Why does Rockford have so many slot stores

Terry Blue
   Rockford, Illinois is a dump. Although there is apart of town that has all the chain restaurants  and everything is occupied there are other surrounding parts that are ghetto The town though is occupied and could be worse and in a sense its ability to retain store occupancy needs to be celebrated when considering where it is located.

The place though has a wide downtown that is lacking of the nightlife of other towns and surely developers in this county do not have the same power to burn old historic buildings and replace them with cheap big box stores. the downtown is particularly attractive and maybe not having so many businesses interested in the area is a blessing. The quietness at night and the vast remoteness of it does give it a scary sense that only a South Bend, Indiana can rival. Another disturbing trend I have noticed about this town in my urban and architecture study is the number of these slot stores that are popping up all over the place in Rockford. These ham and egger casino stores are apparently an attempt from the failure of local leaders in delivering a full-fledge casino to this river town that so many other river towns across the nation have managed to pull off. A city like Rockford would actually be better off with one large casino than with these endless number of strip mall mom and pop slot stores in every neighborhood that are sure to put your mom and pop into the poor house or into your house. Whether Rockford leaders would ever contemplate the obvious is doubtful though.The old fogies of Rockford with too much pension money and dead social security spousal reimbursements need a place to go and spend their insipidity life. One would think a town like Rockford could do so much more and it is sad to see the economy go in this direction and all the book stores, shoe stores, and furniture stores go to frucking slot cafes with these stupid games that can take so much of these saps incomes so quickly.