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-

Is there really a difference between a city neighborhood and a suburb?

That’s the question bopping through my brain these days, what with the questions being brought up about the mayoral aspirations of Paul Vallas.

VALLAS: Chicago enough to be mayor?

The one-time CEO of the Chicago Public Schools who also has worked in education in Philadelphia, New Orleans and Bridgeport, Conn., has had quite a life in many places.

BORN IN CHICAGO, it seems that Vallas is like many a Second City native in that he regards Chicago as home and his life always manages to bring him back to us – even though his work life has managed to take him to several places.

In fact, Vallas had his long-time home in the Chicago area in suburban Crestwood – which was his residence when he ran for lieutenant governor back in 2014.

Which is why it shouldn’t be shocking that some people are already trying to take Vallas’ mayoral aspirations down for the count by trying to make it seem that Paul has no right to think of himself as a Chicagoan.

WMAQ-TV this week reported how Vallas’ mayoral campaign doesn’t seem to have an office in Chicago. Campaign literature does offer up an address in the Chinatown neighborhood, but the television station couldn’t find local people aware of any political presence.

THEY DID FIND evidence that Vallas’ brother, Dean, has business interests at that address, and also in Crestwood. It also seems the Vallas for Mayor campaign, as it exists, does have a bank account – at a financial institution out in Plainfield.

Which, for what it’s worth, is a suburb not even located in Cook County (it’s most definitely Will, where locals consider Joliet to be the BIG city nearby).

So is Vallas unfit to even think of running for mayor of Chicago? Are we going to get something similar to the political strategy back in the 2011 election cycle – when people tried arguing that Rahm Emanuel wasn’t really a Chicagoan.

EMANUEL: Residency issue didn't work

After all, he was raised in the North Shore suburbs near Wilmette and did live in Washington, D.C. back when he was working for presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and also serving in the House of Representatives – albeit representing a district that covered the Northwest suburbs of Chicago proper.

THAT EFFORT ULTIMATELY failed, in large part because the courts ultimately found that Rahm was registered to vote at the residence where he continues to live – even during much of the time he was working in the District of Columbia.

While Vallas made a point of moving to the Lincoln Park neighborhood several months ago – so as to establish city residency so he could even consider being on the mayoral ballot for the 2019 election cycle.

It may be a lame issue. But then again, when there are roughly a dozen people talking seriously about trying to get their names on the ballot next year to run for mayor, perhaps they hope it will stick.

Particularly if it only manages to sway a few potential voters into erasing Vallas from their mental consideration for their vote. A few is all it will take in an at-large election in which no one will come close to a 50-percent-plus-one majority.

NOW I REALIZE why municipal elections are open only to city residents-proper. Suburbs have their own local governments. People ought to have a stake in the communities whose government business they want to do.

But there is a part of me who wonders if we ought to think of places like Calumet City, Cicero or Evanston as being similar to Hyde Park, Austin or Lake View. In terms of being small communities that comprise the greater entity otherwise known as the Chicago metropolitan area.

The idea that the Vallas campaign is at such an early stage it really hasn’t set up a full-time campaign office or established bank accounts for itself within the city proper for an election cycle that remains some eight months off (and we still have to vote for governor first) comes across as a non-issue.

Besides, if the Vallas campaign really is uncoordinated enough that it can’t put together a proper campaign office and account at one of the city’s bigger banks, then it likely is destined to become one of a fringe nature that we’ll most likely forget all about a year from now.

  -30-

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.

  -30-

Times are changing ethnically, and one alderman seems unwilling to resist

Mike Zalewski, an alderman in the Southwest Side 23^rd Ward, let it be known this week he will step down from his government post next month – just under one full year before his term comes to an end.

ZALEWSKI: Wants to go out on top!

Zalewski is in his fifth term as a member of the City Council. But like many of the so-called “white ethnic” officials, he’s finding the “ethnic” part of his home district changing.

ZALEWSKI IS NOW an official of Polish ethnic origins representing an area that is 67 percent Latino (mostly Mexican-American) composition. It seems he saw the result of the last month’s primary elections in a neighboring ward where the state representative who is brother to almighty Alderman Ed Burke managed to lose – to a Latino official who will now begin his political career representing an area of which he fits in with the majority.

It would seem Zalewski didn’t want to have a similar fate to Burke. So, he announced his intention to resign come May 31 – even though his term runs through early May of 2019.

