TRUE CHICAGO

Cottage Industry

2012-01-21T14:07:00.001-06:00

It has finally snowed here, two times in a week's time, about six inches.Here in Galewood there is a little cottage industry, shoveling snow for money. Maybe people are too busy to shovel their own snow, that is certainly the case with grass during the summer. So, kids in the neighborhood capitalize on this fact, and have been shoveling in the dough, at five bucks a pop. Yesterday i saw a crew of cousins, shovel four homes in the time I shoveled mine.

This morning I saw the same kids coming home from work on other blocks. I also noticed a few middle age and older men roaming around ringing bells on this block and the one to the north. I called one man over, " Are you trying to get shoveling jobs?" I asked. "yeah, I haven't got a job yet." he said. I said , " those kids over there are charging $5 and getting all of the jobs." " I charge $10, I got a family." clearly annoyed that I had stopped to talk with him, " you got a job for me?" " Sorry, I just shoveled my place." i replied. He walked away.

To me, this is a small picture of the economics of the city. Low skill jobs are scarce, there are too many competing for those jobs, wages are depressed based on the fact there those that will work for a fraction of cost that labor demands to take care of basic needs.

Riis Park Sledding Hill

2012-01-14T21:33:00.001-06:00

Just went sledding with Liam at Riis Park. This hill is slightly better than Humboldt Park's. You can still see the skyline and the decline is at a steeper angle, so you fly. Some teenagers were sledding with Pam cooking spray sprayed on the bottom of their sled. Awesome! We had a fun time

I Choose....Galewood

2011-12-08T00:00:00.005-06:00

The move from nomadic society to an agrarian society took place when these wanderers were able to position themselves in the perfect location near a surplus of food, water, and shelter to survive. Once that place was found, they made a decision to settle down; to grow families, to grow societies. Two blocks west of Narragansett, on the shore of an ancient freshwater lake, we now find our family having chosen the very same...

I choose being ok with driving everywhere. I choose being ok going to the Brickyard, and going to Jewel, Chipotle, Lowes, Target, Walgreens, Chase, McDonalds, Verizon, and Starbucks. I choose having to worry about my lawn and how loud my kids are getting, I choose not to worry about not sending my kids to the local school or going to the local church, I choose living in a neighborhood where I don't have to start everything from the ground up, I can come alongside individuals that are and have been fighting for the neighborhood for generations, I choose to focus on growing my family here, I choose not have my family live through another drive-by, I choose not worrying about selling out, about moving from a "more real" neighborhood 3.4 miles east. I choose not to feel guilty about my freedom to choose and that I have everything I need to survive here. I choose not to coast on my lessons from my past, but grow. I plant my family on this fertile land and will harvest, here.

Could it be?

2011-12-07T23:32:00.003-06:00

I've been raggin' on my new neighborhood in the last couple of posts, but I actually have simmered down. I am open to liking, not just surfacy liking, but actually open to the fact that I may someday love living here.

Where do you live?

2011-12-07T23:31:00.002-06:00

"Galewood. " " Where's that?!

The Soundtrack of my Hood

2011-10-30T23:18:00.004-05:00

Noise is comforting, it gives you reference, it creates a narrative of your immediate world. Scientifically, noise is sound waves or vibrations. The vibrations are detected by the ear and turned into nerve impulses that are understood by the brain. Hearing requires sensitivity to the movement of molecules in the world outside an organism. Neighborhood noise gives sensitivity to movement of life in the community outside of your home.
I think the soundtrack of Keystone gave me comfort. Fire engines, police cars, abulances, salsa, bacahata, banda, and hip-hop blasting, someone yelling up to a window, Le-o, Hec-tor, cars hitting the speed bump at full speed, the faint hum of North Avenue, Pulaski, or Grand Avenues, the F-word punctuating every conversation, all of these sounds ever so comforting and piquant.
I was scared at how quiet it was around my new place. Silence is scarier than a gun shot, silence stirs up the unknowns, the what if's, the turn my back, the who's theres. It was so quiet that you could hear crickets during the day. As days went by I longed for some drama on the street, maybe a curse filled fight, or a dope fiend passed out on my lawn, nope just landscapers mowing lawns, that is all you see and hear around here, landscapers mowing lawns. The soundtrack of my hood, Galewood, is crickets and lawnmowers. This doesn't comfort me, it gives me a reference of what I'm dealing with here, and it is surely a narrative of the lack of life outside my home.

One Month and 3.4 miles Away

2011-10-30T23:02:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow marks one month of living in our new neighborhood. One month and 3.4 miles from my old life. How did we leave the most intense, stretching,fearful, courageous, painful, and exhilarating seven years of living we ever had lived. I don't know if I can tell my last few months of my time on Keystone it went from horrible in June to beautiful by the end of September, I think I will have to have to get into that at a later time. However, Katie and I had come to the point where all the doors were open to go, and we felt peace about stepping forward. Here we are now, in our Chicago bungalow, in Galewood. Both Katie and I are feeling different emotions about being here, I guess the perfect phrase to sum up our life here is, now what?

True Chicago: Jewel bag

2011-10-30T22:30:00.002-05:00

Any True Chicagoan,when needing a plastic bag, will inventively request a Jewel bag, named for the Jewel-Osco grocery store. Jewel bags are used to throw out garbage and junk, best practice is to double Jewel bag it then throw that into a Jewel bag that you stuck into your plastic garbage can or waste basket, because lining your can with a Hefty cinch bag, with Febreeze, is for yuppies.

No True Chicagoan will pack lunch in a Tupperware container or a thermal insulated lunch bag, no, a True Chicagoan uses a Jewel bag, with a sammich wrapped in aluminum foil or paper towel, a banana, and a can of something or other.

Jewel bags are the favorite of old ladies, hence the nomenclature, bag lady.

Hang out in any Polish or Eastern European neighborhood neighborhood and you'll notice the Jewel bag as people walk down the street.

The Jewel bag, the True Chicago carry all.

This block

2011-06-10T15:33:00.003-05:00

The pillars that hold my house are no more crooked than my neighbors. The gutters accept both fresh water and waste. I now know that the block's blood is hustler’s blood. The twin sidewalks of the 1500 forever keep two sides, two faces.

Are You A Christian by Nelson Algren

2011-06-09T15:41:00.002-05:00

"Nothing but Sunday morning services can dissuade the hunter one moment from the prey."

Are You A Christian?

It’s still an outlaw’s capital—but of an outlawry whose colors, once crimson as the old Sauganash whiskey-dye, have been washed down, by many prairie rains, to the colorless grey of the self-made executive type playing the percentages from the inside. Under the pale fluorescent glow.
We’ve abandoned the neighborliness of the Middle Border while sharpening its competitiveness—to lend it a bloodier, more legal edge than the Middle Border ever knew.
For in the time that Dwight L. Moody went about these streets straight-arming strangers with the simple and terrible question, “Are you a Christian?” the answer was simpler and less terrible than now.
Certainly the thief calling himself John the Baptist wasn’t one even though he left a religious tract at the scene of every tract. Even though wearing the ministerial black with the Come-to-Jesus-or-Else collar. For he also wore a bright red bandana about his dirty throat and never a shirt below or beneath at all.
Either you were or you weren’t. John the Baptist wasn’t one and the bumboat pirate called Black Jack Yattaw wasn’t one either. Nor was Paddy the Bear nor Cooney the Fox nor Duffy the Goat.

Nor Red Jimmy Fitzgerald, who conned Charles Francis Adams out of $7,000, and Hungry Joe Lewis, who took Oscar Wilde for another small fortune in that same unchristian year.
Nor speckled Jimmy Calwell nor Saffo the Greek nor Jew Kid Grabiner. Nor Fancy Tom O’Brien, the King of the Bunko Men; for he murdered Reed Waddell, the inventor of the gold-brick fraud.
Nor the little monster named Mickey Finn, who openly advertised the horror he had devised for the simply pleasure it afforded him to hear some curious innocent order it with his own lips—just before being spun off the stool and into the alley behind the bar. To wake up with the cats looking at him. If he wakened again in the great world at all.
But the Mick was the last of the true infidels.

By the time Hinky Dink Kenna came along you had to cut in closer to answer the reverend’s question. For in The Hink the border apache became a working citizen, a property owner assuming civic responsibilities, commanding a ward-wide loyalty and professing some sort of faith or other come Sunday morning. A hustler’s hustler, part philanthropist and part straight brigand, The Hink sought his personal salvation in the ballot box.
Like the city that bred him, he had a heavenly harpist on his bedpost as well as a hustler’s imp stoking the furnace: when hard times came he fed and sheltered more hungry and homeless men than all the Gold Coast archangels put together. And felt frankly outraged when the archangels accused him of trading free lunches for votes at his Workingman’s Exchange.
He’d paid fifty cents in gold cash for every vote he’d bought, he let the archangels know—but what about the missions that were buying blackened souls in exchange for blacker coffee and the easy promise of a heavenly throne? Why was it less noble to pay cash here and now? Let the Gold Coast archangels answer him that.
Those same pious Gold Coasters who took the Righteous Horrors at the nightly carnival put on by the First Ward cribs—while secretly pocketing rents off those same terrible cribs.

Yet in standardizing the price of the vote The Hink did more to keep the city running on bitter winter than did all the balmy summers of Moody’s evangelism. Not even to mention Lucy Page Gaston’s command that the Chicago Cubs stop smoking cigarettes immediately.
Who came out the truer Christian in a hassle like that?
For always our villains have hearts of gold and all our heroes are slightly tainted. It always takes somebody like The Hink, in whom avarice and generosity mingled like the hot run and the cold water in his own Tom-and-Jerries, to run a city wherein warmth of heart and a freezing greed beat, like the blood and the breath, as one.
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Somebody like The Hink’s Bathhouse John calling on the city, in the name of its little children, to ban the sale of the deadly coffin nail from within two hundred yards of every schoolhouse. Thus earning himself, a buccaneer to his balbriggan underwear, the sanctimonious applause of the Tribune:
By this measure he will drive from the school areas the petty peddlers in death who have been inviting the children to ruin.
Applause which The Bath acknowledged grandly, bowing first to the left and then to the right, in a wondrous tailcoat of billiard-cloth green, lavender trousers, pink gloves and a cream-colored vest flaring with diamonds—to the greatest rogues’ circus ever pitched under a single tent.

For all his strutting piety in Lucy Page Gaston’s name didn’t stop him for one moment from leading his harlots and hopheads, his coneroos and fancy-men, his dips and hipsters and heavy-hipted madams—his “willing hands and honest hearts” as he termed them—to flaunt their soiled banners at the Annual First Ward Ball.
Out of their dens and out of their dives, out of their traps and curtained parlors—most of them carefully masked—The Bath led his willing hands and honest hearts with his victory over the tobacco trust in his pocket. And, in the other, plans for a private zoo. What did his take from the cribs have to do with whose little children anyhow, The Bath would have just liked to know.
The fact being that The Hink and The Bath were the first of the big-time operators. Both living on to see their territory taken over by the business tweeds who put a stop to free lunches as being unbusinesslike.
The Hink and The Bath being the first to suspect that appeals to Civic Loyalty were appeals to empty air: that the place had grown up too fast to be conscious of itself as a unified city requiring any loyalty beyond that to the American dollar. “The cult of money which one encounters here does not spring from avarice or meanness,” one European observer put it quaintly, “but making money is the only aim one can set oneself in a city wherein the dollar is the spiritual denominator as well as the financial one.” The Buck alone lending purpose to the lives of the anonymous thousands living in anonymous rows along anonymous streets, under an anonymous moon.
And sining the old crossroads hymns of Faith Everlasting can’t help any more, for you can’t call anonymous souls to the Lord. He doesn’t know who they are.

And the Lord Himself couldn’t get some of them that far out into the light anyhow. They’d think Here Comes That Tuesday Night Lineup Again.
You can live your whole life out somewhere between Goose Island and Bronzeville without once feeling that, the week after you move, the neighbors are going to miss your place. For it isn’t so much a city as it is a vasty way station where three and a half million bipeds swarm with the single cry, “One side or a leg off, I’m getting’ mine!” It’s every man for himself in this hired air.
Yet once you’ve come to be part of this particular patch, you’ll never love another. Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real.
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Jane Addams too knew that Chicago’s blood was hustler’s blood. Knowing that Chicago, like John the Baptist and Bathhouse John, like Billy Sunday and Big Bill, forever keeps two faces, one for winners and one for losers; one for hustlers and one for squares.
One for the open-eyed children of the thousand-windowed office buildings. And one for the shuttered hours.
One for the sunlit traffic’s noontime bustle. And one for midnight subway watches when stations swing past like ferris wheels of light, yet leave the moving window wet with rain or tears.
One face for Go-Getters and one for Go-Get-It-Yerselfers. One for poets and one for promoters. One for the good boy and one for the bad.

One for white collars as well as blue, for our museums like cathedrals and our cathedrals like museums, for the windy white-and-blue miles of our beaches, the Saturday night moonlight excursions to Michigan City, the afternoon at the zoo washed into mists of sunlit remembrance by a sudden warm, still rain; and for that night-shaded honkytonk where Sherry Our Shivering Sheba shook the long night’s last weary shake to twenty empty tables and one middle-aged pimp wheedling a deaf bartender for a final double shot.
One for early risers, one for evening hiders.
One for the White Sox and none for the Cubs.
One for King Oliver and Louie Armstrong improvising half an hour on end at the old Lincoln Gardens Bandstand, for Baby Dodds and Dave Tough and all the other real-gone senders, sent-for-and-gone too soon, who brought jazz up the river from New Orleans, made it Chicago’s music and then the world’s.
For the soldiers and the sailors and the far-from-home marines, who’ll tell you, no matter where you’re from, that it’s the most open-handed town in the country for any far-from-home soldier.

As well as for old soaks’ goat’s nests, backstreet brothels, unlit alleys and basement bars: for tavern, trap and tenement. For all the poolroom tigers in checkered caps who’ve never seen a cow, and all the night-club kittens who’ve never seen a cloud.
For white-lit showups, dim-lit lockups and the half-lit hallway bedrooms, where the air, along with the bed, is stirred only by the passing of the Jackson Park Express. For all our white-walled asylums and all our dark-walled courtrooms, overheated district stations and disinfected charity wards, where the sunlight is always soiled and there are no holiday hours.
For hospitals, brothels, prisons and such hells, where patronage comes up softly, like a flower.
For all the collarless wanderers of the hose-and-wagon alleys of home.
It isn’t hard to love a town for its greater and its lesser towers, its pleasant parks or its flashing ballet. Or for its broad and bending boulevards, where the continuous headlights follow, one dark driver after the next, one swift car after another, all night, all night and all night. But you never truly love it till you can love its alleys too. Where the bright and morning faces of old familiar friends now wear the anxious midnight eyes of strangers a long way from home.
A midnight bounded by the bright carnival of the boulevards and the dark girders of the El.
Where once the marshland came to flower.
Where once the deer came down to water.
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Wheeling around the loop of the lake, coming at Chicago from east and south, the land by night lies under a battle-colored sky. Above the half-muffled beat of the monstrous forges between Gary and East Chicago, the ceaseless signal-fires of the great refineries wave an all-night alarm.

