 | StevePI (0)
07/12/2004 |  I could make this the longest post here but who's going to read it or even care? Wrigleyville is a microcosm of what has gone terribly WRONG in Chicago. Wrigleyville used to be just part of the Lake View neighborhood, one of many that made Chicago great. A typical Chicago blue collar area populated mostly by Germans and Scandinavians. In the 60's and 70's the long time core residents of the neighborhood fled and the urban poor started to move in. Read Rich Schwabs account of the neighborhood in his 1976 book Stuck on the Cubs. The neighborhood was becoming a little dicey and dangerous but then voila! Just like to the south in the Lincoln Park area real estate developers and the politically connected decided to make this another yuppie heaven. Now it is loud, garish, classless and horribly overpriced. And guess what? The yuppies who aren't gay leave the area for places like Naperville as soon as they decide to tie the knot and have kids. It's the same story all across the city of Chicago. Formerly declining areas are yuppified and the urban poor and assorted flotsam and jetsam get moved around like chess pieces. Many of the hispanics of Lake View (excuse me Wrigleyville) have fled west to other former great neighborhoods like Albany Park, North Park, and Irving Park. So what you have now is a decidedly two tiered Chicago. Gentrified areas like Wrigleyville where young professionals of the gay and straight variety and empty nesters come to cash in or be plucked by the now exhorbitant prices. The poor folk get moved around like cattle while the movers and shakers hope they die or leave town, but there are far too many of them, and most aren't leaving the city. The lower middle and middle classes have basically fled the city forever. So now its either places like Wrigleyville or the many gritty dangerous neighborhoods that remain. It's sad and it was avoidable. Working class whites and Chicago's minorities trying to bootstrap themselves have both been royally screwed. Chicago isn't any where near the great and liveable place it was in the not too distant past. Wrigleyville? Bah!
(3 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
 | hendo (0)
07/28/2003 | People move into this neighborhood with a century-old ballpark, a ballpark that has made this neighborhood what it is today, and what do they do? They complain about the ballpark, fight against having more night games, fight bleacher expansion, whine about parking, cry about drunks walking around after the game, etc. Might as well just tear down Wrigley Field and make these people happy, no?
(2 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
