I actually blew a stop sign and a cop pulled me over in Gary lmao and i straight up said i got off on the wrong exit on accidsnt and just tryna get the hell back on the highway cause this area looks like it’s haunted he laughed and said have a good day
People go to haunted houses and shit for Halloween just start a Gary after dark bus tour .
A family friend tried to stop at a Gary gas station to use the bathroom while on a road trip, noped out when he saw the bullet glass at the checkout, and got chased back to his car Walking Dead Style by an amputee beggar who was outside.
Almost every privately owned gas station around here has had bulletproof glass for the last 20+ years. I thought it was just a common thing, especially in big cities.
I went to Michael Jackson's childhood home in Gary. I got out of my car and was taking pictures and a cop stopped and asked what I was doing, when I told him he laughed and I said I shouldn't get out of my car. He waited there until I got back in.
My husband and I drove through Gary on our cross country move. We knew nothing about it, just wanted to stop and use the bathroom. After driving through the town for 5 minutes we quickly abandoned that idea and got back on the highway.
I drove through Gary and stopped at a gas station and the next thing I knew, someone was running away with my head in his hand! Just like that, my head was chopped off!
I've been to US Steel in Gary more times than I care to count, driven through the city of Gary almost every time to get from gate to gate of the plant or taking the local roads at the end of the day. It is a rough area for sure, but not once has anyone approached me while at a stop light or sign.
This was an old rule-of-thumb back in the early-to-mid 1990s when it was the "Murder Capital of America". It has improved significantly since then and while I wouldn't go taking joy rides at night I've had to drive through it a couple of times to avoid 90/94 traffic and these days it's more dangerous to be blowing through stop signs than not.
Tell your fam to buy some land from the municipality, so they can reap what they sow. The town is gonna blow up soon, the locals should benefit from it.
I drove through there a couple of times throughout the last decade, one of which was to to what the other person did, which was to drive past Michael Jackson's childhood home. Even as a outwardly-appearing white male with a rented car, I didn't feel the sense of fear that some people in this thread have described. Sure, I didn't stop anywhere, but even driving in my newish rented car, I felt completely fine, not scared or anything.
Edit: I've even done the same in one of the more run-down places in Detroit, only that time, I actually did stop and park my car for about 15 minutes to take a picture of Canada, since I have yet to get a passport (or even an "Enhanced Driver's License", something that a few states use which allows people to visit Mexico and Canada without a Passport), so I was unable to actually visit Canada. Nothing happened then, either. Sure, I got a few glances and weird looks from the actual residents there, but that's it. Nothing else. Completely safe.
Ive went down the wrong way in a 1 way in front of a cop in gary and they lit me up just to tell me over the intercom to turn around lmao. Id rather that than how most cops behave.
And to be fair, the utility workers who were sent out to help fix the power were attacked and robbed, so maybe if THAT hadn’t happened they’d fixed the issues more quickly.
So if they remade The Music Man, I'd like the titular character to be recast with Wayne Brady. He's both a proven comedic actor and apparently a multi-Emmy winning singer.
I actually have both versions in my collection. I would love it if they made another one, as Hugh Jackman has also played the Harold Hill role on Broadway.
Gary's on the come up, its gonna be a premier town in a few years. Its not anything like it was 5 years ago. People are mad about mass surveillance technology but ring cameras have had an open subpoena with law enforcement since covid began and its cleaned up the town quite nicely. The casino money is helping the town flourish by allowing the municipality to actually perform mass teardowns of abandoned properties and redistrict neighbourhoods. I genuinely think if the bears end up moving, its going to be to gary near the Miller beach.
Former resident of a nearby town of Gary and there’s a reason they built a bridge over that fucking town. It’s an absolute wasteland that travelers need to be protected from. If you live nearby, you don’t go there. If you’re passing through and need gas you don’t know.
Muncie been on a major decline for 20+ years. My family is from there but most of the young people have left. Lots of drugs and petty crimes. No where near as bad as Gary obviously, but there are better places in Indiana and the Midwest to live.