Until, moving with the breaking light, we touch the green pennant of the morning boulevards running the dark-blue boundary of the lake. Where the fortress-like towers of The Loop guard the welter of industrial towns that were once a prairie portage.
It remains a midland portage. No railroad passes through the city. Passengers shift from one to another of half a dozen stations. Freight trains are shunted around belt lines. But the Constellations overhead begin to lend it the look of a mid-world portage, with all the sky for its ocean–port.
The city divided by the river is further divided by racial and lingual differences. The Near Northside, centering around the comical old humpty-dumpty water tower which survived the fire, is, for example, almost as different from the Near Northwest Side, just over the bridge, in manners, mores, vocations and habits of speech, as Bronzeville is from Rogers Park.
So if you’re entirely square yourself, bypass the forest of furnished rooms behind The Loop and stay on the Outer Drive till you swing through Lincoln Park. Then move, with the lake still on your square right hand, into those suburbs where the lawns are always wide, the sky is always smokeless, the trees are forever leafy, the churches are always tidy, gardens are always landscaped, streets are freshly swept, homes are pictures out of Town and Country. And the people are stuffed with kapok.

For the beat of the city’s enormous heart, at the forge in the forest behind the towers, is unheard out in this spiritual Sahara. Where the homes so complacent, and the churches so smug, leave an airlessness like a microscopic dust over the immaculate pews and the self-important bookshelves. The narrow streets of the tenements seem to breathe more easily, as though closer to actual earth, than do these sinless avenues. Where Reader’s Digest is a faith, the Reverend Bradley is a prophet, and nothing but Sunday morning services can dissuade the hunter one moment from the prey

The Hustlers by Nelson Algren

2011-06-09T15:23:00.001-05:00

In the words of Nelson Algren, Chicago has always been a hustler town. My neighborhood ain't no different.

The Hustlers
To the east were moving waters, as far as eye could follow. To the west a sea of grass as far as wind might reach.
Waters restlessly, with every motion, slipping out of used colors for new. So that each fresh wind off the lake washed the prairie grasses with used sea-colors: the prairie moved in the light like a secondhand sea.
Till between the waters and the wind came the marked-down derelicts with the dollar signs for eyes.
Looking for any prairie portage at all that hadn’t yet built a jail.
Beside any old secondhand sea.
The portage’s single hotel was a barracks, its streets were pig-wallows, and all the long summer night the Pottawattomies mourned beside that river: down in the barracks the horse-dealers and horse-stealers were making a night of it again. Whiskey-and-vermilion hustlers, painting the night vermilion.
In the Indian grass the Indians listened: they too had lived by night.
And heard, in the uproar in the hotel, the first sounds of a city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to roll boulevards down out of pig-wallows and roll its dark river uphill.

That was to forge, out of steel and blood-red neon, its own particular wilderness.
Yankee and voyager, the Irish and the Dutch, Indian traders and Indian agents, halfbreed and quarterbreed and no breed at all, in the final counting they were all of a single breed. They all had hustler’s blood. And kept the old Sauganash in a hustler’s uproar.
They hustled the land, they hustled the Indian, they hustled by night and they hustled by day. They hustled guns and furs and peltries, grog and the blood-red whiskey-dye; they hustled with dice or a deck or a derringer. And decided the Indians were wasting every good hustler’s time.
Slept till noon and scolded the Indians for being lazy.
Paid the Pottawattomies off in cash in the cool of the Indian evening: and had the cash back to the dime by the break of the Indian dawn.
They’d do anything under the sun except work for a living, and we remember them reverently, with Balaban and Katz, under such subtitles as “Founding Fathers,” “Dauntless Pioneers” or “Far-Visioned Conquerors.”

Meaning merely they were out to make a fast buck off whoever was standing nearest.
They never conquered as well as they hustled—their arithmetic was sharper than their hunting knives. They skinned the redskin down to his final feather, the forests down to the ultimate leaf of autumn, the farmer out of his last wormy kernel of Indian corn; and passed the rain-swept seasons between carefully skinning one another.
One such easy skinner listing his vocation lightly, in the city’s first dictionary, as Generous Sport.
Mountain grog seller and river gambler, Generous Sport and border jackal, blackleg braggart and coonskin roisterer, Long Knives from Kentucky and hatchet-men from New York, bondsmen, brokers and bounty-jumpers—right from the go it was a broker’s town and the brokers run it yet.
It’s still the easiest joint in the country in which to jump bond, as well as for staying out of jail altogether. The price commonly being whatever you have in your wallet. If the wallet is empty a fifty-cent cigar will usually do it.
Indeed, the city’s very first jailbird got a pass from the city fathers. An antique stray named Harper was knocked down, under the local vagrancy laws, to George White, the Negro town crier, for a quarter. And legally led away by White at the end of a rusty chain.

When antislavery feeling forced the Negro to let the white escape, George wanted only his two bits back. And couldn’t collect a dime. So each nigh scandalized the darkness by crying his loss instead of the hour. He never got his two bits back, but he made a hundred dollar uproar over it. Every hour on the hour. All night long.
The joint is still in an uproar. Every hour on the hour. All night long.
When the Do-Gooders try to quiet it down they only add drums to the tumult. The village squares arrived too late for a firm toehold.
In 1835 they declared a “season of prayer” and wrested two outlaws right out of the devil’s clutches—yet the devil seemed not to miss the pair at all. So they tossed two harder customers into the pokey.
And still nobody cared.
Then they fined a brothel-keeper twenty-five silver dollars, and the battle between the Pure-of-Heart and the Brokers’ Breed was joined for keeps. The ceaseless, city-wide, century-long guerrilla warfare between the Do-As-I-Sayers and the Live-And-Let-Livers was on. With the brokers breaking in front.
Broke in front and stayed in front despite being crowded to the rail on occasion.
Not that there’s been any lack of honest men and women sweating out Jane Addams’ hopes here—but they get only two outs to the inning while the hustlers are taking four. When Big Bill Thompson put in the fix for Capone he tied the town to the rackets for keeps.

So that when the reform mayor who followed him attempted to enforce the prohibition laws, he wakened such warfare on the streets that the Do-Gooders themselves put Thompson back at the wheel, realizing that henceforward nobody but an outlaw could maintain a semblance of law and order on the common highway. Big Bill greeted his fellow citizens correctly then with a cheery, “Fellow hoodlums!”
The best any mayor can do with the city since is just to keep it in repair.
Yet the Do-Gooders still go doggedly forward, making the hustlers struggle for their gold week in and week out, year after year, once or twice a decade tossing an unholy fright into the boys. And since it’s a ninth-inning town, the ball game never being over till the last man is out, it remains Jane Addams’ town as well as Big Bill’s. The ball game isn’t over yet.
But it’s a rigged ball game.
Once upon a time, when Thirty-fifth Street was the far Southside and North Avenue was the limit on the north, something called the Law-and-Order League shut the Sunday beer halls, and the Beer-on-Sunday Party won the subsequent elections in a walk. A horde of horrified Ohio spinsters thereupon counterattacking the halls by praying at the bar rails, pleading with the drinkers to kneel beside them.
There is no record of anyone getting sawdust in his cuffs: this was 1873, and thousands who had come to rebuild the ruins of the great fire were carrying ragged banners crying BREAD OR BLOOD on the streets. Sunday was the one day of the week the working stiff who was still working had to himself. So he just dipped his kisser deeper into his stein, wiped his moustache tidily and ordered another. He knew he wasn’t getting any eight-hour day by kneeling for it.
Indignantly then in their hundreds the women marched to City Hall to demand legal prohibition of Sunday beer—and got turned down there cold. Working stiffs and out-of-work stiffs alike booing them gently back to Ohio.

After times had picked up again a Reverend Gipsy Smith, dressed like midnight itself, led twelve thousand black-gowned and black-tied saviors, carrying flaring torches and half-stepping in funeral march tempo to the menacing boom of a single drum, up and down the midnight streets of the old Levee.
The piano rolls stopped on a single surprise chord, the little red lamps blinked out together, the big drum called “Come to Jesus or Else,” and the saviors cried in one all-accusing voice, “Where is my wandering boy tonight?”
“He ain’t in here, Reverend,” some awe-struck sinner answered earnestly—and the little red lamps flickered with laughter, a piano roll lightly tinkered a jeer, and the revelry crashed like window glass with one deep-purple roar.
And roared on all night long.
“We have struck a blow for Jesus,” the reverend announced without changing his shirt.
“A church and a W.C.T.U. never growed a big town yet,” Old Cap Streeter contradicted him flatly. “Hit’s still a frontier town.”

Where the gouging and the cunning and the no-holds-barred spirit of the Middle Border still holds as true as rent day.
For despite the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts, the missionary societies and the Bible institutes, the Legion of Decency and Lieutenant Fulmer, Preston Bradley and the Epworth League, Emile Coue and Dwight L. Moody, there’s no true season for salvation here. Good times or hard, it’s still an infidel’s capital six days a week.
And with a driving vigor and a reckless energy unmatched in the memory of man. Where only yesterday the pungent odor of stewed dog trailed across the marshes, now the million-candled billboards, weaving drunken lights in the river’s depths, boast of Old Fitzgerald, Vat 69, White Horse and Four Roses. Where only yesterday the evening crow crossed only lonely teepee fires, now the slender arc-lamps burn.
To reveal our backstreets to the indifferent stars.

Tear Down, Move On, Abandon

2011-06-07T10:49:00.002-05:00

"Utilitarianism is the sibiling of capitalism." I like this quote from a blogger I read recently. She was discussing abandonment of cities and structures that one may see in cities like Detroit. Once a structure, neighborhood, or city has passed its good use, we decide tear down, move on, or abandon. In two weeks my friends and I are going to travel to Braddock, PA. I town of 30,000 in the 1950's and about 3,300 today. It has lost 90% of its population and it has no tax base; some say capitalism has left Braddock. In the face of almost complete abandonment, of any place, how do we respond?

True Chicago Vacation: Wisconsin Dells

2011-03-13T22:51:00.004-05:00

The only kitschy place in American that hasn't been taken over by hipsters. I've never read about the Dells in Chicago Magazine, the Red Eye, or the Reader. This place is a true Chicago vacation spot. If you cant go to Disney, but you want something fancier than Six Flags Great America, head 3 hours north on I-90 and get off when you see the Great Wolf Lodge.

True Chicagoans Don't Have Peanut Allergies

2010-12-05T15:56:00.001-06:00

True Chicagoans don't have peanut allergies, they don't eat soy nuthin', they eat gluten, raw!

Neil Diamond and a Chance of Meatballs

2010-09-13T15:24:00.002-05:00

On Friday we celebrated Liam's first week of school by attending an outdoor movie at his school, Mitchell. There is nothing better than elementary schoolers jammin' to Neil Diamond's greatest hits such as Coming to America, Thank the Lord for the Nighttime, and Cherry, Cherry. All that was served up with the main attraction, the whip smart comedy, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. So much fun.

Impunity

2010-09-07T22:43:00.006-05:00

As a teen, the attention I would get from suburban or out of town girls with mere mention that I was from Chicago was always nice. I never abused using my status as a Chicagoan, born and raised, as a way to get together with girls that were looking to slum with some guy they thought grew up in a bad neighborhood. I didn't grow up in the hood, I grew up on the nortwest side. However, if you really wanted a girl from out of town to like you, you would answer yes to the following question: Have you ever been shot?

I would always say no, and look at those girls with disdain, I wasnt going to play the bad boy. I couldn't stand the stereotype of Chicago being a negative place to live; too many of my friends and neighbors had left me back in the neighborhood because of this stereotype. Guns never affected me or my friends where we lived in city.

I was scared of gangs; I made sure that I never wore certain colors, or a hat turned to the side, even for fun. It had been etched in my mind as a young boy that even playing around could get you shot.

My elementary school gym teacher scared me with a story of a student using sign language and gang bangers shooting him because they though he was flashing gang signs. If someone started with me, I would never dream of giving them any push back, in my mind, anyone could pull out a gun and shoot me, anywhere. Through this all, I stayed far away from gangs and anyone affiliated with gangs, never saw a gun, never heard a gun shot.

When I moved to North and Pulaski with Katie, Eric, and Emily, we were discouraged by some about the violence, we were given slack from some about choosing to live here because our future kids could likely get shot.

None of those things have ever happened, but neighborhood kids warned us about certain parks, they informed us about the gang territories and how kids from our block were trapped because they would get jumped or harrassed if they walk in any of the four directions. They were kids however, we were adults, we knew the statistics; the likelihood that we'd get shot was slim to none. We would walk around the neighborhood with impunity. In our head, there were a few priveledges we had enjoyed from not growing up around here, one of which was the priveledge of thinking we could not personally be touched by the violence that affects so many others in our community. on Labor Day we snapped back to reality.

The whole house went to Kedvale Park after our wonderful Labor Day Party. Eric, Eleanor, and Edith, Katie, myself, Liam and Ava, Charlie, Luke and Faith. I made a mental note of the three thuggish teens scheming on the side of the park house, when we arrived. I made a note of the neighbor kid smoking weed with another boy and about six girls in the middle of the park, I took in the basketball game to the right of me, the soccer game to the right of that. I watched my Liam and Luke ride bikes around the perimeter of the park, saw Ava crawl to the swings, Katie went after her.

The largest one of the thuggish boys call to one of boys smoking weed. They went north on Kedvale through the park, the neighbor boy put out his blunt on the concrete, met up with the two others, they walked up to the cul-de-sac, red and black covering their bodies became a blur next to a red, abandoned Honda. The largest boy leaned against the side door and pop,pop, pop pop pop, pops burst out towards Grand Avenue. Once I realized what was happeneing, everything turned into slow motion; the basketball players disappeared, the soccer players were one with turf, everone grabbed a child and headed towards the back of the field house.The shooting was over, the only one walking with impunity was the trigger man. He brushed past the crowd of victims as if nothing had happened. We called the police, the park cleared out, we walked home silent; somehow we managed to convince all of the children that everyone was running from fireworks to not get burned. Almost every child bought the story.

