Who benefits from casino locations?

Chicago is finally going to be able to have a casino operating within the city limits, yet that doesn’t mean the politically partisan infighting is anywhere near to being complete.

Where, oh where, in Chicago will this become a reality?

Because Chicago is a big city. Now we get to fight about just where it ought to be located.

JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY is prepared to make an argument about how their neighborhood is the choice location that ought to provide Chicago with the potential economic benefits that a casino can create.

Of course, those arguments are going to be countered with quarrels about how putting a casino in somebody else’s neighborhood is a sure-fire way to ensure that a casino would fail to produce any benefits.

After all, nobody wants to go there!

We’re going to be hearing a lot of these arguments in coming months. Because while people will talk about city-wide benefits from gambling and a casino, they’re going to want to have the perks coming from their own neighborhood. Chicagoans aren’t really united enough to work together for our collective betterment.

WE’D JUST AS soon see each other get screwed over, if it means we can be the ones who come out on top.

That’s why I wonder if the debate over locating a casino will be as long and drawn-out as the fight has been over whether to let Chicago have a casino at all.

There are those who always argued the whole point of casinos was to provide economic benefits to isolated communities that can’t attract any other kind of economic development projects.

They’re the ones who took their opposition to a Chicago casino all the way down to last week’s Legislative vote that permitted the city to have gambling somewhere within their limits.

IT’S INTERESTING TO see Gov. J.B. Pritzker argue against putting a casino anywhere near downtown or the McCormick Place convention center. He said this week he wants a Chicago casino put out in one of the isolated neighborhoods that otherwise wouldn’t have any kind of attraction to draw people within their boundaries.

In short, he’s following the line of logic that Illinois originally had back when it placed casinos in places like East St. Louis or Metropolis.

Although there are other people who think that placing a casino downtown or near the convention centers is the way to ensure that large numbers of Chicago tourists have easy access to the place. Why place a casino at an isolated location where it would be difficult for anybody except for those who already live nearby to attend?

It’s the argument I’ve heard about developing a casino at a South Side location, particularly if we’re talking about the far Southeast Side 10^th Ward.

WHO’D MAKE THE trip to the East Side neighborhood if they weren’t already there. Although there are others who argue that the neighborhood’s proximity to the Illinois-Indiana border and the casinos that have cropped up in Hammond, East Chicago and Gary, Ind., would mean we’d be able to steal away business from Indiana.

In short, get people to quit venturing across the state line when they feel the urge to gamble. Stay in Illinois, and keep your losses here.

Of course, consider that other casinos would be permitted in the nearby south suburbs, Waukegan, Rockford, Danville and Williamson County in Southern Illinois. We’re bound to wind up putting casinos just about everywhere – making it all to easy for people to blow their money on games of chance.

Which could result in the notion of true economic development coming about from drawing real businesses to one’s community – instead of a chance at a job parking cars at the casino or keeping the casino’s buffet well-stocked. Because those are the kind of jobs most likely to be made available from a casino construction somewhere.

  -30-

Another piece of Chicago’s industry moves to far sout’east corner of city

Reports of a company that shreds scrap metal choosing to locate along the Calumet River in Chicago’s 10^th Ward really isn’t that surprising.

Remnant of Republic Steel plant whose site will someday have a scrap yard. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

What caught my attention in the reports about General Iron Industries is that the scrap yard is leaving its current location, which is along a portion of the Chicago River in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

WHILE I REALIZE that Lincoln Park hasn’t always been the upscale place for Chicago’s excessively wealthy to live (and at one point in the 1960s was close to evolving into an ethnic enclave for people of Puerto Rican descent), it makes me snicker that such an industrial company was ever located there to begin with.

It is a reminder that lakefront (and riverfront) property once was viewed as prime sites for industry. You could bring in your raw materials on barges and dump your waste into the water.

That is, until all those pesky environmentalists started spewing their rhetoric about the need for clean water and public health. How times change!

Which is why I’m sure General Iron is moving on from their long-time site. They’re no longer going to have to listen to the complaints from area residents who can’t stand the sight of piles of scrap lying around near their million dollar-plus homes and the stench of certain metallic odors that can waft through the air.

