Monica Geller on “Friends”: “I guess there was a screw up at that damn post office. Tell me about it. U.S. Post Office, more like U.S. lost office.”

A large portion of the 2020 election will be conducted by mail. Citizens get their ballots by mail, fill them out, send them, done…VOILA!! Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Many states have done this for years, plus all states handle absentee voting by mail. Easy peasy without problems.

The only person with issues about this is our current president. We’ve heard Donald Trump make his unsubstantiated claims about voting fraud due to mail-in voting for months. The only ones who believe him are his flunkies and probably not even then since most of them already vote by mail. They just have to continue their constant ass kissing to keep in his good graces.

However, mail voting is going to rise substantially this year. Because of Covid-19, people will feel safer voting this way. Why risk getting infected by standing in long lines with people you don’t know, when you can eliminate that without leaving your home? It makes perfect sense…at least it does if you can trust the post office system to handle the job….but can you?

First off, Trump and his buds have been defunding the post office system. I’m not sure the post office will have the money or resources to handle this most important job. When you add in that the Postmaster General is Trump supporter Louis DeJoy, whose only qualification for the job is he donated millions of dollars to Trump. Makes you feel a little uncomfortable about this, doesn’t it?

I was already more than a little leery about this…and then I had this recent episode with the U.S. mail….

I needed some new socks. I decided to buy a couple of pairs from a company that does all their business through their website. No problem, right? We all buy things off the internet, right? I made the purchase and I was told I would get an email when the socks were ready to ship. After a few days without getting the email, I contacted the company. We went back and forth a few times. Finally I received the email that would let me track my package of socks. Then the U.S. post office got involved….OY! Check out the road trip my socks took:

July 13 Avenel, New Jersey: Order processed and shipped.
July 15 Melrose Park, Illinois: Package arrival.

So far, so good….

July 17 Chariton, Iowa: Package arrival at post office.

Uh oh! I’m pretty sure this isn’t the route to take to get from Melrose Park to the north Chicago suburbs.

July 18 Des Moines, Iowa: Package arrival at post office.

C’MON already!!! Do I have to drive to Iowa to pick up the socks?

July 19 Forest Park, Illinois: Package processed at sorting hub.

I’m not sure what a sorting hub is, but we seem to be getting closer to delivery.

July 20 Fox Valley, Illinois: Package processed at sorting hub.

Hmmmm…the socks seem to be moving backwards, plus there’s that sorting hub thingy again.

July 22 Palatine: Package arrived and processed at sorting hub.

Enough already with this damn sorting hub!

July 22 Deerfield, Illinois: Package arrived and processed at sorting hub.

C’mon!! Stop with this fucking sorting hub!!

July 23 Deerfield, Illinois: Delivered!!

WOW!!! Ten days to get from New Jersey to Illinois. Even with a side trip to bum fuck Iowa, that’s a long time. Quite the road trip!! Maybe the socks were looking for a better home?

But if takes that long to get a two pairs of socks delivered, what are the chances millions and millions of ballots have to be delivered on time and correctly? By the way, this isn’t my first delivery episode with the post office this year. A passport that I ordered in January was supposedly delivered a month later. Keyword is supposedly because I never received it. My local post office has no idea where it is. Good thing Americans are banned from flying into almost every country. Pffft!

My solution, and I know this won’t work for everyone, is to vote early. In Illinois, we have about three weeks of early voting. My local poll is the library about a hundred yards from my back door. I can walk there, vote, go home and wash off all the voting booth cooties in a lot less time than it will take to get my vote-in ballot delivered.

Sounds like a plan, right? Maybe I’ll even wear the new socks to polling place. U.S. Post Office…more like U.S. lost office! Hey guys….any chance of finding my lost passport by election day?

Related Post: Who would be president if the election was postponed?

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Last week I posted a summary of the Chicago neighborhoods with the highest incidence of murder over the last 12 months. However, what people really want to know is which are Chicago’s safest and most dangerous neighborhoods and knowing where the murders are taking place really doesn’t help you answer that question. Although Chicago has an especially large number of murders each year people are much more likely to be the victims of some kind of violent crime and that’s what everyone is really worried about.

Unfortunately, it’s not easy to definitively identify a Chicago neighborhood as either dangerous or safe. Every neighborhood has some level of crime so what’s the cutoff? And even within a single neighborhood there are areas that have a higher level of crime than others. And, generally speaking, higher population neighborhoods are going to tend to have more crime than lower population areas.

So what I do is try to provide some relevant data that people can use to make their own determinations on which neighborhoods they believe are safe or dangerous. Every year around this time I take a look at aggravated assault and battery incidents across the city over a 12 month period ending on June 30 and summarize the data by neighborhood and also map it out.

