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Pedway, First Store Open At Block 37
Around Town
Red-Light Cameras Not So Special?
Original photo via City of Chicago
We previously mentioned a few items -- Venetian Night, the lighted boat parade and fireworks display that attracts upwards of 500,000 each summer, is going bye-bye. There's also no money in the budget for the Outdoor Film Festival in Grant Park, nor for the Chicago Criterium. The Chicago JazzFest, which arguably features the most talented musicians of the city's music festivals, is being shortened once again. Celtic Fest, Country Music Fest, and the Viva Latin festival are being moved from Grant Park to the smaller confines of Millennium Park so the city can save money on portable toilets. The Mayor's Cup Youth Soccer Tournament is also on the chopping block. City arts programs will continue to take a hit.
But cuts to these kinds of items aren't new -- the city sponsored fun in Chicago has been slowly eroding without many noticing. Looptopia fizzled out before it could find its groove. The headliners at Taste of Chicago have actually managed to become even less inspired in recent years -- Naperville's RibFest draws bigger acts. "Chicagoween" in Daley Plaza has been whittled down from an elaborate month long affair to only a week. The State Street Halloween costume parade is also gone. Remember the CTA's "Haunted 'L'"? Hopefully you do, because memories are all that's left. The CTA's schedule for the "Holiday Train" remains ominously stuck on 2008. And there's the moving of the Christmas Tree lighting to broad daylight during a weekday. All that, and we're sure we're forgetting something.
Of course in a down economy, these kinds of "extras" need to have a lower priority -- but given the fiscal mismanagement in Chicago for so long now, it's an even bitterer pill to swallow. These events and programs -- despite how "trivial" some may deem them -- add to the overall quality of life for Chicago residents. The city needs to right its gaudily decorated and lighted financial ship and get things like Venetian Night back.
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I don't see "corruption" as one of the items being cut.
The film festival cut is a shame. That's one of the few city events I've seen that really seems to appeal across the board.
Venetian nights has always been a weird yachting class sort of thing. No great loss. Looptopia was an exercise in bizarro urbanism. A "silent rave"? Creepfest.
The various music an ethnic fests are pretty heavily sponsored right?
Jazz Fest could always move out to Oak Park where all the white liberals who "just love Coletrane" live.
Sounds like someone has some social class issues.
Yeah. Oak Park is full of boring old white liberals with HRC bumper stickers and really great vinyl collections who think voting for Barack Obama and yelling about Glenn Beck makes democracy safe for all.
Have you...have you been to Oak Park? Really, it's just too precious.
So now you're the expert on Oak Park.
You know about everything in the whole wide world. I don't think that there is one subject on this planet that you're not an expert on.
btw, what in the hell is old people music? By your definition, my 19 year old is old.
Funny...but you come off as being either an old, grumpy, judgmental curmudgeon or an immature little pisher...so all I have to say is: pot meet black.
JEss is an expert on everything, dontcha know.
Speaking of city snobbery, James Macnanus, a writer who teaches at the Art Institute and who is famous for his writings on poker, has an essay called "Your What Hurts" that pretty much skewers the snobbery of shitheads who think living in Chicago represents some kind of personal accomplishment.
I live in the city, but Christ, that doesn't make one better than suburbanites. As for Oak Park, probably some of the smartest and most interesting people on the planet call that town home.
What do I know, though? I listen to Beethoven regularly, which is the ultimate old people's music.
Go ahead Jess, indulge your fat fetish now :)
Yep...you haven't reached the zenith here until you've been called fat or old by Nevins and I'm pretty sure I've been called both. And oh that really hurts too, doesn't it? Not.
I live in Oak Park..and what I like most about it is I can have the quaintness of tree lined streets that are quiet and nice to walk my dog at night, but I'm a mere15 minute drive or ride on the green line to the city...where I do most everything except hang my hat at night.
