Jazz saxophonist Miguel Zenón comes to the 'hood.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to explore Chicago's diversity through the lens of my own immigrant heritage. I've come to realize that even though I am a third generation American with little overt connection to my Czech grandparents and the country that they came from, I still identify with that heritage. This is not exactly specific to that particular European background, but rather a recognition of how growing up in Chicago along with other sons and daughters of immigrants provides the lens through which I view the Chicago of today.

When I visit the southwest side neighborhood that I grew up in and see that it is now predominantly Mexican-American, it makes perfect sense. Then and now, it is a tidy neighborhood of modest houses occupied by working class people who are striving to make a better world for their children, but the signs on the storefronts are in a different language. I have a real affinity for these simple neighborhoods far from the glamour of downtown.

Hermosa is one such neighborhood, albeit one much older than the post World War II area that I lived in. In the early 20th century, Hermosa was full of manufacturing and warehouse jobs. Schwinn bicycles came from Hermosa. Walt Disney was born to a carpenter father there. It was and still remains a blue collar place.

It is also, like my childhood home, now predominantly Latino. The forces at work here are a little bit different, though, as many of these residents were displaced from neighboring Wicker Park, Humboldt Park and Logan Square by gentrification.

So was, in a sense, the place I was at last night. Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year, and a little over 40 of those years were spent in Wicker Park. The current space opened in 2013. Their core focus is on Puerto Rican culture, but expands to include other Latino groups as well. Last night they hosted saxophonist and MacArthur Fellow Miguel Zenón in a free community event in conjunction with Zenón's Grammy nominated project Identities are Changeable, which is being presented live by the University of Chicago. Zenón was born in Puerto Rico, but by now he has lived over half of his life in the U.S. His heritage, though, remains the intellectual center of his work, so far spawning no less than five albums.

I wrote an appreciation of the event for Agúzate, an Afro-Latin journal that is kind enough to publish my work. You can read that HERE, but before you do, let me quote Miguel Zenón from an interview I did with him a few weeks ago.

“The Puerto Rican community in Chicago is one of the most important and historic communities outside of the island, so all of the ideas from the project would definitely apply there as well. But then again, I think that this is an idea that could apply to any immigrant community anywhere.”

Indeed. I am far from my grandparents immigrant experience, but I can imagine them negotiating life in a new country far from their place of birth. My parents grew up Americans, of course, but Czech was still spoken in their childhood homes. And now there is me, further removed, yet still connected by the same bloodline.

And I can relate.

A little relief

It's been something of a grim spring and summer in Chicago. People are being shot and killed at an alarming rate. Monday morning headlines have taken on the regularity of box scores or opening weekend movie grosses. They are just that dependable.

Much of this carnage has been taking place in a concentration of poverty stricken neighborhoods where historical patterns of segregation going back over half a century have all but assured that those neighborhoods stay poor and violent. Rogers Park, where I live, has suffered a bit too, though nothing on the grand scale of parts of the south and west sides. I live in a "mixed" neighborhood in every sense of the word. There is a vast diversity of incomes, races and cultures. There is also a pronounced strain of progressive politics and community engagement that dates back to the 1970s. We've been gentrified, suffered setbacks, and re-gentrified. That progressive streak keeps the gentrification from getting out of control and, at the same time, keeps the violence mostly in check. It's a delicate balance, but one that we are generally pretty good at. This year, though, it began to feel that the violence, even here, was making a comeback.

People are on edge.

Devon & Glenwood, July 12

Hell, I'm on edge. Just a little over a week ago, on a Saturday afternoon, a man was shot and killed on Devon Avenue, just kitty-corner from a hip farm-to-table restaurant that I often eat at. I have no doubt that at least a few diners were still finishing up their brunch on the patio. I heard about it before the media reports broke because my girlfriend was on her way to my place in her car, and a bevy of police vehicles blocked her way. When she asked an officer what happened, the reply was (and I'm paraphrasing here), "One gang banger killed another."

Not quite. The gang member might have been gunning for a rival, but his indiscriminate hail of bullets found someone else. Later on, I learned that our alderman, who was doing some political canvassing right around the corner, heard the shots and saw the killer running away. My girlfriend, because she's chronically late to most engagements, was not in the middle of this. But she could have been.

A couple days later, I was walking up to a cafe that I often go to for both the quality of their coffee and the community engagement that they practice. It's a very cool place and is located on Howard Street, which is still trying to shake a decades old reputation for shadiness and danger. Someone was shot on Howard just a few months ago.

That's when the edge got me. There's no dramatic punctuation to this part of the story, just the realization of the creeping unease that I was feeling walking this same street I have walked a hundred times.

Celebrate Clark Street

This isn't what I was thinking about last night, though. Because last night was the conclusion of an annual party that we throw called Celebrate Clark Street. Here is a festival that indeed celebrates everything that is good about Rogers Park, namely, its stunning diversity. It's about music and food and culture and dancing. It's a profoundly family affair. I've gone for so many years I almost take it for granted, but this year it felt especially powerful. My girlfriend remarked that attendance seemed higher than previous years. Another friend, a Mexican-American who lives in Lincoln Square and was visiting my 'hood for the first time, was most impressed by the family atmosphere.

