Good morning Chicagoland and the world!
Chicago Gang History has gone through a massive revamp that has been a work in progress since May. Some of you may have tried to contact me through the contact form and have received an annoying rejection message that basically said you were doing something wrong and that your email would not be processed, well you were not to blame it was a host company we were using called Cloud Cannon. Cloud Cannon had never worked with a site of this magnitude before and once surpassed having 3GB of data they allowed this site to freeze. The freeze was not felt by any users out there, you could still navigate through the site no problem. The freezing was only felt on my end as I could not update anything at all, not even to correct a damn type O; hell, I even tried removing some of the pictures that caused the jam but it locked me out of that too! Because of this lock up the contact form was completely frozen which prevented you from being able to contact me.
My developer all along Comfusion worked tirelessly day and night from May until August redeveloping this site and found a new hosting company and made an amazing Word Press application. Now we are running smooth and able to hold as much data as we want, no more crappy 3GB limit like Cloud Cannon forced us to deal with, now I can have all the damn pics and data I feel like having!
Now onto some of the new features you will see. First, besides the new overall layout, there have been all new taxonomies built in. Basically that is the information at the beginning of the page that tells you gang colors, symbols, founders, territory etc…In the Hoods section it shows, boundaries, gangs headquartered or which gangs were founded there. In the Projects section you can now see which gangs controlled each project when they once stood.
Another new feature I added was images of some of the most run down abandoned buildings and houses in all of Chicago Land. These images can be found at the bottom of the following Hoods pages: Englewood, West Englewood, Greater Grand Crossing, Woodlawn, West Pullman, Roseland, Burnside, Grand Boulevard, Fuller Park, New City (Back of The Yards), Marquette Park, South Chicago, Oakland, Douglas, Washington Park, East Garfield Park, West Garfield Park, Austin and North Lawndale. I also have these same type of images of run down buildings and houses for some of the suburbs like: Harvey, Robbins, Chicago Heights, Ford Heights, Lockport Township/Fairmont, Aurora, Kankakee, Joliet and Bensenville. I added these pictures from Google Maps. Yes you can just go on Google Maps and look for yourself but I took the time to pluck out as many of those pics from all over Chicagoland as possible and post them on here so you don’t have to go digging. I am also trying to prove a point by posting those that Chicago land has some hard areas and straight up neglected areas that deserve better attention in order for the communities to be safer and worth more. As I stated in my American Dream piece abandoned buildings costs the entire community dearly and makes everyone suffer that lives there. I want to also show the whole world how badly blighted some neighborhoods in Chicago land really are so you can know where the more destitute areas are.
I will keep doing updates periodically, hit me up if you see anything you can add or if you have any pics to share.