What is Back of the Yards like? (Chicago, Oak Park: apartment, high crime)

[amanda8404]

Hi,
Can anyone describe the Back of the Yards neighborhood for me? Does anyone live there? Visit there? I couldn't find anything about it anywhere else so if you can point me to a thread that already mentioned it, that would also help. Thanks...

[Drover]

It's not a particularly nice place. A fair chunk of it is industrial, and the residential portions have a pretty high crime rate.

[amanda8404]

Oh , that's what it looked like from what I've been reading but I saw the greatest apartment online there and I was hoping everything I read was just wrong.... My partner is going to University of Chicago in a couple months and I don't really want to live in Hyde Park... Sigh...

[Drover]

You might try looking into McKinley Park just to the north of BotY, bounded by Pershing Road to the south, the Stevenson Expressway to the north, the Chicago River to the east, and Western Avenue to the west. McKinley Park is about 98% ungentrified/sleeperville, so rents are crazy cheap. And it's a lot safer than the Yards.

[JohnDoe2008]

I have known the yards for 10 years. It is a safe, normal city neigborhood.
I personally rather be there than hyde park. It fits me better, I am more comfortable there. See it for yourself, drive down Ashland, when you hit 40th, look around, keep going to 47th, stop, drive in the residential areas, thats the yards.

[ajolotl]

I don't want to impose my taste but I can state objectively that I've never met anyone in my 25 years in the area debating between Back of the Yards and Hyde Park. Not that Back of the Yards is such a horrible neighborhood (though it doesn't look particularly nice to me) or that Hyde Park has no downside, but unless there is something very specific about BOY it would seem more sensible to go either very close to HP (Woodlawn, North Kenwood/Oakland, maybe South Shore, even East Washington Park on MLK Drive) or to farther out but more commercially lively areas like South Loop, Oak Park, Wicker Park. Also, university-affiliated families have traditionally preferred Flossmoor (on Metra Electric Line) and more recently Beverly. If you love BOY then by all means it makes sense, but it would be an unusual choice.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2008

I have known the yards for 10 years. It is a safe, normal city neigborhood.
I personally rather be there than hyde park. It fits me better, I am more comfortable there. See it for yourself, drive down Ashland, when you hit 40th, look around, keep going to 47th, stop, drive in the residential areas, thats the yards.

This "safe, normal city neighborhood" has experienced 13 homicides, 56 aggravated batteries with a handgun (read: shootings) and 275 robberies in the last year. This in a neighborhood of about 40,000 people.

You be the judge about whether this is a "safe, normal city neighborhood."

[ajolotl]

A number of these murders received a lot of press in the local papers with accompanying quotes by residents making the neighborhood sound awful, much worse than I would have thought. I had been planning on hanging out in Sherman Park just for the fun of it (designed by Olmsted -- looks nice when driving by), but I'm a little intimidated now.

[Drover]

Nah. Go hang out at the park. Spending a couple hours in a wide-open public park is an entirely different proposition than actually living there.

[JohnDoe2008]

Yards is good. Theres NO public housing or any housing with governemnt benefits at all, everyone works, theres doctors and lawyers in the yards, theres also blue collar workers too of course. Those statistics are not bad for the size of the population. That is subjective though, I know someone from Bogota, Colombia, he told me that every day theres about 2 murders, and carjackings and robberies are not rare, almost everyone there had been robbed once. To him, Yards is the safest place in the world, to me, its up there too. Sure, its not suburbia or suburbia in the city like certain neighborhoods, where theres zero poverty and zero cullture other than a certain one I wont mention cause I could care less about starting a fight about that stupid ****, but what Im saying is that the yards is very safe, its not extremely safe like suburbia, or some neighborhoods here.
No bulletproof glass on stores or gass stations, they arent even behind anythbing at all, its so safe. But to each his own, if you want to not be around certain people because they are mostly not like you, then say that, dont say its bad. I will understand that more,
I rather live in the yards than hyde park, anyday. Its a real neighborhood, not a tourist or temporary neighborhood. Its untouched by materialistic glossy fakeness. Its unphotographed unless by local kids that love their neighborhood.
Theres not one abandoned building, its not run down.
So its a little closer to public housing than other neighborhoods, its also not right next to them, or real close.
Its subjective. I like humble people, you probably dont. I prefer Burger King than the Signature Room any day. Im not alone with this, Millions of people that live in chicago, and not in the fake chicago full of people from small towns and suburbs, but the real chicago where people actually grow up in, 1 to 17 years old, and someitmes leave, sometimes stay, but their parents are there, their house, etc...
Its like any other place in chicago, its not dangerous. People here probably have as much money as you people over there, but they dont waste it on range rovers, they have more kids than you, and they travel to foreign countries, they put their kids in private schools, and they save a lot of money. They do not even care for material possessions, surprising huh? We all have cars, cars that work fine, and some of us are poor, some are rich. Thats another difference, you do not see any poor people at all, ever, around your streets, you love it like that too. You would have to get on the highway or something and go miles and miles. Over here,its mixed income mostly.
Honestly, I think its better you dont come here, were better without gentrification, we wouldnt know how to react if we saw someone jogging down the sidewalk or walking a nice dog or something that gentrifiers do. Stay in the areas you all just arrived to, YOU are the foreigners in OUR city, we are chicagoans, thank you.

Sincerely,
From the yards to whats left of humbolt park, to albany park to whats left of uptown,
a guy who grew up in the real chicago as the happiest kid.