16 posts tagged “sheridan”
In general it's a noble thing the owners of the real estate in this two-block area are doing; they're doing a lot of new development, a lot of new construction, trying to jump-start a new interest in the neighborhood, more money, more safety, more options, more jobs, etc. But for those who don't know, this is a neighborhood that's been infamously shitty for decades now, and still is in certain quarters; and for those who have never spent time regularly in such a neighborhood, among lots of other long-term effects it means that the locals mark very little difference between "public" space (sidewalks, parks) and "private" (your yard, your building's lawn, your cafe's outdoor seating).
In effect it creates this real schism in such "redevelopment zones," a monkeywrench in the plans to get the middle-class to feel safe enough to move in; because this is one of the very premises of the middle-class itself, this distinction between public and private space, this idea that your middle-class hard work is what gives you the privilege of the manicured lawns and outdoor cafe tables. If some crazy smelly homeless curse-word-swearing nutjob can sit down right next to you, can ruin your middle-class privilege that easily, what's the point of putting in all the hard work to become middle-class in the first place?
As a result, then, smart redevelopment land owners are constantly having to think up smart new ideas for placing physical barriers up on their properties, literal fences that separate this privileged middle-class private outdoor space from the public space like sidewalks where the usual crazy homeless junkies go wandering around muttering to themselves and peeing in their pants. In the '50s and '60s, of course, the way to do this was very obvious and not that intelligent at all; literally put up walls, fences and the like, making such inner-city erections feel more like fortresses than pleasant middle-class habitations. That was the lesson learned, in fact, from those redevelopment projects in that period that all failed; that you can't slap up literal fences and walls to create this space, because you then drive away the very middle-class urban adventurers you need to transform the neighborhood.
Take the building shown here, for example, within this redevelopment ghetto on Sheridan I mentioned. Ultimately it's presenting a cool private outdoor space for all the middle-class condo owners who move in; those nifty patios you're seeing, all slanty and glass just like the middle-class urban adventurers love. And then on the first two floors there's an ingenious semi-public space as well, for social interaction with your fellow middle-class adventurers; a mini-mall, that is, completely enclosed, with the natural intimidation of a consumerist space (and paid security guards) to naturally keep out the dirty homeless muttering junkies. And thus do you build that wall you need between the middle-class and the rest of that neighborhood, that makes the middle-class feel safe and thus populate the neighborhood more and more; but you don't literally build a wall anymore, but merely place your outdoor space up in the air, and a virtual wall that blocks out the poor in shifty but legal ways. The reason I call this space between Wilson and Lawrence a redevelopment "ghetto," then, is because there's literally something like six such projects found there, all of them built in the last decade, creating this great little two-block area for the middle-class that doesn't hold a damn thing of interest for the poor, addicted and crazy who have lived in the neighborhood for the past several decades.
I'm not saying any of this is ethically right or ethically wrong; I think there are arguments to be made for both conclusions, in fact. I'm just saying that it's happening in this particular part of the city, as well as others, and that these projects are apparently popular because more and more of them keep getting built. It's changing the very nature of this neighborhood, in fact, literally one block at a time.
Just posted a lengthy review of the novel "Little Children" to the website for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com -- you're now reading every day, right? You've mentioned it at your own blog by now, right?). I ended up really loving the novel, actually, and a big part of that was because of the ways that author Tom Perrotta shows the silly elaborate rituals that many people in their early and mid-thirties will engage in, that they think is 'grown-up' behavior but is actually as immature as their teen years (hence the title of the novel) -- such as how many of the men in their community participate in this evening "Fight Club" style intramural football league, where teams will meet at the expensively Astroturfed high-school field once a week, a group of accountants versus a group of cops for example, and spend a night illegally pounding each other with no refs, the only rule being "the first one to quit is a faggot pussy," and with the hordes of former frat dudes spending the entire evening calling each other bitches and slamming each other's chests together in torso high-fives.