He wants to depart on his own terms, and NOT as someone who got taken down by a growing ethnic population that no longer views him as “one of our own.”

Such circumstances mean that Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get to pick a replacement for Zalewski to serve through the next 11 or so months. Whoever that person winds up being will have the option of seeking a full four-year term in the 2019 municipal election cycle – and will be able to do so as an incumbent alderman.

BERRIOS: Ethnic loss can go opposite

NOT SOME OUTSIDER challenger seeking an open seat.

So in that regard, Zalewski is playing the political game according to the rules – in that he’s making it possible for the establishment to decide for themselves who will be admitted to the ranks of that political species considered by some to be among the most insipid creatures of all.

A real, live Chicago alderman!

But on the other hand, Zalewski is making a bold move that political people would not have even contemplated in the past.

BURKE: Sees own possible fate in Dan

CHICAGO’S ETHNIC AND racial composition is constantly evolving. There are many neighborhoods that once were something completely different than they are now.

Yet that doesn’t mean their political representation is always willing to follow along. In fact, replacing the old with the new often means the “old” goes kicking and screaming – with some insisting that some sort of foul conspiracy has occurred to remove them from office.

Seeing someone willingly acknowledge the change that has occurred in his neighborhood – one that he often clings to because it gave him a chance to run for a political office – seems to me to be a step in the positive direction.

Of course, these ethnic changes move in all directions.

CONSIDER THE FATE of one-time state Rep. Toni Berrios, whose Northwest Side legislative district by 2014 had developed from a Puerto Rican enclave to one that had some segments of upper-scale whites – many of whom that election cycle decided they’d like to no longer be thought of as an ethnic district.

State Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, wound up winning the support of people in the Logan Square neighborhood, and the woman who had been the first Puerto Rican female to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives went down to defeat.

A fate that Zalewski definitely wants to avoid.

He’d probably like to have an end similar to the one-time Alderman Vito Marzullo, who served more than three decades representing what once was an Italian ethnic community in Chicago that, by 1986, had become Latino.

COURT-ORDERED REAPPORTIONMENT brought about boundary changes that made it highly unlikely Marzullo could continue to be elected – so he retired amidst great fanfare in the City Council. Which also brought about a rookie politico in the form of Luis Gutierrez.

Who is only now stepping down from the seat in Congress he eventually rose up to. Which gave us the primary victory showing Gutierrez likely will be replaced by Jesus Garcia – who was amongst the backers of Dan Burke’s Illinois Legislative victor and himself becoming a Latino power broker who likely would have found someone to play political hardball against Zalewski; if he hadn’t had the sense to step down now.

These kinds of changes are going to continue in the near future. Because our city is not the same composition as it was some 50 or 60 years ago.

Even though the kind of people who’d be inclined to complain about Zalewski’s departure are likely of the sort who wish things had never changed, and that we still had the original “Mayor Daley” in charge – rather than trying to figure out which third-generation Daley will someday try to run for mayor.

  -30-

Does it boost City Hall's ego too much to order about the Chicago Cubs?

Reading the reports Wednesday about how the Chicago City Council spent significant amounts of time throughout the day debating the merits of the Chicago Cubs’ scheduling practices really makes me wonder why our aldermen feel like they have nothing better to do with their time.

Do the people of this downtown building gain too much ...

Seriously, you’d think that council members would be too busy to spend the amount of time they did contemplating exactly when the Cubs should play their ballgame Friday against the Milwaukee Brewers.

BUT THAT WAS the situation on Wednesday, when the council’s license committee discussed the issue, in advance of the full council taking up the issue for a final vote later in the day.

But then again, I’m sure there are some aldermen who get an emotional kick out of being able to dictate scheduling policy to the Cubs – whereas if any other alderman tried to do such a thing with their local ballclub (or even if the Chicago aldermen tried to tell the White Sox what to do), the response would be the ball club telling the politicos up what orifice they could shove their concerns.

At stake is the Cubs/Brewers weekend series that is scheduled to begin with a 1:20 p.m. ballgame on Friday. But the Cubs, seeing they’re in a pennant race with particular interest in fans in attending this particular ballgame, want it rescheduled as a night game.

As in starting time 7:05 p.m. People work for the day, and there probably could be an even bigger crowd for a Friday night game.