Thousands of people gathered along a three block stretch of Clark Street, and the availability of cheaply priced Modelo Especial and Dos XX assured that many of them, including myself, were fairly well inebriated. There were definitely a lot of people acting the fool. But there wasn't a single fight. And nobody got shot. By the time Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca played their final notes for an impromptu conga line that featured, improbably, a life size cutout of the World's Most Interesting Man, I was exhausted, sweaty, elated and, I realized, relieved.

Ricardo Lemvo, sweaty dancers, the World's Most Interesting Man

Collectively, it was what we needed. Rogers Park residents have been holding their breath and treading cautiously for months. And I'm certainly not implying that being alert to possible danger is not an essential component to urban life. It is, every single damn day. But another essential component is community, and still another, hope.

Rogers Park has plenty of those, too. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Is limited gentrification possible? And maybe even a good thing?

Several things have me thinking about gentrification lately. I don't know about you, but when I hear that word I immediately go to the negative connotations, the profit driven force that fills historic neighborhoods with haves and displaces the have-nots, obliterating their character in the process. That's odd, because I am, in some ways, a gentrifier. That is to say, I'm a white dude that likes to live in diverse and funky neighborhoods where, more often than not, the median income is below average.

I've written of my love for my neighborhood, Rogers Park, but in the same piece that extols its historic character and scrappy nature, I express my gratitude for relatively recent additions like farmers markets, lively nightspots and hip cafes. If fact, as I write this, I'm sitting in a new cafe on Howard Street near Ashland, which anyone not living in Rogers Park (and, I suspect, some who do) will tell you is a sketchy block that is best avoided. The area across the street is home to some of Rogers Park's poorest citizens. Nonetheless, Sol Cafe does its best to engage the immediate community, hosting discussion groups, local artist exhibits and other ways to combat this fear. It has a airy, welcoming feeling enhanced by a huge floor to ceiling window that lets in plenty of light. Howard Street itself recently upgraded its streetscape, and a vacant lot on the other side of Ashland will soon be a sizable community garden. There are less empty storefronts, and the Caribbean-American Bakery up the block, rebuilt after a fire, is still going strong.

And yet, Rogers Park remains an extremely affordable place to live. Neighborhood grocery stores sell their produce for less than you'd pay at a supermarket, and you can still get a stunningly delicious taco al pastor at any number of taquerias for two bucks. Rogers Park may be on the lake shore and blessed with lovely beaches and parks, but it's still pretty far from downtown. Heck, the nearest Divvy bikeshare station is still three miles south of here.

By contrast, Wicker Park is in another part of Chicago, one much closer to downtown, that went from a historically Polish neighborhood to one that was on the skids, but then became an edgy artist enclave in the 80s. Within 15 years, the transformation to the upscale was total, and the signs and t-shirts that pleaded "Keep Wicker Park Weird" were all gone.

Anyway, I'm thinking of this because I recently spent most of an entire weekend in Pilsen during their annual Open Studios art walk. The neighborhood is historically Czech, but transitioned to primarily Mexican in the 70s and 80s. It, too, became an artist enclave, but this time the artists were grounded in Latino traditions, their work a cultural expression of Latinidad. Even a casual walk around the neighborhood makes this apparent. Murals that range from historic Chicano depictions to graffiti-inspired abstractions are everywhere, and more often than not galleries are gloriously chaotic spaces, often doubling as studios and workshops, the very opposite of sleek showrooms.

Pilsen lies even closer to downtown than Wicker Park, and it also lies just south of the University of Illinois campus and Medical District. You can bet that real estate developers have been coveting it for years. And, indeed, the area is dotted with new condos and, yes, several Divvy stations.

Without question, Pilsen is changing. Funky designer boutiques are popping up, and there's a whole lot more to choose from than tacos and carnitas when dining out. Hipster entrepreneurs from north side neighborhoods are taking notice and opening restaurants and bars. But there are signs that, even with these trendy new accoutrements, an effort is under way to respect and retain the character of the neighborhood.

New businesses like Simone's Bar and Pl-zen (named after the Czech city that gave the neighborhood its name) have taken care to honor the street art muralist tradition. The charming and very busy La Catrina Cafe is named after one of the most beloved figures in Mexican folk art, and a substantial amount of its square footage is devoted to a gallery and event space for local artists. Needless to say, they serve a delicious Mexican hot chocolate alongside their lattes. Día de los Tamales takes that most humble of Mexican foods and puts a modernist twist on ingredients.

