2:13 pm UTC Apr. 16, 2021 For decades, Clare Hutchinson has shrugged off the insults. The comments are as snide as they are repetitive, along the lines of “You live in South Peoria? For real? Isn’t it dangerous?” Or, “The South Side? I’d never go there!” Hutchinson, 76, lives in her childhood home on West Starr Street. She turns no blind eye to longstanding woes in her neighborhood. She and her husband used to run a convenience store, where they enjoyed the daily chatter with customers and witnessed the creep of drugs in the '70s and ‘80s. In a 1985 Journal Star profile of South Peoria, residents bemoaned a lack of key needs, including new housing, commercial investment and city upkeep. Still, they recalled the glory days of the neighborhood — Hutchinson’s childhood — and expressed frustration that outsiders unfairly painted South Peoria as hapless and hopeless.