And I don't have an HRC bumper sticker on my car, I don't have any bumper stickers at all and I don't recall ever talking with neighbors about Glen Beck. When we OPers talk politics, it's usually about local (village) politics. And some of my best friends here, right on my block, ARE REPUBLICANS! Oooohhhhhh!
Not my kind of town, exactly, but it does seem nice, and I know enough very smart and/or very nice people who live there and seem to like it alright.
Never got city snobs. Reactionary, narrow-minded types, most of them.
You do realize that Jess can't find the Internet's bounty of free porn and does find his or her joy being childish here, right? I am happy to take part. Sure is cheaper than sending a check to the Humane Society or whatever (recession has us all a bit stretched these days).
"Coletrane"
Is that a Nat King Cole and John/Alice Coltrane collaboration?
It's old people music, whatever.
Jess, as a young tastemaker could you recommend to me some cutting edge hip young people's music. Desperately trying to cling to my youth here and would appreciate any help you can give me.
Nice one.
Aw, Ingrid, Navin and big ol' Bertha, ganging up on me now? The nattering nabobs of the Chicagoist forming a super-friends style coalition? I love it! Form a coalition, put me down for a $10 donation. Lets have meetings and pot-lucks and coffee klatches.
Ingrid, the kitty defender lives in the OP? Color. Me. Shocked.Oak Park is where the Keatons went to die. Buncha fart-sniffing Prius drivers who prattle on about how Frank Lloyd Wright once dropped a deuce in their water closet.
Jazz makes white people feel good about how much they don't like Black people, it's museum music.
And Bertha quoting essays by Art Institute instructors skewering snobbery is making me laugh so hard my sides hurt.
I do have a fat fetish though. M4W Seeking BBW. Interested?
Jess are you going to hook me up with some musical suggestions or not? I hear that this John Philip Sousa guy's doing some pretty cool shit in Brooklyn.
Pick up the New Moon Soundtrack. Play it out of your van around the middle school playgrounds and you'll get hip t the way us kinder are grooving these days.
You realize, we're all tossers right folks?
C'mon Jess, let's have some serious suggestions. You're not old like me too are you?
All snark aside--seriously--what the fuck is your problem?
You don't really debate or converse--however one may be able to that here--as insult and needle.
Seriously, what is your problem and/or angle? Frankly, if this thrilling for you--we all have our cheap and easy thrills, after all; mine involves creative use of encased meats and discarded chess boards, for what it is worth--at least that's understandable.
I am simply curious.
At least with MM, it seems he/she is rather dim ideologue who enjoys fighting liberals and phantoms of liberals, pushed on, it seems, by the bat signals of Glen Beck. That I understand.
Are you lonely or something (asking in all respect)?
I'm sorry, were you just having an inner monologue? I think you did some automatic writing there Bertha.
nevins, fyi...I moved here a few years ago. flew in from the east coast, reluctantly, because of the ex's job. had 2 days to pic out a house in an area I knew nothing about.
my ex picked this place, I didn't...so I'm just kind of stuck here for a while...and fart sniffing prius drivers? Watch South Park much? Try to be a little more original next time.
But you should stop by sometime, there really is more to the people I hang out with here than what is in your narrow little brain. Try to get over your myopic views of who lives where.
God, I can just imagine it. We take a long walk to Barbara's Bookstore, go by the Unity Temple and talk about our mutual appreciation for the writings of Christopher Hitchens and how Sam Harris' views on Eastern Religion are so thrilling. Then we could head to Khyber Pass for some Indian fare. I'm an Ovo-Lacto level 2 Vegan so we have wait while they switch out sterno pots. Which gives us time to look over your cat photos from the week. We could end the evening by walking through the park, finding a low-hanging branch and hanging ourselves.
I'm a white liberal from Oak Park, though I don't live there anymore. I like Coltrane, and still play a little tenor every so often. I'll probably move back someday, assuming property taxes stabilize.
