Marathon Pundit: The abandoned stores of Gary, Indiana

John Ruberry describes the former "city of the century" in the first paragraph of his recent post:

Gary is Indiana's reply to Detroit. After its population peaked at 175,000 in 1960, now only about 75,000 people live in what was once the Hoosier State's second largest city.

Palace Theater, Gary, IN

 In November 2017, when Ruberry returned from Motown - for those of you who don't know Detroit, Michigan - he made a stop in Gary. This post takes a look at the old commercial buildings along Broadway in Gary.  One of his pics shows the Palace Theater which are one of the buildings on Broadway that Ruberry documents:

Probably every town in America in the 1920s with 50,000 or more residents had a movie palace that doubled as a vaudeville theater. Gary's showplace was the Palace Theater, which opened in 1925. It closed in 1972. To be fair, many, perhaps most of these theaters went dark after television sets became the focal point of most living rooms, so Gary shouldn't be clobbered over the demise of the Palace.

But hang in there, I'll start slapping Gary around soon.

Donald Trump, when he was a real estate mogul, also owned the Miss USA pageant, which amazingly was held in Gary at the Genesis Convention Center in 2001 and 2002. For the latter beauty display, the future president fixed up the front of the Palace and placed "Jackson Five Tonite" on the marquee. The Jacksons of course were from Gary but moved away shortly after signing with Motown in the late 1960s. After Michael Jackson's death in 2009, according to Wikipedia, new placards declaring "Jackson Five Forever" were placed on the marquee. As you can see none of those signs remain.

I didn't know about our current President's forays into Gary in the early 2000s. He even tried to dress up Gary for one of his pageants.

As I've said Gary could be a very wonderful opportunity for someone with deep pockets and a good plan. If I was such a person my first concern would be issues with bad gov't. For example, would I get heavily taxed for my real estate  or would someone come out the woodworks and say I must hire from within Gary. I'm sure there are other roadblocks so to speak that could be contrived by a politician or an uscrupulous activist. Bottom line is Gary is a blank slate waiting for investment.

The future investment of Gary, Indiana could begin not only with the revitalization of Broadway it could certainly begin with capitalizing on it's connect with the Michael Jackson and the Jackson family. Of course in light of the "King of Pop" untimely demise this was the plan though it's hard to say what has come of those plans since then.

A few days ago I posted a documentary about Gary from 2013, if you're curious about what happened with Gary give it a watch. Certainly go read Ruberry's post about Gary's Broadway.

Stagnant Hope: Gary, Indiana

[VIDEO] Found this video about Gary, Indiana recently. It shows it's explosive growth especially with the steel mill as the economic engine, and it's decline during the 1960s. Sometimes in spite of Gary's issues with crime and economic stagnation I wonder if there is an opportunity that's not being tapped in to.

What do you all think? Is Gary one place where you can own property and then potentially rebuild a city? Now I'm just thinking about finding any real estate articles I can find from the former "city of the century".

Do non-citizen workers have rights to compensation and a non-hostile work environment?

So this article published in an Indiana paper & written by a local blogger Gregory Tejada  raised some good questions. I'm no lawyer let alone an immigration expert but it something worth exploring and hoping there is an update to this:

Griffith police Commander Keith Martin said Wednesday that the 45-year-old Griffith man faces a felony charge of intimidation and a misdemeanor charge of battery for an incident that occurred Monday at the Griffith Gyros & More, 105 N. Broad St.

Martin said police received a call at about 7 p.m. claiming a disturbance at the restaurant. When officers arrived, they found employee Jose Martinez, who lives in Calumet City, Ill., with marks on his face and arm.

"It was obvious he had been hit," Martin said.

Martin and Jose Bustos, manager of the East Chicago-based Immigration Support and Assistance Center, both said that the incident occurred when Martinez was working Monday night and called his boss to complain about how busy it was.

Martinez told the Post-Tribune that he told the manager Monday he would quit his job immediately if help did not arrive to deal with an onslaught of customers.

Police said the manager then came to the restaurant and began yelling at Martinez for making a threat to quit, then began hitting him with a clenched fist.

Martinez said the man made threats to him during the fight concerning his immigration status, indicating he had no right to walk off a job. Martin said witnesses confirmed threats were made, but could not say what those threats were. Martinez admitted he is not a U.S. citizen, Martin said.

Martinez said the manager threatened to shoot him. "I thought I could get killed," he said.

Where do I begin? Well another thing from this article at least is his now former employer wants to withhold wages.

OK so it appears he's in a hostile work environment a boss who will threaten him and assault him. Not only that will make reference to his immigration/citizenship status just to threaten him.

It makes me wonder if this boss wasn't above the boards with his business and employees. Perhaps he knew what he was doing when he first hired people. Who knows?

Count me in as one of those people who want better controls over who enters this country and their paths to citizenship. What I see here, there is so much wrong with this picture my hope is Martinez finds a lawyer who'll take this fight to his former boss. Whether an immigrant or not no one deserves this treatment!

Story about Indiana pizzeria fabricated out of nothing

I'm still attempting to get this story from Indiana and figure out what it's all about. I understand what it's attempting to do and recognize that the state is taking a beating for the law they just passed.

Then I saw this story yesterday that I see at Instapundit. So a pizzeria - owned by a Christian couple - was said to have utilized their rights to not cater gay weddings. They've never been asked to anyway and they didn't make any publicity. It becomes a story and then it became they don't want to serve gays & lesbians.

What happens in our time of instant communication is that things get blown out of proportion. The couple are in the wrong business if they want to not serve a certain segment of the population which could be gay or black or Hispanic...etc. Unfortunately they said this in relation to this law out of Indiana.

Well wherever the truth lies in what the media from this news station in Indiana and the blow up on social media needless to say it had become a major fire. This pizzeria could suffer and some dumb things have been said. All I can say is let those people have their opinions and let's not allow our passions to get too high.