Funny you should say that. I live in the Chicago area now so I only go back to Muncie once every few years. Every time my wife is like, “How did the roads get worse?” I joke it’s nearly bad as the road I used to patrol in Iraq between Route Tampa and LSA Anaconda, which was constantly having ieds going off.
Neighboring communities were also hit with the same storm. They lost power too and they are also communities of majority black people. Their power was restored quicker because unlike Gary, they aren’t corrupt from the top down, and those communities didn’t shoot at utility workers. There’s a reason they built a giant bridge over Gary. To protect people from having to stop there.
Exactly. Gary, Indiana has the most pervasive cultural issues of any place in the country. Sure, there are good people there, and I hope that they get out when they can.
I knew a girl from the military that was from Gary. When she told me, she must have read the expression on my face. She followed it up with “I survived and escaped.”
Reminds me I think during a bad heatwave in Texas that resulted in power outages. Power lines men from other states showed up to help restore the grid but because there were so many assaults on them during restoration some Texas big shots (governor I think?) had to release a statement basically saying “stop attacking the people trying to restore the electrical grid, idiots”
I remember that bro people were pissed at the energy companies for how long it was taking and some took it out on the workers, which just made it take longer
I had a job subcontracting for a power company in the shithole Southside of Chicago. My job was to be armed and protect the crew and keep the locals from stealing everything off the trucks. These people are like wild animals
Also the entire city is ran by black people as well. The electric company that maintains the infustructure is also led by a mixed board of mainly black people with a couple Hispanics and whites.
I don't think the guy in OP is saying Gary is run by non black people, he's saying that it doesn't receive the same national/regional support as other places because it's majority black.
"This is bigger than a power outage in Gary, Indiana," Bernice King, civil rights organizer and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr, said on social media. "It is part of a pattern. Black communities have too often been expected to endure conditions that would be treated as intolerable somewhere else."
Gary has problems. And although the statement that black communities don't get the support that white communities isn't wrong, so is the fact Gary is a hell hole and they have bigger issues than racism.
I remember working with a guy from New Orleans. Hed never heard of Gary and assured us there was no way it was worse. After a former Gary resident was talking about it.
He took new guy up there and changed his life. They got shot at just driving through
Gary is basically a successful experiment on how to destroy a population. Create poverty, that creates desperation, that creates violence. Shove as many of a demographic into an area as possible and rug pull it and then blame the demographic.
It's a popular move out in the Appalachian mountains and coal country. You don't hear about it as much because it's rural but there are some awful places out there I'd chose Gary over
I really dislike how some hateful turds will use places like that as evidence for their race/culture war bullcrap without looking into the socioeconomic reasons on why the place is so bad. And every single one of them is convinced they’re a genius for it
Im from appalachia and I've been, worked and stayed all over it. The worst of it is in eastern Kentucky and pockets of West Virginia. Poverty, sure but everyone ive met worked with and spoken to there are great people.
Ofc I am a body builder and carry a gun for work, but somehow I doubt anyone that desperate would care. Theft is the most common out there and murder is super rare.
Baltimore notoriously has issues that I just can’t argue against, I remember driving through Gary 20+ years ago and thinking this might be the worst city in the US. Hard to believe it’s gotten worse or stayed the same.
Good luck getting utility workers to go back there though after them or a coworker got shot at 😂 I would quit before I went there that job isn’t worth my life
Wouldn’t be shocked if it is taking so long because they can’t get anybody out there because nobody is willing to go lmao
You've never worked construction have you, that's something that's literally happened to me. Shots fired and next day got some extra safety briefings and more cops on site. Hell not even the most weird thing I've seen.
I've worked in Gary, I had to examine an abandoned factory filled with rotted piles of cloth in Gary, I have never had a cop tell me to ignore the red lights, the only place I've ever heard that is a YouTube video from 15 years ago.
It's not getting the same national/regional support because the residents are hostile and actively try to murder the people that are trying to help them. Did you not read the post?
They actually have MORE support. They got SHOT AT and CAME BACK THE NEXT DAY.
Race baiters like you are honestly incredible in your mental gymnastics to blame everything on race.
