The Beverly Review Article

We just read an article posted on the Beverly Review website and we feel the need to respond to the hit job. Excerpts are in italics from this Beverly Review article.

The owners of a local car wash said last week that information posted on a neighborhood blog is false and that an email message that spread through chain e-mails has damaged their business.

We have no control what people decide to send via email chains. We highly doubt that the car wash business has been damaged, as it is one of the better local car washes that we even said we go to.

The family that operates Quick Suds Car Wash, on the northwest corner of 115th Street and Kedzie Avenue, said the neighborhood blog falsely accused their business of being a street gang hangout and a hotbed for drug activity and other crimes.

Easy there Mr. Mayer. We never accused your business of being a street gang hangout. We just posted what others wrote in the comments and email. We added our two cents, but never claimed it was a gang hangout. Where did you get that?

“Black P Stone gangbangers have taken a foothold at 115/ Kedzie at the carwash,” the anonymous writer stated in an e-mail and blog. “They are targeting whites! Threatening passerbys and customers. Things are getting ridiculous now. Gosh, we can’t even wash our cars without being hassled by thugs.”

Which anonymous writer are you talking about Patrick Thomas? Because if you are saying MTGP, you are surely mistaken. That was from our comments section posted by someone else, don't attribute quotes to something we did not say. Could be slanderous.

The blog posting also criticized nearby Section 8 housing and voiced concerns about recent crime in the area and about an apartment building near 115th Street and Pulaski Road. The e-mail caused several local residents to contact this newspaper because they thought the information was true.

What, do you have infomation that it is not true? Do some research, section 8 individuals do live in that apartment building. Parolees do live there. We never claimed that crime occuring in the neighborhood was attributed to those that live there. Only that our residents of our community need to be made aware of those that live among us. Do not make statements in the middle of an article that have nothing to do with the article to make us at MTGP out to be unreliable. Horrible idea Mr. Thomas. Readers are smarter than that.

Matt O’Shea, administrative assistant to Rugai, who received several calls on the rumors and contacted police officials, said the blog postings and e-mails were “completely fabricated.” O’Shea said the Mayers operate a safe and courteous business.

“One thing I know is that whenever you go to Quick Suds, one of the Mayers is working,” he said. “It’s one of the respectable businesses. They do it right.”

Hey Matt O'Shea, our blog posting is not fabricated. We wrote it. The comment left might have been, but it is a comment. We wrote a blog story about it. We wrote our observations in the blog story. Mr. O'Shea, are we not allowed to write about our observations anymore? Was the first amendment reversed recently and we were not aware? We also wrote a blog story with Mr. Mayer's letter regarding the car wash. We championed Mr. Mayer for the letter. We encouraged our readers to patronize the car wash, and will continue to do so. Any business that brings money, and is a positive influence on the community, needs to be patronized. We do have concerns about that corner and we have expressed those time and again. Sorry if you do not like what we have to say, we have the right to say it anyway.

What we love about the Beverly Review article was that for 3/4 of the article it was a slam against the blog and what we posted. The last 1/4 of the article seems to support all of the reasons that we exist.

While police said there has been no gang activity on the corner, there was an alarming report down the street on May 16. On that evening, a man cutting the lawn at a home on the 3200 block of West 115th Street discovered a .357 revolver. About an hour later, police received a call that another man cutting his grass on the same block had discovered a .22-caliber revolver and a speed loader, a device used to load bullets. The loader did not match the revolver. Police cannot recover fingerprints from an item that has been exposed to the elements for that long, 22nd District Sgt. Dennis Kettering said, and thus, they have not been able to determine the owner of the guns.

“We’ve got nothing to tie these to anything,” Kettering said. “We can only speculate how they got there.”

On Jan. 15, Thomas Banks, of the 11800 block of South Kedzie, in Merrionette Park, was arrested for shooting two people and battering two others in his apartment, but the situation was an unrelated domestic disturbance. Police said the shooting and the recently recovered guns had no connection to the car wash and should not be a concern for customers.

When contacted by e-mail to explain where the information came from about the car wash, the anonymous blogger said only that the information received comes from e-mails and postings. The administrator of the blog would only communicate to this reporter through e-mail and declined to provide an identity out of fear of retribution for comments posted on the blog.

“Residents appear fed up with the lack of police protection they are receiving for the amount of money they are paying. Our main goal is to alert our neighborhood of crime and potential suspects,” the blogger wrote.

It appears that we are libelous, slanderous individuals who are only out to do harm to the businesses in our community. At the same time, we are out to protect are local community from crime that is occuring and encourage our community to patronize our businesses. Hmmm...We don't get it, are we evil or good?


Here are links to our articles regarding 115th and Kedzie, the Car Wash and our comments regarding Mt. Greenwood businesses in the order that they appeared on our blogsite. You be the judge on how libelous or slanderous we were.


115th and Kedzie (5/15/2010)

We are not here for your benefit (5/17/2010)

Car Wash (5/21/2010)

From email (6/6/2010)


A side note for the Beverly Review author of the article, Patrick Thomas. Learn to structure your articles better. We really hope this was an opinion article, because if it was supposed to be a factual article, your true intentions of attempting to hurt our crediblity were obviously made known instead of just presenting the facts and allowing the reader to make their own decision. Lastly, do you or the Beverly Review feel threatened by our presence as a blog? We do this for free for no monetary gain. We do this to make our community safer and better. You guys write for monetary gain. Hmmmm......