EXTRA: Are you sure foreigners are taking over everything in this nation?

I spent my Saturday afternoon in the Pilsen neighborhood, checking out the set-up along 18^th Street and the Mole de Mayo festival.

McDonald's on a street named for Cesar Chavez, or ...

It’s an event intended to give various restaurants a chance to show off their special recipes for that uniquely Mexican dish – mole. That mix of the cocoa bean and assorted spices mixed into a sauce served atop chicken, turkey or other meats.

... mariachis playing in between Giordano's and Subway? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

IT HAPPENS TO be a personal favorite of mine, and I was anxious to try unique variations on the dish (which my mother often served atop chicken with rice).

But the part of the day that caught my attention was the ethnic and racial blend of people that turned out to what some people would want to believe is the ultimate Mexican neighborhood in Chicago.

Chato's for pasta, along with ...

Just as many white people of assorted ethnicities showed up and gave the mole a try. The fact that this one-time immigrant enclave that has been through so many ethnicities during Chicago’s history truly is going through gentrification.

... Memo's for hot dogs

For it seems there were so many mixtures of the old (being the Mexicans who have been a part of Pilsen since the 1950s) and the new (upper-scale individuals who like the idea of a city address not too terribly far from jobs downtown (it’s about a 15-minute ride from “the Loop” to the 18^th Street CTA ‘el’ train platform).

I’M STILL TRYING to figure out the most off-beat sight I saw – the stage on 18^th Street where I saw a female mariachi band perform, located in between Giordano’s and Subway franchise restaurants.

Or the McDonald's franchise located on Chicago's Cesar Chavez Street.

A faded Mexican mural on a barbecue joint

The conservative ideologues who would have you think that the foreigners, especially all those dreaded Mexicans, have “taken over” this country ought to see these sites. It would go a long way towards shutting them up – except that the ideologues usually don’t worry about having fact to back up their rhetorical trash.

I also couldn’t help but notice several restaurants in the neighborhood being operated – based on their names – by people of Mexican ethnic origins. But who are serving up most definitely un-Mexican foods.

Still sights w/in Pilsen ...

PASTA AND HOT DOGS, to be exact. Assimilation at work. Perhaps somebody figures that even Mexican-Americans are anxious for something else to eat, even though the ideologues might have inane thoughts about serving up burritos.

Now I know some people see these sights and they get scared. They’re afraid the white people are going to drive up the rents and make it too expensive for others to afford to live there.

Although there has to be a mid-ground we can reach between a neighborhood remaining an ethnic enclave and becoming the latest version of Lincoln Park – which itself was once a Puerto Rican neighborhood back in the days when Pilsen had an overflow of Czech immigrants and it made sense the neighborhood was named for one of the largest cities in what is now the Czech Republic.

... that I'm sure will manage to offend ...

It was pleasing to see so many interacting with good behavior.

I DIDN’T SEE any bad incidents, and in fact there wasn’t even a heavy police presence.

I saw two lone officers walking along 18^th Street, and they said it was a pleasant afternoon. Which is something I'm sure the ideologues will refuse to believe can occur in an ethnic enclave in Chicago. We are, after all, the "murder capital" of the country -- even though it's really St. Louis, with Baltimore and New Orleans close behind.

... the ideologue idiots amongst us

Not even the presence of $5 beers got people to misbehave. Perhaps it was the presence of all the food that kept people from acting up. Or at the very least, kept us all stuffed to the point where none of us would have felt compelled to start up any trouble.

Although I have to admit to one thing – despite not being displeased with anything I ate or drank, I still have to say; none of the moles compared to the way my mother use to make them.

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Too safe? How about too costly?

I’m not a regular reader of The Onion (that one-time paper-turned-website filled with attempts at parody), but I couldn’t help but stumble across one of their recent attempts at humor about our neighborhoods.

Humboldt Park on display in this 2008 film

For The Onion last week gave us an account of a woman who lives in the Humboldt Park neighborhood who thinks that the recent efforts toward gentrification have made the neighborhood too expensive for her to live in.

OR, AS THE parody attempts to portray it, the neighborhood is, “too safe for her family to afford.”

It seems that this account is mocking of those people who criticize gentrification. Because who in their right mind would up upset about the safety of a neighborhood? Or would deliberately search for a more violent place to live in order to save money?

Which may well make the people who came up with this particular account as much a part of the larger problem as anyone else. They’re definitely part of the solution!