Salt piles amongst area's cleaner substances

NOW, THEY’RE LOCATING to a place that long has been a prime location for all the kind of industry that no one – if they can at all avoid it – wants to live in proximity to.

Specifically, they’re moving to a site along the Calumet River in the East Side neighborhood; that part of Chicago where you’re south of Lake Michigan altogether and the eastern boundary is State Line Road (a.k.a., the Illinois/Indiana border). They’re actually going to be on part of the site that once was Republic Steel – the site of that Memorial Day 1937 labor protest that ended with police beating dozens of picketing union members and killing 10 of them.

Along the Calumet River

It is a place where the locals are used to certain foul stenches wafting through the air. But since they don’t have “million-dollar homes” in places like the East Side or South Deering, the political people don’t seem to care. Where else would one find a sub-neighborhood literally known as “Slag Valley” because of the piles of iron slag and petroleum coke that lie out in the open near homes – no matter how much the locals complain.

I’m familiar with the area because it is the part of Chicago that is my birthplace. Specifically, the South Chicago neighborhood, but I have cousins who live in all the other neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward.

I KNOW FULL well how paying a visit to certain members of the family can be an unpleasant experience – and not because those cousins are annoying. It’s because the stink can be overpowering, and the sight of waste can be unpleasant.

Of course, this attitude is because much of the industry that sparked development of such neighborhoods has long withered away.

There no longer are steel mills working round-the-clock, and local residents justified the unpleasantness of the environment as evidence that they had working-class jobs that actually paid a living wage.

I am the grandson of two such men who worked in steel mills for a living, which is how my family developed an attachment to the area – it was near their jobs. Some of the old-timers who remain claim that old days of pollution were bearable because it was evidence they were employed.

BUT NOW THAT the jobs aren’t so plentiful, some people want to act as though we ought to be thankful for the few that remain. And may well try to act as though complaints about pollution are somehow elitist rants by people who have to right to think of themselves as elite.

When 10^th Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza says, “we’re tired of being the city’s dumping ground” (as she told the Chicago Tribune recently), I’m sure certain others in Lincoln Park are coping the attitude of “better you than me” in terms of having to cope with pollution.

Envision one-time police car soaring through air

How polluted is the part of Chicago my family hails from? One can’t help but note the continued failure of plans to turn the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks site into something economically viable – with some hints being that the pollution remaining from the plant that closed over a quarter-of-a-century ago is too toxic for serious development.

A place that too many Chicagoans regard as something utterly ignorable – except for when they stumble onto the old “The Blues Brothers” film and once again see that car-jumping scene over the 95^th Street bridge – which is only about 2 miles from the site where General Iron plans to set up its new home by 2020.

  -30-

EXTRA: Minimum wage continues to rise for fortunate few who work in Chi

I have known of teenagers who live in Indiana in the areas just along the state line with Illinois who always made a point of getting those summer jobs on our side of State Line Road. Illinois’ minimum wage is slightly higher – meaning more money in the paycheck.

The Wendy's and Popeye's fast food franchises located across the street pay better than this Indiana-based business

Now, the gap is going to become even larger. What with the city’s minimum wage continuing to rise so that anybody fortunate enough to get a job within the city limits will be able to claim significantly more money.

THE MEASURE THE City Council approved several years ago to boost the state-mandated minimum wage that must be paid to people working for Chicago-based companies took another rise on Sunday.

The first of July resulted in the Chicago minimum wage rising to $12 per hour – much higher than the $8.25 minimum wage called for by any company based elsewhere in Illinois.

Including those suburban places right up against the city limits. Or those places in Indiana that are right up against the East Side and Hegewisch neighborhoods of Chicago. Because the Indiana minimum wage remains the same as the federal level of $7.25 per hour.

Could it be that our very own businesses will be able to claim better-qualified workers because they’ll attract workers with their higher wage? And yes, I know that the Chicago minimum wage law is geared toward adult workers who are stuck in lower-paying jobs – teens can still be paid less.

Menial labor heads west TO Illinois

BUT I COULDN’T help but notice the study released Monday by the Illinois Economic Policy Institute and the Project for Middle Class Renewal. The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign-based academics say the increased salaries haven’t caused the harm that some feared. The idea that having to pay workers more would cost businesses financially.

