Archive for April 24th, 2010
Great Merciful Zeus: Someone in Boystown, besides us, admits there's a connection between the Center on Halsted and the Boystown crime surge.
We couldn’t believe our eyes when we read this today, but someone in Boystown besides us is publicly admitting a connection between the Center on Halsted and the surge in violent crime in the gayborhood, caused by the criminal elements the Center attracts north from the Southside.
This came in the form of a small blurb in Boi Magazine, but it’s something. A start. A break in the denial perpetuated by the Leftists in Boystown.
Boi Magazine is a weekly photo album of club shots, with a few “articles” thrown in amidst advertising for the local bars, restaurants, and circuit parties. Everyone reads it like Page Six in New York, looking to see who was at what event, what outrageous outfits Cyon Flare or Teri Yaki wore this week, which bartenders are getting fat, and what porn stars are going to be guesting as strippers in which clubs this coming week. Sporadically, there are also little funny bits we enjoy, where readers send in answers to questions like “What’s the worst Christmas present you’ve ever received?” or “What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?”. It goes without saying queries like this, in Boystown, elicit truths stranger than fiction.
Near the back of the magazine, there’s a feature called “In The Know, On The Go!”, because not all gays have the fabulous-and-witty gene.
After a few paragraphs about the new martinis at the Kit Kat Lounge honoring Glee (“The Gleek”, “The Cheerio”, and others), we were stunned to read this:
“Things are getting tense on Halsted. It seems a number of business owners object to the large numbers of gay youth hanging out after programs at the Center on Halsted conclude. Whilerace (sic) and class issues no doubt figure into the tension, the main problem seems to be that there are no other social outlets available.”
Of course, being a Leftist publication, the author then launches into an apology for the “youth”, saying these “kids” have no where else to go, and that they are just misunderstood.
Last summer, over a dozen gay men were hospitalized, after being violently robbed, by these misunderstood “youth”.
It’s revelatory, though, that Boi Magazine acknowledged a link between the Center on Halsted and the problems ongoing in Boystown. Though they downplayed what the “youth” are doing, this is sincerely the first time we’ve ever seen one of the LGBTQ publications admit a causal link between the Center and anything.
This is because, we’re told, that the last CAPS meeting (the community outreach meetings the police have with residents and business owners once a month) was an absolute screaming match, between business owners, in particular, fed up with the Center’s excuses regarding what their “youth” do in the neighborhood once the Center closes.
The Center, for the last four years or so (since the day it opened), has been claiming they shoulder no responsibility for the surge in crime, because they claim this “youth” behaves itself while at the Center and they have no ability to control their behavior when they leave the Center. This is similar to a woman who lived on our street growing up in the 80s. The woman, a lonely old lady who wanted to feel special, used to feed pigeons, cats, stray dogs, possums, and whatever other stray and wild animals she could. Her whole backyard was one giant food ball for everything that could fly, crawl, waddle, and, most importantly, defecate.
There was you-know-what all over the neighborhood, because the nonstop buffet at old lady Kravitz’s house led to poo-a-thons everywhere in the surrounding vicinity. You feed flocks of pigeons nonstop for months and see just how much guano you can accumulate on windows, roofs, cars, and the increasingly more common scalp.
In the winter time, many home owners were jarred by the sudden and ear-splitting terror of cats mangled in their car engines, since these strays would seek warmth under the hoods after feeding at Kravitz’s house.
And then there were the rats.
Not only cute and cuddly things come running when someone well-meaning, but with little common sense, opens a smorgasborg and invites the world over.
For every good LGBTQ youth who comes to the Center on Halsted for needed help, there are a dozen rats who roll along for the ride. The Center defends itself by focusing only on that one good kid in the pack of muggers and hoodlums, claiming their mission is to give that one youth a safe place to hang out. They completely ignore all of that kid’s “friends”, who ride up from the Southside with him or her, not to attend the Center’s programs, but to use the Center as a base for their criminal activity.
It’s like old lady Kravitz insisting, “But they’re all so hungry. Every day there are more of them that need food, so I feed them. They love me. They come to me because I love them and it’s not right for you to tell me to stop feeding them when they are hungry”.
Ultimately, Kravitz ended up in a nursing home. Magically, once her feeding operation was shut down, all the strays disappeared and the problems with rats and pigeons were relieved. Who knows where any of those things went to eat after the trough was emptied, but it was nice to have the neighborhood back to the way it was before Kravitz went nuts and embarked on her crusade to actively bring these elements onto the street.
We plan on attending the next CAPS meeting and doing a full report on what really goes on at these things, because you only get snippets of the truth in the local LGBTQ papers — and the MSM refuses to cover this story at all. But, we’re frightened this summer’s going to be the year when these “youth” from the Center finally kill someone. Last year, they put one guy in the hospital who came close to dying, after these Southside kids beat him with a baseball bat late at night while robbing him. This year, there are more of these thugs out than ever, and it’s only April.
Whatever happens, the Center will claim they never anticipated violence and deaths like this, but we just don’t see how even the most Leftist of Liberals can be blind to the reality we’re facing.
