(08-04-2020 12:53 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 09:21 AM)utpotts Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 05:14 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  The PAC and Big Ten areas of the country have bigger problems now then whether they play football or not.

Not safe to walk the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland or Seattle.

Record number of shootings last month in Chicago. Minneapolis city telling citizens to be ready to give up their phone, wallet or purse if robbed. Portland had the highest number of murders in 30 years last month. Seattle saw 525% spike in Crime in June.

Like I said hell of a lot of things more important than football to be dealt with now in upper Midwest and on the West Coast.

Sad, so sad

The worst part is that I know you actually believe what you just wrote.

COVID and Unemployment put stress on your local street level drug dealer. They respond to stress by shooting at rivals. When they shoot at rivals they often hit bystanders. If it were not for the upper middle class users there would be no street level market worth exchanging potshots over.

Rural drug dealers are shooting at each other more often these days as well, but when they miss, the hit a tree.

(08-04-2020 12:53 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 09:21 AM)utpotts Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 05:14 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  The PAC and Big Ten areas of the country have bigger problems now then whether they play football or not.

Not safe to walk the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland or Seattle.

Record number of shootings last month in Chicago. Minneapolis city telling citizens to be ready to give up their phone, wallet or purse if robbed. Portland had the highest number of murders in 30 years last month. Seattle saw 525% spike in Crime in June.

Like I said hell of a lot of things more important than football to be dealt with now in upper Midwest and on the West Coast.

I agree that Chicago has a very high rate of murders, not disputing.

Here are a few cities that would like to have a word with you.

North Charleston
Richmond
West Palm Beach
Shreveport
Memphis
Baton Rouge
New Orleans
St. Louis

These^ all rate higher than Chicago in murders per 100,000.

Also...

Little Rock
Atlanta
High Point
Tulsa
Norfolk
Montgomery
Orlando
Newport News
Nashville
Greensboro
Albuquerque

These^ are all in top 40.

There is a murder problem coast to coast, north to south and everywhere in between. I'm not living in any of these bigger cities, just not for me. I tend to rely on percentages in this matter, gives me a better picture rather than an overall total number of casualties. There are 15 cities you're more likely to die in before Chicago. Not defending Chicago, just putting things into perspective.

Cu - back in the day I taught urban studies. Rural and suburban people often do not understand urban environments until you advise them to place several roosters in a small chicken pen.

Most of these shootings are just "business". In rural areas, instead of shooting your competition, you can burn them out without taking out most of the neighborhood.

Get this, I dinged Cardinal Jim one point for his overly partisan assessment of Big 10 and P12 country. Just one point mind you. Then he cries and dings me 3. A Terripan fan would have taken it like a man.

(08-04-2020 01:20 PM)Statefan Wrote:  Cu - back in the day I taught urban studies. Rural and suburban people often do not understand urban environments until you advise them to place several roosters in a small chicken pen.

Most of these shootings are just "business". In rural areas, instead of shooting your competition, you can burn them out without taking out most of the neighborhood.

This is an accurate point you make, Statefan:

"Rural and suburban people often do not understand urban environments."

"Urban" is defined — in a general sense — by building and people density (and not by the ethnicity of a place's residents).

And a city does not have to be large in terms of population to be "urban" in its form and function. The downtown of smallish city Franklin, Tennessee, for example, is somewhat urban in that it has a noticeable degree of building and people density.

The more "physically spread out" a place, the "less urban" that place is.

(08-04-2020 01:16 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 12:53 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 09:21 AM)utpotts Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 05:14 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  The PAC and Big Ten areas of the country have bigger problems now then whether they play football or not.

Not safe to walk the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland or Seattle.

Record number of shootings last month in Chicago. Minneapolis city telling citizens to be ready to give up their phone, wallet or purse if robbed. Portland had the highest number of murders in 30 years last month. Seattle saw 525% spike in Crime in June.

Like I said hell of a lot of things more important than football to be dealt with now in upper Midwest and on the West Coast.

I agree that Chicago has a very high rate of murders, not disputing.

Here are a few cities that would like to have a word with you.

North Charleston
Richmond
West Palm Beach
Shreveport
Memphis
Baton Rouge
New Orleans
St. Louis

These^ all rate higher than Chicago in murders per 100,000.

