Another Little Love Song, This Time to My Adopted City

Can you be nostalgic for a place before you've even left it? I don't know, but I've been feeling a little like that lately. I may be moving on next year, after eleven years in Chicago. On one level I'm ready to go, even looking forward to it. But the realization that this adventure might be coming to an end brings such power and poignancy to every moment, every experience, every breathtaking glimpse of the skyline by night. I love this city.

Tonight i went to Millennium Park and heard the Deep Blue Organ Trio at the Chicago Jazz Festival. Standing above the beautiful Pritzker Pavilion, listening to some fine music, catching just the slightest cool breeze on a hot summer evening, there was a moment when time seemed to stop, when the world seemed absolutely perfect.

The Deep Blue Organ Trio at the Pritzker Pavilion

Twilight at the Pritzker Pavilion

Sweet Attila's Comes To the RP

We like our ribbon-cutting ceremonies here in Rogers Park. Tonight was the grand opening of Sweet Attila's Bakery and the Growling Rabbit Café at Sheridan and Lunt (the site of the old Café Ennui). This event was part of Alderman Joe Moore's "Follow Me on Friday" series--a great idea that helps introduce people from the neighborhood to some of our many eating and drinking establishments. I don't usually go, but this time the invitation included the word "cookies." I had one of their delicious cheese and bacon mini-scones from the farmers' market a few weeks ago, and have the feeling i'll be visiting them on a regular basis.  

A Little Love Song to My Neighborhood

I envisioned this blog as a travelogue. Unfortunately, for the past few years and the foreseeable future my travels have been seriously curtailed by poverty and "terrible life choices." But i subscribe to the philosophy that all life is a journey with wonders to be seen, so until the gods rain money and plane tickets on me, i'll write about what i encounter on my daily travels, beginning with a walk along Clark Street in my neighborhood, Rogers Park on Chicago's far north side. 


I really like Clark Street. One day, a while ago, i suddenly realized that even though this is a very busy, commercial stretch, it doesn't have a Starbuck's. In fact, the mile-long section between Devon and Rogers is remarkably lacking in corporate branding: there's a McDonald's and a Subway, but that's about it. The only new construction i've noticed are a firehouse, a library, and a grade school. Of course, i'm gerrymandering a bit by cutting off the discussion at Rogers Avenue, just before you get to Walgreen's and the strip mall with a major supermarket (with its very own Starbuck's). But still. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-coffee or even anti-Starbuck's. I've been drinking black coffee since i was about nine years old, and i enjoy the occasional Starbuck's latte as much as the next guy. And it isn't like Rogers Park is a café- or even a Starbucks-desert, but it is incredibly pleasant to walk along this busy street and look in the shop windows and not see the same old stuff, the same old signage, the same old same old.  


So, in the absence of America's coffee-giant, what can you find on Clark Street? The street reflects the celebrated diversity of the neighborhood. The predominant influence is Mexican, with lots of taquerias and panaderias,  as well as the inimitable Paleteria La Monarca and Jessica's Western Wear, with its amazing array of cowboy hats and elaborate boots with toes so long and pointy that they could kick somebody in the butt from half a block away. But there are also fried chicken, Chinese, Thai, Nigerian, Peruvian, and Persian restaurants, and a diner that advertises the all-day availability of its famous omelets. There are laundromats, a Kosher sausage shop, produce stores, guys selling produce off the back of a pick-up truck who pause in their conversation to flirt (even with an old broad like me), a leather bar that's been there for over 30 years and a place right next door where you can buy the appropriate (ahem!) attire for a visit to said bar. There is a police station, a playground, and a magnet school for math and science (housed in what used to be an indoor flea market). There are clothing stores where the mannequins are too voluptuous for the windows of Ann Taylor or The Gap, auto repair shops, storefront churches, and a bicycle shop. The sidewalks aren't wide, yet they seem to have been made for strolling and pausing to look in shop windows. 


When i was a kid in Philadelphia, there was nothing i liked better than taking a walk on the avenue, looking at the shop windows full of shoes, clothes, cakes, and the acrobatic performance of the pizza guy, tossing the dough in the air and catching it. Clark Street recaptures that feeling for me. But it isn't some weird, frozen-in-time faux nostalgia. It's a reminder of how good it feels to live in a real neighborhood, a real community.