Oak Park is awesome, and I'm glad Jess Nevins didn't grow up there.
Or....you could get off your high horse and stop believing that you know everything about everyone.
Do you know my height, weight, sign, what kind of guy I like, food, movies, books too? Are you going to call me fat now? Oh..and accuse me of reading John Grisham too?
The Oak Park you blather on about is an Oak Park I don't even know...what? Did you read a bookie wookie about it at some point? Honetly, dude...your head is so full of rusty stereotypes and passe generalizations that it makes me laugh. out. loud.
Khyber Pass? r u for reals?
You can go there if you want, but I ate there once when I first moved here and it's pretty much the worst Indian food on the planet.
Oh...and I've never been to the Frank Lloyd Wright house. I don't care for the man or his architecture.
Ha, I went to Khyber Pass *once*. I used to work in OP and we tried pretty much every restaurant in walking distance. Let's just say not too long after eating at KP I got some long quality time with the work toilet.
http://www.wednesdayjournalonline.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=15628&TM=38862.22
look at all of the lame dorks in Oak Park. heh...nevins would have been eaten alive here :)
Another person who confuses stereotypes for thinking.
...confuses it with cleverness as well.
Come to OP, Nevins...let's get stoned, put some Morcheeba on and chill. Forget about your Barbara's Bookstore and Frank Lloyd Wright fantasies...that's not where it's at, man!!! Loosen up a bit, for once...it's nice, I promise.
I've got a new theory about Nevins, the collection of pixels formed into an icon formerly known as Albany Parkour. I think he's also moonlighting as Mr. Marauder, which is why Mr. Marauder only shows up every three or four days or so. They actually have very similar debate styles.
I also have a vague suspicion Jess lives in California.
There is no doubt in my mind that Nevins is an incarnation of AlbanyParkour, if not Parkour himself.
He keeps denying it....but unless Parkour got hit by a bus, there is no way that that insufferable ego would keep silent.
The Cali thing I hadn't thought of, but you could be on to something because of the way he spouts off 'knowledge' of all the neighborhoods and burbs here...it's like it all came straight from wikipedia. And nobody who really lives here is so stuck up and self-congratulatory about living here. It's like the old zen saying about when you really know something, you don't have to talk about it.
"And nobody who really lives here is so stuck up and self-congratulatory about living here."
Actually, I've know many, many natives and transplants who consider living in Chicago some kind of achievement for which excessive pride is required. Sort of reminds of the 'Proud to be an American' crowd.
It's weird...in all of the cities I've lived in, I have never encountered this kind of 'city hubris' or whatever you want to call it, until I moved here.
If you voice a negative opinion to a Chicagoan who has this attitude, they get offended and defensive. If you say something negative to, say, a native New Yorker, they'll just laugh and agree....even though you know and they know that they love living there.
There are good things and bad things about any city...but for some reason, a lot of Chicagoans cannot admit the bad things. Maybe it's a midwest thing.
And before anyone jumps my bones...I do like Chicago. I'm not crazy about the midwest, in general...but Chicago is great.
I am not sure it's a Midwest thing--I've lived only in two states in the Midwest--but I think Chicagoans, despite their macho posture, are extremely insecure. They generally remind me of the Russians--nice, usually smart, and proud, but extremely insecure about their place in the world.
uh uh.. its a Chicago thing. This town eats itself.
Ingrid,
Hang out with New Yorkers *away* from New York and you'll find that in the first few minutes they will either complain about something that's lacking (compared to NYC), or find a way to work into the conversation the fact that they live in NYC.
Without fail.
I see this as one of Chicago's defining characteristics, the thing that separates it from other cities where I've lived or visited at length. I've never encountered such a collection of insular people who delude themselves into thinking they're open-minded simply because they happen to live in a place with bad parking and a subway. I've met deeper thinkers in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming. I think it's the thing I hate most about Chicago.
Oh everyone, it's been lovely.
