Happier Abroad Forum Community

And I know it from personal experience. Having been born and raised in Chicagoland and having travelled across significant areas of America, I can tell that Illinois is totally the absolute worst region in America, most likely even on the entire continent of North America, for guys to meet women, or even approach them at all. A lot worse even than the New York City area! Illinois women are totally unapproachable at all! In fact, in Illinois, just the mere sight of a beautiful young gal nearby actually causes me to move in the opposite direction; away from her! Literally an automatic instinct of "All Back Full!" When I would go on solo vacations to Florida and have fun with Florida ladies, every time I return to Chicago, I hit the ground walking in huge, wide circles around every female person in the airport concourse, all the way to the baggage carousel.

Chicagoans are not friendly or sociable people, but as it appears, the farther west and deeper into the suburbs I travel, the worse the social atmosphere gets. The safer a neighborhood is, the more anti social and sometimes defensive the locals of that neighborhood are towards anyone not part of their households. In fact, outside the semicircle of the Tri State Tollway, even on nice sunny days, I practically see nobody even interacting with neighbors! It's like nobody even loves their neighbors in Illinois. Out in the satellite communities (Sycamore, DeKalb, Rockford, and such), there's practically no social atmosphere at all; only a dry, lifeless, and barren social desert. And it appears to stretch all the way west to the Mississippi River. Going west from Chicago, it goes from a few widely scattered sociable people here and there in the city proper to a lifeless social desert in the middle and outer suburbs and the satellite communities/rural Northern Illinois.

For everyone's info, by the way, I define a social desert as a region where nobody likes to socialize or be social, especially with new people.

traveller wrote:Chicagoans are not friendly or sociable people, but as it appears, the farther west and deeper into the suburbs I travel, the worse the social atmosphere gets. The safer a neighborhood is, the more anti social and sometimes defensive the locals of that neighborhood are towards anyone not part of their households.

For everyone's info, by the way, I define a social desert as a region where nobody likes to socialize or be social, especially with new people.

Having lived here my whole life your assessment of the Chicago area is correct. The people are paranoid and anti social, this is especially true with the single women.

You are so right about the safer a neighborhood is, the more paranoid and anti social the people tend to be. It's weird, the people who live in the suburbs are more afraid of others than the people who live in the city are (even though the crime rate in the city is much higher than it is in the suburbs).

It sounds you really enjoyed Florida, what cities in Florida did you visit? Were the women more friendly and approachable in Florida?

What about a poll on Toronto as a city to meet women? I'm confident enough that Toronto is by far worse than Illinois for meeting women. Toronto is the city that spawned the Slut Walk movement.

jamesbond wrote: Having lived here my whole life your assessment of the Chicago area is correct. The people are paranoid and anti social, this is especially true with the single women.

You are so right about the safer a neighborhood is, the more paranoid and anti social the people tend to be. It's weird, the people who live in the suburbs are more afraid of others than the people who live in the city are (even though the crime rate in the city is much higher than it is in the suburbs).

It sounds you really enjoyed Florida, what cities in Florida did you visit? Were the women more friendly and approachable in Florida?

In Florida, I have visited; Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Key West, Key Largo, Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Sanibel Island, Naples, Tampa, and Crystal River. The women are a lot more approachable in Florida than in Illinois or even in Wisconsin! Wisconsin women are slightly approachable, but not as approachable as Florida women. At the same time, I also know someone who lives in Louisiana, and apparently according to him, the people are highly social in Louisiana, too. Same with Mississippi. I imagine women can also be approachable in Texas, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia.

It's weird, too, but I actually once read a study that says that people hug more in the southern states (Florida, Texas, Louisiana, the Carolinas, and such) than in the northern states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Michigan, and such).

Chicago, especially the lakefront area, and the west and south sides, as well as the south suburbs east of Illinois Route 50/Cicero Avenue, have horrendously high rates of violent crime! Shootings, homicides, armed robberies, assaults, stabbings, fights, even in broad daylight, you name it. In much of Chicago's massive ghetto, especially the south side and south suburbs, you are practically not even safe driving through in broad daylight! One area of Chicago, the Cabrini Green housing project located around West Division street and north Larrabee street (about one mile west of Oak Street Beach), reportedly got so violent at times that the Army was called in! Meanwhile, in the west suburbs, especially in DuPage County, you can easily take a bicycle ride through town at 2 in the morning without any worries of getting shot, assaulted, robbed, or anything of that nature. And yet in those same neighborhoods, nobody even likes to interact with anyone in broad daylight, even at places with a lot of people such as shopping malls, shopping centers, cafeterias, food courts, carnivals, fairs, and such.

I used to ride my bicycle a lot on the Illinois Prairie Path, which is a bicycle trail that begins in west suburban Maywood, just north of I-290, and goes all the way west to the Fox River. It first goes out to west suburban Wheaton, where it splits into 2 separate paths. One goes southwest to Aurora with another branch off to Batavia, the other goes northwest to Elgin with another branch off to Geneva/St. Charles. And I have been to all 4 of those ends on my bicycle; Aurora, Batavia, Geneva/St. Charles, and Elgin. While I have encountered a couple of widely scattered nice people in St. Charles and Elgin, the social atmosphere appeared the same; the farther west I went, the worse it got; the more unfriendly and anti social the people got, and the fewer and farther in between the nice ones were. Also, in St. Charles, the Great Western Trail starts and goes west to Sycamore, so I also went to Sycamore and DeKalb and Northern Illinois University (NIU) three times in 2004. My first two times at NIU, I encountered nothing but a lifeless social desert. My third time at NIU there was apparently a barbecue party of some kind near the Stevenson Towers dormitories, and even there, only a couple people even managed to interact with me. One of the ladies of course said that "her boyfriend was getting jealous" when I was present.

Then in October of 2004, I went back to Sycamore again, this time with my parents, to attend Sycamore's annual pumpkin festival. There was a parade, there were lots of people at the event, a lot of cool artwork made from pumpkins and such. I was fresh from my first time in Florida, and I walked around, and while I was checking stuff out, I was saying "Hi, how are you" to the people, and other than a group of NIU cheerleaders handing out flyers for an event of some sort at NIU, only 3 locals, in Sycamore, even said "Hi" back to me at all! The rest of them either ignored me like I was thin air, or they gave me that cold, mean look as if saying; "Go away!" at least in their hearts. The locals were even rude and anti social with my parents, too. Neither I nor my parents have been out there since.