Take A Video Tour Of Halsted Street With Bear Rapper Big Dipper

By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 5, 2016 9:11PM

Vice has filmed a video tour of Halsted street—which they call “the backbone of Chicago”— and it’s worth watching, highlighting locations as far south as Altgeld Gardens and as far north as Boystown's Berlin.

Chicago native Big Dipper, a bear rapper perhaps best known for “Drip Drop,” hosts the video, and he does it with admirable restraint. He definitely has enough stage presence to steal the show (and any other show), but instead, he dresses in Chicago guy normcore—a beanie, a flannel, a white tee—and lets his subjects do most of the talking as he visits the Save Money Crew’s studio (though he doesn’t see Chance the Rapper, he does see Towkio), checks out vertical farm and recycling paradise The Plant, and chats with the namesake Maria at Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar in Bridgeport.

Though the video does feature an interview about the environmental degradation around Altgeld Gardens, and the likely-related cancer epidemic in the area, it’s relentlessly positive overall. Big Dipper asks questions like “So this shop makes you proud, huh?” (to an Auburn-Gresham shoeshine) and proclaims the only thing he eats (a hot dog at Maxwell Street Polish) is delicious.

It could be selling me something—I have stared at it for almost an hour now and still can’t tell if it’s branded content for Google Earth—but between the peppy spirit and the genuinely beautiful visuals, I’m down to buy what it's selling? It’s at least leagues better than Vice’s recently-released print guide to Chicago, where the big reveal was that we have Al’s Beef here.