I focus on “aggravated” assault and battery because it indicates such things as a more serious level of intent, the use of a weapon, the status of the victim, or the injury caused. But this definition does leave out violent crimes such as rape, robbery, and theft but including all that stuff would produce an overwhelming mountain of data. Also, note that I have left out domestic incidents, which account for around 29% of all cases of aggravated assault and battery. When people are trying to determine if a neighborhood is safe or dangerous they are not thinking about domestic incidents so it doesn’t make sense to include them for this purpose.

Once again the number of these violent crimes is surprisingly consistent with previous years. I pulled a total of 10,569 incidents for the last 12 months compared to 10,650 last year and last year was pretty consistent with previous years. In the graph below I summarize the number of these crimes by neighborhood (more precisely community area) in terms of incidents per 100,000 residents and the pattern is generally similar to what we’ve seen in previous years. You’ll want to click on the graph inside the window in order to see a more legible version.

Compared to last year the following community areas saw a 20% or greater reduction in their rate of aggravated assault and battery:

• Norwood Park
• Pullman
• Oakland
• North Center
• West Town
• South Chicago
• Fuller Park
• Edgewater
• Portage Park

And the following community areas saw a 20% or greater increase in their rates:

• South Deering
• Clearing
• Irving Park
• McKinley Park
• Morgan Park
• Ashburn
• Beverly
• Forest Glen
• Burnside

In fact, Burnside had a 125% increase in incidents from last year but with an extremely small population it’s extremely sensitive to changes in the number of incidents.

Map Of Aggravated Assaults & Batteries In Chicago

Of course, when you aggregate data like that you lose a lot of information. Knowing the incidence of violent crime in a particular neighborhood doesn’t tell you where in the neighborhood the crime tends to happen. That’s why I like to map all the incidents.

The map below is interactive. You can pan and zoom, share it, expand it to a full screen, and if you click on an individual balloon it will give you a few more pieces of information about the specific incidence. There’s a ton of data on that map so give it time to respond to your commands.

Certain patterns are always apparent. For instance busy streets/ high traffic areas tend to have more crime than side streets. More targets? More random interactions that lead to altercations? Hard to say. But one thing is clear. The concentrations change block by block.

#ChicagoCrime #ChicagoNeighborhoods

Gary Lucido is the President of Lucid Realty, the Chicago area’s full service real estate brokerage that offers home buyer rebates and discount commissions. If you want to keep up to date on the Chicago real estate market or get an insider’s view of the seamy underbelly of the real estate industry you can Subscribe to Getting Real by Email using the form below. Please be sure to verify your email address when you receive the verification notice.

There’s a Mariano’s on Broadway. It’s not a villain, it’s a grocery store. And we were excited to have one in the neighborhood. It was closer than Trader Joe’s and had better food than the Walmart Express.

But there’s a domino effect when a giant grocery store moves in, especially on a street like Broadway. Several of our great little shops had a hard time keeping up.

The first one to close its doors was a little flower shop. I remember going in there for birthdays and anniversaries, giving the florist a budget, and he’d create something meaningful for Ashley. His work would usually cost somewhere between $30 – $60. Compare that to Mariano’s, they’ve got pre-made bouquets by the door for $19.99 and less. And they look just fine.

The next to go was Pastoral. This one really hurt. I used to go in there for cheese, no name of a cheese in mind, just a general idea like: “I’m making burgers tonight, looking for a good cheddar or something,” or “What would be a good blue cheese?” The expert behind these big wheels of cheese would always nod, give this immediate, “Oh, I know just the one” expression and cut off a sample. Ah, that’s good. Pickup some olives. Pickup a loaf of bread. Head home.

But Mariano’s has all of the above – cheeses, olive bar, bread. It’s not quite the same, but it is more convenient. And less expensive. Within two years, Pastoral closed its doors.

In my lifetime, from as early as I can remember (about 1996) to now, there’s been this giant arms race to make things faster and more convenient. I grew up in what was probably the peak of the everything in one place grocery store. Walmart. Meijer. Kroger. These guys dominated the 90s. But nowadays they almost look like the little guy competing with the juggernaut of Amazon. The reality: you can always go faster. Now, grocery stores have been scrambling to keep up. First, it was the self-scan checkout. Then it was, “We’ll pick out your groceries and bring them to your car.” I imagine the only way to survive over the next 10 years will be things like delivery, online orders, basically imitating Amazon. Otherwise, we’ll think of Mariano’s as that little grocery shop down the street.

But there’s another way to compete with faster, faster, faster. You go in the opposite direction and focus on the experience. The store owner says, “What’s great about my store is that you’re not in a rush. It’s an escape from the fast-paced world.” Sure, there’s probably something cheaper. There’s probably a way to order an item online. But that’s not the race I’m running.

The Inkling Shop is one of these places. You can find it on Broadway between Apple Bite Mart and Manor Dry Cleaners. They usually have a small sign on the sidewalk with the words “Cute Little Shop,” a cartoon, and an arrow written in chalk.