 

.... pleasure by telling these people what they can do?

THE PROBLEM IS that city ordinances that were crafted back when the Cubs gave up their “day game only” tradition at home back in the 1980s strictly limit how many night games can be played at Wrigley Field.

Not only that, the restrictions were put together to make the concept of Friday night and Saturday night ballgames at Clark and Addison streets a non-starter. Alderman Tom Tunney told the Chicago Tribune that the restriction is about giving non-Cub-related business in the Lake View neighborhood (all the bars) a chance to operate on weekend evenings without having to compete with the Cubbie fan crowds that otherwise take over the area 81 game days per year.

Some still seem to think Wrigley Field is lacking in light towers

Now I can appreciate how the Lake View residents living near the century-old ballpark can feel like the Cubs crowds are an annoyance that must have restrictions placed on them to prevent them from becoming the reason the neighborhood gets flushed down the societal toilet.

But I also get that if these people enjoy it as a perk that they live in close proximity to a stadium used by a major league ball club, they also have to accept some inconvenience.

THE REALITY IS that sporting events are scheduled mostly during the evening hours because that is when most people are capable of devoting time to actually attend them.

I don’t doubt other teams are wondering why city officials have any say in when a ballgame is scheduled, or whether it is played in sunshine or by moonlight.

This is one of those occasions when our aldermen get to order around Major League Baseball – as opposed to the times when baseball gets to push around the local government officials in the form of figuring out how to pay for building and maintaining the stadia that are used by these ball clubs.

Of course, the alternative for the Cubs to avoid such political nuisance would be to find a new site to build the stadium with full amenities that they could use to max out the revenues they take in from their fan base.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE even the Cubs realize that a significant part of their popularity is tied to playing their ballgames in the one-time home of the Federal League’s Chicago Whales and even the excess of day ballgames they play.

They’re baseball’s aberration, caused mostly by our aldermen acting in ways I’m sure they’ll claim are meant to benefit their constituents but also have the heavy hand of feeding their own political egos.

This Hall of Famer will be highlight for some

So the Wrigley Field faithful will turn out Friday night for their game against the Brewers, who still have their own chances to overcome the Cubs in the division title standings and could also gain a Wild Card slot into the National League playoffs.

Or, other baseball fans in the city may choose to see the last place-in-their-division Chicago White Sox take on the even-worse-in-their-division San Francisco Giants in a weekend series at Guaranteed Rate Field. For them, the Tim Raines bobblehead figurine being given away Saturday night may be the ultimate attraction.

  -30-

Chicago’s self-segregation hurts city’s chances of gaining future success?

I’m never sure what to think of people who want to point out the fact that Chicago is a racially- and ethnically-segregated city.

In this Chicago map, black people are blue, the whites are orange, and Latinos are the greens interspersed throughout. Map provided by Metropolitan Planning Council 

Oftentimes, the people who bring this argument up come from places that are so overwhelmingly white (compared to Chicago’s roughly one-third equal split between white, black and Latino) that the only reason they don’t have separate black enclaves is because they don’t have black people living there at all.

BUT I’M NOT going to deny the reality our city exists in a way in which people can avoid contact with individuals who aren’t exactly like themselves – unless they happen to wander into a nearby neighborhood to try out an ethnic restaurant.

Dinnertime may be the only time we integrate, before rushing back home to our fortress-like neighborhoods meant to keep out those not like ourselves.

This issue was the focus of a study by the Metropolitan Planning Council and the D.C.-based Urban Institute, which released a study Tuesday saying that Chicago is the fifth-most segregated metropolitan area in the nation.

I suppose we can take some joy in the fact that we’re better than the Milwaukee metro area (number four) and that places like New York or Cleveland are comparable, but it doesn’t really mean much.

THE STUDY, FUNDED in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that we often hear about if we pay attention to public television, tries to make an economic argument for increased integration of the multitude of groups that reside in Chicago.

A better-integrated city would mean more economic opportunity for all residents, implying those segments of our city’s society that now could be perceived as a financial drag on us all would actually provide a boost.

NEIGHBORHOODS: Chicago strength, or impediment?

Chicago-area residents would earn an extra $4.4 billion per year in income, the gross domestic product for the area would boost by $8 billion and we’d have 30 percent fewer homicides – but 83,000 more residents with bachelor’s degrees. Or so the study predicts.

