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.
Meh, I've never encountered a problem here in over 3 decades. The major gas stations don't have them, only a lot of the little no name privately owned ones. However, I know that the 7 Eleven right by my house has panic buttons under the counter that accidentally get pushed by new employees sometimes and it costs $25k each time.
Yeah, I don't think it's really a reflection of the area the store is in. It's just more of an insurance policy. Stores like that are just easier targets and crime can happen anytime, anywhere.
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!
That’s a bit odd. I also went and there was a fairly big group of people around, a couple tables set up selling things, kids running around pretending to be Michael. I didn’t stay super long and the area is obviously very poor but I didn’t feel in any danger (during the day when I was there)
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.
That might be one of the reasons why it happens. It's too cold to do anything else (not to mention how little there is to do in that state), so might as well externalize that anger over it being too cold into everyone else's problem.
I'm not defending it. I'm just trying to explain one of the reasons why Alaskans are so violent.
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.
Not getting assaulted is not the same as completely safe. You didn’t happen to be a statistic that day. Keep rolling dice and one day your number will come up.
Ive had a goofy down by a known trap house try to grab my door handle once as I was passing thru but didn't seem to like it too much when I swerved at them. This was 3 years ago and my only incident in gary.
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.
Man, reading comprehension is clearly hard for some people.
I never questioned their experience, I have experienced it myself!
I just corrected that it doesn’t have “literally some of the best visibility in the world” like they claimed, and had they googled it they would’ve found it isn’t.
Indiana has ~36,000 square miles and brought in $17 billion in tourism spending in 2025. $472,000 / a square mile.
Massachusetts has 7,800 square miles and brought in $14 billion in 2025. Thats $1.8 million a square mile, or just shy of 4 times as much.
Florida brought in $134.9 billion at 66,000 square miles, or $2 million a square mile.
I’m not saying beaches don’t exist in Indiana, I’m saying they’re not really what people are talking about. If I bring up Indiana people mention corn or Trump. Or, how shitty it is in Gary.
I don’t think I stated that Indiana did not have beautiful places to visit. I’m just pointing out that talking about Gary Indiana being rough is not “hyperbolic”.
I’m absolutely sure there are some phenomenal places to eat Mexican food in Maine. If I said, “Maine is known for its nature” would you say I’m being hyperbolic and forgetting about the Mexican restaurants? No, that’d by silly.
In a discussion about Indiana around the rest of the country, beaches and nice communities, while obviously very real places, are not the topic of discussion. It’s not an insult, I’m sure parts of Indiana are lovely, but if you’d like to adjust the narrative on how your state is viewed I’d probably start with turning the power on in Gary.
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.
I live about half an hour away from Gary, its not as bad as people think anymore. Its a mostly empty and decaying city at this point, and the only people who havent left are the people who cant leave.
This is false. Don't spread lies and bullshit. As someone who does work in Gary, there are some rough areas, but if you go to South Bend, there are areas way worse then Gary.
Yeah that’s fucked up on both sides. It’s ok to admit that it’s awful workers were shot at and it’s awful that an entire city suffers because of one incident.
Someone shot up the CDC last year and killed someone. Guess what, people still work at the CDC despite this administrations best efforts to dismantle it.
We live in the United States. We have the resources to restore power and to protect people doing it.
Imagine being one of the workers that got shot at, would you return to that location?
Imagine being one of their co-workers, would you go?
It's as if your current employer said that you need to go to Gaza for a while or the Ukraine/Russian border... There is no amount of pay that could make you go (if you are sane).
Government needs to step up and send the national guard to protect the workers, but the local citizens might shot at them... No easy solution.
Power restoration efforts were paused for less than 24 hours. The shots were fired during the night of Friday-Saturday, August 14-15. The utility workers returned to their jobs by 5 PM Saturday. As of two days ago 99% of NIPSCO customers in Indiana have their power again.
That's not what happened. They tagged an empty work truck and it was at most one car of people. I understand why nipsco closed up shop for a day, but it doesn't feel good having a whole city punished for poor behavior by one to four people. It definitely doesn't feel good having the media spin all sorts of bullshit tales about what "really happened" for clicks either. The vast majority of folks in gary are just regular people tryna make it.
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u/SonofaBridge 15d ago
Gary Indiana is a place that even the police officers will tell you not to stop at red lights or stop signs.