoln Park you linked to- Ald Michele Smith is another Rahm rubberstamp who votes with the mayor on defunding our services and conveying our money to corporate cronies.
You can call them “copfuks” if you want, but we need police presence. 10 years ago, Chicago had 13,000 officers. We are now down to 7,000, while the Rahmfather conveys billions of dollars to sports venues and other corporate welfare. The lack shows. No neighborhood has enough coverage, and when there is an emergency like the riot at Montrose Beach, officers must be pulled from other areas that are already short, to deal with it.
Section 8 is the problem in Lakeview. Formerly beautiful areas on N. Sheridan have turned into near-ghettos, and the people living there have brought in the gang element that is causing the problems at the park, shootings, beat-downs, robberies. The neighborhood is going, as they say, and I couldn’t agree more with the need to shut down Section 8. To me, the problem is government handouts of all kinds — if you take away the free money and force people to work to survive, you get people who care about and protect what they have. People with no time on their hands to cause problems. People who can’t afford drugs and the gang culture that comes with them.
As many people on that blog attest, Chicago is quickly becoming Detroit.
Thinker, Section 8 has wrecked every city in this country, except in places so rich that the landlord can make a better profit converting to co-op or condo, like San Fran and NYC.
I don’t know exactly what part of N Sheridan you are talking about, but I remember that the 4000 N to 5000 N blocks were very slummy in the late 80s, then cleaned up and “gentrified” extensively in the 90s. The 4000- 4400 blocks were never considered to be Lakeview before 1995 or so, but were Uptown, and the 4400- 4800 N blocks still stayed very “marginal” and gentrification did not stick too well because of the prevalence of SROs and ratty corridor buildings in the Uptown neighborhood.
Rogers Park and Edgewater, meanwhile, remained very challenged until the late 90s. Ald Mary Ann Smith cleaned up Edgewater greatly, but people there have gotten rather complacent, while Rogers Park, though considerably improved, still has a lot of bad buildings. It’s a shame because all these far north neighborhoods are stuffed with great architecture and amenities.