An older guy that now lives in Garfield Ridge gave me a five hour speech about his time in Chicago. We grew up in the same neighborhood, although he moved out of his parents house by the time I was born, actually about a year after. He says there were no drugs and gang problems back in those days. He said his drug dealer neighbor at his current location in Garfield Ridge was killed not long ago in the apartment next door he said.
I told him that he lived in McKinley at the same time my dad was dealing heroin and other drugs in the neighborhood. They used to shoot up bars back then I heard. Tommy Rapp, Smiley, and all those other guys who ran around with my dad were bad news back in those days, how could you say there was no drugs back then?
He said the drugs and crime were nothing like it is today. His brother’s wife got stuck up at gun point a few years back in the old neighborhood, so they were forced to move out of Chicago. White flight.
He said that he never goes out after dark in the neighborhood. It’s not safe in Garfield Ridge anymore. It was rough back in the day, but now it’s worse.
He remembers when the street signs of Chicago were brown and yellow. There used to be a bar in every cross street in McKinley Park. It was a happening neighborhood. A deli on every street, a tavern, candy stores, bakeries, and people all over. Nobody was getting shot and killed like they are today in Chicago.
There used to be a milk delivery guy that lived on the 37th hundred block of South Hermitage. At Winter time, the kids used to skitch the back of the milk man’s truck when there was snow and ice on the road. Once a kid skitched onto dry ground and fell to his death. That’s the only one of his friends that died in the neighborhood when they were young.
They used to swim in the McKinley Park pond. Later in life he worked for the city and they found dead bodies in McKinley and Marquette Park ponds. People were killed and dumped in the river during the 90s and 2000s. They found a lot of bodies, but perhaps didn’t find them all.
There was an old cross eyed German barber on the north west corner of 36th and Paulina that he used to get his haircut from all the time. I told him that I used to get my haircut from him when he was already very old. He said that once, his friend made fun of the man’s eyes, and then they got skolded in foul language for it. He used to run around with some trouble makers that he went to school with across the street at the Nathaniel Green grade school on the north east corner of Paulina.
He remembers Mary and Sisals bar on the corner. Another bar on Ashland was one that everyone stayed away from. Some parts of the neighborhood were known to start away from in bars.
He remembers Marquette Park area had a happening area on 69th Street. He says that the area made 69th a one way street towards Western ave so that the black people East wouldn’t come through. The last bar on the street at Artesian and 69th was another one of those rough bars. I’ve interview others that hinted towards the idea, that they stayed away from it. There were near 20 bars on that street in the matter of four blocks. All the bars on the street were of live music, food, pool tables, good times, and people dressed up to be there, but the last bar on the eastern end of the street was populated with construction workers and mechanics who were still in their work clothes. Sometimes the black prostitutes would come walk to the bar to order beer to go, because back in the 70s in Chicago, bars sold beer carry out. The prostitutes would go in there to let the guys know that she’s available in the area. A guy would have interest towards her, then follow her out to have sex in the car.
A friend of his did that. Although it was frowned upon to have sex with black people in those days, so he took her to a culdesac in Marquette Park and did his thing with her there. He fell asleep in the car and the prostitute robbed him while he was sleeping nice next to her. In those days, the front seat of a car was huge and long in length because they were a bench and not bucket seats. The cops woke him In the morning with his dick hanging out. The cops asked what he was doing naked sleeping in his car in the park, he said that he fell asleep while he was jerking off. A person could pay off some cops back then to leave you alone, but he didn’t have his i.d. or wallet anymore, because the prostitute robbed him. So the cop took him to his brother’s house, to where the brother gave the money to pay off the cop.
If he was young again, he would probably go see the guys at the bar like he did in the old days, but most of those guys are dead now and the bars aren’t what they used to be, plus there’s so much crime these days in 2025, and not so many bars to hang out at like it used to be.
The Essence of Chicagoland Areas 