by Stephen Green, PJ Media:
Chicago has a problem with retailers closing their doors, pulling up stakes, and getting the hell out of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
Without warning last week, a KFC franchisee “abruptly” shuttered three South Side locations. One outlet, located in Chatham, had been “undergoing renovations for months” when the franchise owner apparently just gave up and boarded up the windows instead. According to the same Fox 32 Chicago report, the Great KFC Vanishing came “less than one month after Cinema Chatham, a local movie theater, shut down.” That closure also came without warning.
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Sixth Ward Alderman William Hall said, “A closed business is not only a sore eye, but it’s a gateway for violence because when you see abandonment, it looks as if there is no love, no hope in the community.”
“There was no communication,” he added. “I saw what the residents saw, disappointed just the same way they are.”
A commenter on the Fox 32 story wrote, “What’s killing business on the south side of Chicago is no one feels safe anymore. I frequented both the 35th and 75th Street locations, and the food was great. But I’d never go after dark. There’s a whole different feel to those streets when the sun goes down.”
I was about to write how sad it is when a well-run restaurant can’t survive the lawlessness prevalent in parts of the city, but it’s worse than sad, isn’t it?
Some folks, like Twitter/X user Jay here, had fun with the bad news. “I went to that same KFC,” he posted. “When I got my order I walked out and I was chased by these two guys with red hats and they were yelling ‘This is MAGA country’ in a Jamaican accent… no wonder why it’s shut down.”
Aside from the crime problem plaguing mostly the city’s poorer neighborhoods, “inflation, rising labor costs, and changing consumer habits” forced so many local businesses to shutter that Axios devoted a lengthy year-end roundup to it.