Of course, achieving this theoretical economic growth would require some serious changes in the way things are perceived in Chicago.

FOR ONE THING, the concept of various ethnic groups each having their own unique neighborhood is something that often is thought of as a strength of our city – you can find people with ties to just about every place on Planet Earth in an ethnic community somewhere in the city.

I suspect if extraterrestrial life ever were found elsewhere in the galaxy, it would be just a matter of time before those outer-space lifeforms would immigrate to Earth, and set up residence in their own Chicago neighborhood.

Although would that add to the mixture of diverse Chicagoans? Or to the idea of segregation, since they’d be living off by themselves?

Chicago wouldn’t be Chicago, or at least the city we now know and many of us love, if we truly pushed for increased integration on racial grounds.

PERSONALLY, I ALWAYS thought one of the most interesting parts of “Boss,” the biography of former Mayor Richard J. Daley by newspaper columnist Mike Royko, was where he described the “ethnic state” nature of Chicago’s composition and how it affected the way we perceive things.

“You could always tell, even with your eyes closed, which state you were in by the odors of the food stores and the open kitchen windows, the sound of the foreign or familiar language and by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock,” Royko wrote.

That was Chicago of perhaps three-quarters of a century ago, yet in some ways, it hasn’t changed much. Except for the fact that black people used to be penned up into a single neighborhood (Bronzeville), rather than occupying much of the city’s South Side. With white and black neighborhoods often separated by Spanish-speaking enclaves to serve as a racial-tension reduction presence, of sorts.

A status that the study says “we need more deliberate interventions to accelerate our progress.” Although I don’t doubt that some knuckleheads amongst us would perceive those “interventions” as somehow being unnatural and against Chicago’s very character.

TAKE THE MOST recent presidential election results.

 

TRUMP: Has his Chicago backers

While Donald Trump may only have received 12.41 percent of the city’s vote, consider that some of the most intense white enclaves had precincts that gave him nearly 70 percent of the vote, compared to overwhelmingly black neighborhoods where he was lucky to get just over 1 percent.

Maybe it means the Trump mindset has established its niche in Chicago, and any effort to “desegregate” is going to be a long, drawn-out process that I likely won’t live long enough to see complete.

  -30-

We're all Irish on St. Patrick's Day, whether we want to be or not!

Saturday is the day we go overboard with the green, wearing shamrock symbols and even allowing our beer to be dyed to take on the tone of the Emerald Isle.

A past St. Patrick's Day, when Daley Plaza officials felt compelled to dye their water fountains green. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda.

It's St. Patrick's Day, and some of us will go about spewing stories about the Catholic saint driving the snakes out of Ireland. Most of us won't care about a "why" we're doing anything; we'll just want to eat, drink and be merry -- and perhaps get a peck of the lips  off some Irish lass who's in a particularly festive mood.

IN CHICAGO, SATURDAY is the day we'll get the official parade -- the one that ventures downtown along Columbus Drive (the Italian explorer gives up his ethnic character for the day to all the people who want to be faux Irish).

Personally, I don't plan to be anywhere near the parade -- and not because I'm experiencing some anti-Irish sentiment (if I did, there'd be no way I could bear daily life in Chicago). It's more because I just don't get into the idea of parades in general.

Although I will admit to twice having been at the St. Patrick's Day parade to see just how Chicago feels the need to celebrate those who come from places like County Mayo and don't feel compelled to make silly gags about sandwich condiments.

In both cases, I was out there as a reporter-type person. Back in 1993, I covered the parade back in the days when it was still held in downtown proper along Dearborn Street. In fact, that was the parade of which footage was included in the film version of "The Fugitive."

THE ONE IN which they felt compelled to use film snippets of then-Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to show the idea of a political person bloating his ego -- which is one element of what the parades are all about.

I also remember the parade from back in 2002 -- which was the one in which then-President George W. Bush felt compelled to fly in from Washington, D.C., to participate in. To the point where I still remember the heavy security that Secret Service officials put parade spectators through (all those metal detectors and searches) to try to ensure that there wouldn't be a lone gunman-type amidst the green-clad spectators who would suddenly jump out and take a shot at the President of the United States.

Which, if you think about it, would truly be pathetic -- a leprechaun-clad assassin or some fool covered in "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons suddenly wielding a pistol. Personally, I'd like to think that if such a situation had occurred, all the parade spectators in the area would have reverted to a drunken mob and would have jumped the attacker and beaten him silly.

