[HN Gopher] A very Chicago gamble
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A very Chicago gamble
Author : gregorymichael
Score : 60 points
Date : 2025-01-24 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bitsaboutmoney.com)
| jeffgreco wrote:
| Some truly hideous AI art on this one.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Holy fuck that's a terrible deal they offered on the $250 shares!
| Made up billion-dollar valuation aside, an 11% interest rate on a
| $24,750 loan means that it's _never_ going to pay for itself and
| start producing a return for the owner, even at casino-level
| profits.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Bally's built a _temporary_ casino in Chicago while the
| official one is getting funded up and built. Because, you know,
| you can 't let that gaming license just _sit there_ and do
| nothing.
|
| Sadly the temporary casino is only taking about 60% of
| projected revenue so far.
|
| https://www.yogonet.com/international/news/2024/10/16/82112-...
|
| Bally blames the location and lack of parking and yadda yadda
| yadda, but Illinoisans are just saturated with gambling options
| right now. The suburban casinos, the Indiana casinos, Wisconsin
| first-nations Bingo, Illinois Lotto, the multi-state lotteries,
| home-rule gaming in restaurants and bars, online sports
| betting...we still have horse racing here for crying out loud.
| And, oh yeah, weed is legal here.
| tedivm wrote:
| There's a lot of interesting stuff in here, but there's also a
| lot of garbage. Talking about the African American community in
| Chicago, but then using examples from LA to prove a point, is at
| best a horrible argument and at worst purposefully misleading.
|
| I live in the Chicago South Side, in a neighborhood that is 99%
| black. I am not black. There are no pogroms happening here
| against people who aren't black, even if they do happen to own a
| business. This is just such a weird statement to have to make.
| shigawire wrote:
| As with most Chicago critics, there are valid points to be made
| but it often feels too gleeful.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > I live in the Chicago South Side, in a neighborhood that is
| 99% black. I am not black.
|
| May I ask why? This seems like a deliberate choice. It is, at
| best, met with suspicion by other residents.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure hen wasn't given a deliberate choice whether
| to be Black or not.
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith.
|
| Chicago is an extremely segregated city. In segregated
| cities, there is a nuanced thought process one must undergo
| to move into an area where you are considered an outsider.
| In Seattle for example, the tech community is overall
| reviled for having gentrified the Central District, where
| historically black areas were bulldozed to erect overpriced
| cardboard apartments for tech plebes. This is a legitimate
| question.
| pc86 wrote:
| The reason you're being downvoted is because "Why are you
| living there?" can sound suspiciously like "You shouldn't
| be living there." It's also a leap to assume the black
| people living there are going to suspicious of him. You'd
| be horrified if a group of white people were "suspicious"
| of a black man living in their neighborhood and this
| should be no different.
|
| Another question is what will his answer do? How will
| your opinion of him change or be influence by his answer?
| Maybe he was born there. Maybe that's all he can afford.
| Maybe he found an apartment with a particular
| architectural style unique to that area he wants to live
| in. Maybe it's close to his friends, or close to his
| girlfriend, or not _too_ close to his girlfriend, or
| close to his parents, or easy to get to work, or he often
| goes into central /southern IL or over to Indiana and
| doesn't want to drive through the city every time.
|
| There are literally hundreds of possible reasons.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Including, it's a nice place to live!
| pc86 wrote:
| Let's not get crazy now /s
| somanyphotons wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the question was about choice of location
| recursive wrote:
| Why not? Everyone has to live somewhere. If it wasn't there,
| it would be somewhere else.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I lived in a south side neighborhood that was >80% black and
| am white for nearly 20 years.
|
| I lived there for a variety of reasons that weren't
| suspicious at all like price, location, commute, etc. my
| neighbors didn't seem particularly suspicious of the
| decision...
| notinchicago wrote:
| He's a gentrifier, either in Bronzeville or adjacent Beverly.
| The "why" is cheap real estate. No random yuppies are living
| in any other "99% black" part of the south side (that's a
| blatant lie btw, even Roseland and other Wild 100s
| neighborhoods are not 99% black).
| kasey_junk wrote:
| You could check a map if you wanted to make up things to
| sound knowledgeable about the Southside of Chicago...