Perhaps most hopeful of all, though, was a simple grocery store that I stumbled into almost accidentally when I noticed the facade was newly painted in vibrant colors. A neighborhood grocer has occupied this corner for as long as I can remember, but something was different. Curious, I noticed that it was now called MeztiSoy. "Soy" is, of course, a vegetarian staple, but it's also Spanish for a declaration of self, meaning "I am." Soy Mexicano. Mestizo, on the other hand, describes the complex identity of someone who is of both European and Amerindian descent. Something thoughtful was clearly going on here.

So I went in. And there, all in one place, side by side, was an organic produce market that also carried a large selection of the packaged goods that you will find in any Mexican supermercado throughout the city. These are beloved items from back home, comforting in their ordinariness. To top it all off, there was a taqueria in the back, albeit one that serves vegan soy chorizo fajitas alongside caldos, tacos and other traditional favorites. Locally owned, the whole place defiantly asserted that organic farm-to-table ingredients and mindful eating are most definitely NOT for hipsters only.

Finally, you can't discount the resiliency of long time residents who rightly view all of these changes with some concern, but also considerable strength. An artist that I spoke with, when asked about the threat of gentrification, remarked, "Latinos don't rent. We buy. We're hard to get rid of."

I think Pilsen is going to be just fine.

Home is where the heart is.

I'm not sure that I can adequately express my fondness for the neighborhood that I live in. Rogers Park is a sublime combination of inner-city grit crossed with the atmosphere of a beach town. To get there, you head north along Lake Michigan out of downtown Chicago on the train. It's a fairly long ride, and when it's crowded, it can be pretty unpleasant. You'll pass through many neighborhoods on the way there, some wealthy, some not so much: Gold Coast, Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Uptown, Edgewater, until the tracks angle slightly to the west, following the shore. Rogers Park hugs the lake, long and thin. Loyola is the first stop, adjacent to its namesake university. Morse is next, a commercial crossroads. Jarvis is mostly residential, Howard is the city limit.  

I moved here about 6 years ago, but until I did, I was a little afraid of it. The median income is around $39,000. That's not an especially low figure, but it doesn't adequately convey the sheer variance of the community's demographic. Walking around, you begin to see a fair amount of grand old city homes and rehabbed vintage apartments and condos, even some new construction. But the view from the elevated train has long been of blighted commercial strips and the rickety back porches of brick three flats. When you get off of the train, you see the community's diversity. There are a lot of low income families in Rogers Park, and a good many of them are immigrants. Poorer neighborhoods are often like that because they are affordable.  All big cities have their equivalent of a Rogers Park.  Heck, Chicago has more than one, although a few enclaves have already been extinguished through gentrification.  Somehow, though, RP has become a truly mixed neighborhood, economically as well as ethnically. Maybe it's the parks and beaches that line the shore, providing a soothing glimpse of nature on an evening stroll and a gathering place for families on summer Sunday afternoons. Or maybe we just got lucky when the real estate market crashed, slowing the pace of condo conversions and in the process preserving the neighborhood's character.

It has what urban planners call a high walk score: just about everything you need is a short walk away, and when more people are out walking, neighborhoods are safer. That's not to say we're crime free, quite the contrary, but most of it falls in the "oh, well, that's city life" property crime category.  I'd like to think that we're too far away from the action downtown (and that miserably long train ride) to ever fully gentrify. At the same time, I'm grateful for the positive changes that have occurred: crack houses wrested away from negligent landlords and converted to fashionable housing, new restaurants and nightspots, renovated streetscapes, farmer's markets. Friends, neighbors and merchants tell dark tales of "10 years ago", confirming my initial, outdated qualms about moving here.

Perhaps the best way to describe Rogers Park is a peek inside my local grocer. There's plenty of organic produce, but there are also ethnic staples like limes, 15 for a dollar. Lots of produce (chayote, plantains, jackfruit, casava) that you won't find at the supermarket. Tortillas share shelf space with kosher baked goods and Jamaican hard dough bread. Meat pies. Canned and bottled goods run the gamut from Hispanic to African to Caribbean. Dried chilis and Greek oregano. Chorizo and kielbasa. Free range chicken and cow foot. Yep, it's all here.

Clark Street is the main commercial strip, running parallel to the lake about a half mile to the west. It's not the prettiest of boulevards. Every block has a few vacant storefronts.  But what is there is fabulous. Packed with modest ethnic restaurants, it turns into an aromatic paradise around dinnertime. And there's not a Starbucks in sight. OK, to be fair, I don't think there are any cafes on Clark, but you'll find an indie coffee paradise just down intersecting Morse, Jarvis and Howard and along Sheridan Road by the University.  OK, maybe one Starbucks.

We (officially) gather on Clark Street once a year to celebrate our diversity with food, music, beer, art and kids activities. In recent years, Celebrate Clark Street's two music stages have turned this modest neighborhood street party into a de facto world music festival thanks to the energetic talents of David Chavez, a DJ and head of the fledgling global arts organization Sound Culture. This weekend, my neighbors and I will be out in force to dance, drink and, yes, celebrate. I can't wait.

You can come, too. We like to share.