Only place takes pride in its namesake river being green

That would have been a truly unique story -- instead of the one I actually wrote for my then-employer United Press International.

IN THAT STORY, Bush ultimately got into a car and drove off with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to Gibson's steakhouse -- where they ate a lunch that was far beyond my income level to afford (even though I still remember my editor thinking it inappropriate that I tried pointing out that fact in my copy).

Enough of reminiscing, though. The biggest-name pol we're likely to see on Saturday will be Gov. Bruce Rauner, who likely will figure out pretty quickly that not everybody falls for his "Blame Madigan" rhetoric with regards to state government problems.

The real trick is to think of why we feel compelled to celebrate this particular Irish occasion, and not only in Chicago. I'm aware that Boston and New York also will feel the need to celebrate -- and may even have delusions of grandeur into thinking they "do" the holiday greater than we do in Chicago.

Although considering that we in Chicago do more than just the official parade (which will be from Noon to 2 p.m. and will be broadcast live on WLS-TV, for those of you too lazy to make the trip downtown to see Irish step-dancers galore or that of yet another young lass from Beverly or Bridgeport wearing the sash of the St. Patrick's Day Parade queen, I'd argue we can't be topped.

WE'LL HAVE THE South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue through the Beverly neighborhood, or countless other celebrations that will take place in neighborhoods across the city and suburbs. I'm sure some will argue there are Pulaski Day parades to give Polish ethnics something to celebrate, and the assortment of Cinco de Mayo events for Mexican-Americans -- although I'd argue the latter have evolved into something so garish that it will rival all the St. Patrick's Day green for the Irish.

Parade became a plot element in film

Perhaps it is all good if it goes so far as to remind those of us in Chicago that we are an ethnic mixture. Which is something I have always felt added to what makes Chicago a special place.

In far too many places, people bellow out they are "American" without having any sense of where they're from or what they really are.

It almost makes all the green nonsense we're going to endure on Saturday just a bit more bearable.

  -30-

I’m looking to return to Chicago, no matter how much the very concept of such a move freaks some people out

One of the lessons I gained from my time some three decades ago working as a police reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago is that violence and stupid stuff can happen anywhere.

Too much variety in neighborhood life to ignore

As much as we want to believe that nonsense only happens in the Englewood and North Lawndale neighborhoods (with the bigots amongst us spewing nonsense about how “those people” just don’t know any better), there is no getting away from it.

THERE ARE BAD people amongst us no matter where we live, and certain circumstances can bring out the worst in anybody.

So when I read a recent Chicago Tribune commentary written by a person who tried rationalizing his recent move from the city proper to a suburban community, I couldn’t help but find his tone too over-the-top to take seriously.

Particularly since this person was also trying to urge other people to make the move. As though the 2-1 suburban/city ratio isn’t a large-enough gap.

Yet that person seems to think he can get away from violence. Even though it really has cropped up around me too often in life. The reality is that those of us in society who want to be influential are the ones who can stand up to stupidity and try to do something to fix it.

THOSE OF US who run are going to wind up finding that the violence follows us.

My birthplace neighborhood, heavily idealized

One aspect of this particular commentary that I found amusing is that I had my own stint living in the very neighborhood that he had fled from – Ravenswood and Albany Park.

It was one summer back when I was in college, and I can recall the neighbors warily warning me of “the gangs” that supposedly were running roughshod over the neighborhood.

I don’t doubt they were there. But I also remember that they didn’t bother with me, largely because I had no reason to bother with them. Maybe because I minded my own business, we co-existed.

I didn't flee because of this

IT MADE ME wonder how much of my neighbors, most of whom I haven’t seen since I left there some 32 years ago, was fear of the unknown. Besides, I see that that particular area has become a popular one for certain young professional types to live if they are not of an income bracket to afford Lincoln Park or Lake View.

How bad could it have been, even if there was a recent homicide that now taints the neighborhood in the minds of this one writer.

Perhaps it’s just a difference of opinion. But I have lived in places that have acquired a local taint because of a criminal act. I remember one day back when I was in Tinley Park when police stopped me and demanded some sort of evidence I belonged in the neighborhood.

