4 ms·
It helps that huge segments of the city are basically expensive ghettos with storied histories of racial tensions, crime, gangs, and drugs. And it doesn't hurt
by mdorazio 7y ago
It helps that huge segments of the city are basically expensive ghettos with storied histories of racial tensions, crime, gangs, and drugs. And it doesn't hurt that the LAPD has such a bad reputation. It really is an easy place to set a crime story and have it still be believable.
- mc32 7y agoBut why not Chicago?
- SamReidHughes 7y agoWhat does Chicago have? Banks?
- mc32 7y agoLots of mob and machine politics and run of the mill crime good for pulpy novels.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoYeah, bigcorps, corruption, and a big shiny ball. L.A. has serial killers, disaffected body builders, criminal surfer gangs, kung fu sidekicks, crooked magicians, new age cults, disgruntled aerospace employees, gratuitously wealthy people, pornographers, and loads of driftwood in orbit around Hollywood, flitting from project to project. Chicago has Catholics and Perogies. Any crime story set in Chicago could be better done in New York or Philadelphia.
- fumar 7y agoThat is one interesting and reductionist take on Chicago. The south and west sides of the city are cultural melting pots. The north side also has its ethnic enclaves. I am not defending Chicago but as the only other true metropolis outside of NYC, its more than the two things you listed. The architecture alone gives a great backdrop to any story.
- SamReidHughes 7y agoIt certainly is reductionist!
- werber 7y agoChicago is far more diverse than that. There's a huge black community. There's a gigantic Puerto Rican and Latin American population. A sizeable Asian community. Hipsters. A steady influx of wide eyed Midwestern kids arriving every fall. There's plenty to write about, like a corn fed Americana noir (if such a thing doesn't exist already). It's lack of perceived weirdness is pretty weird for such a large city
- claudeganon 7y agoI like and used to live in Chicago, but I think it’s hyper segregation is what prevents it from being perceived in this way (especially compared to somewhere like LA).
- werber 7y agoI've only visited, what makes it hyper segregated?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- cafard 7y agoBack in the early days of TV, "The Untouchables", set in Prohibition-Era Chicago, ran for a while on network TV. David Mamet made a movie out of it some years ago.
- mdorazio 7y agoChicago is good for run-of-the-mill / noir crime stories, but the audience for those is limited. LA is a weird place in that pretty much anything crime-related is actually plausible, so the potential breadth of stories is a lot bigger. You could make a story about a group of Croatian street dancers laundering dirty Persian money through Venice beach dispensaries using couriers on electric scooters to move cash around and I would actually believe that's a thing that could be happening right now.
- casefields 7y agoYour example really amuses me and reminded me of the famous and real Zankou Chicken Murders: https://www.lamag.com/longform/the-zankou-chicken-murders/ https://www.lamag.com/longform/the-zankou-chicken-murders/
- mannykannot 7y agoLet's not forget Florida - or is its problem that reality sometimes strains credibility?.