Back in college, one of my good friends was a born and raised Manhattanite. He had never been to Chicago before, so he came to visit me one summer break. I took him on a drive down LSD to check out downtown (as it's always a pretty easy way to impress out of towners).

About 10 minutes into it, after driving past miles of lakefront skyscrapers, and with Big John and the rest of the mag mile skyline staring him right in the face, he turned to me and said "damn, Chicago is the first city I've ever been to whose skyline isn't a complete joke."



"Not a complete joke"

That's the highest praise a New Yorker can give any place, LOL!

True that my friend, true that :haha:

Least violent Memorial Day weekend in at least 16 years
 

Lower crime numbers continue through May. There is an outside shot at coming under the historical target of 400 homicides. We will see if it holds over the summer, but good news.

From the Sun-Times:

Thought this was of note:

There is construction on the roof of the public school building across the side street from me that starts at 6pm and goes through the night for the past couple of weeks during the weekdays. Sometimes it has kept me up to almost 2am but I'm not sure how much later after that they are working. From the noisy cranes that when lifting sound like a jet, the beeping of trucks backing up, to the giant pot of tar steaming away, I think it is a bit much. Sure I get the work has to be done but at those hours? I'm sure they are working not to disturb the kids during the school day but school ends shortly for the summer. They can work during the day time when school ends. I have to work in the morning. If this is an emergency then they wouldn't have the school open at all?

My question is, is this legal at those hours? I've googled noise ordinances and construction type work and there are hours that you may not work but maybe this is an exception? And how long does it take to replace a roof on a school building?

Looking more deeply on the Internet this is the work they are going to do:

"Scope of work includes roof replacement, targeted masonry repairs, and related interior finishes at main building at Nettelhorst."

Anticipated to end middle of Aug. I seriously hope when the school is over for the summer this switches to daytime work. Still though for now while school is in session, are they allowed to work through the whole evening and through the early morning hours? People have to sleep. It is loud with trucks constantly beeping while backing up and the engines of the crane lifting and such.

I seriously get that the work has to be done but 6pm through at least 2am (I eventually fall asleep by then with the noise so I dont know how late this goes on) or later?
https://www.reddit.com/r/lakeview/co...nt_working_at/

Enough of my rant lol.

Seems to me that we've had an unusually cold beginning of the year. . . my guess is that has had something to do with it. . .

. . .

I think everybody understands this, it is even referenced in the article I posted. But nobody knows how much of an effect it has had. That is why we will wait until after the summer to understand how sticky the lower violence numbers are.

Either way, I'll gladly accept the significantly lower levels of violence that we've had so far this year. That's the goal, it's ok to be happy about it.

Yeah, the trend line right now is for one of the lowest homicide totals for Chicago in like the past 60 years.

That is very good news. Less homicide is always better than more homicide.

But as you said, we'll have a better picture after summer to see if the start of this year was just a "chilly spring" aberration or not

Weekend violence
 

70-degree Weekend: 3 killed and 10 wounded.
10-year Average: 8 killed and 39 wounded.

https://heyjackass.com/

I need a piece of news like this today with so much going on in the world...... Great to hear.

I was on Mag Mile Saturday and it felt completely normal. Tons of people out, cool sidewalk performers, etc.

And one of those 3 killings that hey jackass recorded for this past weekend was allegedly a non-gun homicide on Saturday night on the 5600 block of W Fullerton in Belmont-Cragin that I can find absolutely zero info about from any other local media outlet.

Only the fatal shootings in South Shore and New City have been corroborated by other media reporting.

Was the Belmont-Cragin death even truly a homicide? Hey jackass has been known to jump to conclusions about suicides in the past.


EDIT: Sun-times finally posted an article late monday afternoon regarding the Belmont-Cragin stabbing homicide on Saturday, so that one is legit.

Still though, blessedly less violence than an average summer weekend of recent memory. Let's pray the trend holds.

Just curious, has anyone ever tried to build something on the little L shaped lot across from cirrus and cascade?

Unless reports of more overnight homicides come in, it looks like Chicago will close out the first half of the year with less than 200 homicides, according to heyjackass data. It's been at least a decade since Chicago has met that mark.

Homicides through 6/30:

2025: 198
2024: 293
2023: 329
2022: 330
2021: 365
2020: 355
2019: 259

Source: heyjackass.com


I think we can now safely say that Chicago's pandemic-induced violent crime spike has finally waned.

It would be nice to think this leads to a virtuous cycle. If there are 40% less shootings that police have to respond too, you'd think that at least *some* of the time they save can be devoted to preventing new shootings.

What a wild time we are living in...... Chicago homicide numbers are down and Chicago real estate trends are bucking national trends moving upwards.

Up is down and down is up.

This isn't the development thread, but that site has always been reserved for an elementary school. Magellan isn't required to build it, so it would be funded by CPS... but CPS hasn't found any money to build one in the last 25 years.

Building a vertical skyscraper school on a tiny sliver of land in one of the city's richest neighborhoods just isn't a priority for CPS, and Magellan already invited GEMS to build down the street so neighborhood residents already have a private school option nearby.

Probably Magellan will put this off as long as possible, and then go to the community/alderman with a request to amend the PD and delete the school for some high-priced townhouses.

From what I understand, GEMS is closing, isn't it?

I thought I heard that as well...and construction on the high school building has been stalled for well over a year.

Was there some hidden air show I missed the memo on?...... Did anyone else see the contrail A symbols this evening at sunset?