Miscellaneous and completely random brain farts about Chicago

[bnk]

I have no Idea what kind of squires it was in Iowa but no one called them fox squires, just big red ones. We don't have those reds where I grew up in McHenry county, if we did, i never seen them.

But than again growing up in the 70's I never seen wild Turkeys before and now they are like all over the place, walk enough you will step on one.

Surprisingly those huge birds can fly enough to roost in the trees to sleep at night. It looks outrageous but they can do it.

BTW I know the Aves are Dinos and Turkeys really look like dinosaurs, not as much as an emu, that would just love disembroiling you, but damn close.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Fox squirrels are unmistakable. They are at least twice the size of a gray squirrel. If you see one you might think it's a monkey with a bushy tail, at first glance.

Yes, squirrels cross roads all the time - non-busy ones. Wide, busy ones are death traps, and most squirrels would never even try.

I actually have extensive experience observing the success rates of squirrels crossing roads of different kinds around me, which is why I wondered about the squirrels on the IIT campus. There is this one road I go on multiple times a day that is a death trap for squirrels - so much so that several years ago I started keeping rough track of how many got hit. On the ~1-1/3 mile stretch of road I notice an average of 2-3 squirrels getting hit every month. A couple weeks ago was really bad when I kept track of at least 5 that week. In the 6 years I've lived there I have easily seen 150 squirrels killed on that road. And sadly, this last Tuesday I finally hit one myself when it suddenly started raining really hard and a few seconds later a squirrel ran right in front of my car (probably trying to get out of the rain itself) and it was raining so hard I didn't see it until the last second and I hit it.

Since I started noticing this I also started keeping rough track of squirrels getting hit on other streets in my area. I've noticed that they very, very rarely even bother trying to cross the wider and busier roads (that is, I almost never see dead squirrels on them) whereas I see plenty of raccoons and opossums killed on those same roads. Clearly the raccoons and opossums try crossing those bigger roads, but squirrels rarely try. That's why I'm seriously doubting the squirrels on the IIT campus ever bother trying to cross those busy roads.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Here's a video of a particular Florida subspecies of Fox squirrel. This is larger than most other Fox squirrels, but gives you an idea. The ones around me are maybe 15% smaller - still quite large. These aren't going to be the ones you're seeing in Chicago. Go to about the 10 second mark.

• Video Link

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

Here's a video of a particular] Florida subspecies of Fox squirrel. This is larger than most other Fox squirrels, but gives you an idea. The ones around me are maybe 15% smaller - still quite large. These aren't going to be the ones you're seeing in Chicago. Go to about the 10 second mark.

• Video Link

The Illinois Fox Squirrel population is heavier than gray squirrels but not much longer than them.

“Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger): The fox squirrel is the largest tree squirrel in Illinois, weighing 1¾ to 2 pounds and having a length of 19½ to 22 inches“

[MolsonExport]

disembroiling

That must mean a person being formerly cooked, and but somehow subjecting them to being uncooked after the fact.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

11. As far as I can tell, the entirety of the north half of Chicago is one giant yuppie/hipster heaven. Or at least most of the north half. I sure didn't see anything I'd categorize otherwise. I drove up to Wrigley (mostly on Clark St), and then a couple miles north of Wrigley or so to (I think) Lawrence Ave, then headed west for several blocks on that street, then drove south on Damen Ave for quite some while, just to pick an ordinary street to get an idea of what the place looked like. The entire journey was pretty much nonstop yuppie/hipster habitat. While I was at Wrigley I parked my car for a bit to wander around some local streets, and even some of the streets I thought might have some junkier houses were still mostly yuppie/hipster habitat.

This is very noticeable, and possibly the biggest difference between gentrified Chicago and gentrified other prime U.S. cities. Not just the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, but almost everywhere east of river and up through Uptown.

Maybe it's a lack of rent control and general affordability means that the prime areas become relative monocultures? There's an enormous Big 10 grad-oriented feel, where it seems places like Lakeview are transitional spaces between college and suburban child-rearing. 22-35 age cohort absolutely dominates streets like Clark, Belmont, Broadway, etc.

Re. the El, there was a postwar plan at some point (I think under Daley I) to replace a number of lines with subways, and maybe replace the downtown El loop, but it never went anywhere.

Re. State Street, I believe it was the dominant street until about 1980 or so. Michigan Ave. wasn't really a thing until Water Tower Place was built. But from that point forward, Michigan Ave. became the dominant street, and State Street declined somewhat.

There was also a racial angle, as State Street was a popular shopping street for black South Siders in the 1970's and 1980's (Englewood and the traditional South Side retail corridors were mostly gone by that point, so people headed downtown), while Michigan Ave. was much whiter and North Side-oriented. State Street is also very transit-oriented and Michigan Ave. isn't. The Loop also had a theater district, which was full of cinemas playing blaxploitation flicks, while the whiter demographic moved to newer theaters north of the river.

State Street is still probably in better shape now than 20-30 years ago. A bunch of colleges have taken space, and the main library stabilized the southern half. The theaters have been renovated. State Street south of Congress was a notorious skid row until relatively recently.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is very noticeable, and possibly the biggest difference between gentrified Chicago and gentrified other prime U.S. cities. Not just the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, but almost everywhere east of river and up through Uptown.

This just inspired me to look at the river on Google maps, and I noticed that the river actually circles back into Lake Michigan up north. Never noticed that before. So that makes that area kinda like an island!

