An imaginary place in a reactionary time

Yeah, it's sad what happened to WP. I rarely go there but, last week, I did, and it kinda hurt to see how much, and how, it's changed.)

That got me thinking about what happened to Old Town (which has mostly kept its name and boundaries, at least) Lincoln Park (which now extends to the point where you'd have to use a sattellite viewer to see the park,) and Lakeview (ditto with the lake.) All these suburban-sounding names pushed by real estate agents. And, yeah, Ryanview (how's that for Pilsen?) is presumably next up -- Ed's doing a hipster map, which includes us, and we already have a branch of Rainbow.

These geographic reveries brought up two memories, one recent, the other old. I recently visited with the last Puerto Rican homeowner on Halsted in Boys Town -- she's been there forever. She was pleasantly surprised I remembered the old days with anything other than an attitude of "good riddance" (hey, I sure look like a yuppie, and I am urban, and professional, though not so young any more, so she didn't expect me to look fondly o those days, or even have any experiece of them.)

The older memory was from childhood, when our parents' generation would reminisce about "the old neighborhood" wistfully, as if it were some shangri-la of family values.

I realized how much my own reveries of places gone by shared their sorta maudlin regret.

I guess the difference is that, whereas my parents' generation (and I say "my parents' generation" because my own parents really did't do that) remembered things like Church dances, wholesome evenings sitting on the porch with the family as neighbors walked by, and low crime rates, my memories are different.

I remember the guy who used to sell heroin from the alley across the street from the bank on Milwaukee. I remember the hookers who used to thumb johns on Broadway. I remember when we called Washington Square Park (nee Bughouse Square) "fellatio park", cuz you couldn't walk by it without some guy offering you a blow job. I remember the male hustlers on Hubbard, the Insane Unknowns on Diversey, and the TVs on Rush.

Now, it seems, the whole City is being transformed into our parents' generation's wistful reverie of "the old neighborhood" by their children -- all squeaky clean, safe and, to me at least, dead in the soul.

It makes me wonder about the reality of those reveries of our parents' generation. To me, it always seemed to be wishful thinking -- convenient, counter-factual nostalgia for a time which never really existed. I think of a conversation with a tough old West Side Jewish Lawyer (now living in Highland Park): "All this stuff about the old neighborhood is crap -- I don't care if you were Orthodox Jew, or devout Catholic -- we were alll sucking and fucking and stealing and fighting."

I guess it's bizarre that I look back wistfully at memories of pimps and junkies and hookers (and, yeah, even for the days when, in the corn-fed white boy neighborhoods where I lived as a kid, oddballs and pervs walked the streets, instead of being restrained with chemical straightjackets, and institutionalized, and Hillbillies threw a curveball to conformity.) But those memories are real -- I know that.

Now, it seems I'm living in someone else's dream. Actually, a second-hand version of someone elses's dream.

And, to me, at least, it seems like a nightmare.

(npr just finished an interview with the authors of old chicago neighborhoods on the 8:48 show. they said the number one trend in the people they interviewed was safety: everyone remembers how safe it used to be. when pushed, they discribed african americans taking their life into their hands when leaving the black belt...)

me, i remember fondly when lakeview/wriglyview was dangerous after dark, when the first "rehabs" occured in the very late 70's early eighties. when the cubbie bear was a real dive, when rents first climbed to 200 bucks.

i have some sweet memories of the original crate and barrel, whenit was full of crates and barrels and raffia. and sam's wine and liquers. vogt's wine shop, down by harrison.

maxwell street...

"rags and iron," "scissor sharpened"

ooooooo! 100 points! damn! and me being the junkman's grandson too....

thank you danny!

Oh yeah, "safety" my ass. It wasn't "safe" for us, and it was downright deadly for Blacks and Browns.

One of my early, frightening, memories, was when there was a huge commotion on Union when I lived on that street in St. Gabe's (Canaryville, to the real estate agents.) I walked out on my porch, and saw a really tense scene -- anxious, angry people everywhere. The image that sticks in my mind is nice old Mr. Kyle from across the street, walking down his porch with a shotgun in his hands, and a really ugly look on his face. I asked the guy next door what was wrong, and he said: "Three niggers were walking down the street."

I didn't understand that at the time. It's not like my family were saints. But we were more recent immigrants than most people in St. Gabe's (we were refugees from the Irish Civil War in the 1920s, while many of them were descended from Hunger Refugees from the 1840s) so we hadn't assimilated American racism. My neighbors scared the hell out of me, and I just didn't understand it.

But I learned soon enough, and saw many more incidents like that growing up.

It was a lot better for "white" people, but hardly "safe." As a kid, I could get ambushed by a fist fight just for crossing 39th street or, later, 99th street. In both cases, it had nothing to do with race, color, or religion. The people on the other side of those borders were, like me, "white", Irish and Catholic. But I wasn't from their 'hood, and didn't belong there.

In fact, it was one of thse confrontations on 39th street which made me decide to become a lawyer, for protection from one kid who threatened to have us thrown in jail (his Dad was a cop, and I was too youg to realize his trheat was empty.)

And, yeah, I saw lots of pervs' dicks when I was a kid, and even had to fight off one perv who tried to pull me into his car. And I had lotsa stuff stolen from me, and many times people just attacked me on the street for no apparent reason.

So, yeah, I guess it wasn't all that "safe."

But it was real. And I look at University Village, with its turrets and fences and cul de sacs and emergency kiosks, and am reminded of nothing so much as a medium-security prison.

I'd rather take my chances with the pervs and thugs than live like that.

Danny, I don't so much remember the call of the knife shaperner, as his bell. For the guy who worked my part of the South Side, he had it hooked up to to the wheel on his cart in some way that made it ring every 10 seconds or so. I can sill hear that ring in my ears. . .

Or The Weatherman -- a weird, wizened old man, who walked around aimlessly. But, if you gave him a date, he could tell you what the weather was on that date. He told me there was a blizzard on my birthday. My Mom's memory was different. But I've since checked the records, and The Weatherman was right.

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your right. i'm a dick. and i'm the only guy you will ever meet who admits to it. and you are a spoiled whiney brat.
and gone.

i'm sorry.