I don't like stories from people about the gun shots they hear every night or how they know someone who got shot or has been killed. I don't care for individuals that intentionally move into the hood and try to compare notes on who has experienced the most effects from gun violence or who has experienced the most trauma, as if that makes them harder or better than another person. I will not be that person to act as if this is, my, neighborhood and no gang banger is going to scare me into keeping my kids from that beautiful park. Nor will I be that person that gives into I told you so... thinking by others. If this incident has taught me anything is that I can't walk this neighborhood proud or haughty, feeling comfortable and street smart enough. The greatest reality check for impunity, is a good old fashion random act of violence.

First Day of School

2010-09-01T23:35:00.003-05:00

Well my dream of having my children walk to school like i did will not come true. I am proud though that Liam will be among the third generation of students in my family attending the CPS. I am glad that the public schools here in the city still has something to offer my children and that we haven't given up on the system. I am excited for Liam and Ella starting school together on Tuesday, I plan to take the morning off to take him to his first day at Mitchell. I hope to give him some token or object to mark the day. Maybe a watch, time is ticking, they grow up so fast, but look forward to the next 12-18 years of this journey.

Whip it! Whip it good!

2010-08-14T00:38:00.003-05:00

I haven't been around the block much since Katie and the kiddos have been in Wisconsin. A lot of craziness happens around here that most wouldn't flinch at someone OD'ing on the sidewalk, or shots ringing out, or someone getting beat down while children play. I have rarely seen my neighbors shocked at an event over here, until today. No one could have anticipated a bicycle riding pimp, pulling out a bull whip, and slicing the noggin of my neighbor. No one.

Happenstance is Dead!

2010-06-20T00:31:00.005-05:00

There use to be a time when you could happen upon some place and be in awe, to really feel like you had discovered a gem, that only you knew about, and you could be able to, only if you wish, share it with those that were in your life, the ones who could appreciate and cherish the place as much as you did. You could have your own little close knit community of those in the know. Today, that is gone.
Last week I received a stack of Time-Out Chicago magazines. The overwhelming amount of in the moment, what to do and where to do it information that was in these weekly magazines blew my mind. The competition between bloggers, tweeters, zines publishers, yelpers, online site barkers, and app developers to mine the city for the most events and most obscure places dwarfs the oil industry's search for new oil fields. The new peak oil worry should be one's ability to stumble upon something or someplace.
On Friday, I went to St. Paul, Mn., I brought the previous week's Time-Out, the magazine sent out four writers to live and breathe the Twin Cities for four days. What came out was an itinerary that leaves nothing in the Cities to be discovered. How cool am I going to be traveling to Minnesota, to eat Hmong food in Frogtown, St. Paul, going to a farmers market at the history museum, taking a kayak excursion to Minnehaha Falls along the Mississippi River, taking the light rail to a Twins game in their new stadium, and ending the night in the diviest bar, for Zombie night, in the Lyn-Lake area of Minneapolis, the "Wicker Park" of the Cities. I have just consumed an intentionally manufactured experience by people hired to create a false sense of happened upon.
I guess if you have the money and know how, you have the ability to capitalize on these happened uponed experiences. I am also overwhelmed by the those in Chicago that have parlayed the money for the Olympics into a full blown effort to exploit unknown or uncharted areas by tourists or local consumers of the next dive bar or cool shot for Flicker. These monied individuals have financed something called Eat, Pray, Love Chicago, and a full on army of individuals from the Department of Tourism and people that do not live in those 77 neighborhoods, have done a very superficial job of giving neighborhood history, landmarks, and cool places to visit from their limited perspective. In the past, the definition of place was gleaned from individuals that lived in that place over a period of time. We should ask ourselves, who defines meaning and history of where I live. Today, place and space is being cheapened and sanitized for the next quick fix. I can say I've been somewhere cool and edgy because the Reader or that blogger did the dirty work of finding it in the first place, I can experience a far off place, or a dangerously hip place in the ghetto without being there because it has been geo-tagged, or made virtual via Google Earth or streetview. I can miss out of visual and spiritual minutiae of a place because my hand held device augments my reality of that place, it acts as my viewmaster overlaying and mashing restaurant, accommodation, travel, historical information, and other people's You Tube, Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Four Square feeds so that I have all the data about that place, that may have originally taken decades to define, all ready and for me to consume, without any conscience effort, in minutes' time. What do we do when every quiet, corner of this city and world has been shared? What will be left to discover?

Wow, I Haven't Blogged in a Long Time

2010-06-19T23:49:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged in almost three months, lots has changed in those three months. Officially, I started up the guerilla historical society. Currently we are closing in on 800 fans, not bad. I love that we have been able to play with the whole idea of "place" and what defines a place. What has defined a place throughout history has been something gleaned over time by individuals living there. What we have attempted to do is define this place, North and Pulaski, oh by the way, this area was never called North and Pulaski, just by creating the Facebook page and by getting it out in cyberspace, we have just created the definition of space and place in time, not in the historical sense of the fixed, gleaned definition, but through the medium of the social networking site we have created a fluid, working, ever changing, wiki-nition of this place. Right now our fans skew in the 45-65 range. Through their comments, and online interactions with each other, a perception of this neighborhood's history has been conceived based on their recollections and experiences during a certain time period. However,as time goes on, as online demographics of our fans grow and change, the definition of this place will morph and mutate. Is this good or bad, I don't know, it is very new. Our hope is that the definition that arises in dynamic and maliable enough that we can bridge the gap between all people that have been affected by this space and place through time.

Butt Face

2010-03-27T20:26:00.009-05:00

I have a serious penchant for potty humor, it makes me laugh. So, a month ago Eric and Emily went out of town and left Eleanor with our family. I came up with a fool proof plan to make Liam and Ella laugh. I invented "butt face". I squeeze my face cheeks together, and blow. It made such an exquisite, wet farting noise that both Liam and Ella almost peed their pants. I kept doing it and doing it, and they almost threw up laughing.
Now I haven't heard or seen Ella copy this invention at her house, maybe she has forgotten, maybe her parents scolded her when they saw her imitate it. Liam however, still loves it to this day. Initially, it had made me laugh so hard , but upon reflection I have realized I have created a monster. Think of what it may be like for your child say and imitate "butt face" in church, how about the doctor's office? Not funny, actually now that I think about it, I'm imagining Katie have to embarrassingly explain "butt face" to the pediatrician, "butt face", "butt face", "butt face", ha ha. Actually, sorry Katie (snicker, snicker). So now, we're trying to redirect Liam by convincing him to say "fish face" instead of "butt face". So far, it's been a half-ass success.

What Are You?

2010-03-08T21:12:00.005-06:00

Being half Puerto Rican and half Ukrainian with a Serbian last name sounds like it has its perks, but you're not accepted by Puerto Ricans because your not "Puerto Rican enough", Ukrainians bug out because you show up with your grandma at their Orthodox church and they're thinking, get this Puerto Rican guy outta here. Serbians don't know how to handle you and you don't know how to handle them because you dont look, talk, or act Serbian, you're only Serbian by last name( my dad was adopted). I get "are you Jewish, I thought you were Greek or Italian or something, don't you have a Polish name, you can't be Hispanic because you don't speak Spanish, what are you?" The truth is I'm none of these things, I'm a Chicagoan, true, bleedin' baby blue and red. This is the only one identity I can hold on to, without insecurity, with confidence, without having to explain and justify. As a Chicagoan I am just me.

Fwd: Logan Square Blogger Entry #3

2010-02-23T20:25:00.020-06:00

Here's an excerpt from The Logan Square blogger: "Gentrification really pisses me off. I mean how can we maintain the diversity of Logan Square with its cool bodegas, Spanish speaking Latino residents, many of whom make below the median income, and the great dive taquerias and places to get the famous "jibarito". People have the right to stay in the neighborhood with out young professionals taking over. The Latino, Spanish speaking couple that live under me have told me numerous times how they lament the loss of their friends of ten years over the last year,in our two unit building. With globalization transforming our cities, young,white, urban professionals are taking neighborhoods,like mine, which are up for grabs, with cheap rent, awesome gritty bars and greasy spoons that my friends like to hang out in, and turning them into another Starbucksville or bland anywhereland. The Latinos,those that speak Spanish, and those of lower median income, making less than $24,000, of this neighborhood, need to fight against this influx of, for lack of a more appropriate nomenclature, yuppies.

Ugh, I'm glad I got that off my chest. The injustice of gentrification just incenses me, so glad that I am on my toes, trying to totally be aware of how other people do things and just aren't aware of the unintended consequences they have on other people's lives. Well, I am off to a rally of sorts, I'm taking my old rusty, trusty, Schwinn to a bicycle themed art installation at my favorite coffee shop in the whole of Logan Square, New Wave Cafe, there I'm sure I'll find a bunch of homies that cuncur, as we embibe PBR and eat elotes and taquitos."

Rearview Sunset

2010-02-23T19:26:00.003-06:00

My friend Brett Champin published a book. It's called Rearview Sunset- A Novel.

Demolition of a Cabrini- Green highrise

2010-02-23T17:35:00.002-06:00

Check this out.

The%20surgical%20demolition%20of%20a%20Cabrini-Green%20high-rise--a%20time-lapse%20video%20

Izens Shoes

2010-02-21T13:18:00.005-06:00

Izens Shoes is one of the only original shops still in business here on the North and Pulaski strip. If you need shoes, dress or gym shoes, this is a place I encourage you to go. It still eeks out an existence with Payless and Footlocker across the street and the $10 dollar bootleg shoe place on Grand and Pulaski. Those of you that romanticize mom and pop stores, this is the real deal, and needs to be celebrated.

Mr. Izen's Story:

"My grandfather, Samuel Izen, came to Chicago from Russia with his 17 year old son Julius around 1903. They opened a very small shoemaker's shop on the near south side in the vicinity of Maxwell and Halsted Streets. He lived in back of the store to save money so that they could send for the rest of the family - my grandmother Peltie and the children Rose, Max, my father Morris, Molly, Ben and baby Libby.

"My father and mother opened a Florsheim shoe store on North Avenue near Crawford (now Pulaski Road) in 1923. The businessmen in that area flouished because the Pioneer Trust and Savings Bank on the corner was one of two banks that remained open during the great depression. IZEN'S SHOES is still in that location. It retains the Izen name even though it is owned by people who bought the business from our family."

- Author unknown

Auto Show

2010-02-21T11:32:00.002-06:00

I usually wouldn't go to the auto show, but I went with Liam. If there is any place to realize Liam's fantasy of driving an automobile, its the auto show. It was two hours of climbing into and out of cars and messing with buttons, lights, and the radio without anyone yelling at him. Liam also loved riding up and down the 50 foot tall escalators through McCormick Place. The whole day was kid led, no adult agenda, I loved it,and so did Li.

St. Liam

2010-02-12T14:44:00.003-06:00

Liam busted out with a little theology today. We were sitting at the kitchen table is when and I asked him what he learned in school today. He said" sin is when you kill a lamb". I laughed and asked him what else he knows about sin, " he said when you have sin in your heart you don't go to heaven with God" and " when you don't have sin in your heart, you don't go to heaven either". I told him that is when you do go to heaven. Soon, Katie came over and I asked him to repeat his knowledge of sin. Katie gave him a good definition, " Sin is when you do something that God doesn't want you to do, when you sin you say I'm sorry, and God forgives you." We asked him to try it.Then, knowing that he can't have pop, Liam sipped the straw from my Subway beverage, and said, " Sorry, God." We laughed and told him that he couldn't just do what he wants then ask for forgiveness, when he wants to do something he knows he shouldn't, he should tell himself, no. So, he went for my pop again, and before I could shield him, he said no. He proceeded to pretend to be tempted and deny himself about five times. Pretty funny, I realize that I can't just expect Liam to pick up concepts about God or morals only from his Baptist preschool, or from Sunday School, we are the ones that should be molding his spirtual life and understanding first, this is an awesome task, difficult when I may be childlike in my own pursuit of God, but necessary nonethless. Thanks Liam for you theological pursuits and insights.

Happy V-Day

2010-02-12T11:50:00.005-06:00

I love when majorly famous people fall. The saying goes, "pride before the fall". John Mayer and Kanye West exemplify that saying.It serves as a reminder of how human we are. And while it is great to see those guys get their just desserts, it also serves as a reminder to me that while I am not a famous a hole musician, I too am an a hole a lot of the times. My self centered attitude is not far off from those dudes, and it takes saying something things stupid, or many things stupid, to realize how much you hurt people and to be really able to listen to them about how your actions and attitude affects them, without getting defensive.

So I want to put it out there that that time came this today, I just finished fighting, then talking to Katie, and came to realize how much I need to work getting over myself and really putting her and the kids as a priority. Katie just puts so much of herself into Liam and Ava, and managing our families' life , and I mean I just don't get it; and I get ticked off when she asks me to take out the trash, pick up laundry, spend to talking to her about her day, or get off my butt and do something, and I'm wrong. I need to reject my passivity for the sake of my family and my relationship with Katie. So here is my love letter to for all to see, I recognize what I need to do to get our lives on track for this season in our life and I commit to doing it.

Food and Liquor

2010-02-12T11:23:00.002-06:00

Our block club has been diversifying its interests, the winter slows a lot of the craziness in the neighborhood, so rather than tackling problems, we've kinda taken the opportunity to build into developing relationships with residents on Karlov and Kedvale, to the west of us, meeting politicians that represent our block, and by getting to know business owners along North Avenue and Pulaski. Dave initially became friendly with the of Don Carlos restaurant while working the polls last week. That bloomed into a conversation that included ideas for opening a high end wine and specialty beer shop next door to the bar,that will offer panini's, imported cigars, food, and a lottery machine. The owner wanted to meet with the community about the idea. So, Dave, being the organizer that he is, gave an invitation to the man to come to our block club meeting last night.