Does the water in that part of the river flow north to south or south to north?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

This just inspired me to look at the river on Google maps, and I noticed that the river actually circles back into Lake Michigan up north. Never noticed that before. So that makes that area kinda like an island!

Does the water in that part of the river flow north to south or south to north?

Check out this thread I made last year:

Chicago's "Manhattan"

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

The Illinois Fox Squirrel population is heavier than gray squirrels but not much longer than them.

“Fox squirrel (Sciurus niger): The fox squirrel is the largest tree squirrel in Illinois, weighing 1¾ to 2 pounds and having a length of 19½ to 22 inches“

I always wondered why the squirrels in New York look slightly smaller than squirrels in Michigan. I now realize these are gray squirrels in NYC vs fox squirrels in Michigan. NY and Michigan do both have black squirrels, though.

[galleyfox]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I always wondered why the squirrels in New York look slightly smaller than squirrels in Michigan. I now realize these are gray squirrels in NYC vs fox squirrels in Michigan. NY and Michigan do both have black squirrels, though.

Black is just a mutation that occurs in both the Grey and Fox squirrel population. More so grey squirrels in the Midwest.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

Black is just a mutation that occurs in both the Grey and Fox squirrel population.

The SE corner of Wilmette that I grew up in decades ago had a very large % of its eastern gray squirrels with the black fur mutation, for whatever reason.

I've never seen black squirrels in such numbers anywhere else that I've lived in Chicago.

No idea if it's still like that up there.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by galleyfox

Black is just a mutation that occurs in both the Grey and Fox squirrel population. More so grey squirrels in the Midwest.

The black squirrels in Detroit are typically smaller than the fox squirrels, so I suspect they are mostly gray squirrels. They look exactly same as the black squirrels I've seen in NY.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by James Bond Agent 007

25. How does the street parking thing work? Three times so far I've parked in a street parking space and used those little kiosks to pay for my space. You enter your license plate # and then pay with a credit card. It doesn't spit out anything to put in your windshield, or anything like that. How do they enforce that? Do they have meter maids who scan the license plates of the parked cars and then check if it's in their system? Or something? If that's the case I wonder about it, because when I was entering my license plate # I could find no 'space' character on the keyboard and had to enter my license plate number all jammed together. Maybe that doesn't matter and they can tell anyway?

In Kansas City, street parking is free on the weekends so I've never actually had to use the city parking meters, except maybe a couple times and in those cases it's more like a regular parking meter and you put something in your windshield.

This seems to be pretty standard parking technology.

The license plate # that is entered into the kiosk is transmitted to the meter maid's handheld device. She goes down the line and checks to see if yours is on her list.

At least that's how I think it must work.

[pj3000]

Also, I would much rather ride an elevated train and see great urban views than ride the subway.

The best train rides in NYC are quite obviously the non-underground portions.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is very noticeable, and possibly the biggest difference between gentrified Chicago and gentrified other prime U.S. cities. Not just the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park, but almost everywhere east of river and up through Uptown.

Maybe it's a lack of rent control and general affordability means that the prime areas become relative monocultures? There's an enormous Big 10 grad-oriented feel, where it seems places like Lakeview are transitional spaces between college and suburban child-rearing. 22-35 age cohort absolutely dominates streets like Clark, Belmont, Broadway, etc.

The young adult cohort absolutely has an outsized share from the loop up to Lakeview, but your net is cast a bit too wide when you include everything east of the river up through uptown.



20-34 age cohorts as a percentage of Community Area (2020):

City-wide average - 27.0%

The Loop - 47.8%
Near North - 42.4%
Lincoln Park - 41.3%
Lakeview - 46.7%

Uptown - 34.8%
Lincoln Square - 29.8%
North Center - 23.7%


In fact, because the Milwaukee corridor now soaks of so many of the young adults that come to Chicago, you can actually find higher shares of them west of the river than you can in those last 3 listed above.

Near West - 40.7%
West Town - 44.8%
Logan Square - 39.2%
Avondale - 32.1%

[Steely Dan]

And for reference, I found age cohorts for DC's Adam Morgan. They didn't line up perfecly with the range above, but 18 - 34 year olds make up 43% of the population there, so chicago's major young adult areas don't seem like they'd be too outlier-ish on that score to me.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Also, I would much rather ride an elevated train and see great urban views than ride the subway.

The best train rides in NYC are quite obviously the non-underground portions.

I can only think of a handful of scenic rides above ground... 7 train between Hunters Point and Queensboro Plaza, the N/Q/D over the Manhattan Bridge, and J/Z over the Williamsburg Bridge.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I can only think of a handful of scenic rides above ground... 7 train between Hunters Point and Queensboro Plaza, the N/Q/D over the Manhattan Bridge, and J/Z over the Williamsburg Bridge.

ANY elevated train ride will be more "scenic" than rolling through a subterranean subway tunnel.

I don't have a majestic view of the — Alps or anything like that on my daily brown line commute down to the loop, but it's still nice to be able to look out the window and see something.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

ANY elevated train ride will be more "scenic" than rolling through a subterranean subway tunnel.

I don't have a majestic view of the — Alps or anything like that on my daily brown line commute down to the loop, but it's still nice to be able to look out the window and see something.

There's no real difference to me. The buildings are usually so close to the tracks in NY that it feels like a tunnel anyway. I tend to dislike the elevated sections though because they are much louder than when you're underground.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I tend to dislike the elevated sections though because they are much louder than when you're underground.

That's odd. the situation is completely reversed in Chicago.