Because the issue with gentrification that causes so many people to be resentful of the concept is that it comes across as officials willing to upgrade a neighborhood in search of a higher economic demographic – which often comes across as a more Anglo-oriented ethnic class of people.

AS THOUGH NO one wants to be bothered to make a neighborhood better for its current residents if those people happen to be a little too dark complexioned for the tastes of the kind of people who make their money from real estate development.

In the real Humboldt Park, that is the prevailing attitude that is going about.

Humboldt Park is a northwest side neighborhood that back in the mid-to-late 1960s became the center of a Puerto Rican community for Chicago. Many of them moved from places like Lincoln Park when that neighborhood began its upscale trend.

There are those current neighborhood residents who wonder if the fact that many upper-scale, somewhat monied, residents have moved in during recent years means that history is trying to repeat itself.

SO THE ONION finds humor in quoting a woman saying she now feels safe when she walks to the grocery store. Which is a bad, bad thing for her.

If gentrification were to take full effect, would this icon disappear?

I did find some absurdity in the name that the parody account gave to this mythical woman – it most definitely is not anything with origins in Puerto Rico or Latin America.

Because if anyone were really going to be complaining about the gentrification trend, it would be someone of those ethnic origins. Who may have to wonder where they’re now headed.

Perhaps Jefferson Park? Could it be that someday, the Puerto Ricans will be chased out of Humboldt Park and wind up living in those neighborhoods that ring around O’Hare International Airport?

WILL FUTURE GENERATIONS of Chicago residents complaining about airport noise and the idea of jet fuel dumped on their homes express themselves in Spanish-accented English?

Let’s not forget that this particular ethnic tension was partially behind the outcry earlier this year that chased the Riot Fest event from Humboldt Park!

Not that this tension is unique to Humboldt Park. The whole concept of gentrification bothers those who feel like they’re only permitted to live in neighborhoods that are decrepit – usually due to age and neglect and the idea that they’re not worth maintaining anymore because of the demographic of the current residents.

At least until someone figures out a way to get someone else to overpay for the concept of living in places that have always had a certain advantage throughout the years – proximity, aided by mass transportation, to downtown Chicago!

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Are we chasing people away from neighborhoods, or eliminating them?

I'm trying to figure which story I stumbled across this weekend is the most tragic.

I think it is the subject material for the Chicago Sun-Times' columnist Mark Brown, who wrote this weekend about 46th Ward Alderman James Cappleman.

HE REPRESENTS THE Uptown neighborhood in the City Council, which historically had developed a reputation as a place where the down-and-out of our society wound up living because they didn't have any other options.

That image bothers Cappleman, who appararently would prefer it if his north lakefront ward had something more along the line of a youthful or hip reputation such as something like Lake View, if not quite Lincoln Park.

To that end, Cappleman has informed the Salvation Army -- which often sends outreach trucks into the neighborhood to help distribute food to the needy -- that they're no longer welcome in Uptown.

Cappleman seems to think homeless people are deliberately making a special trip to Uptown just to take advantage of the trucks; whose purpose is to let people know of the wide range of services they can find if they visit a Salvation Army facility. Although he tries to tone down his rhetoric a bit in response.

AS THE SUN-TIMES reported, Cappleman is giving the Salvation Army one month to find another location to send their trucks. He doesn't seem to care where they send them, so long as they're not within the 46th Ward.

Salvation Army officials say they will comply. They're not looking to pick a fight.

But I'm not sure what will be accomplished by this move, other than some homeless individuals getting even less than they already have. Because I don't see them leaving the area, just because Cappleman thinks they're a blemish on his home neighborhood.

If anything, Cappleman may well be giving us a perfect example of why people are suspicious of efforts to revitalize urban neighborhoods. The "dreaded" (to some people) concept of "gentrification.

ALL TOO OFTEN, it comes across as an effort to chase people out of a neighborhood so that someone else can come in and enjoy its benefits.

And Uptown does have its benefits -- most particularly that eastern boundary also known as the Lake Michigan shoreline. Get the kind of people who pay significant types of money to live in places like Lake View or Rogers Park.

As for the individuals who get chased out, there are too many political people who seem to take the attitude that it just doesn't matter. Where they wind up is somebody else's problem -- as in they will then have to figure out a way to chase those individuals away to someplace even further out-of-sight.

Which is what too many of us think of someone like William Strickland, a 72-year-old resident of the Brainerd neighborhood (that's South Side, to those of you whose knowledge of Chicago doesn't stretch south of Soldier Field) who died early Saturday.