Dave also fliered the three blocks to get people to come to the meeting. We did get one person from Kedvale, and multiple people from our block. Dave led the meeting by encouraging the man to detail his plans, show his approval letters from the alderman, and chamber of commerce, as well as to give details about committing to hire local unemployed people and youth, especially from our block. The audience peppered the man with concerns that ranged from keeping the place clean, to our concerns about another liquor store in our area, to actually scrapping the plan in an effort to provide space for a head start program. He seemed intent on his plan to open the store within six months. Dave gave the man our unequivocal support, but I said we needed to thin about it. Generally, the owner left with a petition signed by all that support the project, and a general sense of agreement from the block club that we want to support local business, we as an entity will not get in the way of a liquor store, although most rather have a day care, so as long as we can keep him accountable to his agreements and that we will have enough of a relationship with him to approach him if the business begins to have an adverse effecton our community. All this to say, it was a good meeting, the beginnings of a respected community organization, albeit a little scrappy one that has its hands in the happenings of our neighborhood. Thanks for your work Dave.

Super Dave

2010-02-10T22:37:00.002-06:00

We had record snow in Chicago, and Dave shoveled to whole west side of the block and helped neighbors shovel out their cars to get to work on time. Later, he fliered the blocks of Keystone, Karlov, and Kedvale, as well as all the businesses on the 1500 block of Pulaski, and the businesses on the 4000 block of North Avenue. Dave wants to have a super block club that takes the triangle bordered by Grand, Pulaski, and North Avenue, can't say I don't dream of a community organization myself. Dave made a connection with the owner of Don Carlos bar and wants to inform residents of a new venture the owner wants to bring to the neighborhood.

By the way, on a random note, Dave worked the polls last Tuesday, he seems to be the only proud Republican on the West Side. Yesterday,he was yelling outside that if we don't get our politicians to listen, he is going to make sure they vote Republican, he also screamed his belief in smaller government for the whole bloc to hear. I have to say I love this guy, I can't imagine our block without Dave. If we leave, things will be o.k.

Great Movie Accents

2010-02-09T21:02:00.005-06:00

Just like all movie lovers, I love great actors and actresses, moreover, I appreciate when actors change their accent to fit a regional dialect of their character.

Great Movie Accents:

Brad Pitt- Snatch
Daniel Day Lewis- Gangs of New York
Leonardo DiCaprio- Blood Diamond, Departed
Mel Gibson- Braveheart

Any star from Australia, Britain putting on an American accent.

Rachiel Weisz, Eric Bana, Kate Winslet,Nicole Kidman, Toni Collette, Christian Bale, Anthony LaPaglia, Bob Hoskins, Emily Blunt, Ben Kingsly, Hugh Jackman, and Cate Blanchett.

True Chicago Snowstorrm

2010-02-09T20:52:00.006-06:00

RIP Animal Kingdom

2010-02-07T20:10:00.002-06:00

Born and raised in Chicago, I feel like an old sage, although I am only 32. I grew up before the gentrification of this city and in my young age I can tell you tales of old.

I spent most of my childhood in a Polish neighborhood near the intersection of Milwaukee and Pulaski. We'd have to take Milwaukee Avenue down to Logan Blvd., to the Expressway, to Fullerton to get to my grandma's house. You'd pass tons of Polish deli's, bakeries, and clothing stores. Old furniture shops and five and dime stores. One store you'd pass was Animal Kingdom, my only template for a pet shop. Its neon sign with a little puppy and jungle themed mural in front becnoned you in. And when you got in you got to see tropical fish, rabbits, gerbils, among other live animals. The real treat of Animal Kingdom was the fact that they had a real live tiger in a cage, along with chimps, and parrots. As a kid there was nothing better than to see a real tiger in a 10x10 foot cage, up close. In later years, when I came back to Animal Kingdom, that tiger and chimp were replaced with a coyote and some other kind of primate. The economy and hipsters did that place in. Those hipsters love a kitchy, ethnic neighborhood full of taverns and cheap rent and empty storefronts ripe for the pickin', but they sure don't like caged animals or puppy mills. So another True Chicago vestige of old is gone forever,probably replaced by some hipster lounge or club called Kuma's Corner 2, The Avondale Inn, The White Eagle , or worse even, Animal Kingdom.

Fwd: Logan Square Blogger Entry #2

2010-02-07T20:08:00.003-06:00

Last night, was at the Handlebar, ate some nut soup. My Native-American friend Tatanka from El Paso, Gunther from the Global Transportation Alliance, and I were talking about all of the systemic problems that lead poverty and violence in the lives of African American youth, we all proceeded to " unpack our knapsack of white privilege" and pledged to, sometime in our life live in the "hood" as a way of solidarity and undermining the systems that bring people down. I feel in some way we were able to do that later in the evening. We went to the Hispanic, I mean Latino, part of Logan Square, and hit up a dive bar on Fullerton, close to Pulaski, called the Leevee.

It was a great time to mingle with the proletariat, I mean I drank my Old Style with, next to a Guatemalan immigrant, I tried to talk to him about how I thought his people subjugated by the Chiquita Banana Co., he didn't know what I was talking about, but I felt we connected. Gunther stood close to a gentleman in his 60's, and struck up a conversation about what its has been like living in Logan Square so many years; while he wasn't expecting a racist rant at all the dumb Polaks, Puerto Rican gangbangers, and the Spanish signs at Jimenez he can't read, I think Gunther got the man to appreciate the real sense of joy he feels living in a diverse, multicultural got ethnic neighborhood. Tatanka, just wanted to leave, so we did. What a night, as I rode my bicycle with Gunther on his unicycle, and Tatanka on stilts, down Fullerton, I could hear a faint whisper of the men we met..... "thank you for spending that brief moment in time with us and being practitioners of your convictions, you are doing your little part to make this world right."

True Chicago Guest Blogger: Eric Runyan

2010-02-02T15:14:00.001-06:00

[Guest author’s thoughts] Friday night, after the creator of this informative blog and I helped get our kids to bed for the night, we took the invitation to attend a local “political rally” (can’t think of a better term). From what I could tell this event was put on by our alderman for all the candidates that represent or could represent the people of his ward. I must pause here for a second and say “the people from his ward” were greatly outnumbered by the politico types, the candidates and their right hand men and women.

Because we have kids, which we care more about than this gathering, we arrived late
(8:00 for a 6:30 start time). But we were right on time. As we walked up to the door, we spot Cynthia Soto (someone had to point her out to us) walking out, she currently represents our district in the Illinois house. Perfect, this is the person we wanted to see. We had some questions to ask. Immediately we started talking to her about the issues we have been trying to contact her about for the better part of her term with no real response or action. To make a long story short, she seemed to have little care towards what we were talking about and said we have to understand things are busy, that she is in the middle of a “contested” race in the primary so everything she is doing is focused on winning this campaign. Everything? Just a question I wish I would have asked, “Do you take vacation days when you are not working on matters that affect the constituents of the 4th district?” This was sad to hear.

I opened the door and who is it that I see, the governor of our great state Pat Quinn. (I seem to have just read our great state is accumulating the greatest financial deficit in its history and isn’t shrinking. And focusing energy on campaigning to get re-elected is the best we can do at this time? Another guest blog. )

I never thought I would be a part of something like this. I came to realize I think this was a political machine party. I don’t really know what that means, but it seemed to have a certain look/feel to it…how we were included on the invite list is a mystery to me.

Now to the real meat of why I was asked to contribute to this blog. As we were watching the candidates take the stage and give their stump speeches about why they are the best person for the job, I was thinking to myself ‘what is this that am I at?’ No one said anything that mattered. Buzz words and slogans flew everywhere. Nothing about what you believe or what you care about or what you want to do if elected. Just yelling to convince the people who are already on your side you are the best vote. Did I mention yet, I am not sure how we were invited or why they thought we were the right people for this gathering?

Don’t get me wrong…I love the democracy in which I live and take part in. I know I have it wonderful compared to many other parts of the world where this letter/blog would put me under scrutiny just for thinking/writing it. Our system is manned by and for people that can express how they feel… the beauty of our system, right? A question that swirled in my head for the better part of the night was what forum do candidates have to express where they stand and it not be about yelling and getting you to think they are the best because of some 25 second catch phrase you give to me and the rest of the non-listening audience.

I probably wasn’t at the right event for this to take place, but plenty of candidates were willing to hand me their political flyer and remind me what number to punch to take a look at the people/organizations who endorsed them. In the same short time, you could have just talked to me. I know time is short and there are many more important people than I, but 1-2 minutes engaging in a conversation would go a long way. I am not asking for an emotional connection but something more than the words you throw around that I feel like you’re not even sure that you mean.

This was never clearer than with a candidate running for a sub circuit judge. As we were walking out, she found it important enough to approach us and make sure we saw her face and knew what number to punch (when we voted). When we gave our home address and asked if we could even vote for her, she replied she didn’t think so. We then seemed to be less of a priority. She then proceeded to turn around when someone else needed her attention. Not an “excuse me” or “could you wait a minute” or anything like it. We waited for a few seconds and when it was apparent she wasn’t coming back to us, we walked out the door. Needless to say, I threw her literature in the trash.

I need to end with one positive from the whole night. As we were about to leave, I saw a candidate for one of the sub circuit judges, Steven Fruth. He appeared to be getting ready to leave but I asked him, “In one minute tell me why you should be the judge and what will you do to serve the people that elect you?” He graciously explained who he was as a person and the things he felt were important to him (why do we elect judges?). I then went on to ask him about the most current ruling of the Supreme Court in regards to campaign contributions. He answered honestly giving us the reasons in which he rooted his opinion. He had time for us. I liked that.

Good Luck

2010-01-31T08:03:00.005-06:00

From Gapers Block:

"If you're looking for some help in deciding on who will get your vote in this Tuesday's election, here is some help from the Sun-Times, the Trib, Vote for Judges, Chicago Bar Association, the Independent Voters of Illinois, the Chicago Federation of Labor, Crain's, and finally, further coverage from the Reader and Windy City Times. Good luck."

Black Tongue

2010-01-31T07:42:00.002-06:00

This morning I woke up with a black tongue, I got nervous. When I googled it I found out that my condition ws called black, hairy tongue. I was stressed I might have some kind of stomach cancer considering my weak stomach for the last few days, it turns out that my saliva reacted weirdly to the chewable Pepto-bismol tablets I ate last night. Thank God.

Getting Older

2010-01-31T00:53:00.002-06:00

Soon I turn 33. I have waited forever to look my age, and I finally feel like I am. I mean, I weigh a couple years ahead of my age, so I have been waiting for my physical features to catch up. Well, I finally got crows feet, I have a furrow over my brow, my sideburns are starting to fill in, and I think I can grow a man mustache.

Puking

2010-01-31T00:29:00.002-06:00

I can count the times I've thrown up in my life in less than two hands. On Thursday I added to my count. Its not good to eat a whole loaf of raisin bread, a baguette of 9-Grain bread, chicken medallions, and a banana split, and get the stomach flu. The good thing about this sickness was that I learned a method of not tasting my puke, I hold my nose, I recommend it. I felt over the sickness today and partook of at least three cups of coffee, a roast beef sandwich, Lou Manati's pizza and some wine...don't feel good. No puke, thank God, at least stuff is not coming up, just going out the other side, I can handle that.

Irony

2010-01-30T22:54:00.002-06:00

Driving up Pulaski from I-290. I see a lot of foreclosed, boarded up houses and apartment buildings plastered with political signs for next week's primary.

Guerilla Historical Society Update #1

2010-01-13T15:38:00.004-06:00

I found a photo of North Avenue and Pulaski from 1934 in a Special Collection of photos from the Weast Side of Chicago. I've got to check it out at the Harold Washington Library downtown. It comes from the Campbell Collection #277. There are apparently more photos from our area dating back to the turn of the 20th Century. Also, Bethel Church has a bunch of photos of the church and the neighborhood dating back to 1896. I am going to be allowed to check them out, amybe even achaive them.

Vote Februry 2nd

2010-01-12T16:27:00.006-06:00

Don't think it doesn't matter. Your choices are few.There are some Green Party challengers and even fewer Republicans in Chicago. We effectively have a one party system in this city and county, and if this were the Federal Government we'd start a revolution. So few people vote here, so your vote does make a differnce. True Chicagoans vote.

Check out your ballot and some editorials here:

http://elections.chicagotribune.com/

http://elections.chicagotribune.com/editorial/

My Favorite Puerto Rican Actor

2010-01-10T00:16:00.009-06:00

Luis Guzman is hands down my favorite Puerto Rican actor. I love it when I see this guys face on a film.For years I swore that the villain in Ghost was the same guy. However, I was mistaken.

Star Sightings

2010-01-09T23:01:00.005-06:00

Every once in a while when I movie is being filmed in Chicago I happen upon the set. The first time this happened I was at the Field Museum and saw a scene from the 1988 Kevein Bacon/John Hughes film She's Having a Baby. Later, I actually met some movie stars, I shook hands with Robert Downey Jr. and was snubbed by Tommy Lee Jones on Irving Park Rd., during a break from a scene from the 1998 sequel to the Fugitive, U.S. Marshalls. I also saw David Duchovney and Minnie Driver slow dance over and over during the filming of a scene from the 1999 movie, Return to Me. Another time I saw the irrepressible actress, Helena Bonham Carter walking down Michigan Avenue, in town filming the dark Steve Martin comedy, Novacaine.
However, there is one star sighting that burns in my memory. It is my encounter with the most asinine and arrogant actor ever to grace the silver screen, if you think I'm speaking of local thespian Jeremy Piven you are wrong, you must meet Billy Zane.
The fateful night began at 11:45 during a summer night in the year, 1997. Daniel, my brother, and I were going to a midnight showing of the future Bruce Willis, Michael Clark Duncan blockbuster, Armageddon at the McClurg Court theater downtown. We sat down a little toward the back. From the corner of my eye, I notice a gentleman sporting a Donegal Irish Tweed hat covering a cleanly shorn head, a white collared shirt, two top buttons unbuttoned, white slacks,and white shoes, but I didn't pay much attention. Then some girls came running up to the gentleman, in the commotion the gentleman exclaims in a snarky voice, " Oh no, Armagedden outta here." My brother and I looked back, our contempt muscles flexing, at the lameness of his pun. Soon a Puerto Rican man came running up the aisles,yelling "Oh my God, its Billy, Billy Zane, I love your work on the Titanic." Soon a swarm of people began to surround Mr.Zane. He entertained the crowd with his half humble stories of working with Michael J. Fox on Back to the Future, Sam Elliot on Critters, and of his title role in the adaptation Sunday comic, The Phantom, co-starring Kristy Swanson, of the original Buffy the Vampire fame. His sordid tales were interrupted by the house lights dimming. Soon the crowd was ready to watch that summer's second and best cinematic turn at portraying an asteroid's potential to end all human existence. As the previews were about to begin, the motion picture began to become distorted, maybe some snafu with the projector, all of a sudden a bellow cracks from in back of us, "FocUS!". O' Billy Zane, with his method acting, trying to be the hero. The whole movie I felt this knot in my back, I couldn't shake the cringe that Mr. Zane elicited in me. To this day whenever I see Billy in print or on screen, I remember that fateful day I ran into a famous movie actor and realized that they are not just like us, sometimes they are just an ass.

