Go On A Pub Crawl And 7 Walking Tours Perfect For City Nerds
By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 28, 2016 4:35PM
Jane Jacobs—activist, imaginer of better cities, and author off The Death and Life of Great American Cities—would have turned 100 this May. Jacobs passed away in 2006, but Chicago is still celebrating her birthday with its fourth annual Jane's Walk event, a citywide collection of conversational neighborhood tours on May 7.
"The typical walking tour tends to focus on downtown," Chicago's Jane's Walk organizer, Martha Frish, told Chicagoist. "And it's very often oriented to tourists. My goal here is to get people who live in Chicago to go out and explore other neighborhoods that they don't live in."
The tours are both fun and educational, for Frish as well as participants. For instance, before this year, "I never realized how important Marquette Park was in the story of civil rights in Chicago," Frish said. "And I never realized it had been a Lithuanian community."
Currently, Jane's Walk has seven tours on its roster, and Frish expects to add a few more in the coming days. Jane's Walk festivities also include a pub crawl on Friday, which will run from 5 to 8:30 p.m. (Specific bars will be posted here any minute now, Frish said.) On May 21, there will also be Jane's Walk-affiliated "day of events... which will include a walk around the neighborhood" in Englewood, hosted by Naomi Davis of Blacks in Green.
So far, Jane's Walk has six tours confirmed for May 7, and one tour (the Hull House tour) for May 8. The tours are:
Humboldt Park Gardens and More
Leader: Karl Kuhn, board member of the Mozart Community Garden
Start time: 10 a.m.
Start location: Humboldt Park Boat House
Length: two hours
Landmark on the route: the Monarch Community Garden, a garden for locals frequently visited by migrating butterflies
Leader: John Cramer
Start time: 11 a.m.
Start location: southeast corner of Kelvyn Park
Length: two hours
Landmarks on the route: Kelvyn Park's Georgian Revival style fieldhouse, the Beaux Arts-style Kelvyn Park School
Leader: Crystal Odom, a captain at Glorious Light Church's Timothy Community Corporation
Start time: 11 a.m.
Start location: 4351 S. Drexel
Length: two hours
Landmarks on the route: President Barack Obama's Chicago home; the national headquarters of Rainbow Push, Rev. Jesse Jackson's civil rights organization
Leader: Rami Nashashibi, the executive director of IMAN Inner-City Muslim Action Network and a professor of sociology
Start time: 11 a.m.
Start location: IMAN Inner-City Muslim Action Network (2744 W. 63rd St. Chicago)
Length: two hours
Landmarks on the route: Lithuanian Plaza; St. Rita Church; Beth Shalom B'Nai, an Ethiopian Hebrew congregation
Leader: Marlise Fratinardo, an architectural historian at the Chicago Transit Authority
Start time: 11 a.m.
Start location: 1322 W Taylor St.
Length: 2 hours
Landmarks on the route: the National Public Housing Museum; Hull House, a memorial and museum dedicated to social reformer Jane Addams
Leader: Julia Bachrach, historian for the Chicago Parks District
Start time: 2 p.m.
Start location: Standing Lincoln Monument, east of Clark Street and north of North Avenue
Length: two hours
Landmarks on the route: a statue of William Shakespeare, the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial
Still Waters Run Deep: Uptown's Hidden Coastline
Leader: Melanie Eckner, an editor and translator who cofounded Friends of Cuneo
Start time: 11 a.m.
Start location: the west entrance of Disney Magnet School (4131 N. Clarendon Avenue)
Length: two hours
Key landmarks on the route: Eastwood Beach Apartment Hotel, Weiss Hospital Urban Rooftop Farm
To reserve a slot on a tour, RSVP on the tour page. To find new tours as they're added to the roster, check here.