It was the day (in fact, within the hour) that a man yet to be found to this day killed five individuals at a nearby shopping center. That Lane Bryant store where the slayings occurred is no more, but the rest of the area thrives. It certainly wasn’t enough to get me to flee the area.

BECAUSE THE TRUTH is best told by Martha and the Vandellas, who had the right idea when they sang, “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide.” You can’t live life in a plastic bubble – bad things happen even in there.

My own life story is that I’m born South Side (the Ed Vrdolyak version in the 10^th Ward, not the Mike Madigan or Beverly versions, as one person recently described them to me) and have lived in several neighborhoods of Chicago south and north, along with selected suburbs.

There even have been stints of my life in central Illinois and within the District of Columbia and I actually spend quite a bit of my time these days around Gary, Ind., due to my reporter-type work. Yet I always have felt a certain draw to the city proper – as though it is the reason why the rest of those communities exist to begin with.

And is why I envision the day coming when I return, yet again, to Chicago; which just has too strong a pull on me to ignore. Despite the plea of one who says, “I can’t find any good reason to live in the city,” I can’t justify going through life living in fear and ignorance.

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Long-time ethnic enclave turning white and wealthier, but is that a plus?

Gentrification is a label with negative connotations to some people, usually those whose long-time home neighborhoods get improved to the point where they can’t afford to live there any more.

Proximity to downtown makes Pilsen attractive to all

Some want to say there’s nothing wrong with upgrading a neighborhood. It ought to be desired.

BUT WHAT OF the situation where upgrade means creating improvements meant to attract newcomers, without any interest in improving life quality for the existing residents.

That seems to be the situation taking place in Pilsen, the long-time immigrant neighborhood whose character has evolved so much throughout the years and is undergoing yet another round of change.

Pilsen carries the name of a village now in the Czech Republic. Sure enough, it was once a Czech enclave in Chicago. It has been home to many ethnic groups as they first enter the United States. Since the 1960s, the neighborhood language has been Spanish – it has been a Mexican enclave.

But the DNA Info website reported on a University of Illinois at Chicago study of the neighborhood demographics – the Mexicans are moving out; being displaced not by other immigrants but by many white people.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD, ACCORDING to the study, is still majority Mexican-American in its composition; nearly 29,000, compared to about 4,300 white people. But that white figure is about 22 percent higher than it was in the year 2000.

While the number of families with children living in the neighborhood is down by 41 percent. Which brings about a drastic change in the neighborhood’s character.

Pilsen has the potential to become the kind of place where a young professional type of person lives for a few years (to gain some sort of Chicago street-cred, so to speak) before moving off to a suburb once they have their own kids.

And for those people whose lives depend upon being within a Spanish-speaking enclave (because their comfort level in English is lacking), they are the ones who could find themselves with minimal options for moving forward.

THAT’S ACTUALLY THE sad part. As a third-generation Mexican-American (albeit one with no ties to Pilsen nor its bordering community of Little Village), I’d like to think the reason Mexicans are moving out is because we’ve progressed beyond the ethnic enclave.

But as one who sees my own home neighborhood of South Chicago turn into a place for people with few other options, I know it’s not true.

I also know that the talk in recent years of turning the one-time U.S. Steel South Works plant into an upscale community of its own scared many South Chicago residents for the same reasons being expressed in Pilsen – the idea that this project was meant to chase out the existing residents.

I actually get why outsiders would be interested in Pilsen. It is fairly close in to downtown Chicago and has direct contact with the Loop through the ‘el.’ Someone living in Pilsen would have easy access to a downtown job, or to other places throughout Chicago through mass transit.

IT MAKES ME wonder if Pilsen is destined someday to become like Lincoln Park – which once upon a time ago was a Puerto Rican enclave, until developers saw that lakefront site and figured other people would benefit from it more.

Just as I’m sure some people probably think a place like Pilsen with good mass transit is being wasted on people who never want to leave the neighborhood.

The key to this situation is to comprehend that there are people already in the places where other people would like to live – if only they can get rid of what’s already there. The most drastic case of this may be the modern-day Cabrini-Green – whose near North location was always seen as wasted on the public housing that was built there back in the 1940s.

Now, many of those former public housing residents are scattered throughout the Chicago South Side and suburbs – where they are disrupting the decades-old routines of those communities. Which could easily happen with the Mexican ethnics whom the whites would love to move out of Pilsen – if things are not handled properly!

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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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