Cook County Commissioners

2010-01-08T22:57:00.006-06:00

Last night we had two candidates for Cook County Commissioner come to our block club meeting. I have no illusions of grandeur that this kind stuff is going to change the world. I'm no revolutionary or system guy, I know this because one time I said said to my Principal on my first day teaching, and I quote " I am going to change the system in CPS", and that didn't happen. I do believe in incremental change. I do believe in education and connecting the dots. What I mean is that little things like knowing who is on the ballot before the election, who your candidates are by name and face, what they stand for, knowing the address of the polling place make a difference.

Let's connect the dots, my alderman won a landslide victory in 2007 with 70% of the vote, just 3,400 votes. There are 370 registered voters in my three block precinct. If we organized to get our three 1500 N. blocks of Keystone, Karlov,and Kedvale to vote, we would've had over 10% of the vote. We have the power to make change, in the political sense, at this small scale and over time. Oh I think its a travesty that only 15% of the registered voters in my ward voted for my alderman. I'm suggesting we can wrap our heads around this thing; politicians look at numbers and just a small coalescence of grass-roots, registered voters in forgotten places is scary and can get an elected official's ear.
My goal last night was to facilitate a situation that would allow my neighbors in this remote, unassuming part of Chicago to feel like they have a voice, that big struggles and complaints that we have everyday about how the system fails us doesn't fall on deaf ears and we're not always just pissin' in the wind. The goal was to educate neighbors so that they weren't voting on February 2nd blindly, it was also to get some aspiring politicians to get comfortable in our basement, tell us what they do or like to do, tell us their platform, and take questions. I found it to be beautiful. Simple, beautiful, radical Democracy.

P.S. If you want to get a better blow, by blow perspective on the night read this post by Emily called Politics:

January 8, 2010 by runyanthree

We had the 2 candidates running to fill the seat for Cook County Commissioner at our block club meeting last night. How humbling to see two politicians shaking our hands in their thin little black dress socks (because everyone takes off their shoes before they come in to the basement). It was really interesting to hear more about the politics and inner workings of Cook County (which short of NPR, I know very little about)…how much money is spent, how much they make, bits and pieces of their role in the overall functioning of our city and who likes and does not like who. And of course the commitment to end patronage. They were able to provide some specific things they would do and then avoided other questions. Dave famously asked many questions and even explained at the end that we felt all politicians were full of shit. Diana talked about her horrible experience at Cook County Hospital regarding her current kidney stone and Dan asked for money for our block club to start a summer program. I loved the opportunity to connect a name and personality and I told Bill that I think he should arrange it each election in some capacity. Oh! I almost forgot the most important thing–while one candidate was here the other arrived with his Dunkin Donuts and coffee for everyone. Bill told us later that when he went out to greet the candidate and his crony that the guy had fallen down our stairs and was mad so he went to wait in his car. With our recent snowfall the stairs were slippery…whoops. Bill had fun imagining him fly down the stairs in his nice suit. He told Bill he would only be able to stay for 15 minutes but must have had so much fun talking about himself that he stayed for over an hour (and then apparently went to go ice his back). So just so you know any day now we might be sued for all we have.

Doppleganger

2010-01-08T20:16:00.017-06:00

Over the last year I have gained over 20lbs. In February I weighed as low as 206lbs now I'm 227. I am beginning to look less and less like Wilmer Valderrama, formerly of That 70's Show and currently the Voice of Handy Manny on the Disney Channel, and more like the great character actor Oliver Platt from such great movies as Beethoven, Disney's The Three Musketeers,Dr. Doolittle, and the Oscar nominated Frost/Nixon.

Guerilla Historical Society

2009-12-31T00:52:00.003-06:00

I've tried guerilla gardening on Pulaski and LeMoyne and my plants were stolen. Next up, Guerilla Historical Society. I have gone underground, since no one was interested, and I have been collecting historical photos and information about my neighborhood of North/Pulaski in Chicago. So far I have procured about ten photos ranging from 1900-1973. I'm a preservationist in a neighborhood that doesn't know or doesn't care that it needs to be preserved, so I am alone. I plan to strike in the next year, by informing residents, by any means possible, about the history of our neighborhood and the need to preserve the collective memory of this space and place. If you care to join me in the revolution, I will be staging my first installation soon.

My Final Resting Place

2009-12-30T23:42:00.004-06:00

Today I went out with my dad on a self guided tour of our beloved town. I had tried to make a customized tour based on a theme my dad gave me. He wanted to visit old mansions of famous Chicagoans. That took us to the South Loop and Prarie Avenue. We tried getting into the Clarke House, the oldest structure in Chicago, and the Glessener Mansion Museum, but when we got there the tours were booked for the next two hours. The tour took on more of a final resting place theme.

We happened upon the site of the Fort Dearborn Massacre, we visited the tomb of Stephen A. Douglas,the famous orator and Senator form Illinois, saw the site of the Camp Douglas prison camp,the final resting place of many Confederate POW's, we ate in Chinatown, and ended up touring the grounds of Graceland Cemetery.

It was a treat trying to find the tombstones and mausoleums of Carter Harrison, Daniel Burnham, Mies Van der Rohe, Potter Palmer, Marshall Field, Cyrus McCormick, John Kinzie, Joseph Medill, Joseph Armour, and other founding fathers of our city.

My father kept saying what a special day he had with me, and there is nothing better that stumbling upon places you've seen in pictures, in photos, or read about in books, and seeing them and experiencing them in real life. The day turned out to be unexpected, the best kind of day.

In all of the joy of our discoveries, I came to a decision that I wanted to be buried in Graceland Cemetery among the people that fostered the development of this city I call home.

I think of my grandfather, who is coming close to his last days, even though it probably makes practical sense to bury him wherever he dies, whether he finds himself near family in Chicago or Orlando, his insistence that he be buried in Puerto Rico, where he was born, forced a move back to his hometown of Mayaguez, PR so that it was assured that he is remembered forever in the place that holds so much meaning in his heart.

I hope that I will be able to do the same, I literally and figuratively want to put down roots where I will not be forgotten. I am planning to live in Chicago for the rest of my life, but I hope wherever I find myself from here on out, that my family will honor my wishes to be buried in the sweet sandy, clay soil of Chicago. Maybe in Graceland Cemetery.

True Chicagoans Pay For Parking Now

2009-12-30T23:32:00.004-06:00

Yes it is true, I now have to pay for parking downtown. I can't get away from it. I think Katie and I have funded the municipal pension fund through our numerous parking tickets. Daley, you and your alderman have beaten us, the common Chicagoan, down with your schemes to make more money. We submit, we will have pay for parking downtown, no way around it.

Ice Skating

2009-12-30T23:07:00.018-06:00

Yesterday I went ice skating with Liam. We tried Millenium Park but the line was 45 minutes long to get skates. Thank God I remembered that nine parks around the city have skating, it just so happens that just two block east, the park at Richard J. Daley Bicentennial Plaza has a rink. Just a 5 minute wait for skates. Getting them on a 3 year old is a different story. That took about 20 minutes.
We had one of the most memorable times this break. Liam loved skating and slipping while I held him up by his shoulders. The skyline looked stunning. On a way back we found one of the best shots of the skyline I have seen in a long time. If you can, check out the bridge over the Ashland EL stop on the Green Line.

Ft. Hood Massacre

2009-11-06T17:16:00.002-06:00

One of the stories coming out of this tragedy is the murder of a 21 year old soldier that was three months pregnant. Turns out she lived three blocks away from our house on Kamerling. Sad.Pray for her family.

Nate's B-Day Tour

2009-10-03T22:32:00.002-05:00

Today's Itinerary:

1. Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral and Rectory

Designed to resemble the Russian provincial churches known to its first parishioners, this elegant church is an unexpected feature of its neighborhood. Even more surprising is the fact that its construction was partially paid for by Russian Czar Nicholas II. The walls of the church are load-bearing brick covered with stucco; the detailing of the two-story rectory repeats the same sinuous curve found in the roofline of the church. The ideologies held by the client and the designer harmonized well in this project, producing one of the most-inspired, small-scale works of influential architect Louis Sullivan.

Ukrainian Catholic Church

Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Closed didn't go in.

Ate lunch at Mr. Beef on Orleans

2. First Baptist Congregational Church

Address: 60 N. Ashland Ave.
Year Built: 1871
Architect: Gurdon P. Randall

Social activism has characterized this congregation since its founding in 1851 by abolitionists. The innovative, amphitheater-style auditorium within this Gothic Revival-style building was widely influential in church architecture. The adjacent Carpenter Chapel was designed by Otis Wheelock and built in 1869 for the Chicago Theological Seminary. Closed, didn't go.

Stockyards Gate

Bubbly Creek

Pope’s Visit - Five Holy Martyrs Church 4327 S. Richmond St - Couldn't find it.

Englewood

Pullman District 11141 South Cottage Grove Avenue

In 1880, George Pullman commissioned architect Solon S. Beman to design the perfect industrial town, a landscaped haven complete with indoor plumbing and gas facilities. However, his utopia did not last. When an economic panic hit, Pullman had to reduce his workers' hours and wages, causing a bloody strike (the first organized one in U.S, history) to erupt in 1894. Today, much of the town remains intact, although a recent fire gutted one of its main buildings. This is a must-see for anyone with an interest in urban histories, planning or the workers' movement in America. You can wander around Pullman any time, but it is best seen on one of a variety of tours offered throughout the year. Awesome.

3. K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple

Address: 1100 E. Hyde Park Blvd.
Year Built: 1924, addition, 1926
Architect: Alfred S. Alschuler

This building, based on Byzantine-style design precedents, houses the oldest Jewish congregation in Chicago. The first Jewish settlers in the city organized Kehilath Anshe Maariv in 1847; Isaiah Israel had its roots in the city's second Jewish congregation, which was founded in 1852. In 1971, the two merged to form K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple.

Obama’s House-

5046 S Greenwood Ave

Chicago, IL 60615- Secret service kicked us off the sidewalk. Got to see Obama's house briefly.

Nation of Islam- Louis Farrakhan’s house

4855 S Woodlawn Ave

Get Directions

- Area served: - Show

Category:

Unverified listing

Kenwood District, Oakland District- Farrakhan wasn't home

4. Pilgrim Baptist Church

Address: 3301 S. Indiana Ave.r
Year Built: 1890-1891
Architect: Adler & Sullivan

The decorative and planning skills of architect Louis H. Sullivan, along with the engineering abilities of Dankmar Adler, are embodied in the strong masonry forms of this building, which is embellished with terra-cotta panels of intricate foliage designs. The dramatic interior of the church contains similar ornament. Built as Kehilath Anshe Ma' ariv synagogue, the building has housed the Pilgrim Baptist Church since 1922. During the 1930s, this congregation and its longtime music director, Thomas A. Dorsey, were instrumental in the development of gospel music. Among those who sang here were: Mahalia Jackson, Sallie Martin, James Cleveland, and the Edwin Hawkins Singers. Destroyed in a fire.

4. Quinn Chapel

Address: 2401 S. Wabash Ave.
Year Built: 1892
Architect: Henry F. Starbuck

This church houses Chicago's oldest African-American congregation, which traces its origins back to 1844, when seven individuals formed a nondenominational prayer group that met in the house of one of its members. In 1847, the group organized as a congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Named for Bishop William P. Quinn, the church played an important role in the city's abolitionist movement. After the Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed the original church, the congregation met for many years in temporary locations. The congregation purchased the present site in 1890, and the current church is a reminder of the late-19th century character of the area. Didn't go.

6. Second Presbyterian Church

Address: 1936 S. Michigan Ave.
Year Built: 1874, reconstructed in 1900
Architects: Howard Van Doren Shaw,James Renwick

When this Gothic Revival-style church was designed--by a prominent New York architect-- the surrounding streets, including Prairie Avenue, one block east, were lined with the homes of wealthy Chicagoans. Members of the congregation included the Glessners, the Pullmans, and the widow of President Abraham Lincoln. The interior decorations include stained-glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. A fire in 1900 destroyed much of the church, but it was reconstructed under the supervision of architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. Didn't go

Douglas Blvd.- Saw old Synagogues turned Baptist churches

Homan Sqaure- Saw the original Sears Tower

Rio wins the Olympics

2009-10-02T17:43:00.004-05:00

I knew Rio was going to win. That South America has never had a Olympics sceeemed to seemed to be a convincing argument. As much as am happy that Daley didn't get his Olympics, and that he will come back to Chicago with a rare defeat, and have to face the voters in 2011, I am sorta disappointed that we didn't get to showcase our beautiful city to the world and finally rid our city of an international reputation of a city of tommy-gun toting gangsters, the home of Micheal Jordan's restaurant, and Jerry Springer.

Rock Starr

2009-09-22T22:27:00.007-05:00

Tomorrow I am going to play Rock Band: Beatles

U2

2009-09-14T00:50:00.005-05:00

Just went to a U2 concert at Soldier Field with Ryan Steingard. It was awesome. Elevation, Vertigo, Beautiful Day, Where the Streets Have No Name, With Or Without You, awesome live. Only have been to three in my life before, Ringo Starr and his All-Starr band, They Might Be Giants, and Jurassic 5. This was the biggest concert I've ever been to in my life.

This is......

2009-09-13T00:44:00.006-05:00

Today was a great day. I went running at the lake, came home, prayed at church; the sun was shining through the stained glass, cam home cleaned the block and alley with a motley crew of neighbors, harangued local businesses, in English and Spanish, for not cleaning up their dumpster areas, built a storage shelf, hung out with my beautiful Ava, walked around the block with her, came back, took Liam with me to Land of Nod to buy Ava a teether, went to Trader Joe's, Liam did all of the shopping in his mini cart, went to Costco bought some diapers and wipes, drove home, ate enchiladas, gave Li a bath, read him stories, put him to bed, ate brownies at Beth and Charlie's downstairs, read online news articles, watched the movie trailer for Black Dynamite, began writing this blog.

The big news though is that I found some books that will add to my eventual book, that I haven't written yet, called Urban Imagery: For Kids. Sorta an urban planning and visual arts guide for parents that want to expose their kids in all things urban. So at Land of Nod, a yuppie kids store, I found a whole bunch of books written and illustrated by a Czech artist named Miroslav Sasek. He published very unique children's books under the name, This is......, that guide them through major urban centers of the world. Each one captures the hustle and bustle of each city at a certain moment in time, the sixties, and matches it with whimsical, stylized, comical, water colored illustrations. Check for yourself. Beautiful artwork.

