#961: Halsted

August 1st, 2018 § permalink

By 65th and Halsted, by a tree-lined road that winds into Kennedy-King College, there’s a wooden cross about three, three-and-a-half feet tall.

It’s simple but sturdy. Screwed and nailed 2×4 but done by someone who has handled wood. The cross is freestanding, braced at the bottom by a four-way splay of board.

There’s a jigsawed heart about a foot radius screwed to the cross’ front. It was cut from particle board and spray painted the color of love and blood. The cross itself is untreated lumber. No paint, stain or other protections. The cross-top crackles from the elements.

Across the axis where spread the arms of Jesus, Spartacus and thousands of crucifixees no one cared to make movies about, someone wrote a name in as elegant a font as they could earn with Sharpie. Manuel Ramirez.

At 63rd, there’s another one. » Read the rest of this entry «

#960: The King of Quiet Moments

July 30th, 2018 § permalink

In my neighborhood, there’s a school for the French. Next to it is a French café owned by a French woman who smiles like a diamond sparkles and whose forearms drip and dangle with tattoos.  » Read the rest of this entry «

#959: I Am Chicago’s Newest TIF District

July 27th, 2018 § permalink

TIF districts, that bugaboo of municipal financing that leeches billions from our tax revenues, are in the news again.

I’ve written about TIF districts before, and my Chicago Corruption Walking Tour takes people to the Bloomingdale’s downtown to show how this program meant for blighted, impoverished areas gets turned into mayoral pet projects for the wealthy. Cook County Clerk David Orr recently unveiled his latest TIF report, showing that now one-third of city property tax revenue is poured into these discretionary slush funds.

One in four properties in Chicago is in a TIF district, declared by the city to be so blighted special measures are needed.

How easy is it to get declared TIF-eligible? According to a 2016 Iowa Law Review article “Is Tax Increment Financing Racist? Chicago’s Racially Disparate TIF Spending,” city employees tasked by Chicago City Hall with reviewing whether an area qualifies for a TIF district have never turned in an answer other than yes. Never. Not for the six TIF districts Harold Washington wanted looked at, the one Eugene Sawyer approved, the 163 in place by the time Richard M. Daley left office or the current 143 fewer-but-larger TIF districts under Rahm Emanuel.

There are standards of course, both to be determined “blighted” and eligible for TIF or a “conservation area” that’s not blighted but still eligible for TIF. The reviewers have 13 conditions to review. If they find five, an area is blighted. They only need three for a conservation area, but the TIF will be just as TIF-y. Conditions they look for include structures older than 35 years, an area constructed without a community plan and conditions of dilapidation or deterioration.

Over 35, no real plan, showing signs of age and wear? I could be a TIF district, I joked.

So I decided to see if I could, reviewing the 13 conditions city reviewers have to check through before they can report back to the mayor that any area in Chicago is A-OK, 100-percent TIF-worthy. » Read the rest of this entry «

#958: Chess Dogs

July 25th, 2018 § permalink

Across from a chalet-style law firm with the old butcher’s shop name “Schmidt Metzgerei” still written above in font as close to German Gothic as nailed-up tiles can muster, next to a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple founded by Japanese-Americans returning after imprisonment in American concentration camps during WWII, there is a valley of chess tables with dogs on them. » Read the rest of this entry «

#957: Kinder Bueno on the Edge of the World

July 23rd, 2018 § permalink

We sat on a rough cement ledge in the parking lot, slowly chewing candy.

Geographically, the lot looked more like it belonged to the walk-in clinic than the bakery. A large sign made of the corrugated plastic used on the yard signs of the candidates rich enough to win declared though that this was in fact for bakery.

Geographically, we looked in the wrong place too. Montclare is Chicago, but looks suburban — strip malls and multi-lane divided highways no kid could wander across without getting a faceful of semi-trailer. Just across the street and down a block, a liquor store awning trumpeted the wares inside as the first stop free of City of Chicago taxes. We were on the border of the rest of the world, thoughtfully munching Kinder Bueno. » Read the rest of this entry «

#956: Who Was Who?

July 20th, 2018 § permalink

The book smells delicious, that combination of wood rot and dust every hankerer after old volumes knows well.

It’s a “Who’s Who in Chicago and Vicinity” (Enlarged to Include the Entire State of Illinois) from 1941. I’m flipping through a pound of pages and decades of history, life stories laid before me in dates, figures and antiquated abbreviation systems.

And I have no idea who these people are. » Read the rest of this entry «

#955: Churches on the Little Calumet

July 18th, 2018 § permalink

In Altgeld Gardens, the roads curve.

It’s an odd realization in a town snapped famously to a grid. But here in the far south south so south South Side crossing a street across the river takes you from Riverdale the Chicago neighborhood to Riverdale the separate municipal jurisdiction, in a housing projects that gives low-income families homes by poison and industrial waste sites, butted against a forest preserve where old men from the projects or the neighborhood glare steadily as they fish rotted waters, the roads curve.

One crackles. » Read the rest of this entry «

#954: The Long Ride of the Pullman Porter

July 16th, 2018 § permalink

“Daddy,” the little girl said, lolling in her father’s lap. “Is this going to be a long one?”

He shushed her gently as the movie and several more questions began. Eventually, he let her go to scamper through the house-museum and run up and down the, in her words, “too many stairs!”

The room went quiet. Black history was about to begin. » Read the rest of this entry «

#953: The City Under

July 13th, 2018 § permalink

It was a natural turn for him, odd for us.

The wife, her father and I had agreed upon a suitable location for dinner and then strode further down the basement. Wordlessly, he turned. Wordlessly, we followed him down the basement path.

With the expert nature of a downtown dweller, he led us through revolving doors and past closing government offices. We went by barber shops and dry cleaners, past empty shoeshine stands and stores for chintzy Chicago memorabilia before popping out feet away from the destination we had planned in the city below.

We took the Pedway. » Read the rest of this entry «

#952: Her Eyes

July 11th, 2018 § permalink

We usually part in the morning. She leaves me behind before dawn’s crack during the school year. I let her go as the sun beats overhead when summer break starts.

No matter who leaves first, mornings are the time my wife and I say goodbye, chat about dinner and become our own selves for the day.

This week, though, she has business downtown. So I have company along my morning commute, the ‘L’ path among trees and towers. We rode the train together. My train. And I wonder if she saw. » Read the rest of this entry «

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