| cozzyd wrote:
| The only halfway charitable plausible explanation I can
| think of is that they're a Rock Island District commuter
| (who closes their eyes between stops)
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| Not only are you making a lot of assumptions here, you have
| a woeful ignorance of Chicago neighborhoods but throw out
| names of neighborhoods like you're an expert (perhaps
| obtained from listening to Drill records or something).
|
| Also, Beverly is one of the most integrated neighborhoods
| in Chicago, and it isn't even majority Black, so not sure
| why you even mention it. It also isn't 'adjacent' to
| Bronzeville unless you ignore all of the neighborhoods
| between them.
| pc86 wrote:
| Most people who complain about gentrification have no
| idea what they're talking about, why should this comment
| be any different?
| tedivm wrote:
| 97.4% - https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/60619/
| tedivm wrote:
| All of my neighbors seem to like me. The specific area I'm in
| has a 14% vacancy rate, so the people around here aren't
| worried about gentrification. I'm walking distance to the
| Metra. My wife has family in Indiana, and not having to drive
| through the entire city to see them was also a factor.
| goat_whisperer wrote:
| I agree. That part was way off base.
| mplewis wrote:
| I wish you'd just use stock imagery rather than the AI slop. I
| know there's great stuff in your blog patio11, and the AI splash
| image really takes away from that impression.
| yesfitz wrote:
| I agree. AI images communicate "low effort" at best and
| "untrustworthy" at worst, neither of which remotely describe
| Bits about Money.
| adrianparsons wrote:
| This was an aside at the end of the article, but what an
| interesting strategy:
|
| _I bought the stock for the same reason I buy stock in every
| hotel, airline, bank, and similar I use: in the unlikely event a
| not-particularly-high-stakes poker player has a routine customer
| service complaint, Investor Relations is available as an
| escalation strategy, over e.g. hotel staff who might be long-
| since inured to listening to complaints from people who lost
| money in a casino._
| pc86 wrote:
| I'm sure this works if you're buying a couple thousand shares
| at a time but I don't think buying 10 shares of Southwest is
| going to make them listen to you any more or less when you have
| an issue on your flight.
| wging wrote:
| I think the idea is to take advantage of certain legal
| obligations that are triggered by ownership of any size.
| plagiarist wrote:
| Could you give some examples? I have no idea what legal
| differences would provide a benefit during customer
| interactions.
| pie_flavor wrote:
| It doesn't matter whether they actually value you any more.
| The point is that investor relations is staffed by competent
| people, as opposed to customer service which is staffed by
| incompetent people as an intentional matter of efficient
| human capital allocation. So you can get much more reliable
| help if you can present the right class signals, and if you
| are at least theoretically allowed to call that line.
| icedchai wrote:
| Do you think they're going to ask for proof and how many
| shares you own? Anyone can claim to be an "investor."
| Animats wrote:
| I've seen worse deals offered in prospectuses. But not often.
|
| Having two tiers of stock with the insiders having the control
| shares used to be prohibited by the New York Stock Exchange. Now
| it's common. Google and Facebook are set up that way, so they
| have presidents for life. So are some lesser companies which
| really need to fire the CEO but can't.
|
| Then, what you're buying into is not the operating entity. It's
| just a holding company. Not even the parent holding company that
| owns many casinos; that's BALY. It's a holding company in the
| middle, one whose returns are totally determined by the other
| parts of the stack. This is much like film investing, where you
| can buy an interest in "Silver Screen Partners IV" and get a
| share of the profits from a specific film. Except that the studio
| and the film producer control the accounting between related
| entities. Those deals are generally a lose, although you get to
| go to the premier and meet the cast.
|
| And then there's the leverage. When you buy in, you're under
| water, and may stay there. Can't speak to the tax consequences.
|
| This is so awful it makes meme coins look good.
|
| (Favorite worst deals: 1) being pitched on municipal bonds backed
| only by revenue from future sewer charges for a development not
| yet built, and which never was. Junk municipal bonds are a thing.
| 2) a San Francisco strip club that did an IPO in the first dot-
| com boom and went bust. SEC CIK 931799.)
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