Okay, this happens to be Chicago, but every city has a place like this.
That weird, desolate area at the far end of town.
We're a half mile west of the old abandoned steel mills.
We're a half mile north of landfills where methane fires used to burn.
Just south of the auto junkyard.
Just east of the site of the old city dump.
Where there was a mountain of raw garbage that would stink up the neighborhood whenever the wind would blow in the wrong direction.
Everybody down here called it Mount Pesini.
For the alderman who let the city put it here.
You'll notice all these, what would you call it, tire marks.
This street is used for drag racing year-round.
Really?
Yeah, because it's basically far enough away from the police that they don't do anything about it.
My guide is Charlie Gregerson.
He grew up down here.
He shows me where a lake, like Calumet.
He used to be back in the 40s when he was a kid.
He'd go fishing on a rowboat with his dad.
Then the city started filling in huge sections of the lake with garbage and incinerator ash.
He'd come here in the 70s and see bulldozers pushing around the rubble of some of Chicago's great buildings,