Also...

Little Rock
Atlanta
High Point
Tulsa
Norfolk
Montgomery
Orlando
Newport News
Nashville
Greensboro
Albuquerque

These^ are all in top 40.

There is a murder problem coast to coast, north to south and everywhere in between. I'm not living in any of these bigger cities, just not for me. I tend to rely on percentages in this matter, gives me a better picture rather than an overall total number of casualties. There are 15 cities you're more likely to die in before Chicago. Not defending Chicago, just putting things into perspective.

Yeah, the gross numbers for Chicago are always eye-popping because the city is so much more massive, but anyone that actually looks at the statistics can understand that there are many Sun Belt cities with worse murder rates.

That's not to say that Chicago doesn't have issues: the fact that it has more murders than either NYC or LA despite having fewer people is a major problem. However, the overall Chicago crime states are almost useless due to the size of the city to the point where it simultaneously overstates and understates the crime problem. 538 just had a study about how people's perceptions of whether crime is rising are *way* off of reality (in contrast to economic problems, where people are actually pretty in tune with reality), with perceptions of Chicago being a prime example. When you take the area encompassing the North Side, Loop, South Loop and West Loop (with a population nearly twice the size of San Francisco), it is one of the safest urban environments in the United States with a crime rate at the level of Toronto. For better or worse, Chicago has very clear lines of demarcation between "good" and "bad" neighborhoods - you don't accidentally go down the wrong block and end up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago in the way that can easily happen in LA or Miami. So, I just cringe whenever people get "scared" of walking around Chicago when all of the places that tourists visit in Chicago are most likely *vastly* safer than whatever hometown they are from.

Now, to be sure, the South Side and West Side of Chicago (outside of the South Loop and West Loop, respectively) definitely have gotten significantly worse in crime. Nearly all murders in the city occur in only 8% of the census tracts. So, that 8% of Chicago has a horrific overwhelming crime problem that needs to be solved. However, that has nothing to do with places like Michigan Avenue, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville that are where 99% of anyone that travels to Chicago will visit. It's akin to thinking that the crime and murder rate in Orlando (which is extremely high) has anything to do with safety at Walt Disney World (which is one of the safest and most controlled tourist environments in the world).

So, part of Chicago has a deep crime problem, but it's a much more nuanced problem than what the gross numbers will tell you. Chicago is effectively the equivalent of San Francisco and Oakland being combined together into a single city without water separating them.

(08-04-2020 01:40 PM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 01:23 PM)Statefan Wrote:  Get this, I dinged Cardinal Jim one point for his overly partisan assessment of Big 10 and P12 country. Just one point mind you. Then he cries and dings me 3. A Terripan fan would have taken it like a man.

??? There's no CardinalJim rating on your report card???

I'm the bigger man so I cut him some slack since he took so poorly.

However people really need to take stock of how partisanship warps objective analysis.



America has rural, suburban, and urban areas. The vast majority of the people live in urban and suburban areas. We do not have Red and Blue states as the mental midgets in the TV box like to tell those who don't have the time or the intellect to actually investigate the facts.

Wow, we have really gone astray from the topic.

The US has problems with our social unity, caused by a variety of factors. These fuel extremists thinking on both sides and divide us. We are falling back into our tribes with zero sum mentality in response to shrinking opportunity and growing economic stress, rather than uniting to tackle the common problems so that all can prosper better. Dogma and ideology dominate, compromise is given a bad name. It's a repeat of Germany in the 1920s. Bad people (mostly selfish, not having the larger America as their interest, just themselves and their tribe) are leading us. We should all look in the mirror and refrain from hammering the wedge deeper. That is all I am going to say.

(08-04-2020 01:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 01:16 PM)cubucks Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 12:53 PM)CardinalJim Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 09:21 AM)utpotts Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 05:14 AM)CardinalJim Wrote:  The PAC and Big Ten areas of the country have bigger problems now then whether they play football or not.

Not safe to walk the streets of Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland or Seattle.

Record number of shootings last month in Chicago. Minneapolis city telling citizens to be ready to give up their phone, wallet or purse if robbed. Portland had the highest number of murders in 30 years last month. Seattle saw 525% spike in Crime in June.

Like I said hell of a lot of things more important than football to be dealt with now in upper Midwest and on the West Coast.

