Rockford IL good or bad (Chicago, Elgin: homeowners insurance, employment, buying)

[billybones]

Is it just me or did the Rockford school system stop teaching grammer?

[Havasu]

Rockford is number 100 on the fastest growing City list in USA. Maybe the City is getting its act together? Or are there just quite a few new people that have moved there and have not caught on yet?
The 258 fastest growing U.S. cities - Jun. 27, 2007

[Maintainschaos]

lol 258 fastest-growing cities when some cities on the list aren't actually growing in the time period overviewed? o_O

[ngrome]

There are some really nice, cheap homes there available, that's all I know. I grew up in part in Belvidere as a kid, but really made my home in the SW suburb area like Woodridge, DG, Darien, Bolingbrook, etc. I don't think there's really anything wrong with Rockford, has it's good and bad like every other place. The place by 20 and Old School Bell Rd. seems to be the nicest, IMO, where there's reasonable and newer housing.

[Sycamoron]

Originally Posted by billybones

Is it just me or did the Rockford school system stop teaching grammer?

grammar...

[Sycamoron]

I live in Sycamore about 35-40 minutes southeast of Rockford and have visited the City many times. Ive never really crossed the river to the west side so i dont know how bad that area is but the east side surrounding state street just north of Cherry Valley is very nice..., this coming from someone from a who lives in an upper middle class town with no racial diversity whatsoever, so take it or leave it

[rhalld38]

Originally Posted by Havasu

Rockford is number 100 on the fastest growing City list in USA. Maybe the City is getting its act together? Or are there just quite a few new people that have moved there and have not caught on yet?
The 258 fastest growing U.S. cities - Jun. 27, 2007

Well lets hope that Rockford is getting there act together. Find me one city where its the best place to live with no crime or little crime. Every city has its problems.

[pong0168]

[SIZE=3]Please excuse my English grammar. I am a graduate from Rockford Public High School. I thought I tried hard in school but it was truly difficult to focus when over half of the class were just playing and yelling and made the teacher cried. I felt sorry for the teacher. In another class the teacher was often put the movie on to kept the class quiet; how was I suppose to learn from watching movie almost weekly? There were many fights in school regularly. After high school I was in and out of Rock Valley College as I struggled to make a living, working mostly in factories and fast food places. The co-workers were mostly mean and have poor attitude. At lunch time they were mostly talking about female reproductive organ and having sex even with prostitute from area around Broadway. It is massage pallor at the front store and was raided by police too and found many illegal sex workers hiding. They like to show each other tattoos and talk about prison and there experiences from Winnebago county jail. So my co-workers was truly abusive in language and it was very difficult to fit in if you want to talk about something good. There was a lot of threat to each other and even fight in and out of work place. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3] My truck window was broken in twice and got stereo stolen twice in different locations and finally my truck was stolen for a joyride and days later was recovered by the RPDP but it was in bad shape because the theft who stole it destroyed the interior and exterior of the truck. [/SIZE]
[SIZE=3]When I was riding my motorcycle I was ran over the road more than once around North 2nd street by someone in what looked like a Camaro and he was laughing; so after that I sold my motorcycle and stop riding. [/SIZE]
When I was driving my truck in Lovespark to do some work and passed by 2 teenagers about 15-16years of age. One of them yelled racist derogatory at I. Oh talking about that when I used to ride my motorcycle a 10 years old girl yelled at me “eat sh*t and die” for no reason. I thought to myself how could a young person at that age could be so racist.

At one fast-food place some of the younger co-workers were inviting me to their house later I found out they want I to joy them smoking marijuana but luckily I didn’t take their offer and that was one of the best decision to my life which help me passed the drug test to get a better job and finally moved out of Rockford to keep thing short.

[danimal1961]

My wife and myself moved to Rockford in March of 2007. I am beginning to think it was one of the worst things we could have done. We come from Chicago where we always lived in racially mixed neighborhoods were whites were always the minority and never had any problems but we have have never lived in such a sad neighborhood as the African American neighborhood on the West side of Rockford that we live in now. The older generation of blacks in are neighborhood are old school, hard working, honest people who want to live in clean and save place unfortunately the younger blacks on the west side of Rockford are nothing but a drain on society not all but the majority of these young blacks are content with having the state pay there rent, there food and free health care, they also have no interest in making sure there children get an education we constantly see children on school days not in school not a surprise when Rockford has one of the highest drop out rates in the state, you think these parents would want better for there children but they do not. No companies have any interest in coming to Rockford when they find out that all they will be able to employ is uneducated, illiterate dummy's. The west side is a lost cause and Rockford is quickly turning into the toilet bowl of IL. the crime rate is second only to Chicago the other day two car loads of young black men drove down my street shooting at each other with assault weapons. And the mayor says plant flowers so people will want to move to Rockford, as long as we have one of the highest unemployment rates, drop out rates of high school students,foreclosure rates and crime rates who in their right mind would want to move to Rockford.

[Traderx]

Holy cow!

Just stumbled across this thread.

I grew up in Rockford and lived there from 1961-1992. Lived on the NW side of town going to schoold like Welch, Roosevelt and West High then Rock Valley College and Rockford College. Moved to Florida in 1992 on a whim with no job prospects or friends just because I thought there had to be something better out there.

I've never been back to Rockford since I left. Not once. Pretty weird actually that you could live in a place 31 years leave and not have any feelings of being homesick.

What brought me to this thread is I'm actually coming to Rockford in June. I want to show my kids where mom and I grew up and see whats changed. I guess I'll be able to see whether or not all these horror stories are true.

Some of this stuff seems old to me though. I remember race riots on the front lawn of West High when I was there(1979 grad). My grandparents lived further west across from Henrietta school(?), Johnston ST(maybe? cant remember its been so long) and it wasnt very pretty even back then. I remember my friends and I riding our bikes in the summer out to 4 four lakes when we were like 12. I can't imagine letting my kids do that here in Florida.

In my hearts of hearts I sort of think some of the Rockford trash talking comes from lack of knowledge about what it's like elsewhere. A little the grass is greener think. Even though life's been good and I can afford to live well in Florida, I would say our schools suck here, even if you live in the best area your not far from crime, etc. Thats actually one thing I like about Rockford is as I remember it you could avoid a lot of the crap just by moving to a better area. Down here the good and the bad areas are mixed together.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how things have changed in the 17 years I've been gone. For some reason after reading all this stuff I'm more excited about the trip than I was before.