And sitting here finishing my time at Holiday tonight, I realize -- dude, that's just like the fucking trackball bowling videogame found in bars like these! How many times have we who are secure in our masculinity and adult choices we're making in our lives sat in bars with such machines, and watched a group of drunk, insecure, date-rape assholes spend the night getting ALL GEARED UP BEHIND THAT TRACKBALL, DUDE, and put up a leg and get all behind that push, and WHIZZ THAT LITTLE COCKSUCKING WHORE round and round until getting a strike, YELLIN' AND SCREAMIN' AND HOOTIN' AND HOLLERIN' AND HIGH-FIVIN', all their terrified little girlfriends in the corner and sucking down Sex on Beaches and trying to blot out as quickly as possible what horrific unsalvagable situations they've gotten themselves into.
Seriously, a pretty great book. I encourage you to stop by the site and see what I have to say about it. Man, for the rest of my life these bowling videogames are now going to creep me the fuck out.
Hey, I'm out again, at Holiday again, having Guinness and a grilled-cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes. It's Saturday night, give me a freakin' break, I want to be out! Damnit, I may even get on my bike later and pedal down to Lakeview, and maybe get in a little trouble old-skool Belmont and Clark style. We'll see!
Earlier this week I read the first half of this slim new-age self-help guide called "Happy," by this guy who apparently teaches a class at Harvard on "how to be happy," which apparently is the most popular class currently available at Harvard (yeah, roll eyes here, I know). And that's why I stopped reading halfway through, frankly, is that the book's mostly a bunch of obvious new-age claptrap about positivity and empowering visions and the like. One of the things the author suggests you ask yourself, though, is what exactly the definition of 'happiness' is anyway, which I've been doing this week and have realized is much harder than it sounds. The best I can do, in fact, is come up with things that can lead to happiness, while also acknowledging that I don't know what combination one needs to truly be 'happy...'
--The absence of pain.
--A sense of accomplishment.
--A sense of inner peace, of acceptance of oneself and one's surroundings.
--The sensation of pleasure.
--The sense that one is contributing to the world, instead of simply consuming its resources.
Here I am right now, for example, at Holiday Uptown in my neighborhood, currently pretty happy, but only because of a combo of little things -- because it's warm, because I'm outside, because I'm having a beer and am a little buzzed, because I've gotten a lot accomplished today, because half-dressed hot nerdy girls keep walking by me, because I just got done with a good mid-distance bicycle ride, because I've eaten, because I have a satchel full of just-published edgy small-press books, that I got for free because of living in a city with such a large and well-funded library system. And this doesn't even count the more existential reasons I'm happy -- because I live in a city I love instead of hate, because I'm starting my own business and am my own boss, even if that means barely any money right now, because I'm doing something with my time that I feel is adding something constructive and meaningful to the world, versus (for example) using my creative talents to be selling fucking hamburgers for some soulless multinational corporation. Sound haughty? Well, that as well is part of what makes me happy.
So what's the magic combination? Well, that's the fun part of life, isn't it, of discovering just what that combination is. I can tell you this, though, that the older I get, the more sure I am that is has almost nothing to do with the things preached to us in a consumerist capitalist society -- the accumulation of wealth, the accumulation of possessions, the getting ahead of your fellow humans, the long hours and little rewards and endless frustrations of most white-collar jobs. It's not just a thing for hippie undergraduates to believe in, I keep realizing more and more -- that the quest to simplify one's life, the effort to enjoy the current moment instead of deferring your entire personal life to the twenty years before you die, is of paramount importance to having true happiness in your life.
Er, that's all. End of line.
I was a good boy tonight; got every single thing with the new CCLaP website (cclapcenter.com) working except the commenting feature, and got tomorrow's Obsession of the Moment and book review written in advance, so am now rewarding myself with a Pabst Blue Ribbon and grilled cheese sandwich at Holiday Uptown in my neighborhood, a rare nighttime trip out for me because in general I can't afford it, in the company of a bunch of hot, drunk hipster females, which of course is always a pleasure. I don't necessarily have to be directly interacting with my fellow humans to be happy -- in fact, I've discovered that it can often make me annoyed rather than happy -- but that I do at least need regular time around other humans, periods where I feel like part of a society and not so cut off in an online netherworld like most of my day is spent. Always good to get out occasionally and have a beer among the hoo-mons.
Enjoying CCLaP yet? Book reviews bitchy enough for ya?
