11 Years of Chicago Values
On January 25th, 2013, we launched a questionably named site with the simple idea of illustrating "Chicago values". 4,017 days later we're still sitting here tracking this nonsense.
Quick backstory: in 2012, there was a spike in homicides that caused some around town to clutch their pearls and head for the fainting couch. That spike, mostly due to a very warm late February and March, ended up pushing the homicide count to just north of 500 for the year. While these days, we can tag 500 before the end of summer, in 2012 it was an anomaly where the average homicide count since the mid-aughts was roughly 450 give or take.
At the time, information about these homicides was hard to come by. While the Chicago Tribune along with their daily freebie rag, RedEye, did a pretty good job with tracking the newly deceased, the data was usually delayed a few days and there wasn't a single place online where one could take in all the stupidity in less than 30 seconds.
Out of that came the idea, then a weekend building the site, slapped a stupid domain on it and we’ve been doing this every day ever since.
About Those Chicago Values
Back in 2012, Rahm was only in the second year of his eight-year run and decided to get involved in a local zoning matter regarding well-known beef-o-phobes, Chick-fil-A. During the controversy in which the alderman didn’t like CFA’s CEO’s politics, Rahm declared the now-immortalized Chicago values line:
“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago values. And if you’re gonna be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect Chicago values.”
- 9.5, July 25th, 2012
More than 11 years later, we still have no idea what Chicago values are or what they are supposed to represent. No matter its representation or meaning, it made for a fantastic tagline. Thanks Rahm!
By the way, there are now 12 Chicago Chick-fil-A locations, Rahm departed the scene in 2019 and the alderman who started this nonsense is no longer an alderman because of “legal issues”.
So much for values.
Stats, Metrics, Numbers and Crap
When we first started, we only tracked homicides but soon realized that shootings were a more accurate gauge of violence. This is because many factors go into a homicide (shot placement, number of wounds, timeliness of medical care, victim condition, etc…) whereas a shooting is binary - you are either shot or you are not. Just like there is no such thing as being kind of pregnant, there is no kind of shot.
Our non-fatal shooting data is solid from January 1, 2014, onward as it took us much of 2013 to figure things out. So keep that in mind when reading through the following cumulative nonsense.
January 1, 2013 - December 31, 2023: 7,078 killed, 30,161 wounded
In the past 11 years we’ve tallied:
6,289 shot & killed
363 stabbed
212 beaten
212 killed via other means
269 shot by police, 96 fatally
Averaged 10 people shot per day from 2014-2023
Jan 1, 2014 - Dec 31, 2023: 22 days without a shooting and/or homicide
Worst Day: May 31, 2020 with 18 homicides and 33 wounded
402 mass shootings (4 or more victims) w/ 274 killed from 2014 onward
6,259 (88%) males killed vs 819 females
5,597 (79%) Blacks, 1,147 Hispanics, 334 other
135 children 12 and younger murdered
Homicide age range: 0-96
Average age of a homicide victim is 30
Team Austin tallied 3,327 shot, 596 fatally
Every Community Area recorded at least 1 homicide
11th District tallied 721 homicides from 2014 onward
At least 1,813 #ShotInTheAss
11 Years of Tees n’ Crap
It wouldn’t be until 2015 that we were finally allowed to participate in Google’s Ad Sense program. Shockingly, Google doesn’t pay well and users block ads most of the time anyway. Thanks to you, we’ve found that merchandise does much better than ads. So to celebrate these past 11 years, we’ve decided to bring back one of our original designs - our take on Rahm’s Safe Passage signs - at a discounted price. Choose from four different designs in four different colors and there are matching stickers as well.
Social Dumpster Fires
We’ve cut down our social media presence to just those places we feel kind of work for us including the platform you’re on now. Check us out on these other platforms if you haven’t already done so:
X: https://twitter.com/w_h_thompson
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heyjackasschicago/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@HeyJackass
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Many thanks to everyone who visited, liked, tweeted, posted, promoted, told your buddy, emailed, hit the tip jar and/or picked up some tees or other crap these past 11 years. And remember “We don't want nobody nobody sent”.
I want to thank you for informing my near-daily arguments with my city employee wife about why the sweet union cashola doesn’t quite balance out the constant threats to our health and safety. I’d also like to thank you for letting us all know who has the biggest dick in Chicago.
This site has the best arguments for Conceal Carry that I've ever seen ;)