Not quite the labor force

“As minimum wages in Chicago have increased, private sector business growth has kept pace – and in some cases exceeded – that of suburbs where the minimum wage didn’t change,” the study says, also pointing out that unemployment in the city proper has dropped slightly more than in the suburbs.

It will be intriguing to see how this trend continues, since the same City Council ordinance continues to take effect on July 1, 2019 – when the minimum wage rises to $13 per hour. As for those people who argue higher minimum wages will result in more menial jobs being done by machines, I’d argue those employers will want to mechanize their labor forces even if the minimum wage was reduced.

Political people, meanwhile, continue to argue for and against the idea of a $15 per hour minimum wage as a standard across the nation. An idea that will cause much arguing amongst our politicos – while they make me wonder how much better things are now, since I still recall my own teenaged days of a $3.35 per hour minimum wage.

  -30-

Cat food in the beef tacos? Or just nitwit nonsense from the nativists?

Perhaps I’m just taking trivial trash on Facebook far too seriously. But I have been getting outraged by a page meant to celebrate a pair of neighborhoods on the city’s Far South Side that has turned into a rant about the content of Mexican food.

The building still stands. The food does not. But some still feel compelled to take the cheap shots. Photograph provided by the Smokin', Chokin' and Chowin' with the King weblog.

The page in question is meant to give people a chance to share their memories of the South Chicago and East Side neighborhoods – which are the ones in I was born and which I still have some relatives living.

THERE IS ONE stream of thought now existing on the page that talks of the Mexican Inn – that triangular shaped restaurant at 95^th Street, Ewing Avenue and Avenue L – not far from that open bridge the Blues Brothers leaped over in that 1980 film.

The thread has been out there for months. But in the past couple of weeks, there are those individuals who have felt compelled to inform us that the restaurant used cat food in the preparation of its tacos and other Mexican (actually, more Tex-Mex than real Mexicano) food.

While some people say it wasn’t cat food as much as real-live kitties being cooked up in preparation of the Mexican dishes.

When some (actually many) people felt compelled to post items saying that such stories were nonsense, there were responses from the few insisting that EVERYBODY in the neighborhood knew all about this. It just had to be true!

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always known there are some people who are nit-witted enough to want to believe stupid stuff and tall tales, particularly if it is something hateful about another group. Perhaps their own lives are lacking that they feel the need to trash someone else to make themselves feel better?

And yes, the idea that some people are pathetic enough to want to rant about anything Mexican in nature is not a surprise. Particularly since the names of the individuals who were spewing these feline tales seemed to be (by my judgement, at least) Polish or Italian.

Probably people who voted for Donald Trump (17.05 percent of the 10^th Ward’s presidential vote last year went for The Donald, with some precincts exceeding 40 percent) and are upset about his recent political defeats on various issues.

But seriously, who feels compelled to spread old rumors and rubbish about a restaurant that – while an iconic part of life in the 10^th Ward – has been out-of-business for several years?

THERE ARE THOSE who say the Mexican Inn (which dated back to the early 1960s) was one of the first Mexican-inspired restaurants in Chicago, and it lasted several years into the 21^st Century.

I know some people of a certain generation (in their 60s or early 70s, and NOT of any Spanish-speaking ethnic orientation) who say the first time they ever ate a taco in their lives was at the Mexican Inn!

But while the building remains and there are some faint traces of the paint on the outside walls that used to advertise the restaurant, the food service has been long gone.

Even the more contemporary restaurant that the family tried opening in Dyer, Ind., has since gone out of business. From what I hear, many people felt the new restaurant was “too expensive,” although many of those people struck me as being cheap and complaining in the way that some can’t get over the fact that a Chicago Tribune no longer costs a quarter the way it did when I was in high school – and is actually now $1.99 per copy!

PERSONALLY, I REMEMBER eating there as a kid. Both when my family was still city-residing proper, and later when we had gone suburban (Lansing and Calumet City, to be exact) and made trips back to the city to “visit grandma” or other cousins.

In my mind, the Mexican Inn is a place where I could get some basic Mexican food. I have since found restaurants offering much more elaborate Mexican cuisine, but that doesn’t degrade the “Inn’s” memory to me. Which is why I hadn’t been there in years, and must admit to being shocked when I learned a couple of years ago that it was gone.

