Comments ( 11 )

• I’d be interested to hear the Zekasian take on dis piece of gar BAGE outta Crains.

  Talk about misinterpreting data. Joe Zekas may have an appropriately curmudgeonly take on this data set.

  Apparently south suburban Harvey has lost 130 percent of its population since 2000. Many other hoods and suburbs are also showing massive population losses of 40 percent of more in a decade. I mean I know many city hoods are losing population, but not at that rate.

  My guess is the “author” of this chart took ten year data from 1990-2000 and then carried over that loss for TEN individual years. Basically multiplying the actual loss by at least a factor of ten.

  I would cancel my Crain’s subscription in protest, but I’m a luddite at heart. I need newsprint in my hands.

  Woe is me.

• I’ll respond later to the data questions, IrishPirate.

  In the meantime I have a question. Newsprint? You’re no longer cuddling the cheap wine bottles in brown paper bags?

• Joseph,

  cuddling cheap wine bottles in brown paper bags!

  I’m outraged!

  Anyway I buy my wine by the jug so larger plastic bags work out better.

• IrishPirate,

  I used to have a Department of Planning map that showed Chicago community area Census population over about a 70-year span in the form of a bar graph, with numbers, inset in each community area.

  That map made stunningly clear how rapidly population shifts occur within the city. It was common for community areas to lose 60, 70 even 80 percent of their population in a decade, or to grow by that amount.

  None of that changes the fact that the Crain’s map appears to reflect random garbage, as you note. I wouldn’t spend any time wondering how the data was arrived at. I have no interest in garbage.

  One small set of data points. Wilmette, Winnetka and Kenilworth have very stable populations. The map shows them losing, respectively, 39%, 36% and 49% of their population. Garbage.

  P.S. I started to comment on your jug-handling technique, but restrained myself

• Joe,

  I don’t think the relatively rapid changes in population you mentioned are all that common anymore. With the exception of the south and west loops areas there is no hyper-rapid population growth in the city.

  As for population loss that is also generally slower ; although,seemingly like a slow motion avalanche in huge swaths of the west and south sides. Ten to twenty percent loss each decade.

  The earlier more rapid changes were likely do to the fact the city wasn’t “built out” and because of how industrial and residential areas would sometimes rapidly change from one to the other.

  I’m tempted to email Crain’s, but my experiences in pointing out glaring errors in the major media hasn’t been appreciated in the past. I’m a prophet lost in a desert, while the major media is merely interested in a different type of profit.

  It’s best not to comment on my jug handling techniques. At my age it will only make me wistful and perhaps I’ll start perusing Craigslist and come to the attention of Sheriff Dart. That would be unfortunate.

• The wistfulness of Yeats, another Irishman, perhaps?

• Yeats had a vasectomy in his 60’s.

  I’m not sure he understood “wistful”.

  I’m feeling more like Joyce described himself near the end of his unhealthy life.

  “My mouth is full of decayed teeth and my soul of decayed ambitions.”

• And yet you still sally forth every day to forge in the smithy of your soul the uncreated conscience of your race.

• Joe,

  “forge”ing ahead beats the alternative.

  At the moment Joyce is a bit much for me. The man took a simple Irish drinking song, Finnegan’s Wake. and turned it into an examination of birth, life, death, and the possible resurrection.

  I think I’ll stick with my current interest in American Civil War history before I tackle Joyce again.

  Thankfully Mark Twain helped Grant write his famous memoir. If it had been Joyce no one would have understood it, yet they still would have recognized its greatness.

• IrishPirate,

  The Civil War is more fitting for an Uptown resident.

• Yep, the War of Southern Hubris is more fitting;although, if you’re gonna stick with literature I think some absurdist writing might “speak to” the Uptown of the present.