39 posts tagged “uptown”
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 got finished editing up episode 3 of the CCLaP Podcast, which will be getting posted to the official site tomorrow morning; so like always, I thought I'd post a sneak preview of it here as well, for any VOX readers who are checking in over the weekend. This episode is four minutes long and is a video report from the latest Dollar Store Show at Chicago nightclub The Hideout; run by "Time Out: Chicago" Books editor Jonathan Messinger (who is also one of the founders of Featherproof Books), each month Jonathan asks a couple of people from the city's small-press community to write and perform a brand-new story, based on a piece of merchandise from a dollar store that Jonathan had given to them a month previous. Enjoy!
Links to the projects and people mentioned in this episode:
Jonathan Messinger
The Dollar Store Show
The Hideout
Featherproof Books
Time Out: Chicago | Books
The Printers Ball
THE2NDHAND
Uptown Writers Space
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 don't reallly hide the fact that I did LSD roughly a dozen times as an undergraduate, back in the 1980s and '90s; in fact, I was one of those annoying little art-major shits who always had to take acid under "controlled environments," and pay all this attention to what was going on, unlike my friends who wouldn't think twice about dropping a tab or two before a rave and then either dancing and/or fucking for the next ten hours or so. (Well, okay, I did that once or twice too. Vive la Universite!)
Anyway, they say that everyone who does acid has a certain "thing" they most associate with the experience, a certain aspect of reality that suddenly seems really heightened or distorted or whatnot, which is what lets that person know they actually are on acid. Mine, for example, was for some reason the ways that artificial lights look when reflected off trees in the middle of the night; whenever I was on acid, the subject would endlessly fascinate me, of the million different subtle little hues such a situation actually produces, that you just never bother noticing when you're NOT on acid, and how you can double that number when God forbid there's streetlights of two different colors hitting it. It's a product I'm sure of my environment at the time; the middle of Missouri in the middle of the summer, that is, where nature can't help but to encroach around every single corner, no matter what you tried to do to stop it (and as big-city wannabes in that environment in those years, believe me, we tried everything we could to stop it).
So now, a decade and a half since the last time I did acid, I still have those sense memories associated with the experience; balmy summer nights, quiet back streets, the dramatic shadows of a streetlight beaming down on an otherwise dark tree, the feeling of being SURROUNDED by color on all sides, so many subtle shades of the same few colors that while on acid were suddenly as different as night and day. And even now sometimes, on warm evenings when I'm on a quiet side street in Chicago and feeling contemplative, and come across some trees being dramatically lit by two differently-colored streetlights at once, my mind can kick back into the memories of being on acid so dramatically to almost be scary; the jaw-grinding, the unnatural sweating, the heightened paranoia and all the rest. There's a reason I stopped doing acid 15 years ago, after all; it's not exactly a party drug, although I did attend some excellent parties back then while on it. It's not the same as a true flashback, I know, with the tracers and all that, which I never experience because I didn't do enough of it in school; but still.
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 don't think I've mentioned this yet, so just wanted to let everyone know that I recently finished my third customized bike map of the summer, for use in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth; this one covers over 40 small neighborhood parks on the north side of Chicago, using a route that covers roughly 25 miles (40 km) of city streets. As regular readers remember, this map took quite a bit longer to put together than the others I've made, since it contains just so much more information; over 150 photo placemarks, in fact, along with all that online research I had to do about each park's history. Anyway, you can click here to check it out online, and then once there you can click on the "KML" link in the upper-right corner for the Google Earth file; those who are interested can see all of my bike maps by clicking here.
Don't forget, I actually have the photos taken as well for my fourth and fifth maps, which I'll hopefully be getting to this week; the fourth will cover the trip from Uptown to the Loop, using only inner-city paved bike paths (i.e. ones that run along the edges of vehicular streets), and the fifth of course will cover the entire 18-mile lakefront bike path, the trip I made just a few days ago and from which I'm still recovering. (Seriously, I really overdid it on Monday. Remind me of this the next time I try to ride 25 miles in a single day.) Anyway, like I said, you can look forward to those maps as well hopefully soon.
As always, a quick recap first for those who need it...