What’s going to be interesting, when the Center “youth” finally do kill someone, is what happens to the Center if the victim’s family is smart enough to bring the Center into a wrongful death suit as a third party defendant, for doing what Kravitz did with those rats and pigeons, and creating an attractive environment for the increase in crime. Is it possible to sue the Center for something like this, if you are a victim of crime in Boystown and your attackers are part of the Center on Halsted Gang? Can a legal argument be made that if not for the Center and its active recruitment of Southsiders into Boystown, you would not have been attacked, or someone would not have lost his life?
Something like that could dry up the Center’s fundraising pretty damn quick. And, without funds for these Southside outreach programs, how would the Center continue to actively bring criminal elements into the neighborhood?
Stay tuned, because more than a few of these questions look to be addressed, if not fully answered, in what’s shaping up to be a high tension summer in Boystown, thanks to the recklessness and determined myopia of the Center on Halsted.
Feds seize the mob's bank; Alexi Giannoulias facing renewed calls to leave Senate race
Well, the Feds finally done did it.
They seized the Giannoulias family’s bank, Broadway Bank, the mob’s bank here in Chicago.
Everything went down lickety-split, too.
After close of business yesterday, friends of ours who live in Uptown reported workers scraping the “Broadway Bank” name off the glass on the building, and more YMCA-ready construction hat types were up on cherry pickers draping Broadway’s large signage with MB Reality AVAILABLE banners.
Because the real estate market is so sizzling hot, they just had to get those signs up pronto.
More likely, the Giannoulias family wants everything with “Broadway Bank” on it to disappear as quickly as possible, to mitigate the damage to scion Alexi “Did I do that?” Giannoulias.
They also want millions in tax refunds because of the bank’s failure.
That’s right, the sleazeball Giannoulias clan’s going to make a lot of money off the bank they drove into the ground, and into FDIC control. As their familial Titanic was listing, the clan raided the bank for some $30 million, claiming they were “diversifying their investments”. Diversifying them right from the bank and into their own pockets. Now, they’re going to profit once more, this time off taxpayers, because of carry-back provisions that will further enrich them now that the Feds have seized their criminal enterprise.
Only in Chicago, folks.
Anywhere else, a non-insane person would leave the Senate race when his family’s mob-funding enterprise collapsed, but it appears Alexi’s shouting “Damn the torpedoes!” at the top of his lungs, convinced the lackluster Mark Kirk campaign can still be beat, no matter how terrible Broadway Bank makes Giannoulias look.
Kirk’s running one of the worst campaigns we’ve ever seen, believing he should do as little as possible and remain almost completely invisible while Giannoulias goes down with Broadway Bank. Maybe this will work…or maybe Giannoulias, desperate, will start hitting Kirk with everything he’s got.
There’s nothing left for Giannoulias in politics after this. He came onto the scene in 2006, out of nowhere, with Obama’s strong support — since they were “basketball buddies”. Possibly not in the way that Obama and Reggie Love and Kal Penn were “basketball buddies”. This president has more “basketball buddies” than Tiger Woods has bimbo eruptions.
There might have been actual basketball played between Giannoulias and Obama, who knows. But, back when he was running for state Treasurer, Giannoulias made a big deal about how much he was involved with Broadway Bank. Now, as it goes under, he’s claiming he barely spent any time there, and didn’t know about anything that was going on.
It’s hard to imagine this man being able to run for any more elected offices, regardless of who he “played basketball” with.
Only in Chicago, folks. Only in Chicago.
Who's dressed better? The First Lady, or a Boystown Drag Queen?
Click photo above to embiggen.
Who wears skintight black leggings and oddball accessories better — the current First Lady of the United States, or Boystown drag queen Cyon Flare?
Saturday Open Thread: April 24th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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Read John Kass’ column on the latest development in Rod Blagojevich’s trial.
In short, Kass speculates that Blagojevich is sending a political message to Obama, essentially asking for either a pardon or a deal from the Justice Department. If no deal appears, Blagojevich intends to take down as many Democrats as he possibly can, and make as big of a stink as possible nationally, in the lead-up to November’s election.
Do you remember 2006, with the Mark Foley and Larry Craig stench hanging in the air that further pushed Independents away from Republicans?
Gay sex scandals and hypocrisy are to Republicans what corruption charges and Chicago-style politics are to Democrats.
There really is a perfect storm gathering to clobber Democrats unlike anything we have seen in generations. It’s going to be worse than 1994 for them…much, much worse…it’s going to be 1946 or 1938 bad in terms of the shakeup in Congress.
And, if Blagojevich does not get a deal he likes, he seems poised to do everything he can to topple this administration.
If we were Rod, we’d stay away from planes for the next few months…and would actually try to stay out of cars, too. There sure are a lot of car wrecks on the Kennedy and Day Ryan here in Chicago. Lots of days where slick roads lead to hydroplaning. There are also a lot of random muggings and assaults all over the city. Anything could happen to just about anyone at anytime in this city.
We do not believe for a moment this president and his White House are above ordering something vile done to Blagojevich or his family to shut him up. That’s what you get when you send Chicago to Washington, folks. All of you who sat on your butts and didn’t vote in 2008 because you didn’t think McCain was “Republican enough” have only yourselves to blame.
Idiots.