I agree that Chicago has a very high rate of murders, not disputing.

Here are a few cities that would like to have a word with you.

North Charleston
Richmond
West Palm Beach
Shreveport
Memphis
Baton Rouge
New Orleans
St. Louis

These^ all rate higher than Chicago in murders per 100,000.

Also...

Little Rock
Atlanta
High Point
Tulsa
Norfolk
Montgomery
Orlando
Newport News
Nashville
Greensboro
Albuquerque

These^ are all in top 40.

There is a murder problem coast to coast, north to south and everywhere in between. I'm not living in any of these bigger cities, just not for me. I tend to rely on percentages in this matter, gives me a better picture rather than an overall total number of casualties. There are 15 cities you're more likely to die in before Chicago. Not defending Chicago, just putting things into perspective.

Yeah, the gross numbers for Chicago are always eye-popping because the city is so much more massive, but anyone that actually looks at the statistics can understand that there are many Sun Belt cities with worse murder rates.

That's not to say that Chicago doesn't have issues: the fact that it has more murders than either NYC or LA despite having fewer people is a major problem. However, the overall Chicago crime states are almost useless due to the size of the city to the point where it simultaneously overstates and understates the crime problem. 538 just had a study about how people's perceptions of whether crime is rising are *way* off of reality (in contrast to economic problems, where people are actually pretty in tune with reality), with perceptions of Chicago being a prime example. When you take the area encompassing the North Side, Loop, South Loop and West Loop (with a population nearly twice the size of San Francisco), it is one of the safest urban environments in the United States with a crime rate at the level of Toronto. For better or worse, Chicago has very clear lines of demarcation between "good" and "bad" neighborhoods - you don't accidentally go down the wrong block and end up in a bad neighborhood in Chicago in the way that can easily happen in LA or Miami. So, I just cringe whenever people get "scared" of walking around Chicago when all of the places that tourists visit in Chicago are most likely *vastly* safer than whatever hometown they are from.

Now, to be sure, the South Side and West Side of Chicago (outside of the South Loop and West Loop, respectively) definitely have gotten significantly worse in crime. Nearly all murders in the city occur in only 8% of the census tracts. So, that 8% of Chicago has a horrific overwhelming crime problem that needs to be solved. However, that has nothing to do with places like Michigan Avenue, Lincoln Park and Wrigleyville that are where 99% of anyone that travels to Chicago will visit. It's akin to thinking that the crime and murder rate in Orlando (which is extremely high) has anything to do with safety at Walt Disney World (which is one of the safest and most controlled tourist environments in the world).

So, part of Chicago has a deep crime problem, but it's a much more nuanced problem than what the gross numbers will tell you. Chicago is effectively the equivalent of San Francisco and Oakland being combined together into a single city without water separating them.

Your numbers might be entirely accurate. I don't know. But, as a visitor, that is not the perception you have walking the streets of Chicago at night. I live in Milwaukee. I am in Chicago pretty regularly. You do not feel comfortable walking a block off Michigan Ave at night. You are very very cautious. Its not like Paris or London, where you feel confident everywhere you walk.

That said, most cities have good and bad areas. To single out Chicago is somewhat unfair. There are areas in downtown Dallas that I feel completely comfortable at all hours and there are areas a few blocks away that I am uncomfortable in twilight. Same goes for St. Louis, Charlotte, Miami, Tampa, Orlando, New York, Boston, etc. Chicago is a mess right now. There are no easy solutions. Unless the city somehow substantially reduces the drug trade, no amount of money or police presence is going to stop the violence.

MU88

I and the family were in London a while back driving from London Bridge, south toward Dover. We hit an area where the City has striped three lanes in a width that only accommodates two cars - think cobbled streets in Boston. I stay in my lane and slap rear view mirrors with someone else. There are a million cars and no where to stop. About 8 miles south of town I see an idiot in the rear view mirror gesturing and giving us the finger. I finally find a place that looks like you can actually pull of the main road near a park. The guy swerves around us and blocks the road. He gets out and comes toward us, the kids said "run his ass over daddy". In America I might, but since I was in the UK I said "don't worry kids, this is the UK, that guy just got out unarmed and I already have the tire tool.

