Juan Orozco had just finished telling me how he felt squeezed by Chicago city government when his wife pulled up to the curb. An orange and white ticket hung from his pickup truck’s windshield wiper.
“See what the mayor does?” Orozco says, blaming the $25 fine - perhaps unfairly - on Rahm Emanuel.
It’s the third time, he says, he’s been ticketed for parking his truck on a residential street. Add to that the increase he’s seeing this year for his city vehicle sticker, and Orozco is none too pleased.
“I don’t think [Emanuel’s] doing good,” he says. “He raises lots of things. And the property value went down and he…raised the water bills, raised taxes.”
Orozco works in construction. And he is the first person I’ve interviewed for this series who says Chicago is headed in the wrong direction.
“Because the mayor – they do things wrong and they don’t think about the community,’ he says. “They concerned about somebody else…about the rich people.”
Orozco was born in Mexico City, but moved to Chicago 32 years ago. He used to live near Marquette Park.
“It got a little s----- over there,” Orozco says. (There’s another big first for our series: cursing.)
So, 14 years ago, he bought a home at 57th and Pulaski – not far from Midway Airport.
“Pretty nice people live around,” Orozco says. “I got the school across the street.” He has four kids.
“The only thing I don’t like is when I see graffiti all the time, on and off,” he says. “You know, that’s the only bad part about it…like the gang signs, things like that. That s--- I don’t like it. But other than that, I’m okay.”
