in a word: gentrificaton

When I first visited Wicker Park last January, it was a lot more urban and a lot less glamorous than I was imagining based on the constant praise my boyfriend was giving his new home. (Yes, this is the same area and/or park that the Josh Hartnett movie Wicker Park was named after.) In my defense, it was nighttime when I arrived and it was my first taste of the Chicago cold, so I was focusing more on keeping my face inside my jacket collar and my hand gripped around my suitcase handle than on the surroundings. I saw iron bars covering shop windows and doors, I saw 24-hour check cashing places, I saw shady looking discount furniture stores: it wasn't very pretty.

When I came back in June with my all my worldly possessions in tow, it did not look much better for the first few weeks I was there. But as I set out to explore the thrift stores littered between bars and pubs, boarded-up store fronts, and discount furniture stores, I saw it was actually more glamorous than it looked. It was the city hipster style of glamorous, which is a little dirty; or if not glamorous, then it's at least cool. The windows were covered with art, the boarded-up store fronts covered with music and art show posters. There were at least three independent coffee shops, some crazy take-out places, and several banks.

If you haven't guessed, I'm talking about gentrification, a word I didn't actually know the definition of until a few months before I moved here (which, by the way, was five days shy of six months ago). For those who are sheltered like I was (let's face it, Santa Barbara was gentrified before it was even born), gentrificationmeans the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents(taken directly from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

Technically Wicker Park was gentrified already before I started college, but now you can see the stores rushing to keep up. I have seen the ridiculously expensive Akira Chicago jump around North Avenue, moving from smaller stores to bigger ones with bigger windows, start offering valet parking, and putting up its bright red awning outside new Women stores and Accessories stores and Mens stores and Shoe stores and stocking areas. I have seen the local pizza place and brewery, Piece (which does not sell Chicago-style pizza) take over the ex-high end stuff store next door and start offering take-out. I have seen boutique shoe stores and boutique thrift stores move in and two of the three independent coffee shops move out. And most tragically and hideously, I have seen Bank of America with its bright blue and red move in to occupy not one, but three store spaces on one of the big corners in Wicker Park. What used to be a hot dog take-out place, a huge independent coffee shop with couches, and a convenience store, is now a beacon of florescent light seen for miles. And what used to be the busiest, bustling six-way intersection of hipster haven now has a Starbucks, three banks, an upscale bar, and, I think, a cell phone store littering its corners.

I'm not overly focused on these things anymore, the corporatization of the purely independent, but I do think it's rather unfortunate. Not only for the character of the neighborhood, but more importantly for the people who get displaced by this gentrification. Chicago has a fairly strong undercurrent of race issues, exacerbated by the fact that the yuppies follow Bank of America and suddenly all the minorities find themselves living together in the only area they can reasonably afford.

Nevertheless, the hipsters who wanted to live somewhere edgy who moved to Wicker Park in the first place are now moving on to a place like Logan Square, located just slightly north and west, which has a slow influx of independent coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques, but it still has the cheap movie theaters, dollar stores, discount family stores, Mexican markets, and boarded up store fronts.

My neighborhood is a little different because it's inhabited by young families mostly (perhaps these hipsters grown up?), but the main drag is a postcard of beauty: brick, lights, couples pushing strollers, and lots and lots of restaurants and little boutiques. There's something for everyone in that little half-mile stretch. Just one block west and a couple steps north of this charming village is an ugly intersection (mattress store/bank/Wallgreens/shady discount jewelry store), and a bunch of fast food and some nondescript stores, most of them with signs written in unidentifiable foreign languages. Some of this quick shift I can chalk up to Chicago just having some unforgivingly ugly streets no matter how far north or south (or east or west) you go; these streets near my house are two such streets. But the rest? Well, more gentrification, I guess. The young couples haven't procreated enough to expand outward yet. I don't really really mind because there are three dollar stores, one brilliant and cheap Mexican market, five Thai restaurants, and several check-cashing places (for those last-minute, late-night laundry quarter runs) within walking distance. Not to mention four coffee shops (one Starbucks), 20-30 restaurants, an awesome used book store, and my bank... you get the idea.

I think I've reached my satisfaction point of discussing things I really don't know much about. But I would like to note that I've been interested in this real estate/development/planning stuff since I became familiar with it in college and I'm wondering what kind of job I can do that will incorporate that, my desire to learn everything there is to know about that in Chicago, and writing. Business journalism, maybe, which I always thought I hated.

coexistence

Downtown was a disaster this morning. Cars driving on wet, slushy black streets. People walking on icy sidewalks, using muddy crosswalks. Piles of dirt-peppered snow lining all the curbs. Shop owners at work with their snow shovels and salt beneath the busy feet of morning commuters. Chunks of snow and ice falling with the wind from the tops of the buildings. Snow dusting the street below the train tracks after a train goes by--every 7 minutes during rush hour. A layer of dirt, water, and salt lining the floors of the building entrances. Everything is chaotic compared to its usual bustling precision, yet there are a few patches of glistening snow that remain pristine. A layer on the sills of some windows, an outline on some of the building decor, a light powder dusting the planters. Every so often, too, amidst the piles of dirty snow and ice, plowed and shoveled into submission, there is a patch of snow that remains untouched on a forgotten corner somewhere. No one has needed to step through it with their booted feet. It has not wandered in the path of any shovel: it is smooth and as white as the day it fell.

