A streetview of emptiness

I have been extremely busy and unable to go on foot and take some pictures of some neighborhoods I am studying, so google will have to suffice.  Here is a street view of the neighborhood near Lake and Kedzie.

As you can see this is a neighborhood with high transit accessability, and yet the areas near the station has been almost completely demolished.

This area is the Garfield Park neighborhood, which you may remember from a previous post was a hot spot for violent crime.



This image is from 2009.  Unfortunately I haven't been out there to take 2012 pictures but I know that this neighborhood has seen a few more building razed over the last year and a half.  An interesting question is:  is this policy effective at combating violent crime?

Chicago then and now: The Blues Brothers and the South Loop

For your viewing pleasure, clips of the classic film The Blues Brothers that were filmed in and around Chicago juxatposed with their current real world locations.



Additionally, there is a web site which has the Blues Brothers locations.

Interestingly, I was able to deduce that the current Harold Washington library on the corner of State and Van Buren was once the seedy men's only hotel area featured in the film.



I can't tell if this is looking east or west.  Here it is today looking west.

The station at this intersection is new.  The hotel was either where the park is on the north side of Van Buren or where the library stands on the south side of Van Buren.

Interestingly enough, this seedy side of the South Loop still exists.



Note the men's only hotel and the pawn shop, practically a mirror image for the scenery in the Blues Brothers.  This is looking north along Clark, about 2 blocks from where Elwood lived.  The station in the background is the La Salle and Van Buren station.