Save the Pioneer Bank

2009-09-05T00:17:00.005-05:00

Our nieghborhood is a former bright light aka theater district, and major trolley line stop. North Avenue/Pulaski Avenue, formerly North/Crawford was home at least five major theaters, hotels, restaurants, and bars, in addition to many mom and pop stores catering to locals, and still does today. The shopping district from Pulaski Rd. to Grand Avenue retains a largeley unbroken True Chicago urban streetscape, while one of the major theaters, the Tiffin, has been demolished, the five story Pioneer Savings and Trust Bank on the northeast corner of North and Pulaski remains a major landmark. Although it is a landmark in a spatial sense, it is not designated a landmark formally. It was nominated last year, but for purely pragmatic reasons, it probably will be difficult to market if strict landmark rules are applied to the building, negotiations between the landmark commission and the developer who owns the property have broken down. My guess is that developer generically develop into condos, however if they took a pulse of the community, they might find that people want to preserve our built history and maybe a library or community arts center can make use of a landmarked building. Anyone interested in preserving the built environment of the North Pulaski area can contact me at wsmilj1@gmail.com or call 637-2781 0r 794-3095.

Restorative Justice

2009-09-04T21:22:00.008-05:00

"Restorative Justice is a philosophy that seeks to bring together all of the stakeholders (victim, offender, and community) to work together to address the harms and needs of those affected by a harm. Restorative Justice also seeks to engage the community in the process and to give a voice to the victim."

There is a block club here on this block. I am the president of the club, the 2nd. We are part of a greater network of block clubs called The Block Club Federation. The people in our house moved in five years ago, the following spring our neighbor Maria, the former block president, approached us to organize the block club. It happened, Dave became the 1st president and we began working on creating block clean-ups, consistent meetings, tree plantings, an annual block party, a tutoring center, a mural, speed bumps, new sidewalks and curbs, Halloween and Christmas Parties, backyard movies, Ladies Time Out, barbeque's, football and basketball leagues. We've organized for new streets, against prostitutes and johns leaving their used condoms in our grass, heroin users carelessly leaving their used needles in our childrens' play areas, we've fought for greater police presence, and have built partnerships with the alderman and other organizations to create a better community. It has come rather fluid and organically and without pomp and circumstance. We're just a bunch of neighbors that have coalesced as friends under a greater purpose, of creating a safe place to live for our kids and provide a forum for people to express whatever they want about improving our community and building on the assets we already have here.

It all sounds great but it has at times been tedious, depressing, slow, discouraging, confusing, seemingly worthless. Really we're part of something bigger than us individually, but individualistically speaking, it's taken a toll. But, we take this seriously. We are cognizant that building community, organizing a community, and doing community is hard work. You feel a responsibility to be involved in all the action on the block. Sometimes it can be unhealthy psychologically and emotionally. We've had to persevere through racism, classism, and claims of elitism, that we've used our power to undermine the staus quo of the hood. Some have claimed " passive-aggressive white take over", others have equated the community building as " Hernando Cortez overthrowing the Aztecs." However, nothing has been so trying as negotiating with our new neighbors for peace and quiet. It has been an undertaking of massive proportions and a masterful finesse of street negotiation and formal round table discussions that our block and our next door neighbors have come to an understanding of what our block stands for and what is acceptable and not acceptable here on Keystone. While some here had the power to "make the problem go away", we decided as neighbors to invite the next door neighbors to the block club meetings, so that we could air our concerns and they could speak for themselves.

In the initial meetings people either didn't speak up or they brought up generalities about problems on our block. We all agreed that when we saw people from other blocks, gang bangers, or randoms we weren't familiar with on our next door neighbors porch we'd talk to our neighbors directly. That didnt work. Young people, sometimes upwards of 25, would not listen to the adults, and the problem persisted. The next meeting we were directed to call the police. That didn't work. Soon more kids were coming around. Gangbangers started recruiting some of them, two guys set up shop selling weed down the block, next door was ground zero for customers and the hang out where adults couldn't intervene successfully.

We had another meeting. The voices in the club started getting louder, accustations became more pointed. So we attempted to address the situation by contacting the landlord. That created days of peace, then, like kids who start trouble when they think no one is looking, the problems began in earnest. Which led to more calls to the landlord, calls to the police, etc.

The last draw was this past meeting, last month, it was advertised a week prior, and come the day of the meeting, the victims ( the block) came out en masse, the offenders( our next door neighbors) brought an advocate to speak, to defend their side of the story and air out grievances about people calling the cops, their landlord, and (rumored) alderman about their house. At first, their advocate acted as if we had it out for them. Five people piped up at the same time and defended the actions of the block, and indicated that it was our next door neighbors that gave us the action steps to take if they were screaming at the top of their lungs until 3 am, or if 25 random kids were tearing up the block, smashing car windows or tagging up our community mural. It was the block members that called out the parents of the kids from next door to step up and be parents, if they too, really wanted the problems, that stemmed from their house, to stop, then they needed to step up. Seemed kinda harsh, but for all the negative attention that was put on our next door neighbors, I think they got to finally hear and believe all that the block has been implying for the past couple months. " We've got values and norms on this block, and either your with us or against us. And if your against us, we're organized, and your going to have a lot of heat applied to you, and if you don't like it, well, buy in to what's established here or leave." And I think we heard what they have been implying, "It's hard for us to change things so fast, we ain't use to a block that is organized, we're use to getting buck wild, so it's gunna take some time. So quit calling the police every single move we make". The community spoke, the community heard each other, things have gotten better. As many of the stakeholders as we could get were at the table negotiating how to live together on the block, peacefully. Rich, poor, white, black, Latino, old, young, renters, owners, unemployed, employed, trying to be neighbors. We've grown as a block. This is my example of, though not perfect, actually, ugly and dirrrty, restorative justice.

Reading Rainbo

2009-08-28T01:37:00.005-05:00

I'm rereading The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros so that I can read it to my students this coming school year. The house on Mango street was not a real house or in a real neighborhood in Chicago, but a mishmash of ideas, feelings, and impressions Cisneros had living on streets near here; Keeler, Campbell, Loomis, Wabansia, Paulina, as well as stories her students told here while teaching in Pilsen. Personally, I love this book. I can sit all day and try and express the feel of my neighborhood good and bad, in poetic, romantic ways, but it is not nearly as striking as the rich tapestry of emotions, experiences, and imagery that Cisneros weaves throughout the book. Check it out.

That's What I Talkin' bout

2009-08-27T23:53:00.007-05:00

Nothing like good old community development to get the blood stirrin. Woke up at 7:30, solicited commitments from key players on Karlov to watch over their new sidewalks so that no one steps on or scribbles their names on the wet cement. Got the graffiti busters to bust the right graffiti on the street. Went with Liam to the alderman's office, got our donations for the block party, gossiped with the chief of staff about city politics, went to neighborhood businesses and got more donations. Went to Katie's grandma's house. Came back home, got a call from the alderman's office confirming that the CAPS meeting with the police was going to happen in the Jimenez Grocery parking lot and if it rained that it would happen at the Defenders of Christ Church on Wabansia and Tripp instead. Got a call from Angel, he moaned and groaned about some random guy trying to befriend him and embezzle $70 from him. Tried to empower Angel to speak up for himself and come and report the guy at the CAPS meeting. Told him to meet me at 6:40 to leave. Went back and forth, guess the Sox game was more important than his safety. Hung out with Eric and Emily. Our kids trashed their apartment. Went downstairs, called Ramon, asked if he wanted to come to the CAPS meeting, he say OK, ate, kissed Katie and kids goodbye. Go to Jimenez, no meeting, go to DOC Church, cops cant get in, meeting is outside, people talk about all the shootings near Nixon school, flashers on the Fullerton Metra tracks, a crazy kid on Kedvale threatening old people with a gun and intentionally shooting at ladies to strike fear in their hearts. Asked questions about local gang territory and graffiti, reported drug dealers on our block. Dave asks about the boy who was trying to steal his kids' bike, that he caught and detained, and why the cops never followed up with him about whether they caught the other accomplices. The cops say after they took the boy away, the officers' SUV lost it's brakes and smashed into a car of an uninsured woman, on Cicero. No one was hurt, but the boys face was smashed into the window that separates those in custody and the officers, that is why they didn't get back to Dave. Dave is satisfied with their answer.
Leave the CAPS meeting with Ramon, drive him home, decide to stop in the 2010 Budget Meeting at Falconer Elementary to hear other community activists praise, argue, petition, berate, and vision cast. See more city workers, politicians, and their cronys than actualer concerned city residents. Talk to my alderman and the police district commander about the CAPS meeting they are pleased at the turnout. Watch a man go off about the Jefferson Park TIF district, its misuse, and how one developer has created blight along Milwaukee and Lawrence, see Mayor Daley rub his eyes, get up and leave to take a pee break while people rant, don't think they know he left. I leave myself, to take a pee break, Daley is out there schmoosing, taking pictures, joking with city workers. Watch from the side, love the theater of the whole thing. Sit down, talk to a Streets and Sans woman. Give a play by play of Daley's actions. Laugh. Sneak into some photo ops. Write down our neighborhood budget requests, grab some swag, leave. On the way out meet guys from Six Corners/ Portage Park working to get a Metra Station near Cicero and Irving, make some connections, get a card, leave, satisfied with my day.

I Can Do Bad All By Myself

2009-08-27T23:11:00.001-05:00

I love Tyler Perry movies. Just saw a new trailer for his new movie. Madea gunna shank sombody.

Salvage someOne

2009-08-16T00:32:00.005-05:00

Scene 1: 11:00, second floor Salvage One, Chicago,Illinois.

Bill: (Cell rings) Hello?

Henry: Bill I need you to pick me up?

Bill: Who is this?

Henry: It's me Henry, it's to hard, I cant do this, I need you to pick me up.

Bill: Henry, I paid for you to stay, it's non-refundable.

Henryr: I know, I'm sorry.

Bill: Henry, you have nowhere to go, this is your last chance, there is nothing we can do; you can only go back to the street. Henry, this is supposed to be hard, you need to stay, its good for you, you need something that is hard. You gotta stick it out, it's gonna be difficult.

Henry: It's too much, I'm leaving can you pick me up?

Bill: I can't now, I'm by downtown, I've got my niece and nephew and Liam. Stay there, I'll pick you up later.

Henry: No that's ok, I'm leaving,.......bye Bill. (click)

Bill calls Katie, no answer. He then calls Teen Challenge.

Bill: Is my friend Henry Roman there?

Teen Challenge: We tried to talk him out of leaving.

Bill: Is he there?

Teen Challenge: He just left.

Savior Complex

2009-08-15T23:36:00.005-05:00

These past few days have been a whirlwind.

Wednesday
At night Henry shows up at my door to say hi. He attempted to get his wife to let him back in, it aint happening, no place to live. So he asks me to drive him to St. Mary's on Division so he could spend some time in the hospital, they'll take care of him. Two hours later, he shows up again, no place to live, doesn't want to live on the street, so I decide to let him sleep in the basement guest room. I told him he could leave out the back door so he could find arrangements for shelter the next day.

Thursday
Come home from Men's Group. Eat breakfast with Katie and kids, go down to pick up laundry. Smells like freshly taken shower. Henry says he had the best sleep in a long time, and that he cleaned up. Wants to know what I am doing today, I tell him I have to go to Higgins, my rental building, and do some work, he asks if he could tag along. I agree, with some trepadation, I was supposed to work with my dad, you see mixing my two worlds can be problematic at times, hard to explain, but just to say my dad likes to work alone, and having Henry in the mix could create situations where I have to negotiate around.

Everything went fine. My dad worked alone mostly, Henry tried to bum a cigarette off my dad, he said no. Awkward situation. I tell my dad Hector is without a place to live. My dad feels bad, offers a smoke to Henry. They both smoke inside the building. I kick them out. They come back, I offer my dad the opportunity for me to buy him materials while he stays back to work, alone, he agrees but tells me to take Henry he doesnt want to babysit him. I shusk him, but oblige.
Hector and I go to Russo Hardware get everything we need in one shot. Come back, my dad wants lunch so he leaves. We work on fixing doorknobs, dad comes back, we leave. Decide to drive to IKEA and get lunch in Schaumburg. Hector has never been to Schaumburg. Likes IKEA, likens it to a fancy Cook Bros. ( Ghetto Costco). We leave, go to Portillos, see a lady taking wads of cash and a portible credit card machine, Henry is impressed, creates an imaginary scenario of the lady being in the city, getting stuck, and someone taking the cash and machine. Get back on expressway, listen to a CD of indie music, Henry says he'sfalling to sleep and needs something he can wake up to. Put in a Pearl Jam CD and karaoke Alive, Jeremy, Evenflow, while driving and eating an Italian Beef sandwhich. Take I-294 to I-290, get off at Independance Blvd. Go past Garfield Park, and end up at Breakthrough Urban Ministries. Got a tip last night that there were 30 beds available. Uh,oh I thought you can get a bed just like that... no it is a 2-3 week process to even get considered. Well, Hector might have to go to Pacific Garden Mission in Podunk, southside Chicago somewhere.

I take Henry to the house to have Katie help me figure out where to take him. The process was maddening. Calling SRO's, local community organizations, the YMCA, shelters. Nothing can be offered to Henry immidiately. He is essentially on the street til he goes through the interview process for any inteim housing organization. While I am stressing, Katie and Henry are playing with my kids and keeping them occupied. I finally ask him to leave the house and come back at 6 so that I could problem solve. We finally get a lead with a group called LUCHA, but they will call with further info tomorrow. Then we realize that Henry has one more option and maybe he would be ready to enter a 1 year intensive program for drug addiction called Teen Challenge, it would meet his need for housing, food, and medical as well as building him up emotionally, physically, mentally, and spritually. We propose it to him, he agrees, does a phone interview, and qualified, and they had room, if he was serious. He said he was. We put him up for the night at the fleabag hotel and would go together to Teen Challenge tomorrow.