zombie

It's amazing to me that the last couple mornings I have managed to go through my morning routine and, 40 minutes later, find that I'm walking out of the train at the correct station. It's similarly amazing that I turn the corner and the clock on the bank overhang miraculously reads 9:00, no matter how long the ride seemed to take (without it ever really registering in my mind). For the past weeks the clock has been religiously reading 9:10 whenever I turn that corner, no matter how short the ride seemed. Nevertheless, the way I mark my book, close it, and put it away at the stop before mine is really more of a reflex... and the way I walk to the correct place to get on the train in order to get off at the correct place is not something I think about. My mind is replaying my evening or thinking about the book I was reading or anticipating another unmemorable day at work...

the wonder of snow

What was a white dream last night was a brown, slushy rush-hour nightmare this morning.

But that doesn't change the wonder and excitement I felt when I was walking to the park last night, my boots making a sliding crunch every time I stepped. Every single sky-facing surface was covered in a pillowy layer of white. Every detail of the tree trunks, bare branches, and few remaining leaves were outlined, every iron fence, every street sign. It was fresh snow and still falling, so the plows hadn't made their way to the side streets yet; the only thing differentiating the sidewalk from the small residential street (besides a jarring step down the hidden curb) was an occasional tire path. It was silent, the usual bustling pedestrians were at home or in taxis, many of the cars either buried under mounds of snow or slowly making their way on the main streets. The snow fell lazily, tiny white particles swirling with the wind, sparkling under the street lights, unobtrusively attaching themselves to strands of my hair, the fur on my hood, the toes of my boots. Excellently aimed snow balls hit my face, the cold prickling my skin and immediately melting down my neck, past the high collar of my jacket. The night was bright, with the yellow street lights reflecting white, the sky hazy and slightly orange.

Cities, with all their concrete, brick, and stone, can be beautiful in their own grotesque way. But the snow erased the concrete and the dirt, outlined the stone and brick, and created, for lack of a better phrase, a different world. A dream.

The snow continued through the night, stopped to let the shop owners shovel, the commuters walk and wait, the car drivers scrape, the salters salt, and the snow plows clear. By the time I got outside, there were signs warning of falling ice, the sidewalks were concrete again, the curbs black with the dirty white, the planters, trees and hidden parking lots still pristine. It's snowing again: small dusty particles mingled with the larger white, all lazily swirling with gravity and the wind. With any luck, by the time I'm finished working all will be white again and I can try my hand at a snowman or a snow angel. Or another snow-ball fight.

I figure I have this winter and maybe next to enjoy the snow before I start hating it and the hassles it causes. I only know one person who has lived here for longer than two years who still likes the snow. Maybe I will be that person in another few years. Or maybe I will retreat, sheepishly, back to California.

walking ten miles, uphill both ways, in the snow

I have such an understandably California mentality when it comes to weather. It just started snowing again, and from my ninth floor perch in the center of downtown it doesn't look like much -- just swirling dust that's not accumulating. But my mind starts whirling when I think of how the plans I have tonight and tomorrow might be affected by the weather. Will I not be able to walk the mile from the train to my violin lesson? Will I not be able to walk back? Will I not be able to wait outside, in the middle of the freeway, for the train? Will my violin get horribly out of tune just from being outside? Will it be wet? Do my boots have enough traction? Are they waterproof? Am I dressed warm enough?

In college I would miss class, cancel appointments, walk, umbrella in hand, or drive down the street when it rained. Here I have to walk and ride buses and trains like always. I have to get to and from work on time, go to the gym, and once a week I have to get to my violin lesson. My life goes on just as it did in summer and fall, I keep doing what I'm doing regardless of how cold it gets, how high the winds, how icy the sidewalk, how heavy the snow or sleet or rain. I might take a taxi, stand under an awning, or decide to spend a Friday or Saturday night inside. But this day is just a day, and days don't stop even when the weather intervenes.

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Despite my general ignorance when it comes to any weather besides rain, I do, however, feel I've become accustomed to my thermometer reading 32 degrees, 28 degrees, and even 20 degrees. There is no more dancing in my room in the morning with long johns in one hand and three pairs of socks in the other, a selection of gloves, mittens, scarves of various degrees of warmth, long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, and knee-high boots strewn at my feet. Whatever I wear -- long-sleeved shirt or sweater or both, mittens or gloves, boots or moccasins, I'll make it to the train and to my office, and by the time 5:00 rolls around, I'll be sweating under my sweaters and long-sleeved shirts, my hair straight from the heating, and it won't be nearly as cold outside. I'm OK now -- the dance will commence again when the highs are in the teens. My California-bred brain might even try to devise ways for me not to go to work or the gym or violin lessons.

so this is (REALLY) winter

Look! It snowed Saturday afternoon!


Here's me looking goofy outside of my apartment. And my parents will be happy to see that I'm wearing my heavy jacket.


After a few hours of snow and a bit of hail it started raining, and by the time I went outside again Saturday evening, there were piles of brown snow on the sides of the roads, there were little icicles hanging off all the signs and overhangs, and the sidewalks were coated with ice.

And by Sunday it got so warm and rained so much that it looked like it had never snowed at all.