“is that a grim neighborhood”
While working at the University of Chicago, I rode with a VERY ADVENTUROUS carpool, anything to save a few minutes!
Escape to the Western suburbs!
Grim? Carpet bombing, would be an upgrade.
Many of the routes, were for very cold, low snow days only.
Warm weather, stay out, park on the Ryan.
1970-1980’s; I doubt it has improved.
Nothing has changed for the better on the south side. There are neighborhoods that you just have to get a glimpse of from the expressway and they make the hair stand up on your neck. You know that they are the last places you would ever want to be. That area around 13300 S. Indiana has a special dystopian feel to it. It’s pretty much where Chicago ends. It’s wedged in between the landfills and the old steel mills along the Calumet River. There are some houses and apartments and plenty of vacant lots. You can pass through there sometimes and never see another living soul. Except there’s a panhandler who camps out on the median at 130th and Indiana — he’s been there for years, lying on the median with his stuff, plying his trade. Once in a while they find a body dumped around there. A few years back they found some bones, thinking they might have belonged to one of two young girls — sisters— who vanished without a trace over a decade ago, but they turned out not to be.