But other people, it seems, are pathetic enough to want to spread the trash talk. They’re not happy enough that the restaurant no longer exists – they have to piddle on its memory.

Although from my perspective, all they have really done is forgotten to unzip their pants first – leaving the equivalent of a wet spot all over the front of their trousers.

  -30-

How long until proposed Red Line extension turns local tempers all “red?”

It is one of those projects that has been discussed for years – extending the Chicago Transit Authority elevated commuter train lines deeper into the city’s South Side than they already go.
 

Proposed route for Red Line extension

On a certain level, the project makes too much sense. The commuter trains that help city residents get from place to place and are a common fact of everyday life in most of the city only go as far south as 95^th Street.

WHILE CHICAGO ITSELF usually considers 119^th Street to be its southern boundary and there are parts of the city at the southeastern corner where 138^th Street is the end of life as we know it and where suburbia begins.

Now as somebody who actually originates from that part of the city (born in South Chicago and with relatives scattered across the neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward), this is a project that I have long followed.

Because for people in the southeast part of the city, there are a few bus lines that pass through that eventually can take you to a place along the Dan Ryan Expressway where you can catch a Red Line train.

But it can be a slow, plodding trip (what with all those bus stops) and it can result in an hour-and-a-half journey to get downtown. There are parts of Will County or Gary, Ind., that have quicker connections to downtown Chicago via suburban commuter trains.

IT’S NO WONDER that those people who live near a Metra Electric line station in the South Chicago or South Shore neighborhoods, or in the Hegewisch neighborhood where the Indiana-based South Shore commuter line keeps its lone Illinois-based station, prefer to use those suburban-influenced services even though they're very much urban residents.

Which is why the idea of extending that Red Line train that now runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan to 95^th Street would be a life-altering experience for the Far South Side.

 

Metra lines more a daily life reality in Far South Chi

A direct CTA el train extension going to 130^th Street? Actual stations in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods – instead of having to take a bus to the west to catch a Metra Rock Island line commuter train in the Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhoods.

It sounds like nirvana (and I don’t mean the 90’s era rock band).

EXCEPT TO THOSE people who, while complaining about how isolated their part of Chicago often feels, will also be the first to complain about anything that brings about change.

They’ll be the ones who think of el trains as being something associated with “the ghetto” or artsy-fartsy North Side neighborhoods – and something they’ve managed to do without all these years.

I have heard from some of these people already. Although they have been muted largely because of skepticism that the city will ever get its act together and actually build the extension!

But will they get louder, now that talk is progressing to the point of figuring out where exactly new track would have to be built. City officials this week said they would allocate some $75 million for engineering studies. Which means figuring out what structures would need to be torn down.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported Thursday about the project – pointing out that 82 single-family homes and 19 multi-family properties are on a list of things that would need to be torn down to make room for 5.3 miles more of train track for the el extension.

The weekly business newspaper already has some comment from people who admit train service would be nice, but not necessary if it means they have to move.

Personally, I became an el proponent back during the stints I lived in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, and I often wonder how it is that my home base neighborhood, so to speak, has never been willing to demand such equal service.

May someday no longer be distant southern CTA outpost?

Except that too many people living out in the land where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept but is the place at the other end of the Chicago Skyway have become too used to their sense of isolation from the rest of Chicago – a concept whose time truly ought to come to an end.

  -30-

Labor Day is what we make of it

What should we make of Labor Day? The event that will provoke various celebrations of assorted types that probably say more about our own views than anything about the holiday itself.

RAUNER: Picking a lower-key scene for Labor Day

For the record, Monday is the day in which we will pay tribute to the workers of our society – those people whose labor helps make us the finest place on Planet Earth in which one can live.

OF COURSE, THERE also are those who find the very idea of honoring organized labor to be something subversive. That attitude comes out in the types of celebrations that will be held in various communities.

Take west suburban Naperville, where the parade to be held Monday morning is officially billed as the “Last Fling,” as though the day’s purpose is to have one last celebration before summer comes to an end.

The day is officially being sponsored in that community by a Kia auto dealership and is honoring the local park district as its grand marshal, although among its participants will be Gov. Bruce Rauner – not exactly the kind of politico with any interest in building up a favorable impression among organized labor interests.

