Lakeview Is Still a Social Justice, “Free Palestine” Hellhole, Says a Former 20-Year Resident and Contrarian Columnist

Chicago’s Gayborhood found something it loathes more than Republicans

With apologies to my fellow columnist George Shay, who thinks Lakeview residents are taking a bite — perhaps through their rainbow dental dams — out of crime, I would like to present evidence to the contrary.

I do not doubt that many people living in my former neighborhood are, truly, very fine people. But many others, it seems, are far beyond the point of rational thought when it comes to crime, or even how to behave as neighbors. That is, except when their definition of neighborliness means extolling their white privilege by apologizing for the "mugger" after being assaulted by a person of color.

Which leaves the only logical choice, as I have done: Get the hell out of Dodge.

I was walking through Lakeview last night after a Cubs game — just two days after the Pride Parade — with friends from out of town, and I was lamenting that when our children were young, life in the hood was simpler. I told them we longed for the days when our young kids would ask, around this time of year, why there were men wearing leather leggings, sometimes exposing parts of their buttocks. That was easy to explain comparatively.

Now, we told them, we would struggle to tell them why 225-pound ladies — or, more likely, those self-identified as such — with blue hair and keffiyehs march during the Pride Parade, shouting "Free Palestine." These are people who, if they stepped foot in Gaza or the West Bank, would be summarily tossed off a roof for not only batting for the other team, but wearing the opposing uniform as well. Alas, details (which I suppose have become racist dog whistles, for this crowd). 

On our walk, I also told our friends about a friend who was a perfect Lakeview character when we lived there. The best way I can describe him is as an apolitical, capitalist gay guy who happened to be Jewish. But when things started getting strange with the rise of BLM, and anti-Semitism became an everyday thing in his peer group, he hightailed it to Highland Park with his husband and never looked back. To this day, he can't believe how crazy his former rainbow-clad peer group became, especially in its primal hate for Jews. The gay, free-spirited, free-market-embracing community he knew in Lakeview was replaced by something else entirely.

I know of two people in Lakeview who were violently mugged — one spent more than a week in the hospital — who literally apologized for their attackers in social media or media statements. Reading between the lines, their whiteness justified the violence against them. If that sounds crazy to you, it is. It is also the precursor to what just played out in the UK with the Henry Nowak story.

Henry was an 18-year-old white kid from Southampton who was stabbed five times by a "person of color" carrying a dagger. The attacker then immediately lied to the cops, claiming the dying boy had racially attacked him and knocked off his turban. The police bought the sob story, handcuffed the bleeding kid on the ground while he gasped that he'd been stabbed and couldn't breathe, and let him die right there.

That is the endgame if you keep playing on the Lakeview turf: a generation so marinated in social justice, DSA-inspired horseshit that victims apologize for their own murders, perpetrators weaponize fake racism claims like get-out-of-jail-free cards, and the authorities — terrified of being called bigots — side with the narrative over the blood on the pavement. 

Import enough of that mindset, cheer the attackers' systemic oppression, and pretty soon your neighborhood has a two-tiered justice system where true violent hate gets a hall pass, or worse, is cheered on when directed at Jews.

This is not the Lakeview I knew. The rainbow flags are still waving, but they have been co-opted by a coalition that turned "love is love" into "Jews are the root of all evil, and capitalism is violence." Contrast this with the days of old. I remember having an office next to a transvestite club on Halsted and, just about every Monday without fail, finding a puddle of vomit — sometimes worse — in the alcove around our doorstep. But that was during a time when you could reason with people. Sure, it was the gayborhood, but everyone was a capitalist versus a Jew hunter. So to solve the problem, we stayed late at work one Friday, found the doorman on staff at the club, and bribed him with a Benjamin to watch our alcove on the weekends. We never had a problem again.

We have many friends we left behind in Lakeview and the surrounding area. And in just about every case — with only one exception we can think of — their kids have been utterly brainwashed at CPS and private schools by the Free Palestine and social justice malarkey. One kid in particular, who had an amazing sense of humor and was a gifted writer, was hauled in front of a social justice tribunal after making an off-color joke as a freshman at Walter Payton College Prep, and basically lost his spark after that, and now describes his parents as being "red-pilled" when they criticize what is “progress” in his view. My wife even pulled her goddaughter (who attended Lane) aside after seeing her anti-Israel social media posts to ask if she even knew what happened on October 7th. 

I could tell you dozens of these stories. In short: You have a better-than-even chance of losing your kids to progressive DSA ideology if you raise them in Lakeview and probably an 80 percent chance if they also go to CPS. 

We know firsthand how bad it is in these schools. Our son, whom I could only have described at the time as a crypto graffiti pothead anarchist — the antithesis of a young Republican — was disciplined at Lane Tech for holding "non-conforming" opinions on the social justice curriculum in a history class. We had to defend him during a star-chamber hearing with a department head meant to break his spirit (like our friend’s son, above, who permanently cracked during a similar struggle session). He also earned an F in what should have been an easy science class after he repeatedly protested that the teacher focused more on progressive politburo teachings than on aquaponics, which we collectively started calling "social justice underwater farming" among friends (we knew he’d be successful and happy in life when he told us he was doing it to spite his N-95 masked-clad, blue-haired teacher).

Private schools are not the cure either. Our other kids went to a private school that embraced BLM in the classroom and told our kids that all Jews were racist because there was one plantation owner in America 200 years ago who happened to be Jewish, and that they must atone for this "original sin."

Having lived in Lakeview for 20 wonderful years — albeit no more, and with no regrets — I could regale you with more stories of lost kids and lost streets. And listen, I can deal with a lot (body fluids on Halsted included). But like many others, I had to leave when I realized that my neighbors no longer held the same value system that treated everyone equally and with love – and protected the streets from actual violence. 

If you want to raise your kids (thanks CPS!) to believe that Jews are the devil incarnate, that hard work and capitalism are symptoms of white supremacy, that biological men in sundresses belong in women's bathrooms while screaming "genocide" at the only democracy in the Middle East, and that getting mugged is just urban karma for your settler-colonial vibes, I suppose Lakeview is still the place for you.

Just don't be surprised when off-duty CPS teachers materialize at your block party like a keffiyeh flash mob — DSA pamphlets in one hand, a kombucha in the other, chanting for your eradication in perfect three-part harmony — and then expense the whole afternoon as professional development.