Friday
Hector arrives at 8am, we call Teen Challenge, they say he needs 7-8 days of clothes, Collared shirts for classes, dress shirts and tie for Church. I let Henry have a couple shirts and a tie and give him a couple bucks to by dress pants and shoes at the Salvation Army. I tell him to come back at 12 and we'll leave. He does, we go to Walgrees for some toiletries, then McDonalds for his last meal before he leaves for 1 year. We pray, then he enters the building.I read the rules and the expectations of the program to Henry. The program is very structured, its going to be hard, we both acknowledge that. 4 months at the dormitory and 8 months in Michigan, Missouri, Virginia, or Pennsylvania where he will be taught how to read and write, get his GED, and improve jobs skills. I am so excited for Hector. He seems to be excited at the prospect of reading a newspaper for the first time. I pay for the program, norefundable if Henry leaves. They assure me that most stick the program out. Henry seems worried, but he says he need to do this for himself, he's tired of living this life. He asks me to pray for him every night, I agree.

I know that this will be the program that gets Henry clean for good and on a path of realizing the person whom God created him to be.

Bochinche(Gossip)

2009-07-13T00:10:00.008-05:00

I hate the term "white" as a catch-all phrase. Using the term "white" can be used as a way of describing injustice, whether it be institutional or individual, upon someone from a minority group. It also is used as a means of distinguishing those in power and those that do not have "a seat a the table". Periodically, it is used as an insult, such as " Why you actin' all white?". "White" is also used a marker of class, such as
"That's how white people talk." or " Why you dressin' like a white boy?" "or " That' s what white people like."
I also find it funny, when you ask a young person, with very little experience with different races, how to describe a white person, they say, "They're all racist", " They're all rich." "They're all stuck up."

This is all a preface to some of our experience on our block. These are the thoughts that have gone through our neighbors minds since our moving here five years ago. We knew it was a reality, but have done everything we can to beat the "white" catch-all phrase by just living here and creating relationships with our neighbors on our block. While I welcome all the critical permutations that the term "white" stands for, in their purest forms, I can't stand when my neighbor, outside my window, gossips about the "white people" , how they aren't from around here, that our neighbors are just puppets for what we want to do in the neighborhood, that it has to take "white people" to move here to bring up the block. All this from a friend.

All I'm saying is hearing someone describe us and what we have done collectively with our neighbors on the block in the most laziest and racist way, as "white people" just disappoints me, hurts me, and divides our block into us versus them, which should not be. We're a community of many different people trying to figure out living in the same space together; and reducing each other to the most base descriptions just fuels hate, distrust, and division. I plan to confront him and have him explain himself face to face, hopefully we'll have a nice talk. Ironically though, the puppet, La Comay, from Puerto Rico's SuperExclusivo's favorite catchphrase is, "Bochinche!".

Summer Reading

2009-07-13T00:04:00.004-05:00

Just received a text message from someone recommending I read a book called Sidewalks in the Kingdom. This is about the city and it's built environment and it's relationship to spirituality. I am also ordering a book call Our Lot, about the roots of our current housing crisis and a critique of the American Dream of owning a home. Good summer reading.

Toilet Warz

2009-06-29T15:53:00.002-05:00

I have the privilege, not of my own accord, of living in a society, that even to this day, favors a man. There still is a wage gap between men and women, women still must fight to not have the government make choices for her medical and family decisions. Women have made significant gains in gaining equality. However, there is one place that women should not have the same rights, equal protection does not extend to pooping in the same bathroom.

There Goes The Neighborhood

2009-06-29T15:21:00.006-05:00

I have lived and seen all things in Chicago. I have lived in, for lack of better descriptions, changing neighborhoods, stable neighborhood, and just the hood. I know these are loaded descriptions, but any Chicagoan at the ground level knows what I am talking about. A great book to check out is the book There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and Their Meaning for America. The neighborhoods are all southwest side neighborhoods with given psuedonyms, they are essentially mirror images of the northwest side neighborhoods where I've lived. The voices of the people are voices of those I have grown up with or have lived with.
How do you deal with neighborhood change? What physical elements or characteristics of people make you feel uncomfortable in a place you have called home? How much change is your neighborhood willing to accept or accomodate before there is a tipping point racially or socio-economically?

Chew on this: You live on the corner of Narragansett and Addison, you are an elderly woman in a small ranch house that you have lived in for 30 years, you tend your garden and grass daily, your whole family lives in Arlington Hieghts. Then one day you wake up, the side of your house says King Killa, on top of that the Latin Kings have crossed off the message and put their symbol. Do you get the hell out or do you resist temptation and stay and work to promote understanding between gang members in your nieghborhood and your values and the values that have come to define your quiet and peaceful neighborhood for the past 30 years?

Street Art?

2009-06-29T14:02:00.006-05:00

When I was in high school at Lane Tech, its seemed like graffiti art blew up. My freshman year everyone became a tagger, even the nerdiest or least artistically inclined kid would try out a tag name. I guess if you were good you would hook up with other taggers and start a crew or just get into one. I remember ones like J4F and X-Men.

I never hung out with legitimate taggers but I went out with a girl in high school and we did some volunteer work scraping down a wall that was to going to be used as a permission wall. Anyway, I asked one of the guys why they tag, he went on to say it was art for him and that he only tagged under the CTA and government buildings. From then on I realized that graffiti could be used for art and for protest against opressive elements in society. I also appreciate how tagging has morphed into though provoking street art including stencils, posters, stickers. I understand that there is an ethos or a shared set of beliefs these artists work under.

So, I have some questions whether it be a tagger, artist, design theorist, property owner etc. These are in no particular order.

Is there a heirerachy of value given to a piece of street art that is created?

Can one judge the intent of a piece based on it's form or medium? For example, if I'm just a dumb kid who wants to put my name on a couple of garages for the fun of it, is that legitimate?

What if I wanted to tag over a community mural?

Is gang graffti a legitimate form?

Is street art less about protest and politics and more of a selfish endevor?

Can graffiti ever be considered as a nuisance?

Detroit on My Mind

2009-06-09T23:28:00.009-05:00

I first went to Detroit on a college debate team road trip in 1997. I was able realize my dream of going to see one of the old rest belt cities on its death bed. It was my first attempt at anthropological and urban planning tourism, not only seeing the downtown and touristy areas, but inhabiting the neighborhoods, being with residents and living as a true inhabitant would, feeling how the built environment affects locals.

I have an unhealthy attraction to order and disorder. There is beauty in order and poetry in chaos. I especially love the chaos of Detroit and its ruins. From 2 million inhabitants to less than 900,000 the city is now post apocolyptic. Detroit, today, perfectly inhabits the following writing by an unknown poet:

The Splendor of the Ruin

Ruins are a testament to human pride, the fragility of existence and the finite nature of the world.

Urban Tranquility or Anxiety

2009-06-09T23:19:00.002-05:00

The combination of visual and music in this clip gives you insight of the feelings evoked in me when I visit a new city or how an urban space can affect one emotionally and psychologically.

koyaanisqatsi - Pruit Igoe

koyaanisqatsi music by philip glass

Welcome to Chicago, Baby.

2009-05-23T23:42:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday May 19, at 6:05, my baby was born into this city. Her name is Ava. Her middle name is more of a moniker, Paz de la Ciudad. Ava, Peace of the City. She is beautiful, peaceful, and healthly and I am on top of the world.

Pregnant in Chi-town

2009-05-02T21:50:00.008-05:00

Berrrrrwyn

2009-04-30T16:03:00.004-05:00

Son of Svengoolie. Good show for cheezy rubber chicken jokes, talking skeletons, and 1950's B- horror movies. Rich Koz a True Chicago, or Berwyn, icon. A True chicago tv show; when you had to turn the first dial to U and the second dial to Channel 32.

4th Annual Keystone Block Clean-up

2009-04-29T00:24:00.002-05:00

Hispanic or Latino?

2009-04-29T00:04:00.004-05:00

The census workers are out and about. So will I be defined as white, hispanic, latino? I just found out that Latino/Hispanic is not a race. So, according the U.S. government, apparently I am a white hispanic/latino who has Puerto Rican, Ukrainian, maybe Scandanavian blood with a Serbian last name, and to top it all off, I don't culturally identify fully with any of those categories or nationalities. Talk about messed up. Wish the census had a category for Chicagoan, the red, white, and baby blue run thick through my viens.

Suburb in the City

2009-04-27T15:15:00.007-05:00

On Saturday I sat with Dave on the sidewalk, in front of my house, right after the annual block clean-up kick-off event. We sat there taking in the beauty of our neighbors' work, watching Liam, Ella, and Izzy run freely on the sidewalk and parkway, Dave sighed and said, " We got it nice over here, my neice and nephew live in a warzone over by Kimball". " You don't get this around here, it's nice because only dose yuppies have nice blocks, family blocks. This is a family block, like the suburbs in the city. " I said it takes a lot of work to maintain this. He said, " Naw, enough people care about their own kids and others; you got people over there, and there, and over there, spread out around the block, people who care."

I've been asked where I might live if I moved from here, I replied that I have daydreamed about living in Galewood, Oak Park, or some other family oriented nieghborhood.

To me, this block isn't the suburbs or utopia,I have seen or lived in those type of places. Here gang-bangers, addicts, hustlers, prostitutes, sexual predators, all pass through and surround this space. But if Dave's neice can sleep on the porch, like she did this Friday night, and my kids can run around (somedays) without fear of falling and getting stuck by a needle, if families can feel a sense of relative peace, then it's worth it to me to stay. I've got my family oriented neighborhood right here and we've got too many connections and growing roots here in this neighborhood, there's too much at stake to stop what we have intentionally been doing here to leave.

588-2300

2009-04-22T23:40:00.007-05:00

True Chicago commercial.

Tweet, tweet

2009-04-22T23:33:00.001-05:00

I just beat Ashton Kutcher.

Earth Day 2

2009-04-22T20:02:00.006-05:00

When I grew up, I didn't think one bit about littering. In fact, one thing that I remember about about my childhood was how dirty Milwaukee Avenue was on the way to the drugstore. I attributed messy streets with city life. Once, when my aunt came from Puerto Rico, I was riding in her car and I threw a soft drink cup out the window, she said "Billy keep Chicago clean", I looked at her in disdain. I continued this practice until I was 24 years old, when I accidentally threw a cup out the window in front of Katie, like the first week dating. Apparently that was'nt normal in her experience. I mean come on, throwing something out the window, leaving a Whopper wrapper on a flower pot, throwing ashes out of a moving vehicle was wrong? Apparently so.
Once I heard Eric and Emily were cleaning their block over on Mozart and Cortland, back in the day; they even picked up an empty purple juice bottle in front of some gangbangers. I was burning with anger, who did Katie, Eric, and Emily think they were acting like some uppity-ups, keeping Chicago clean. Didn't they know True Chicagoans trash their town and like it like that. Nonetheless, slowly, I came around. I am reformed and so what, I do like picking up trash in front of my house and keeping Chicago clean.

Earth Day

2009-04-22T19:54:00.002-05:00

Today at school we celebrated by creating a ton of trash from decorating our classroom for the annual International Day Celebration. Schools are the biggest wasters of paper out there. I think my blue bin has gum, styrofoam cups, binders with those little wires, styrofoam lunch trays, and pencil shavings. In addition, I think my janitor throws out my recycling in the regular garbage. Happy Earth Day.

Little Lotto

2009-04-20T22:19:00.005-05:00

When I was a kid, my grandma would send me to the cornerstore on Fullerton for milk. Every once in a while she would also send me to buy lottery tickets for my grandpa, sometimes I would get to pick numbers. I would never win, but I always loved guessing the which numbered ball would pop up next.

Green Limousine

2009-04-20T22:06:00.004-05:00

I just got my replacement CTA Plus card so that I can ride up Pulaski on rainy days or when I'm lazy. Pulaski is not as exciting as other lines and the busses don't have as much character as they use to. True Chicagoans will remember the green limousine, used until the 90's. That was a classy ride. Cladded in rivited metal panels of sea green and army green; an interior of, I believe, hues of biege, black, and taupe. The essence of a transportation, True Chicago style, "nuttin' to fancy, it just gotta get me to where I'm goin'. "

My Favorite Smells

2009-04-19T01:35:00.002-05:00

What a beautiful night, walked out of Facets movie theater on Fullerton. 62 degrees, street crowded with cars, taxis, and j-walking pedestrians. The colors glimmering on the freshly wet asphalt. The smell of a misty spring evening rain. One of my favorite smells.

Here is a list of my other favorite smells: freshly lit cigarette, stale beer in a tavern, hiacynth, the Lincoln Park Conservatory, my son's soft cheeks, coffee roasting from a factory on Elston and Webster, Big Red gum, Cool Water perfume for Women, a newly published book, new carpet, newly painted room, cilantro, dentist's office (cloves), leather, moth balls, wintermint, gasoline, Murphy's Oil, pine trees, pipe smoke.

Best shots of the Trump Tower

2009-04-19T01:17:00.004-05:00

New buildings are changing the skyline everyday. The Aqua, The Legacy, 300 N. Lasalle, One Museum Place, and the Trump Tower have changed the skyline forever. The Trump Tower is practically done and it's spire and it's top are tastefully done, the best parts of the tower. I do have a love hate relationship with the tower.
Worst shots of the tower: from the river, Navy Pier, the Kennedy. Best shots of the tower: along the Dan Ryan,heading north from Sox Park, when the road curves west; looking south on Rush street, standing on the platform of the El at Randolph and Wabash.

Best Shot of Chicago

2009-04-19T01:02:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I went to the History Fair with my students. After, I turned off 31st street onto some street that is parrallel to the Dan Ryan Expressway and the railroad tracks, trying to get on I-94. I got the best perspective of the Trump Tower (which I hate), in fact taking this road north and getting onto the Dan Ryan,I got the best shot of the skyline,period. The south view of the skyline where the Dan Ryan turns left provides the most nuanced view of the buildings and their interplay with each other than any other perspective I've come across. No picture though, you have to check it out yourself.

32 years old

2009-04-19T00:29:00.003-05:00

I know a person that was overweight and went to meet a personal trainer, after much analysis they determined that although he was 28 years old, he had the body of a 38 year old. Over the course of a year and a half, although 30 years old, he had gotten his body to that of a 24 year old. In the past two years I have done the same, lost wieght I mean, but I'm pretty sure I have the body of a 32 year old, because in fact I am 32 years old today, it's my birthday.
I am beginning to notice aches and pains, and a faint wrinkles on my brow and corners of my eyes. I am also noticing that I am sounding and thinking more like an old codger. I am constantly trying to instruct my kid and others about the right way of doing things, I dont want kids on my lawn, I dont like them playing football on the street because they might hit my car, and I complain if the nieghbors if their too loud.
I'll tell you this, I have no idea what these next few years have to hold. I never imaginged life past 25 years old, so I kinda have been on auto pilot. I have a baby girl on the way. I don't have any dreams for myself, my family. Kinda sad. Its time to dream again.