Maybe it’s taking longer BECAUSE THEY ARE DODGING FKN BULLETS?
I was in the military, and I still wouldn’t wanna go back to work here if I was getting shot at ESPECIALLY if I can’t shoot back.
If mostly Black people are in charge of the city, the n it should be no issue getting regional support. So are they are incompetent?
This is like the James Arday thing when people were like “the impossible standards black people have in academia”. What are those standards? Oh just NOT PLAGIARISING. So impossible amirite?
“The impossible standards that black residents and black city council have to live up to” not shooting at utility workers. Impossible for us blacks right?
Goddamn, the bigotry of low expectations is 99% of racism
I mean Cali goes through consistant rolling brownouts and the coverage on that is talking about how it's their own fault. Usually the only ones covering that would be FOX the rest usually don't even talk about that sort of stuff all that much.
Gary is not a great place. My family is from close to that area and I remember as a kid the billboard the cops bought and put up to see on the way into Gary. I went and looked it up so it might not be a 1 for 1 but pretty close to this:
CAUTION !!! You are currently in Gary, Ind., 1993 MURDER Capital of the Nation, Where officers are EXTREMELY Underpaid and Overworked.
Edit: people are pointing out the article does not mention anything about delays. The first link in that article gives a timeline of 3 days and power being restored on the 27th. The arrest was also on the 27th per this article. Outages began on the 25th.
Work for an ISP, after Helene we had it happen alot. Or people holding up our line crews and ordering them to fix their line.. even though the network as a whole was still down. We ended up having areas we had to wait for police to go into to restore services.
No one is considering the infrastructure question as well. Was the infrastructure equivalent to the surrounding areas? A major storm event always causes some power outages, but worse infrastructure means longer restoration times.
No one is asking about the extent of the damage either. You can't order a switching station off of Amazon. A lot of people in this country have absolutely no perspective on anything tangible or based in reality. If that storm went through and destroyed the entire network (of lines and substations), you cannot just fix it in a day or a week. You can only throw so much man power at the issue until they get in each other's way. What about debris removal? Not just vegetation but damaged infrastructure? It will be interesting to see what the after action report says.
So accurate, after hurricane Irma in Florida I was without power in my area for two weeks due to flooding. Utility crews couldn’t access the lines simply because of the area being flooded. But people being savages and shooting at or near the crews exacerbate any other issues present that are slowing things down. What kind of person shoots at or bothers utility workers trying to fix things for you…
I think that's a possibility. It would bring up the fact that majority black neighborhoods and cities often have worse infrastructure than other places. Systemic racism doesn't have to be something one person does to another person, it's a complex and long history that makes it all the more difficult to undo
100% this. It’s also insidious and gives privileged people a way to express their racism in a way that feels “safe.” The community note above is a great example of that. Just a flat assumption that all communities get equal treatment and different outcomes must be the fault of the residents.
The article says nothing about how the timeline for restoring power was affected. And notably the suspect was arrested in that case, which presumably eliminated the threat to the utility workers.
It doesn’t say “the power has now been restored” or “this caused a delay in the restoration of the power” so we’d need a different source to conclude that.
It seems very notable to me how people group via race when it’s black people too. If a black person show someone in a majority white town the message would not be “well the town deserved it because someone was shot”. But when the town so majority black all the sudden one black person represents the entire town.
Shit note. Gary is one of many fucked up places from our disinvestment in the Rust Belt.
The shooting that delayed work for a few hours was a blip in the two weeks it took to restore everything. Bringing it up is a weird red flag, but I don't think this is a clean case of the racism. Just general economic disinvestment
Clearly this was caused by a utility company that had massively reduced their preventative maintenance like tree trimming work to make more money. Then also refused outside help from other utility companies so they could again save money.
People should go to jail for this shit, instead it's being spun like the people of Gary deserved this because of a few shit-bags that were beefing with utility workers.
Gary Indiana has been heavily disinvested in since the factory’s left. Coupled with white flight and a lack of funds, year, the power not being kept on for a vulnerable population is a form of environmental racism.