He comes up to my window and begins to curse at me as if I am some Polish or Turkish immigrant. Then I speak - I say "you know, back in the US, people like you would get shot in the face for cutting me off and running up to the car".

He recoiled and stepped back. I didn't even have to show the tire tool. The accent and nationality alone told him he was about to get his ass beat to a pulp.

The point is everyone in the US may be carrying a gun or at least a knife. The "safety" many Americans feel in Western Europe is in part due to the fact that people are not armed with hand cannons and because their most urban areas are the most desirable. If you want to get cut in Paris - you have to go out to the suburbs for example.

In a lot of these "bad" American neighborhoods you are not in any real danger if you look like a clueless white person/tourist. Messing with you gets the local gang boys rousted and beat up - in fact you are bad for business and most will hide from you. (I've done some social science research in places that would scare the living hell out of most insulated, suburban people - you can interview gang bangers and prostitutes with more safety than most realize. Not understanding the "business model" of south side Chicago gangs and drugs is part of the problem.

(08-04-2020 02:14 PM)MU88 Wrote:  

(08-04-2020 01:38 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  So, part of Chicago has a deep crime problem, but it's a much more nuanced problem than what the gross numbers will tell you. Chicago is effectively the equivalent of San Francisco and Oakland being combined together into a single city without water separating them.

Your numbers might be entirely accurate. I don't know. But, as a visitor, that is not the perception you have walking the streets of Chicago at night. I live in Milwaukee. I am in Chicago pretty regularly. You do not feel comfortable walking a block off Michigan Ave at night. You are very very cautious. Its not like Paris or London, where you feel confident everywhere you walk.

I have visited Chicago twice in the past two years, about 5 days each time, and crime seemed like something a million miles away. I was staying at the Drake Hotel up Michigan Avenue, and walked all over that area, north to the Lincoln Park Zoo, over to the water, down south past the river to Soldier Field, then to the west towards the Sears Tower and then back to the north. That's a pretty big area of land, and never felt uncomfortable at all at any time. To your particular point, at night I walked to a restaurant about 4 blocks west of Michigan Avenue and felt perfectly safe.

I also rode the subway, albeit during the day, up to Wrigley Field and around to several other places in that described area. Again, no problems.

Of course, I know Chicago has massive slums with big crime. I just never came anywhere near them. My sense was that Chicago is like just about every major city - very dangerous areas and very safe areas, and the demarcation between them being very clear such that the former are easy to avoid.

(08-04-2020 02:01 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Wow, we have really gone astray from the topic.

The US has problems with our social unity, caused by a variety of factors. These fuel extremists thinking on both sides and divide us. We are falling back into our tribes with zero sum mentality in response to shrinking opportunity and growing economic stress, rather than uniting to tackle the common problems so that all can prosper better. Dogma and ideology dominate, compromise is given a bad name. It's a repeat of Germany in the 1920s. Bad people (mostly selfish, not having the larger America as their interest, just themselves and their tribe) are leading us. We should all look in the mirror and refrain from hammering the wedge deeper. That is all I am going to say.

We could just surrender to the extremist ideology that is destroying our cities. Or we can fight back.

What I get out of your post is that you want to blame both sides. One side of the political aisle is causing most of the problems. Social unity will never be back, now that the masks are off the communists and commie sympathizers. They have showed themselves for what they are.

You must not have learned that you CAN NOT COMPROMISE WITH COMMUNISTS.

Blaming both sides of the isle is usually not too far out of line. Now, however, and over the last 4 years, blame falls squarely on the left. Liberals have made that painfully obvious with the very public temper tantrum they’ve displayed since the moment Trump kicked them right in the azz.

They’ve drawn a line in the sand and have made people take sides, with zero gray area.

Well F them. They’ve divided the country. And they’re gonna lose it again when Trump landslides their “Weekend at Bernie’s” candidate in November.

Yes, statistically there are cities with worse murder rates than Chicago.

Yes, Chicago's raw numbers of murders and shootings are shocking.



Truth is, as far as violent crime goes, the majority of incidents are between related parties (people that know each other).

A small minority of incidents is random.


When I'm visiting another city I'm aware that in order to avoid being a random victim I need to avoid certain areas, I need to be aware of my immediate surroundings, I need to not portray myself as a potential target, etc.