You walk into Inkling and it’s not one of those in your face gift shops like the ones lined up in Times Squre with I Heart New York t-shirts everywhere. Inside The Inkling Shop, verything looks carefully curated. And by your 10th step into the store, you’ve already chuckled three times at some of the comedic items and greeting cards. Ashley usually heads to the apothecary section. I’ve usually got a stuffy nose so I can’t really enjoy the smells. I browse through the greeting cards from talented artists. 

I could keep describing the store, but it’s probably best to let the creativity and comedy speak for itself:

Ten years ago, Inkling owner Stephanie Keller was a manager at a gift shop in Chicago. At the time, her friend Rebecca was in the process of opening her own shop called Wild Card in Pittsburgh. Her start-your-own-store excitement was contagious. 

“Her excitement grew every month as she was closer to opening her very own space,” Stephanie said. “I was proud of her. Early in 2010, I questioned my own future. I spent my free time holed up in my apartment making products to sell at craft fairs, saving my profits, and living off my day job. That’s a lot to ask for, living in such a large city, but I wanted more. What did I want for myself? I wanted to spend my entire day immersed in art. Was that feasible in Chicago? Did I want to make art full-time, or did I want a space for myself? Why not both?” 

And with any big dream, it seems like right after you have that, “This is what I want to do” epiphany moment, it’s immediately met with some level of reasonable fear. That matter-of-fact practical voice always seems to chime in. “Hey, now hang on a second. How are you going to make this work? What about bills?”

“I was scared,” Stephanie admitted. “Scared to fail, but more afraid of disappointing my friends since I needed their help. I am the sole owner of Inkling, but I did not do this alone. During my years selling my work at art fairs, I met incredibly talented artists that I wanted to represent in my shop. I worked with them to curate a unique selection of items to stock my shop and create the atmosphere I had dreamed of.”

Finding the perfect spot ended up being one of the easiest steps. Stephanie decided to stay close to home.

“I lived in Lakeview, so I looked nearby and found a charming stretch of Broadway near Oakdale,” Stephanie said. “Things started to get very real very fast. I think if I had slowed down at any point during the development I would have psyched myself out and frozen in fear. Ten years later, I wouldn’t change a thing. I continue to introduce artists that I admire to my community, I’m surrounded by art and creativity every day, and I am lucky to meet exciting people each time my doors open.”

Can you find greeting cards at a grocery store? Sure you can. Right by the self-service checkout lanes. Are they cheaper? Probably. But with Inkling, we can’t even round the corner on Oakdale and Broadway without our dog Crash making an immediate beeline for Inkling’s front door. He sprints in, one of those moments when he’s walking me, not the other way around. Goes right to the front counter and politely sits down, awaiting his treat.

Like Cheers, you want to go to a place where everybody knows your name. With Inkling, it’s the kind of place that knows your dog’s name and has a treat waiting for him. One of the staff members even gave us this awesome sketch of Crash she made in her spare time. And when I was getting quotes and notes for this article, Stephanie ended the email with: “Give Crash a good chin scratch for me.”

The big stores just can’t compete with that.

You can visit Inkling at 2917 1/2 N. Broadway. Depending on the COVID-19 phase restrictions and also your own comfort level going into stores, you can also shop at www.theinklingshop.com and follow on Instagram @theinklingshop.

Over the last several months, I’ve been using the Medium Rare blog in a different format, featuring local restaurants around Chicago and the Chicagoland area. These also, from time to time, drift into a little bit of philosophy and stories from my own life. To catch up on some of the posts and read about other great local spots, here they are below. 

Chilam Balam: What it takes to keep a restaurant open during the pandemic

The Local Baker: Douglas Callegario’s Nourish Foods

Taste of New York Bagels & Deli

• The Wonder of Saying Yes and Letting Go (Part 1)
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Tango Sur

• Chicago, Argentina (Part 1)
• Chicago, Argentina (Kierkegaard intermission)
• Chicago, Argentina (Part 2: The Family Behind Tango Sur)
• Chicago, Argentina (Kierkegaard Finale)

Black & Caspian

• Black & Caspian – Part 1
• Black & Caspian – Part 2

To subscribe to Medium Rare via email, just enter your email address in the box below. See you next week!

“And you can’t breathe without coughing at daytime. Neither can I.
So what do you say?/Your coffin or mine? -Matt Skiba

I’ve always loved the climax, or final line, of Alkaline Trio’s “Blue In The Face,” where Skiba asks, “Your coffin or mine?” A brilliant pun that plays perfectly with the other coughing our fateful lovers engage in.

Interestingly enough, I was googling the lyrics to this song when I came across this classic Lou Reed interview, ironically titled, “Blue In The Face.” I’ll leave that right here for your enjoyment.

