in a word: gentrificaton

When I first visited Wicker Park last January, it was a lot more urban and a lot less glamorous than I was imagining based on the constant praise my boyfriend was giving his new home. (Yes, this is the same area and/or park that the Josh Hartnett movie Wicker Park was named after.) In my defense, it was nighttime when I arrived and it was my first taste of the Chicago cold, so I was focusing more on keeping my face inside my jacket collar and my hand gripped around my suitcase handle than on the surroundings. I saw iron bars covering shop windows and doors, I saw 24-hour check cashing places, I saw shady looking discount furniture stores: it wasn't very pretty.

When I came back in June with my all my worldly possessions in tow, it did not look much better for the first few weeks I was there. But as I set out to explore the thrift stores littered between bars and pubs, boarded-up store fronts, and discount furniture stores, I saw it was actually more glamorous than it looked. It was the city hipster style of glamorous, which is a little dirty; or if not glamorous, then it's at least cool. The windows were covered with art, the boarded-up store fronts covered with music and art show posters. There were at least three independent coffee shops, some crazy take-out places, and several banks.

If you haven't guessed, I'm talking about gentrification, a word I didn't actually know the definition of until a few months before I moved here (which, by the way, was five days shy of six months ago). For those who are sheltered like I was (let's face it, Santa Barbara was gentrified before it was even born), gentrificationmeans the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents(taken directly from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

Technically Wicker Park was gentrified already before I started college, but now you can see the stores rushing to keep up. I have seen the ridiculously expensive Akira Chicago jump around North Avenue, moving from smaller stores to bigger ones with bigger windows, start offering valet parking, and putting up its bright red awning outside new Women stores and Accessories stores and Mens stores and Shoe stores and stocking areas. I have seen the local pizza place and brewery, Piece (which does not sell Chicago-style pizza) take over the ex-high end stuff store next door and start offering take-out. I have seen boutique shoe stores and boutique thrift stores move in and two of the three independent coffee shops move out. And most tragically and hideously, I have seen Bank of America with its bright blue and red move in to occupy not one, but three store spaces on one of the big corners in Wicker Park. What used to be a hot dog take-out place, a huge independent coffee shop with couches, and a convenience store, is now a beacon of florescent light seen for miles. And what used to be the busiest, bustling six-way intersection of hipster haven now has a Starbucks, three banks, an upscale bar, and, I think, a cell phone store littering its corners.

I'm not overly focused on these things anymore, the corporatization of the purely independent, but I do think it's rather unfortunate. Not only for the character of the neighborhood, but more importantly for the people who get displaced by this gentrification. Chicago has a fairly strong undercurrent of race issues, exacerbated by the fact that the yuppies follow Bank of America and suddenly all the minorities find themselves living together in the only area they can reasonably afford.

Nevertheless, the hipsters who wanted to live somewhere edgy who moved to Wicker Park in the first place are now moving on to a place like Logan Square, located just slightly north and west, which has a slow influx of independent coffee shops, restaurants, and boutiques, but it still has the cheap movie theaters, dollar stores, discount family stores, Mexican markets, and boarded up store fronts.

My neighborhood is a little different because it's inhabited by young families mostly (perhaps these hipsters grown up?), but the main drag is a postcard of beauty: brick, lights, couples pushing strollers, and lots and lots of restaurants and little boutiques. There's something for everyone in that little half-mile stretch. Just one block west and a couple steps north of this charming village is an ugly intersection (mattress store/bank/Wallgreens/shady discount jewelry store), and a bunch of fast food and some nondescript stores, most of them with signs written in unidentifiable foreign languages. Some of this quick shift I can chalk up to Chicago just having some unforgivingly ugly streets no matter how far north or south (or east or west) you go; these streets near my house are two such streets. But the rest? Well, more gentrification, I guess. The young couples haven't procreated enough to expand outward yet. I don't really really mind because there are three dollar stores, one brilliant and cheap Mexican market, five Thai restaurants, and several check-cashing places (for those last-minute, late-night laundry quarter runs) within walking distance. Not to mention four coffee shops (one Starbucks), 20-30 restaurants, an awesome used book store, and my bank... you get the idea.

I think I've reached my satisfaction point of discussing things I really don't know much about. But I would like to note that I've been interested in this real estate/development/planning stuff since I became familiar with it in college and I'm wondering what kind of job I can do that will incorporate that, my desire to learn everything there is to know about that in Chicago, and writing. Business journalism, maybe, which I always thought I hated.