The atmosphere in Naperville is likely to be different than what will take place in Calumet City – which usually has an end-of-summer parade that gives a bit of tribute to organized labor.

IT’S NOT THE kind of place that Rauner would choose to be in – likely because he knows the locals would boo and heckle him mercilessly if he were to show his face.

Can Sanguinetti come out on top ...

Which is probably why Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti will be the official state participant in that parade – I suspect her presence will be undetected because most of the locals won’t have a clue who she is or what she looks like!

The fact that Southpaw, the fuzzy green mascot of the Chicago White Sox, is also to appear in the Calumet City parade will probably be seen as a bigger deal.

Of course, some people couldn’t wait until Monday to celebrate Labor Day.

... or will Southpaw top her in Calumet City?

TAKE THE PARADE held Saturday along Ewing Avenue in the 10^th Ward – where Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza managed to coordinate the first Labor Day parade held in the far southeast corner of Chicago in the past two decades.

The East Side neighborhood and surrounding communities still have organized labor leanings, even though the number of local residents employed in steel mills or factories isn’t anywhere near as many as it used to be.

It’s more a neighborhood of people who used to be able to live off their brawn, and in many cases complain that they can’t still do so.

Then again, let’s not forget that the last municipal elections saw Garza, a Chicago Teachers Union member, win her election against former Alderman John Pope because of her union ties – which also saw local residents vote strongly in favor of dumping Rahm Emanuel as mayor.

IT’S DEFINITELY THE kind of place that would want to celebrate the concept of organized labor. Which is why they felt compelled to get the jump on celebrating the holiday.

Pullman, the home of Labor Day?

That, and the fact that there is an event scheduled in the nearby 9^th Ward, the Pullman neighborhood to be exact, that will take place on Monday. I’m sure that having competing Labor Day celebrations in neighboring wards (literally on opposite sides of Lake Calumet) would have seemed like a bit much.

Where in Pullman, the people like to remember that the remains of the one-time railcar factory was also the scene of a strike that some like to think of as the origins of celebrating Labor Day as an official holiday to begin with.

Unless you think it’s just another excuse to pull out the barbecue grill one more time before the weather goes bad and cook up some burgers; or steaks if you feel like splurging. Or turkey dogs if you’re some sort of health freak!

  -30-

What a plunge!!! Was it worth it?

It’s not something we hear that much of – a suicidal jump off the Chicago Skyway into the Calumet River.

That's quite a plunge from bridge to river. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

We’re more likely to hear of someone taking a plunge into the Chicago River – where the pollution likely would infect them with something more deadly than exposure to icy-cold water.

PART OF IT is that the Skyway is 10^th Ward – that far southeastern corner of Chicago that often feels ever so isolated. Plus there’s the fact that getting onto the Skyway isn’t that easy without a car. And even with one, there really isn’t a place to park it before jumping – you’re likely to get hit by a motorist somewhere along the 7.8 mile stretch before you can take the leap.

Unless you want to stop off at the McDonald’s franchise on the Skyway near the Illinois/Indiana border. How depressing would it be for one’s final image of life to be Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar? Or to learn that the particular McDonald’s franchise has gone out of business. No final glimpse of “Mayor McCheese” for you, bud.

So it is with that premise in mind that I read the news report from the Chicago Sun-Times about the person who got onto the Skyway, then took a plunge into the Calumet River.

Which for all I know is even more contaminated with industrial waste than the Chicago River ever was.

The Calumet River, a place where salt and sludge are stored openly

OF COURSE, CONSIDERING that the Chicago Skyway toll road is nearly 200 feet in the air, that would be one heck of a plunge – one that theoretically could kill someone before being exposed to the Calumet River water.

I was surprised to learn that the person who jumped Monday afternoon was actually still alive when pulled from the water by Chicago Fire Department rescue crews.

Taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital, the person was listed in critical condition initially, but then later died. Officials were not immediately willing to identify the woman, but said it is an apparent suicide.

Now I don’t know anything more specific about this incident other than what the Sun-Times was able to publish on their web site. I don’t know anything about who this individual was – or why she felt that life wasn’t worth living any longer.

The area bridge most people know - the Blues Brothers

ALTHOUGH IT WOULDN’T shock me to learn in the future that some of my cousins, aunts or uncles who still live on the Southeast Side may well have come into contact with this individual at some point in their lives.