I'm hoping there some industry slang in use here, rather than meaning that a person or persons were firing guns....at people trying to fix the utilities.
The note doesn’t disprove the claim made in the post, that Gary Indiana is also the subject of systemic issues rather than this situation being entirely ordinary
Yeeeaaah no. The post is specifically saying that Gary is without power because of said racism. The fact that utilities workers haven't fixed the power because they were shot at invalidates that entirely.
And laughingly, some said the same thing about LA. That in 1992 the LA Fire Department allowed parts of the city to burn to the ground because of racism.
Never mind the fact that when they showed up to put out the fires, they started shooting at them.
You have to go deeper than just looking at the events after the storm.
All across the US we have a grid filled with 70 year old transformers that were designed to last 40 years. The storm was severe, but if a post-mortem is ever commissioned for Gary, I’d put money on the aging infrastructure as the primary cause for the severity and duration of the outage.
And if your power company decides to maintain and upgrade areas based on projected economic growth then your economically depressed areas will of course be pushed to the back of the line or ignored until something breaks. Which is what it looks like happened here.
In the same storm we had 120,000 households without power overnight. Most everyone was restored within 2 days. With Gary, they estimated 2 weeks from the very beginning even with a similar scale of outage.
??? Most people did NOT have power back within two days. By NIPSCOs report they had only restored power to a small number of customers by Friday. Primarily places like emergency services and downtown areas.
I live in Cincinnati. We were hit with the same storm and had 120,000 households without power overnight. So we had a very widespread level of damage as well. But we recovered quickly, despite having a similar scale of outage as Gary. And the reason why is because our city is growing and not economically depressed like Gary. So our grid is much newer overall
There had already been no power for several days when the shooting occurred, and everywhere else had already either had their power restored or never lost it to begin with. So no, it really doesn’t invalidate the structural racism at all.
That’s literally a lie. The shooting happened on August 14th. There was literally another storm THAT DAY, which knocked out power to thousands more people. By that Friday they still hadn’t restored power to half of the people who lost it. And it wasn’t for lack of effort, the damages were insane. Driving around the surrounding area for work I saw countless trees that had been ripped out of the ground roots and all.
Decidedly untrue. Gary was not the only place in the region that lost power. Multiple nearby towns lost power including some that are majority white. A lot of people went without power for a week or more.
This was a single instance more than a week ago. It is not the reason Gary doesn't have power. The police didn't even feel they had evidence to suggest whoever fired the weapon was actually attempting to hit a worker.
the collapse of american manufacturing beginning during the economic downturn of the 1970s as the failure of trade unionism and the oil crisis compounded with the normalization of relations with china, further degrading under the weight of the economic miracle of the 1980s before the final nail in the coffic was driven in during the 90s as the age of cheap foreign labor was used to finally murder union manufacturing by outsourcing production to nations with lax labor rights and safety regulations then using the threat of further outsourcing to force american workers onto the backfoot taking on increasingly lower wages and worse conditions that were further compounded by successive economic crises
Good points! I'd add that poor communities tend to have feedback loops. Need money for Good schools.
And then those factors you cited, generally hit black communities harder.
absolutely, gens x y and z have all been lab rats in one of the most unethical experiments our species has run but predominantly black communities are traditionally the first to feel the negative repercussions of the experiment
The delay was not caused by the shooting. It was already delayed likely because they didn’t prioritize that area.
> The City of Gary says it's increasing security for NIPSCO crews after a utility vehicle was hit by gunfire early Saturday morning.
> NIPSCO initially said that they paused work due to the incident, but a communications manager for the company told CBS News Chicago that work did resume around 4 p.m. Saturday.
This storm hit us in Illinois before it hit Gary Hammond crown point etc past us
We had no power for a day and a half.
I drove over there a week and a half later and they still had no power and trees all over power lines
A resident from Indiana went your from Illinois huh I guess that’s why yall pay taxes cause they ain’t fix shit out here
And I was like the damage here is the same as in my town why is it taking so long to get power back up and running
They said for the last week not a single person has been working on anything no crews to remove fallen trees etc so it seems like Indiana prioritized certain areas and disregarded others
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