Does anybody else here live in the Chicago area?

[NFriday]

Does anyone else here live in the Chicago area?  I am concerned because Albertson's owns Jewel, and Kroger owns Mariano's which are both in the Chicago area.  I am afraid if the Kroger/Albertson's merger takes place, that Jewel will go downhill.  

[melbourne_yankee]

So tell us all about Chicago............

 

I hear that some places in Chicago are worse than 3rd world country cities and others are generally safe.  Actually, some 3rd world cities get a raw deal and are probably safer than most large American cities, or at least they were......

 

Just checked on of the cities I've been to, Rawalpindi, and like Chicago their crime rate has soared since the start of the year.  There were 241 murders there so far this year, but Chicago has them beat with over 3 times as many.

 

I also hear that the state of Illinois is losing people right and left to other places.

 

[NFriday]

Yes, the murder rate is high in Chicago, but it is also the third largest city in the US, and so the per capita rate is not great, but could be worse.  One of my sisters lives in New Orleans, and the per capita murder rate is one of the highest in the US.  I live right outside Chicago in Evanston, where crime is not as bad as it is in Chicago, but it has gone up since the pandemic has started.  People are getting burned out from the pandemic, and we even have panhandlers fighting over spots to panhandle.  We have a huge homeless population, because housing in Evanston is too expensive.

There are places in Chicago that I never visit because it is not safe, and there are places I will not visit at night.  Even Michigan Ave. which has a lot of upscale shops, has had lots of problems lately with guns and crimes, and Chicago in general has major problems with carjackings.  New Orleans does too.  

Illinois is losing some people, but we have a governor's election coming up in a few weeks, and the gentleman who is running against Governor Pritzker, is pro life, and anti gun control.  He thinks we need to crack down on crime, instead of making it harder to people to purchase guns.  Governor Pritzker has lots of money to purchase ads, and I am 100% sure that he is going to win again.  

[melbourne_yankee]

Glad to hear that you are in a place where crime isn't as bad as Chicago.

Where I live we have very little crime and basically no homelessness. It think the last burglary in our street was about 5 years ago and there was an attempted car theft a couple of years ago a couple of streets away from us. No graffiti to speak of either.  I think that the last time there was a lot was about 15 years ago or so.

Our little piece of paradise is generally a high income area that doesn't see much traffic other than residents and people delivering goods.  The city has a number of distinct areas and that will cause the numbers to be different.  The Village area or town centre and about 1 kilometer radius from it is generally very,very safe with little crime.  The houses range from about A$1 million for a cheapo to about $A10 million for the most expensive. Until about 10 years ago the background of the area was mainly European and British. The population is generally older as well. We have had a lot of Chinese and a few Indians buying in the area over the recent past.  When we moved in I think there was one Chinese family a couple of streets over and we were the first family with a Japanese in it to move to the area.  Our street now has 8 Chinese families on it and a couple of families from India.  There are also a number of other Chinese families on adjacent streets as well.  Many of them have sold their houses in more expensive areas of Melbourne and moved to our area which is  a "cheaper" area.  They can get a bigger house for a lot less bucks and put millions in the bank at the same time.

We also have a number of high quality private schools in the area so that fits with the emphasis on education as well.  We also have a public "science" high school that is ranked really high too.  The tuition at those private schools is about A$20,000 a year or so. Go by those schools during drop off time and you'll see a huge number of BMW's, Mercs, Porsches, and Range Rovers. Just coming home today from the grocery store I saw my first BMW X7 50i which was between a Mercedes AMG Coupe, and Porsche Cayman.  Must have been the rich wives club going to lunch!!

I feel I don't belong here anymore!!!

Once you get out of our area and move across the freeway the houses are cheaper, older, and the lots are smaller.  So a different mix of people in that area. When the pandemic was raging here our part of the city had basically no cases, but other parts of the had thousands of cases.

Unfortunately, the population growth here over the past 20 years has been unreal which has caused all sorts of problems with drugs and crime in those other areas. Traffic once you cross the highway is unreal and you don't want to be out driving around school pickup time in the afternoon.