I'm at Emerald City, a cafe next door to the Sheridan red-line stop, in the Buena Park/Uptown neighborhood where I live, my first trip out since my unexpectedly traumatic oral surgery last Thursday. And once again, I'm sitting here staring at the "Getting Things Done" action lists I maintain in my Moleskine notebook, noting with some alarm how large they've all gotten since this oral surgery began two and a half weeks ago, difficult to get through because of the time my body needs to recover. (This photo, for example, shows three of my busiest context lists combined on one page -- things to do at home, things to do on my computer, and things to check out online.)
It's true, I think -- that no matter how busy we might actually be while unemployed or self-employed, trying to do the things that will lead to increased paid work, it usually comes off that we're doing almost nothing, besides maybe watching a bunch of weirdo movies and TV shows that have been illegally downloaded. Believe it or not, a good six hours or so of my day each day is usually devoted to the lowly duties of an underemployed freelancer; of offering free spec advice in all kinds of random situations, building up one's portfolio, maintaining one's social networks, responding to a ton of emails each day, trawling the internet each day for new opportunities, spearheading cutting-edge projects that will get you further noticed, ad fucking nauseum. That's what's so frustrating about all this oral surgery right now, is that it's preventing me from getting all this boring daily crap done, the stuff I rarely mention at my blogs but that's as important to freelancers as that time you got arrested by Boston police for a viral marketing campaign you created.
Anyway, the good news is that the worst of it is behind me; this time a week and a half from now, I'll start the hard work of my mouth's reconstruction, with hopefully most of it done by the time Memorial Day and summer roll around at the end of May. For now, though, it's yet another week of soup, pasta and yogurt; another week of Vicodin-induced foggy sociopathic distancing from humanity; another week of dejectedly watching my GTD lists fill up more and more, helpless at this point from getting any of it done. Sigh! It's gotta be done sometime, I guess; now's as good a time as any.
A sudden cold streak has clashed today with the warm weather here, producing a fog as thick as pea soup; here, for example, is the view from the Sheridan el platform, as I wait for the train that will eventually get me to Pearl Art Supply (Chicago and Wells), where I am shopping today for drawing supplies. More later!
Spotted at Emerald City coffeehouse, Sheridan and Irving Park Road, Chicago -- a coffee device with a curiously Modernist (or Mod) logo attached to it. My 'modar,' in fact (or natural ability to spot Mod things in public) has been in overdrive recently, ever since deciding to base the first wave of my Second Life prefabricated houses off the architectural and design style. It was only 45 years or so, after all, since the height of the style's popularity; there are still lots of original examples to spot in a place like Chicago, not to mention the contemporary companies who have adopted classic Mod ideals.
Okay, so maybe it's not the last SRO in the entire neighborhood, but it's definitely the last one in the area where I travel a lot; I pass this building quite a bit during my regular errands, in fact, and always spend at least a moment or two thinking about it when I do. SRO, for those who don't know, stands for "single room occupancy;" in other words, a living space that consists of a single room, including the cooking facilities. In our modern times, of course, it's only a slim minority of the population anymore who don't live in an apartment under a long-term lease, or a house/condo under a mortgage; a century or so ago, though, it wasn't unusual at all for just a ton of young single men to live in such SROs, as they traveled the country quickly or held low-wage jobs.
Anytime you see a scene in an old noir film between an anti-hero and a scummy "hotel" clerk, a staple it seems in that genre, that's an homage to the SRO industry that used to dominate big cities during the Industrial Age; Chicago in particular used to be littered with such SROs, with a fair amount of them still open even 13 years ago when I first moved here. SROs are not exactly something to be nostalgic about, or to wish to still stick around; they're a feature of film noirs for a reason, after all, and the few left are even seedier than average. But still, once those few that are left finally close down, I doubt we'll ever see SROs in this country again; it's a moment of American transitory history that I'm in a position to capture in a small way, which is why I decided to do so.
I don't mean I've come out as gay; I mean that for the first time in a week, the weather has gotten tolerable enough again to venture out into the world, which is what I've done. Temperatures today, in fact, are way above what they've recently been -- 40 degrees today (4 C), versus the below-freezing temps we've recently been having -- which of course means we have about a foot of snow all melting at once today, which of course has turned my entire neighborhood into a slushy, semi-frozen pond of black water and consumer waste. Nice! It's always something here, I swear.