Obama Administration Oversteps It's Boundaries?

2009-04-01T00:01:00.003-05:00

The Government forced out the CEO of GM. I don't know, slippery slope, or necessary? Even Mayor Daley was like, Whoa, dude, you passed the line.

Grieving a loss

2009-03-31T22:41:00.007-05:00

To me, a tree represents two things, life and permanence. It's always difficult for me to see trees cut down in the city, particularly trees that have taken 50-60 years to mature. No trees have meant more to me than the trees of my old neighborhood at 3312 N.Keystone. There were only five houses on my block and eight mature trees, that isn't counting the leafy roof that lined School Street, the "Lost Boys" crab apple tree in next door apartment building's courtyard, or the bushes you could play hide and seek in, these trees on Keystone formed an impenetrable canopy, a boundary between the sidewalk and the sky. The way a space is organized has an effect on the people that find themselves within that space. I cannot imagine living in a suburban tract housing development without trees, or on a busy street where trees are a nuisence or not allowed to flourish. I owe a great deal of who I am to those formative years playing on my block. The way the urban space happened to be organized, with the trees and the J-shape of the block was serendipitious. The trees created an urban Secret Garden for play.

Today, however, I grieve the loss of the tallest tree on my old block. I rode past the 3300 block of Keystone and found the remains of the tree which my frends and I carved our names. The tree that I carved the names, Caitlin Bryce and Kimberly Brown, my first loves. The tree that quickly came to mind when reading "The Giving Tree" to Liam. All the people and friends from my past on Keystone have gone, the buildings, fences, garages, the names on doorbells are different, but the one thing that gave permanence to my memories, of what it felt like to live on my block, were the trees, and now they are gone too, and so my memories will fade into a mist. And I am reminded of the fragility of life.

If you want to see what I'm talking about go to google maps click on the streetview of 4000 W. School Street go west (straight), turn north(right) onto the 3300 block of Keystone and see for yourself. Just imagine it with at least five more mature trees planted.

Housing Prices have bombed

2009-03-31T22:31:00.002-05:00

Last year the average home price in my zip code was $250,000, today it's $60,000. Looks like we're staying in the neighborhood for a little while.

Humboldt Park Needs a Break

2009-02-26T15:03:00.004-06:00

Humboldt Park can't win. For thirty years people left the neighborhood or had been stuck here with no means of moving up in the ladder. So it became a struggle to maintain and improve housing and quality of life in the neighborhood for residents. Then, gentrification began pushing west and was threatening the displacement of many longtime residents. So the struggle became one of fighting to remain in a neighborhood through keeping housing affordable. While all the non-profits and community organizations were fighting to create or maintain affordable housing, the sub-prime lenders got so many residents to believe they were ready to own. Bam. The housing foreclosure crisis. So now non-profits organizations are fighting educate residents on how to keep their homes and renegotiate with lenders. My observations has been that more often than not, foreclosure has been the best option for people. Now Humboldt Park is beset with abandoned, boarded up homes; sometimes three or four a block, gentrification has slowed to a crawl, and Humboldt Park is quickly bleeding residents. If you count Hermosa just to the north and West Garfield Park to the south, your looking at one of the most abandoned areas of our city.

Now i understand that I don't have a complete handle on the dynamics of what is going on, but instead of spending so much time trying to get unwilling lenders to renegotiate rates, it may look like we have to take a two pronged approach to save Humboldt Park and other neighborhoods. First housing organizations need to continue to educate and guide troubled homeowners through the process of saving or losing their home. Then non-profits such as Bickerdike, Hispanic Housing, NNNN, LSNA etc. should work on creating affordable housing by buying up all the foreclosed property at below market prices and buying as many "short sales" as they can, rehabbing them, and getting them on the market for an affordable price for new home owners or simply managing the properties as affordable housing for renters. If these organizations are serious about their commitment to the neighborhood, in the long run, and are wanting longtime residents to stick around, this is the opportunity to get more affordable housing under the control of community organizations that seek the betterment of the neighborhood and keep longtime residents in the community. Developers are not snapping up these properties so quick because of the credit crunch and banks unwilling top loan to any developer. Community and housing organizations have connections with other non-profit lending organizations that can work around all the red tape the developers deal with. Gentrification has been weakened in Humboldt Park, this is the break organizations and residents have been waiting for.

City of Big Shoulders Gives Me a Hug

2009-01-24T15:25:00.003-06:00

I have been taken back by the good will and honesty that has come my way recently. I get a daily brief of crime in my neighborhood from this site called Everyblock Chicago, I know all of the assualt, knifings, rapes, robberies, drug and prostitution arrests that happen in a one mile radius, everyday. Sometimes you think Chicago's gone crazy.
But three times in the last month our garage has been open hours at a time and nothing has been stolen, nieghbors have kindly watched our stuff or rung our bell to let us know. I lost my wallet on Thursday, with credit cards and a two hundred dollar check. I had been looking everywhere, I even back tracked up and down Belmont Avenue looking for any signs of my wallet. Today, I received an envelope; in it my license, credit cards, and the two hundred dollar check. The envelope had no return address. It's good to be reminded of a little kindness, honesty, thoughtfulness, humbleness, and neighborly love exists in Chicago. I extend thanks and blessings.

Chicago's President

2009-01-20T16:51:00.006-06:00

Today My class and I witnessed the historic inaguration of Chicagoan Barack Obama. My class has a bunch of talkers, so naturally I was dreading having to get on thier backs about talking to their friends while the moment passed us by. But, I was impressed with the respect that my kids showed. They clapped everytime someone spoke, they bowed their heads when a pastor prayed, they held their hands over their hearts and sang our national anthem, without me buggin them to do it. I have never seen anything like it before, it's like their understanding of the moment in time brought forth a well of citizenship that has not been tapped in young people for generations. Two of my students gave articulate and passionate assessment of their feelings afterward, one said that it makes him feel like that "maybe in 20 years we'll have a Latino president, or maybe even a Middle Eastern". The other, I'm not joking, welled up giving his summary, " It's amazing, I mean, we're viewing history, nothing ever like this will ever come close to happening like this again."
I myself, am glad to be on this side of history, to collectively rejoice with my students, other , Americans, and world citizens in the new direction our country is heading in. For those of you that read my previous blog about election night, I have lightened up a little. Unlike the night of November 3, where people just seemed fake and the reaction to the win seemed contrived . I am glad today felt like one of genuine joy and excitement.

Today I was inspired by my students optimism; I am inspired by fellow Chicagoans that scrimped and saved to bring generations of their families to Washington D.C, I'm inspired that someone from my block made it to D.C., I am inspired by all the people that lived through the Civil Rights era crying in the crowd, I am inspired by the inaguration speech in which, I felt, Barack was able to express his awarness of his symbolic meaning and America's symbolic meaning, to push our country into the future, by compelling us to look back at our past and reexamine where we have come from and what our forefathers ideals were for democracy, freedom, and liberty. Today, I am proud that our country, has shown that what makes our country, our people great, is that in the name of our ideals we can work to reconcile our countries' moral failures such as slavery, discrimination, economic injustice, intolerance, greed, poverty, wars, selfishness etc. Thanks Barack for leading us into that future.

True Chicagoans Eat Italian Beef

2008-11-26T00:04:00.000-06:00

The Italian Beef sanwhich is something , thin slices of roast beef, soaked in juices, topped with Scala giardinera, or sweet peepers. Mmmm. Don't get fooled into going to Mr. Beef on Orleans or Portillo's . The best beef stands are on the Northwest Side. Johnny's, Michael's, Roma's, Jay's, and my number one choice for juicy beef's and fries, Mr. Beef on Harlem. True Chicago.

Barack Obama wins

2008-11-05T02:26:00.002-06:00

Everyone will be blogging about this, this evening. I'm tired, it's 2:28 in the morning, and I have to work in a few hours. I will tell you this, I was disappointed with the evening. Not one of the 65,000 people that attended looked like anyone I see and deal with on a regular basis. Lots of self-aware hipsters and cool upper-middle class, educated, pretty people, Ryan and me. Guess this event proves that there really is a technology gap between the rich and the poor.

All the homeless were still trying to get fed, the hustlers were not inspired by the change Obama will bring to America, they were trying to make change by selling Obama t-shirts, hats, and knick-knacks.

I think everyone was just had expectations that this would be our moment to experience in history, where we could say, we were there. That Obama's speech would be Kennedy-esque or a King type " I Have a Dream" speech, but it wasn't. It was just a spiced up stump speech with a few golden nuggets. There wasn't a real organic vibe to the event. If anyone has ever experienced a Bulls Championship celebration or rally, then you know that feeling of this organic wellspring of joy, excitement, and being a part of something bigger than yourself with people from all races and classes. I think the homegenity of the event made it feel subdued, awkward at times, and a feeling of disengenuos excitement. Overall, it felt fake. I expected more from an Obama celebration.

A Coming Out Party: Chicago Republicans

2008-10-07T15:12:00.007-05:00

In Chicago, Republican is a bad word. you only find a few on the far Northwest Side and maybe a smattering downtown. This is a one party town, a oligarachy, ruled by powerful Democrats and and perpetuated through patronism. And they keep thier grip because urban dwellers think everything is copasetic with Democrats in power. I guess were not as backwards and closed as those country folk that vote Republican, right?
Last night I snuck into a John McCain party, at a bar, with Angel and Liam. Angel, a staunch Democrat, had to be coerced into coming. I told him he would be spying for the Democratic Party and that there would be free food. I was going for all the free McCain stuff to give out to my students. Liam was along for the ride. It was a boyz nite out.
I love being in a room where everyone thinks you're on the same page, but you're not. Where you get to hear people embarrass themselves and say things they would never say in public. That is what I was hoping for. When we got there, I grabbed as much SWAG as I could. The room was half empty, and there was a feeling like you were part a group shunned by society and now here are others like you and you're letting it all hang out. I saw babies with Palin Power bibs, people with McCain-Palin shirts, and some othere interesting sights. I could not believe how many old people there were and how many men where trying to pull off bow ties and red suspenders. I guess they were going for the Michael Douglas, Wall Street, look.
Time went on, we ate, watched the Sox lose and we didn't notice any Republican big wigs, until Tony Perica ( running for States Attorney) and Jim Durkin ( he runs McCain's campaign in Illinois) began speaking. These guys were passionate as only any underdog can be. They know how defeating it is to be a Republican in this town, but I was struck by Tony Perica's description of what it would do to Chicago politics by having a Republican as State's Attorney. He said he has the power of supoena and would be going after all the Strogers and Daleys of Chicago and Cook County. As much as I love Obama and am excited about his message of change, a Republican elected to any municipal or cook county office would be more in line with his message than the same old sleeping at the wheel, voting for your party, expectations in Chicagoland.

True Chicagoans Use Double-Negatives

2008-09-30T15:15:00.003-05:00

Any study in linguistics will argue that there is no such thing as improper english. In that light of this, I present to you the following True Chicago double negatives:

I'm not gunna do dat no, not now, not ever.

Ain't nobody gunna tell me not to do dat.

I don't want nothin to do wit you.

... And the most famous double negative in Chicago history.... "Chicago ain't no sissy town" by "Hinky Dink" Kenna, the 1st Ward alderman ( 1897-1923) and "Lord of the Levee district".

A 4th Option

2008-09-22T15:09:00.010-05:00

In Chicago, you only have three options for living.
1. Gentrified or gentrifying neighborhoods.( Lincoln Park, West Town, Humboldt Park, Pilsen)
2. Poor, deteriorating, isolated neighborhoods. ( Englewood, North Lawndale)
3. Safe, family friendlyneighborhoods , but defensive against neighborhood change( Dunning, Jefferson Park, Norwood Park, Mt. Greenwood).

I would prefer a 4Th option. Can Chicago have neighborhoods that are mixed economically, socially, and racially, but not on the brink of gentrification? Can Chicago have a neighborhood that is defensive of change because it's heterogeneity is at stake?

I think it would take a generation of many small groups of young people, of all classes and races, that are committed to putting down roots. I'm talking about intentionally seeking out space in Chicago, not in an upcoming or trendy neighborhood, but in the most isolated, poor, and seemingly unliveable and abandoned places, to live, get involved, raise kids, marry your kids there, grow old, and die in the same house or apartment. This is not utopia, but a call to the challege of status quo of neighborhood segregation in Chicago and the greatest protest against the American Dream or any pressures of climbing the social ladder.

Some people call it gentrification with justice, I call it living intentionally. There are so many definitions of gentrification and without hard data in your hands to prove it, gentrification can only rely on symbols as a definition ( Starbucks, rich people, white people, new condos, too much change too fast). So early on, no matter what, there is going to be judgement about change in a neighborhood, but recognize that time builds trust, time builds community, time and purposeful living can build a 4th option for living in Chicago.

Getting it Wrong

2008-09-22T14:58:00.004-05:00

Last Thursday we had a block club meeting and I mentioned that I wanted to elect new officers for the upcoming year. One of my neighbors asked " Bill, you don't want to be President no more?". I told here that i did , but would like to see other regulars at the meetings get involved. She said, " You know if you guys leave that's the end of the block club."

And there it was right in my face, the realization that I had failed Community Organizing 101,

"Always work to develop indigenous leadership".

Fwd- "The Logan Square Blogger"

2008-09-06T13:57:00.010-05:00

My name's Jill, and I'm really passionate about supporting local businesses. Last night, I rode my bicycle and met up with my friends Emily,Erica, and Katie at Logan Bar and Grill. We talked about our disdain for Sarah Palin and how she is an insult to those of us that supported Hillary. But the focus was on the state of Logan Square and how gentrification has been forcing out longtime businesses. For those of you unaware of what is going on in our neighborhood, newer residents are moving in and forcing longtime residents out. Businesses that have been here for generations are being replaced by Starbucks or some other multi-national chains to meet the consumer demands of those new residents. The effects of globalization have especially hit the Latino residents of our
community the hardest. That's why all of us at the table made a pact to spend our money locally and that's why I want to recommend everyone to try Logan Bar and Grill, it's been in the community for a long time, its not a chain, and its is true to the neighborhood, it even has the word Logan in its name. If I were to choose between two local grills, such as Johnny's Grill and the Logan, I would definetely choose the Logan.

And....... don't forget to get your groceries at Adli on Milwaukee either, you always want to support and protect our local grocery stores and keep the money from flowing out of our community.