Making Decisions

We are now going to leave our church and look for another one. Our decision took the long road, through prayer, anguish, humility, and perseverance, but after 2 1/2 years we will be leaving New Life Humboldt Park . We told our pastor, said we weren't growing, we weren't not connecting with the community among other things. We waited so long because we know that leaving a church sometimes isn't amicable. Our pastor said he has learned to hold people loosely in leading a church, then he gave us the blessing to transition on, we said we wanted to remain involved in the church in ways we could, he agreed, we prayed and that was it. We expected it to play like a break-up and what we got was analogous to a blessing a father gives to a man asking for the fathers' daughter's hand in marriage; a sort of acknowledgement that in order for her to grow he needs to accept, trust, let go, and entrust her to another. We believe in going about things in the right way and feel like we made the right decision.

This block

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

"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

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

"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

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

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

Neil Diamond and a Chance of Meatballs

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

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First Day of School

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!

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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

Demolition of a Cabrini- Green highrise

Check this out.


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Izens Shoes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RIP Animal Kingdom

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

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

[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

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."