Neighborhoods like South Chicago, the East Side, South Deering and Hegewisch do have the feel at times of isolated rural towns – feeling cut off from the rest of the city and sometimes even from themselves.

I do sympathize with this person, wishing they could somehow have found something in life to make them realize just how much it is worth living.

I know in my own case, the recent death of my brother has had me pondering more often in recent weeks about what the afterlife, if there is any, is truly like.

Truly an isolated part of Chicago

BUT IT ALSO has me convinced of the need to make what is left of the rest of my life as worthwhile as possible.

Because I suspect if there is an afterlife and I am destined to meet up with my brother again, he’ll be waiting for me and would pound the living daylights out of me if I were to let my loss of him totally devastate me into accomplishing nothing else with my time alive on Planet Earth.

I’d like to believe that the most significant thing I accomplish in my life has yet to be done. That’s the best way I can think of to pay tribute.

  -30-

Memorial Day “Massacre” a bad memory of how ugly labor tensions once were, and don't need to go back to

Perhaps it’s all appropriate that this Memorial Day holiday weekend comes right as tensions between organized labor and Illinois’ new Republican governor have reached a height that we don’t have a clue when our state officials will be able to put together a balanced budget for Illinois government.



Police attack? Or self-defense? Photo provided by AFL-CIO

We have a governor who seems determined to undermine the influence of labor unions (even if he realizes that “right to work” legislation is mere fantasy) to the point that the Democratic majority in the General Assembly is digging in politically on so many

issues.

SO MANY POLITICAL hotheads. The only thing I feel safe in saying is that there won’t be a state budget enacted by the Legislature by the Sunday deadline.

But how hostile are our labor/management relations these days?

This seems like a time to remember the Memorial Day holiday of 1937. On that day some 78 years ago (the actual holiday that year came on May 30), labor/management relations reached a low point; one that we ought to feel fortunate we haven’t sunk to this far.

That was the day that labor union members picketed outside the Republic Steel plant that used to exist at 119^th Street and Avenue O in the East Side neighborhood.

Who doubted this account 78 years ago?

REPUBLIC STEEL OFFICIALS were adamant about not letting their employees have labor union representation – even though U.S. Steel had given in.

When protesters refused the steel mill management’s orders to go away, they called the police. Who eventually opened fire, then chased away and beat many of the protesters. In all, 10 mill workers were killed and more than 60 people wound up in area hospitals.

If not for the 1968 police activity against protesters of the Democratic National Convention, we’d probably still be talking about this act of police brutality every time a cop does something silly.

Does this poster pay tribute to workers? Or subversives?

It’s fortunate that the Illinois Labor History Society has managed to get ahold of and preserve the newsreel footage that was shot that day. Or else some of us might be inclined to believe the management line that claimed the union-sympathizing protesters were attacking the police – who were merely trying to defend themselves from an unruly mob!

BECAUSE MANAGEMENT WAS merely trying to protect their ability to make the highest profit possible – and ought to be entitled to think of anything that cuts into their bottom line as something subversive that needs to be eradicated.

Some of the nonsense rhetoric we hear these days bears a resemblance to the anti-labor rhetoric of old. It would be overly simplistic to say that nothing has really changed, and that this is merely management trying to get government to give back its old authority over its workers.

Although I’m honest enough to concede that it is highly unlikely that Gov. Bruce Rauner has the Illinois State Police all lined up and prepared to attack anybody who speaks out against his negative labor union talk.

Even though I’m sure there are some ideologue-types who fantasize about such actions, wishing they could “get medieval” on all that organized labor talk.

I SAY THAT because I have noticed in the past how people try to discount the violent activity of that “Memorial Day Massacre” whenever the local neighborhood residents hold their annual service to pay tribute to those workers who were killed.

I have covered the East Side event a couple of times as a reporter-type person (although I didn’t go to this year’s event held two weeks ago), and people from outside the neighborhood always want to think there was something subversive at work on that day.

His poor play that day caused the 'massacre'

Instead of accepting the fact that these were neighborhood residents whose bottom line was to work at their jobs to try to earn a living! Anybody who finds that to be subversive is really ever-so-un-American themselves; and definitely not espousing ideals that those soldiers who made the "ultimate sacrifice" actually fought and died for.

