The 80s was definitely the BEST DECADE!!! I'm born & raised in NYC but always LOVED Chicago since a kid from watching all the great 80s movie's & TV show's. 🎬🎥
You're kidding right? Chicago was one of the most violent cities during the 80s and the 90s. But you're just blinded by nostalgia thinking everything today sucks.
@@yemi1776, you think anything about Chicago is better today? Lol, you’re dead wrong 😑. Decades ago, it was still dangerous, but in a better condition than…NOW…
I was born in 1982 and only have a few faint memories of Chicago pre-1990 but I do remember how gritty it was, and knowing the horrible crime waves it was going through. Lots of gritty industrial businesses and factories were humming all along Lake Street, Elston, and all around downtown back in those days. On the other hand, I remember how many small businesses there were before Whole Foods, Mariano's, and Trader Joe's and I easily remember the days when me and mom argued whether to go to Dominick's (now defunct) or Jewel-Osco. Montgomery Ward, Woolworth's, Dominick's, The infamous Cicero/Ogden/BNSF overpass bridge and interchange ramps, Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor Homes, and countless drug stores and restaurants, all of which are now long gone. Many of the areas I regularly went through in recent years, were in fact either very unsafe or were heavily industrialized. The Wacker Drive building with the white lights on the top south of the Sears Tower had yet to exist, as did the NBC building with two pairs of antennas just north of the Sears Tower. More than half of the high-rises that dominate the skyline today didn't exist then. Chicago simply put came off as being more 'spacious' before high-density development took off after the 1996 Democratic Convention. Mind you, Chicago was incredibly dangerous as hell back in this era but it was simply a different place and it's hard to compare Chicago of the 1980s to now. From what I gather, the crime is lower now but has come in truly vicious ugly spasms rather than be consistently high like in the 1980s and early 1990s. Back then, there were large gangs with well-defined structure and moral codes and large well-defined territories that rivals knew not to muscle in on. Now with the old OG leaders arrested, or dead, these gangs have fragmented into hundreds of smaller gang-cells that now fight each other on small blocks and it has led to very ugly spikes in violent crime, partially also aggravated by the pandemic. Chicago has always been extremes of awesome and awful throughout it's history. If it wasn't notorious for its current-day gang violence issues, it was notorious for Mafia-related massacres such as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929 as well as Al Capone and other mobsters running the show during the Prohibition Era. On the other hand, it has also always been a world class city that has attracted countless peoples to both visit and live in from around the world and it is also an incredibly resilient city that I hope will weather the current crises facing it right now.
Thank you for this comment, I am an immigrant and I live in NW Suburbs now, previously I rented an apartment on N Dearborn St and that was golden time. I fell in love with Chicago irrevocably. It's still dangerous and problematic but gosh, it's sooo beautiful! It was very interesting to read something about its history. Thanks again
You hit it on the head.. Chicago born n raised.. Please suburb folk, please do not say you're from Chicago when you're really from the burbs.. Real Chicago people hate that.
@@silvrx-pz3ce All that happens with hipsters is, they get old and get a mortgage. And then they complain about the city being full of hipsters and kids not being what they used to be when they themselves were young.
Chicago was very slow in wiring itself for cable television. Also, Metra was created in the 1980s when railroads discontinued their passenger services to focus exclusively on freight operations.
I remember all them days back then in Chicago which I was like 5 years ole in 1982 Now days Chicago has gotten so much worse but more outta common now Here it is 2022 and these kids now days are running around with guns shooting up who whom ever. I never experienced gun violence period in Chicago back in the 80a and we grew up in the south side of Chicago on the low end area around 58th street
You couldn't be more wrong. downtown in this era was a place where people went for work and then they went home. Now there's more people living in the loop than there ever was in the late 20th century. tons of new skyscrapers have gone up and some have been torn down. Cabrini Green on the north side is almost completely gone now. Sometimes it's hard to believe how much it's changed in just the 20 years I've seen
Never take your life for granted. Sure we have to deal with covid and climate change but the 80s were not rainbows and sunshine either. Chicago in particular was much more dangerous and lawless than today. You couldn't walk around Chicago at night back then without getting into trouble and there were a lot of rough parts of cities all over the country that are much nicer today. Never take what we have for granted because most of our ancestors didn't have shit