Because of my looming 40th birthday, I've decided to make a number of big changes to my lifestyle this year; among other things, I've decided to try biking between 3 and 5 miles (5 to 10 km) on every day this year it gets over 60 degrees (15 C), and every couple of weeks to put in a longish bike ride in order to build up my endurance. By the end of the summer I'm hoping for such rides to be 30 to 50 miles in length (50 to 80 km), but for now I'm shooting for more like 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 km); so one of the things I'm doing these days is thinking of various fun trips in the city I could make that would be that total distance, either one-way or round-trip. (Bikes are allowed on all city trains and buses, making one-way bike trips quite easy.)
Anyway, an upcoming promotional event from one corner of the literary industry has inspired what I think is going to be my first longish trip of the year; it's happening this Saturday, in fact, where I will bike all over the north side of the city to celebrate national Free Comic Book Day. I worked out a route on Google Maps, in fact, that lasts 12 miles total, that would not only take me to three comic-book stores participating in the promotion, but up almost the entire length of Lincoln Park as well, including such landmarks of heavy interest as the zoo, the conservatory, the Lorenzo Taft sculpture of Lincoln, the last grave left in Lincoln Park (from when it was a cemetery in the 1800s), two museums, a historic belltower, a mysterious totem pole and a lot more. And such a route of course is especially cool for two reasons:
1) Because I'm actually excited about Free Comic Book Day this year: instead of the usual exclusive collection of lame superhero comics specially given out in the past, this year includes such indie favorites as a Victorian detective story from Eddie Campbell (From Hell), a collection of never-before reprinted Peanuts strips, and more;
and 2), ever since Google introduced the ability to build highly sophisticated custom maps -- ones that can not only have text, photos and videos embedded within the route, along with mile markers and multiple colors, but can also be exported en-masse as a Google Earth (.kml) file -- I've wanted to make one! But to make one, I need to actually go out and ride the route of the map I want to make, and take all the photos and videos that will be in the mashup.
Anyway, like I said, the full route takes me a total of 12 miles (20 km), and takes me by enough interesting stuff to add at least a dozen and a half points to my finished Google map afterwards. The rough breakdown is shown below:
*) My home, Uptown; start/finish.
1) Chicago Comics, 3244 N Clark. Total distance: 1.25 miles.
2) Graham Crackers Comics, 2562 N Clark. Total distance: 2.45 miles.
3) Brainstorm Comics, 1648 W North Ave. Total distance: 5 miles.
4) Southern tip of Lincoln Park: Chicago History Museum, Taft sculpture and more. Total distance: 6.85 miles.
5) Historic Art Deco cafe at southern edge of zoo. Total distance: 7.45 miles.
6) Conservatory. Total distance: 7.8 miles.
7) Chicago Nature Museum. Total distance: 8 miles.
8) North Pond Cafe. Total distance: 8.3 miles.
9) Elks national headquarters and veteran memorial, a ridiculously magnificent structure that must be seen to be believed. Total distance: 8.6 miles. Also in this section, Goethe sculpture and garden.
10) Back officially on the lakefront path, in this case at Diversey. Total distance: 9.1 miles.
11) Start of Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 9.6 miles.
12) "Dog Beach" at Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 10 miles.
13) Mysterious totem pole, near Addison. (I'll explain where it came from in my eventual map.) Total distance: 10.35 miles.
14) Waveland Clubhouse and Bell Tower, recently restored to its original historic condition. Total distance: 10.65 miles.
15) The mysterious "Peace Garden" at Buena Avenue, beautifully landscaped but with almost no official information existing concerning its origin. Total distance: 11.25 miles.
*) Back home. Total distance: 12 miles.
So anyway, like I said, I'm going to try to very slowly make such a trip this coming Saturday, on national Free Comic Book Day; in fact, I asked my oral surgeon today during my check-up if it'd be okay to do such a thing, just a week after my latest bout of surgery, and he said sure. Then I'll upload the photos to Picasa (owned by Google), and the video to YouTube (also owned by Google), so that I'll be ready to import it all into my custom Google map, which will eventually be imported as a whole into Google Earth. Whew, that's a lot of synergy! So wish me luck; and of course if you live in Chicago and want to join me for part of the trip, or a coffee/drink somewhere along the way (I'll be spending the entire day to go its length, so obviously will be taking it easy and making a lot of stops), just drop me a line and let me know.
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.