 

Either that, or they’re clueless enough to think that “Memorial Day Massacre” merely means Game One of the 1985 NBA Championship Series when the Boston Celtics beat the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers 148-114.

  -30-

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hilding Anderson, Alfred Causey, Leo Francisco, Earl Handley, Otis Jones, Sam Popovich, Kenneth Reed, Joseph Rothmund, Anthony Taglioni and Lee Tisdale. Working stiffs, or criminals? Depends on who you talk to.

Does your neighborhood “matter enough” to get mention by Old Navy?

I still remember a dispute I had once with one of my editors at the City News Bureau of Chicago of old with regards to identifying neighborhood names within stories.

 

The t-shirt take, ...

I believed then (and still do) that telling where something happened in Chicago is significant, and that since Chicago is such a neighborhood-oriented city it helps to know the 77 official (and 120-plus unofficial) neighborhoods that comprise the city.

MY EDITOR DISAGREED, saying she believed that some neighborhoods just weren’t well-known or significant enough to be worth mentioning.

Lincoln Park and Bridgeport? Yes.

Clearing? Probably not, as opposed to just thinking of it as the place where Midway Airport jets.

And as for the East Side? Hell no, because it’s too confusing for those marketing-oriented geeks who want to think of Streeterville as the New East Side, compared to the neighborhood so named because it is the community located east of the Calumet River.

I COULDN’T HELP but remember this decades-old newsroom discussion on Monday when I read a Chicago Tribune report about the “controversy” arising over a new t-shirt being sold at Old Navy stores.

Personally, I don’t shop there. So I wouldn’t have known firsthand. But it seems the store that likes to think it is hip and happening (or whatever cutesy terms are used to mean the same thing these days) has a new Chicago-oriented t-shirt.

It is an outline of the city limits, with neighborhood names printed on it in a crude approximation of where those neighborhoods are located.

You can wear a trendy map of Chicago on your chest, if you so wish!

EXCEPT THAT THE map is so crude that there’s no way one could use the illustration to tell where anything is in the city.

Also, the map only designates 21 neighborhoods or communities – far fewer than the aforementioned number of neighborhoods that actually exist within Chicago.

 

... as opposed to the real thing!

Which means most people don’t even get to see their neighborhoods included.

Live in Rogers Park, Logan Square, Sauganash, Humboldt Park, Pilsen, Canaryville, South Shore, Pullman or Hegewisch – just to name a few? Forget it, you’re not on the list.

I WOULDN’T HAVE realized how significant some think Lincoln Park was, except it comes across as SO BIG on the map. While Hyde Park is so dinky – it barely fits into the South Side mix.

Personally, as someone who is a native of the 10^th Ward (South Chicago, with relatives in the East Side, South Deering and Hegewisch), I find it comical that the entire southeast corner of Chicago gets designated as “Lake Calumet.”

Although considering that the key element that unites the 10^th Ward neighborhoods is their proximity to Lake Calumet and the Calumet River, that’s not the most inaccurate description of the area.

I’m more intrigued by the description of “Polish Village,” which according to the t-shirt is northwest somewhere between Belmont Heights and Lake View.

NOW I’M AWARE that there are still traces along Milwaukee Avenue of the Polish ethnic neighborhoods of old that used to dominate the Northwest Side. Although I’ve never heard of a specific community bearing that name.

If anyone can tell me of a neighborhood by that name, I’d like to know. Otherwise, I’m going to presume it a generic name for the area. (It is one of the unique aspects of Chicago that even at age 49, there are still new things I learn about the city).

 

Is the whole of North Side "Wrigleyville?"

Then, there is the area on the t-shirt designated as “Stockyards.” Which refers to the area just south of the Bridgeport neighborhood where stockyards used to exist, but is now the Chicago Stockyards Industrial Park.

It’s kind of a shame that the actual neighborhoods around there didn’t get included.

AS IN THE Back of the Yards and Canaryville neighborhoods.

Personally, I think those are two of the most off-beat neighborhood names in all of Chicago. Definitely more interesting than those North Side-oriented people who want to say they live in Wrigleyville – no matter how far away from Wrigley Field they actually live.

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