Shooting in Wicker Park last weekend (Chicago, Lincoln: transplants, buying, living)

[urza216]

Originally Posted by linicx

Maybe it was just noise and no one was hurt? Let's hope so.

No, it was gunshots. It was a series of sporadic pops that we could hear from a distance. Maybe they were shooting into the air and no one got hurt, yeah.

[Chi-turtle]

Originally Posted by chrawnick

Like, I wonder if you folks that move to areas such as Wicker Park, or wherever.....realize that you're living in an area that used to be occupied by crime ridden housing projects...

Yes. My dad grew up in the city, I have family in the city, my dad has friends who have lived in bucktown since the 80's.

Originally Posted by urza216

No, it was gunshots. It was a series of sporadic pops that we could hear from a distance. Maybe they were shooting into the air and no one got hurt, yeah.

Hmmm, interesting. The one I posted about was a man who was shot 5 times and in critical condition.

[ChiGuy2.5]

Originally Posted by chrawnick

Like, I wonder if you folks that move to areas such as Wicker Park, or wherever.....realize that you're living in an area that used to be occupied by crime ridden housing projects...

I had a coworker who lived in Wicker Park once he graduated college. He was there in his 20's during the 90's. He said one morning he woke up to police sirens and lights outside his window. It was 4am and he had a dead body in his front lawn. The person was shot twice. He said it used to be MUCH worse. Compared to city standards Wicker Park is very safe. I would mostly be worried about being robbed (they had the purse bandit there last year), or getting in a bar fight. My coworker who's mid 30's is now raising a family in Bucktown BTW. He loves the area.

[quigboto]

Well hell, even Humboldt Park today isnt as bad as I've heard Wicker Park was 15 years ago.
I suppose there is hope after all.

[Chicago76]

Originally Posted by ChiGuy2.5

I had a coworker who lived in Wicker Park once he graduated college. He was there in his 20's during the 90's. He said one morning he woke up to police sirens and lights outside his window. It was 4am and he had a dead body in his front lawn. The person was shot twice. He said it used to be MUCH worse. Compared to city standards Wicker Park is very safe. I would mostly be worried about being robbed (they had the purse bandit there last year), or getting in a bar fight. My coworker who's mid 30's is now raising a family in Bucktown BTW. He loves the area.

It was an entirely different place then. A lot of people here have probably been pretty familiar with WP since about 2003/2004 to present and people have noted how much things have changed even in those 8-9 years. The further back you go, the fewer of us that know what it was like. Let's put it this way: if you look at WP from maybe 1997 or 1998 to 2012, 85% of the changes occurred from 1997/98 to about 2002.

If you walked down Milwaukee avenue c1998 near where the Bongo room is today and you were to pass a random person on the sidewalk, there was probably a better than even chance that person was either a prostitute, a junkie, a mental case, or some sort of hustler up to no good. In my first few years in the neighborhood, I got to see:

a shoot out, a couple high speed chases, a human trafficking/smuggling bust w/ INS where they stopped a car with 4 people in the trunk (in front of my house), a crazed man threaten to kill a restaurant owner (apparently he did this every night), prostitutes hanging out in diners/restaurants at random hours, prostitutes fighting over a customer, an open air drug market in the actual park in Wicker Park, a homeless camp set up in the park where maybe 15 homeless set up camp, a body near the old Burger King on Milwaukee, and so on. This type of stuff was just things you stumbled upon on a regularish basis.

A lot of older residents who were socially isolated living in older places. There was an old man that used to live above Lincoln Tavern in Bucktown who died due to heat during the heat wave in July 99 I think it was. The tavern owners tried to get him to leave for AC and they checked on him a couple times a day. I was eating there when they found him. The underpasses on the Kennedy on the NW side used to have 5-6 guys sleeping under all of them. They'd park their carts, climb the ramps, and sleep in the little ledge between the top of the underpass ramp and the bottom of the freeway. They fenced most of those embankments off around 2001 or so.

Old timers then talked about how much worse it even was in the early 90s w/ cabs not going past Ashland. It wasn't great when I first got there, so it must have been really bad then.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Chicago76

It was an entirely different place then. A lot of people here have probably been pretty familiar with WP since about 2003/2004 to present and people have noted how much things have changed even in those 8-9 years. The further back you go, the fewer of us that know what it was like. Let's put it this way: if you look at WP from maybe 1997 or 1998 to 2012, 85% of the changes occurred from 1997/98 to about 2002.

If you walked down Milwaukee avenue c1998 near where the Bongo room is today and you were to pass a random person on the sidewalk, there was probably a better than even chance that person was either a prostitute, a junkie, a mental case, or some sort of hustler up to no good. In my first few years in the neighborhood, I got to see:

a shoot out, a couple high speed chases, a human trafficking/smuggling bust w/ INS where they stopped a car with 4 people in the trunk (in front of my house), a crazed man threaten to kill a restaurant owner (apparently he did this every night), prostitutes hanging out in diners/restaurants at random hours, prostitutes fighting over a customer, an open air drug market in the actual park in Wicker Park, a homeless camp set up in the park where maybe 15 homeless set up camp, a body near the old Burger King on Milwaukee, and so on. This type of stuff was just things you stumbled upon on a regularish basis.

A lot of older residents who were socially isolated living in older places. There was an old man that used to live above Lincoln Tavern in Bucktown who died due to heat during the heat wave in July 99 I think it was. The tavern owners tried to get him to leave for AC and they checked on him a couple times a day. I was eating there when they found him. The underpasses on the Kennedy on the NW side used to have 5-6 guys sleeping under all of them. They'd park their carts, climb the ramps, and sleep in the little ledge between the top of the underpass ramp and the bottom of the freeway. They fenced most of those embankments off around 2001 or so.

Old timers then talked about how much worse it even was in the early 90s w/ cabs not going past Ashland. It wasn't great when I first got there, so it must have been really bad then.

Yes, but WP is going down the tubes....

[Chicago76]

^ Totally. I mean the area is just another random shooting in an urban area of tens of thousands of people away from complete chaos. All 30,000 people will move out. Marc Jacobs will be replaced by a package liquor joint with a 3 inch thick plexiglass wall at the counter and drunk guys rolling blunts on the sidewalk out front. The Bongo Room will be a community outreach needle exchange facility. The bank at Six Corners will be a dollar store. Piece will be an old school tavern run by mob guys with poker machines behind a hidden wall. And Wicker Park will revert to it's true highest and best use: open air drug market and homeless camp. The sky is clearly falling.

[rparz]

Of course it will revert back, that's because the trouble-causing element hasn't figured out how to use cars and busses and has to actually live in the area they torment. Needless to say, this will leave areas like Lincoln Park and the gold coast totally immune because the gang bangers refuse to cross a street.

[Aleking]

Originally Posted by rparz

Of course it will revert back, that's because the trouble-causing element hasn't figured out how to use cars and busses and has to actually live in the area they torment. Needless to say, this will leave areas like Lincoln Park and the gold coast totally immune because the gang bangers refuse to cross a street.

huh?

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Aleking

huh?

You beat me to it.