STRICKLAND WAS A man being kept alive by kidney dialysis treatments -- which keep his blood clean of the toxins that the rest of us dispose of through our functioning kidneys.

On Saturday, he was shot to death outside his home. Police told the Chicago Tribune they suspect someone was trying to rob him.

Not only did Strickland's family hear the gunfire, so did the driver of the shuttle bus that was waiting for him to come outside so he could be taken to his dialysis treatment.

This one hits home for me because my mother was kept alive by dialysis treatments, and she used to have a similar transport pick her up early three times a week so she could live a little longer.

SHE USED TO worry about taking a slip on the ice in the early morning hours. Being shot was something that would have gone beyond her imagination.

Yet it happened, most likely because someone thought he could get a couple of bucks from an old man.

There are those of us who get all worked up over criminal acts where the body count extends into the dozens. Yet to me, it is those who single out the most vulnerable who are truly venal.

Perhaps even more so than the current activity taking place in Uptown!

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Night baseball – How much is too much of Cubs for Lake View neighborhood?

It has been 20 years to the day that the Chicago Cubs played their first official night game at Wrigley Field, yet there is a part of the Lake View neighborhood psyche that is still stuck having to argue against the merits of baseball under moonlight.

Officials with Chicago’s National League ball club are preparing for yet another fight with the City Council over whether the strict city codes regulating night games ought to be loosened.

WHILE I CAN understand why the Cubs would want to have changes in the laws that limit the number of night games they can play each season, this is a case where I hope our city officials (particularly those who represent Lake View and the blocks around the ballpark that have informally come to be known as Wrigleyville) take a hard line and don’t change a thing.

The simple fact is that the concerns of neighborhood residents have to come before those of the ball club, and part of what gives Wrigley Field its “charm” (which has always been lost on me) is that it is such an integral part of its surrounding neighborhood.

Anything that hurts the neighborhood’s character will trickle down and hurt the ballpark atmosphere. It would be shortsighted to automatically give in to the Cubs just because they would like to be more like every other major league baseball club.

This postcard from the mid-1940s shows how integrated Wrigley Field was (and remains to this day) to its surrouding residential neighborhood of Lake View.

Under current city ordinances, the Cubs can play no more than 30 of their 81 home games each season after dark. While most teams play somewhere from 55-60 night games per year, the Cubs total already is an expansion from the original city laws that only permitted 18 night games per year.

BUT THE PART of the ordinance that the Cubs are most interested in having changed is the provision that forbids any of those night games from being played Friday or Saturday nights.

City officials argue the youthful population that dominates Lake View comes alive on those nights. Between area residents and the young people who live elsewhere but want to pretend they’re “hip” enough to live on the lakefront, the area’s taverns and nightclubs already are crammed to capacity.

The last thing local political people want is more of an influx of people on those nights, with roughly 40,000 more people trying to be a part of the atmosphere of attending a ballgame – then sticking around afterward to pack the bars even fuller.

Alderman Tom Tunney told the Chicago Sun-Times this week that while he understands the Cubs would benefit because more people can attend games played in the evening, he sees it as too much of a “burden” for his home neighborhood.

NOW I CAN already hear the arguments of Chicago Cubs fans (an irrational breed if ever one existed) who will claim that people who live in the neighborhood mostly moved there knowing that a stadium used by a professional sports team existed nearby. They should have taken the notion that Lake View is not some isolated place like the Sauganash or Hegewisch neighborhoods before they moved there.

And I will concede that while I have never lived in Lake View, I have known people who did, and many of them chose to live there for a time because they liked the idea of being able to walk to and from a Cubs game.

But that is all irrelevant, and it is wrong for the Cubs to overlook the needs of the Lake View neighborhood when studying their own situation.

One of the reasons the Cubs draw a national audience (unlike the White Sox, whose appeal ends once one leaves Cook County and northwestern Indiana) is because they play their games in a building that is different from any other stadium in use today. If not for the building, the Cubs would have little more charm than the old St. Louis Browns.

WRIGLEY FIELD’S CHARACTER is that it sits in a residential neighborhood that is well-kept and clean. Lake View has changed throughout the decades from a German ethnic neighborhood to a flirtation with becoming a Puerto Rican enclave (most of them were priced out and moved further west to the Humboldt Park neighborhood) to its current status as the neighborhood of choice for young, educated professional people.