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Giving back, building, rebuilding, and being the change that our community needs perfectly describes exactly who Chicago’s Own Perdure Carter, CEO, and Managing Broker of Dream Spots Leasing and Sales is in a nutshell. With him, Realty is so much more than just about real estate or physical property. Carter started Dream Spots Leasing and Sales 10 years ago with just 10 agents. He’s now at 100 agents and has over 19 years of Real Estate experience and he is only 40 and yes, much of what he does can easily be condensed to a definition that simplifies what realtors do across the board: “a person who acts as an agent for the sale and purchase of buildings and land; a real estate agent.” …and, yeah, Carter does that extremely well. 

The real jewel in this story is what Carter does with his success in Real Estate. The company is heavily involved within the community through food giveaways and nurturing individuals into careers, not just jobs, that offer sustainable income and the opportunity to really live life and live it to the fullest. 

If that wasn’t enough, Dream Spots Leasing and Sales offers a Brokers Scholarship Program. Additionally, the company’s focus is on helping investors rebuild economically challenged communities by offering a flipping program (www.flippingwithapurpose.com). CEO Perdure Carter is also a part of the nonprofit organization, Make-A-Wish Foundation Scholarship for South Shore. 

On Thursday, July 30th at 5:00 PM, the Leasing & Sales Community, and all their family, friends, and supporters came together while socially distancing themselves at Dream Spots for their 10 Year Anniversary MURAL REVEAL located at 7600 South Jeffrey, Chicago, IL. It’s a celebration for the community and a thank you to the South Side of Chicago for being such a gracious host to Dream Spots. The mural is paid for by CEO Perdure Carter and it is a dedication to our communities, legends, unity, and the South Shore area. The reveal is more than a black-owned office celebrating its 10th anniversary. The reveal is about creating a landmark within the South Shore area that hopefully will last for an eternity attracting tourists and “fans” from around the world. 

“The mural was important to me because it’s a constant reminder for the community of black greatness! People who look just like the people of the community who have accomplished great things and moved us as people forward. I also incorporated some south side culture into the wall; black Wall Street and other great histories we have been able to accomplish as a people. I think the Mural “The black dream” brings hope; unity and inspiration to all in the community.” said Carter.  

The mural was designed by well-known artist Rahmaan Statik of Chicago. Statik is quickly becoming known for many notable murals across the Chicagoland area.  

 “Chicago is a world-class city that deserves world-class art. The black south side of Chicago needs more quality murals and landmarks that represent our community by people from our community. An abundance of murals and landmarks within our community can raise tourism, tourism can often create a demand for more businesses. More businesses can raise property value.” said Statik.  

Follow both on all social media:  

@rahmaanstatik @perdure_coach_carter 

So many of you wrote in with your thoughts, suggestions, and tips in regards to that awful tick-tick-tick in our walls. Though all of your help is appreciated, none of you nailed the cause of the noise. It wasn’t bees, or raccoons, or birds in the venting. It wasn’t the house settling. And much to my relief, it wasn’t scary mojo from long-forgotten burial grounds beneath the basement. But it is to the basement we shall go to solve our problem…

Thursday evening the printer died. Alexa2 stopped answering questions. By checking our phones I could tell that one of our wifi networks had died (no, I don’t know why we have two networks, the installer just did it that way.) So I visited the basement utility room to reboot the router or modem or whatever the black box is called. And the ticking down here was louder. I knew I was near the source.

I hunted around and saw a small green signal light flashing in time with the ticking. I flipped a switch under the flashing light and the ticking ended. Eureka! And what was the device that had been causing the ticks and the flashing light? It was an electronic air cleaner, part of our HVAC system.

When I think of house air filters, I think of fiberglass sheets in flimsy cardboard panels that slide into metal frames in the air duct system. You buy the filters by the case, and if you remember, you change them every few months, trying to avoid skinning your knuckles forcing them into place. That type of filter served us well in all our prior homes.

But the architect for this house designed the system with more “state-of-the-art” electronic air cleaners. These use filters to trap large particles, and electric charges to clump and remove smaller particles. But as the repairman explained to Barb, they are temperamental little beasts. They get dirty, they stop filtering, they click—and unless you pledge to clean all the parts several times a year, they are expensive to maintain. The workman let us know that many households left the casing in place but pulled out the electronic innards and inserted replaceable HEPA filters. Something for us to chew on.

Barb and I have developed a philosophy. We believe that the more gizmos and gadgets we have in the home, the more gizmos and gadgets we have that can go wrong. Yes, of course we love some of the doodads. Alexa keeps us entertained, the electronic keypad on our side door lets me go for a run without bringing keys. But sometimes plain-old plain-old wins the day. Give me those old cardboard air filters any day. I’ll live with a set of skinned knuckles. That is what Band-Aids are for.

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