Y'know, I don't really take this all that seriously. It's a bit of mumbly grumbly, especially when folks like Matilda get all excited and exacting about my nonsense.
For the record (there's a record?) I'm a lifelong Chicagoan. I don't hate the suburbs, though it would take more than the bayonets Spook mentioned to get me out there. My best friend lived in Elmwood Park and hating the OP was high art for us back in college.
Ingrid, I own a cat, and dote on him.
Matilda, you're too tense and I think you, like me, know this is all just a way to avoid work or kill some time online. My work means staring at a screen far too often. Getting into little imbroglios with you all about the Olympics or Daley or what have you is to me what Facebook is to my officemates. Though they seem to spend more time on that than I could ever spend here.
Navin. Well you are kind of a humorless prig.
Ok, ok, enough apologia. I'm neither a marauder nor a parkour, sorry to ruin the conspiracy theory.
I love you all and clearly, we all have too much free time, don't we?
Yet, you get your jollies lobbing stupid insults at everyone, much like the kid under the table kicking the legs of the grown ups. That's what I don't understand. Do you simply crave cheap attention?
Much like you and all the rest of us, I am here solely to kill time, and I don't take any of this any more seriously than you or anybody else. I just find your stupid insults and Mr. Marauder's Coulteresque debate style far more boring than the computer screen I'd otherwise be staring at. I enjoy a good debate, whether I'm participating or just watching, but I hate when this all descends into cable news noise.
Perhaps your insult humor's just pretty hamfisted and unfunny.
BTW, where are those music suggestions, young hip dude?
When I moved here in 2002, I was struck by two things: 1) the amount of racism is a lot higher than I would have expected, and 2) the intense New York envy.
While I moved here a while before you did, I was struck by the exact same things. And I grew up in a very racist area.
There's no way that Jess Nevins = Albany Parkour.
I highly recommend that everyone re-read Jess' post ... re-read it out loud in your head using the voice of Sawyer from the T.V. show "Lost." Perfection.
WHAT? You have to be kidding me. Are they trying to make me move away? Another cold summer and I'm out of here.
Daley's Days are Depleted Daily
Wait that wasn't directed at mithh.
But this is: Cold summers are great, and i don't remember the last time we've had one like this. It's usually in the high 90s and muggy everyday. Barf.
Seeing as how there's all that money in the shadow budget, maybe we could start spending it on the city instead of passing it out to Daley's pals.
Sad to see these events dropped or cut. All the cool stuff going on during the summer is part of what makes Chicago an awesome city, even if we can only be outside for 4 months of the year...
BTW, didn't the Chicago2016 end up with a surplus? Could't that be shifted to fund city events and promote tourism instead?
Such a tragedy to cut out the Chicago Outdoor Film Fest in the summer..such a fantastic classic thing..just to have more money for his buddies.
Matilda are you listening to Beethoven now? I'm kinda picturing you as a Hannibal lecterish serial killer.
On Oak Park, I always say that if forced under the point of bayonets I had to live in a burb, it would be Oak Park. I guess you can consider that an endorsement and its not as bad as Hyde Park
Much of Beethoven has more force than most speed metal bands, Spook.
Get rid of all the neighborhood festivals as well. At least until someone can get Daley to cough up all that money he's hiding from us.
"insecure about their place in the world".
Yes. That's it, in a nutshell.
@Navin...the reason I said what I did is precisely because I know lots of native New Yorkers (I didn't live in the city, but I did live upstate). They do not have that insecurity *see matilda's comment above* that Chicagoans do. Of course, there are dipshits everywhere...we can't say the same about every single citizen of ANY place, right?
@Spook: heh heh...that pretty much sums up how I feel about living in Oak Park. And it's really not too bad once you get used to it...like I said before: I'm a quick jump to the green line and 15 minutes gets me downtown :)
The sidewalks roll up here by 7pm *snore*...but as Petula says, there is always Downtown.