[qingcharles]

I've lived in some of the roughest neighborhoods there and never felt particularly unsafe walking around at all. A couple of times people dumped bodies in my yard, but I also had that problem when I lived in a really nice area too :D A couple of other times I took to my basement while there were gang shootouts happening outside my house.

There is lots of great food in Chicago. Downtown is nice to me. You can get around the whole city on bike + El (subway).

It's still my least favorite major city, though. I have no urge to live there again.

[ptsneves]

How can someone talk about a trivial experience of exploring food while acknowledging that they had bodies thrown into their yards? In both countries in Europe I lived I have never in my life seen a corpse outside of a funeral and even then. I also never heard gun shots except for hunting and never in an urban setting.

I can’t imagine having my little children suffering seeing the corpse of a dead human being and I would curse and never set foot on a land where that is normalised.

[tptacek]

I grew up here and have lived here for the last 20 years and I have never met anybody here who could tell either of those stories. It sounds pretty made up.

Later

I should add, I have friends who grew up in Lawndale, Gage Park, and Auburn Gresham. They don't tell these stories either. Witnessing violence, lots of property crime, being fucked with by the cops, feeling threatened by gang activity, sure. Bodies dumped on their lawns? Hiding in their basement from gun fire? Not so much.

[qingcharles]

This was mostly in East Chatham, just south of Woodlawn.

[kasey_junk]

Bullshit. You could drop every Chicago murder victims body for a year in east Chatham and the chances of it landing in any particular yard would be small. And clearly most murder bodies don’t end up in any yard. For it to happen multiple times is a ludicrous claim.

I lived in Woodlawn for 15 years and never heard a gunshot, more or less went to my basement.

I’m not sure what your goal is. Chicago has a gun violence problem, like many cities in the US but claiming it’s that common is just for tricking gullible Europeans or making political hay.

[qingcharles]

I assume Woodlawn was probably peppered with Shotspotters just like Chatham was, so it's odd that they would install the equipment if there were no shootings at all.

[tptacek]

Dude there's a shotspotter a couple blocks from my house and our police discharged a sidearm in the line of duty for the first time in over 10 years last year. Nobody was dumping bodies on your lawn.

You get that we live here right? How is this argument supposed to work out for you?

[kasey_junk]

Because it’s an obvious troll.

[ungreased0675]

Is your assessment based on no physical harm befalling you specifically? Because what you describe is objectively an unsafe environment.