Part of the reason they choose to live so close to a sports stadium is because the local laws make an effort to control the potential negative effects that such a building can have (although I have heard the complaints from local residents about Cubs fans who think alleys behind their homes double as public toilets).

If those people ever moved out and Lake View took a plunge or two down the economic status scale, it would lose its appeal to the Cubs, would no longer be a desirable place to have a ballpark.

Let’s be honest, if Lake View had not in the late 1970s undergone gentrification and the Latino community had been allowed to develop there, it is most likely that the Cubs would have abandoned Wrigley Field decades ago, and people would regard it similar to how they think of Comiskey Park – a decayed building that outlived its usefulness.

THE CUBS NEED the professional crowd that dominates the neighborhood in order to keep up the illusion that Wrigley Field is a desirable address.

And if the Cubs think that the restrictions of staging their events (which is what the ball games there have become) at Wrigley Field are not worth the hassle, then perhaps it is time for them to start looking seriously at other locations – one where they could build the kind of massive structure that could accommodate their needs distant enough from area residents that excess noise would not be created.

That is why on the South Side, U.S. Cellular Field is surrounded by a block in all directions worth of parking lots, and by a railroad viaduct to the west that separates it from the Bridgeport neighborhood. It provides something of a muffler for the residents of Bridgeport and Armour Square to make life near a stadium somewhat more bearable.

Now I know the Cubs (and many of their fans) don’t want that.

THEY LIKE THE idea of playing games in a building that is a holdover to a past era when stadiums were built on whatever plots of land could be purchased at an affordable price, and the stadium quirks were dictated by the size and shape of the plot.

If that means the Cubs have to play fewer night games than other major league teams because there are people who literally live across Waveland and Sheffield avenues from the ballpark who would be inconvenienced by a batch of drunken idiot Cubs fans at 10:30 p.m. Saturday, then so be it.

After all, the Cubs like to claim the backdrop of all those apartment buildings just beyond the outfield walls and bleachers is what makes the ballpark so beautiful and unique. If they really believe that, then they need to show respect for Lake View and not talk about wanting to dump where they eat.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Cubs already are able to play Sunday night games at Wrigley Field (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/baseball/cubs/1090220,CST-NWS-wrig05web.article) because of the demands of ESPN, which likes to stage a “Sunday Night Baseball” game and often likes the Cubs to be the team that plays in it.

The first official night game by the Cubs at Wrigley Field took place when they beat (http://mlb.mlb.com/content/printer_friendly/mlb/y2008/m08/d06/c3267159.jsp) the New York Mets 6-4, one night after what was supposed to be the first night game was rained out.

The circus-like atmosphere of baseball games staged at Wrigley Field dates back to the coming of lights (http://www.dailyherald.com/story/print/?id=226133), ending the era in which the Cubs took pride in being the only team that didn’t play after dark.

Pilsen is anything but fashionable

My news chuckle for the day came from a New York Times account of the Pilsen neighborhood and Chicago’s other Hispanic influences. Specifically, I find humorous the reference in the story’s lede to Pilsen being the “fashionable Latino neighborhood.”

Trust me when I tell you that any person of Latin American ethnic background who chooses to live in a Spanish-oriented neighborhood (In reality, we are scattered across the Chicago area in all types of communities) is not the least bit concerned with being “fashionable.”

AS FOR THE artsy types who in recent years have moved there because of the perception of cheap rent (it’s nowhere near as cheap as it used to be a couple of decades ago), many of them probably view the Mexican orientation of Pilsen as a drawback overcome by its close proximity (about a 15-minute elevated train ride) to downtown Chicago.

Anyway, here’s the link (http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/travel/29next.html) to the story, which is an interesting account of a continuously evolving neighborhood continuing to evolve.

Seriously, Pilsen is a one-time Bohemian community (Did you think a bunch of crazy Mexicanos named their neighborhood for the one-time capital of West Bohemia?) that throughout the years has been home to just about every eastern European ethnicity when they were immigrants.

Now, it is a neighborhood oriented to newcomers from Mexico.

THE REAL QUESTION is to wonder if the neighborhood will retain a Spanish-speaking flavor, or will it continue to evolve with some new immigrant group? Or will those artists come in, price everything out of range of lower-income Latinos, and turn the neighborhood into an artsy community.

In short, will they turn it into something truly fashionable? And does that make “fashionable” synonymous with “dreadful?”

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