End Times

really now, is it going to make a difference? it isn't like you can navagate milwaukee as is with all of the huge strollers and the brunch crowd...

"Really Mr. Churchill, it's just the French."

It wouldn't make much of a difference if it wasn't such an eye sore. The thing is a monolith on Milwaukee, only to be ousted from its place if a Costco or Boat Lot would be erected next door.

Considering that a friend's building was just bought out to be converted into single family homes at a break even or loss, just in order to raise the property values around it (and make their money on those properties)...

I'd say it's a lost cause, wouldn't you?

I'd say Lincoln Park is a lost cause, but Wicker Park still has things that appeal to me. Although I joined the Trail of Tears to Logan Square for cheaper living, I still enjoy Santullo's, Sultans, and the beers at Piece. The thing that irks me is how they could erect such a bourgeois store such as Urban Outfitters among a plethora of thrift shops along Milwaukee. More of a personal vent, I suppose.

It's just the ebb and flow of gentrification and the rise and fall of neighborhoods. What is happening/already happened in Wicker Park is the same thing that SoHo and Williamsburg in New York, Silverlake in L.A, and Fremont in Seattle went through, and the same thing will happen to Humboldt Park and Logan Square--although I'm sure the Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park will put up quite the fight when that battle comes rolling through.

The artists and fringe socialites move to an area, the businesses follow to bask in the "hip" light by proximity, and then the mass-movement begins to follow the unique business, only to be followed by more generalized business in a corporate vein of the fringe market in place (e.g. Urban Outfitters to the thrift store).

There are things I like in LP too, or at least I recall there being some, but that doesn't change the fact that the neighborhood itself is lost to anyone human. I moved south to Grand/Ashland, because Wicker Park annoyed me. It wasn't rent; I could cover that. It was pretty much straight up annoyance.

Gentrification is nothing new, I'm just saying - Wicker Park is no longer "gentrifying". It's done. They're there. Move on.

(I am looking forward to seeing gentrification meet Humboldt Park, though. That should be entertaining.)

The last time I ventured into Lincoln Park was for Duke of Perth. I was aghast at the atrocious "brahness" of the crowd and surrounding areas, and any factor that makes my shy away from a hell of a scotch bar with all-you-can eat fried fish indefinitely is quite a force. When I'm in Lincoln Park, I don't even feel like I'm in Chicago--it's more like Orange County than anything. My main irritation with what is/has happened to Wicker Park is the transformation of the local business from something unique to something chain based. I can deal with assholes, seeing as I do it everyday.

As far as Humboldt Park goes, I lived there on California and Division when I first moved here and it took a few months for my neighbors to acknowledge my presence outside of wondering what the hell a chubby Jewish kid is doing in their neighborhood. I think the classic graffiti on a door at Rockwell and Division, "This my hood--get out yuppie scum," summed it all up. I think they've been anticipating the coming Crusade for quite some time.

Well, there is another Starbucks coming. It'll be at North and Bosworth (1 block east of Ashland).

Isn't one already too many?