The neighborhoods

I’m in Lincoln Park right now, at the Alfred Caldwell Lilly Pool. It’s beautiful and it just reopened. If it weren’t for the constant whir of cars on Lakeshore Drive, this would be a perfect oasis. At least, perfect for those who can get to Lincoln Park.

I tried very hard to understand the neighborhoods of Chicago before I moved here, to pick one that would be comfortable and easy to get our destinations from. I chose South Loop, four blocks up from Roosevelt, the stereotypical dividing line. I was confused as to what was up with the South Side. Crossing Roosevelt, going south 10, 20, or 30 blocks, the environment didn’t seem too dilapidated. It was much nicer than most of Detroit. 

I needed to go to the North side to understand the north-south split. And when you are up here, wow, you can tell. It’s a whole different city. Sometimes, when you’re on the north side, you’ll notice that no one isn’t white. At some intersections, everyone will be white. I went to a bakery, and then a cafe, and not a single person wasn’t white except for a Doordasher and a worker collecting dishes. 

The Alfred Caldwell Lilly Pond I’m currently enjoying is another example. A Lincoln Park “neighborhood group” raised $1.2M to renovate it at the turn of the millennium, matched by federal funds. It’s been closed for the past two years, except this time, all the funding for renovations came from private donors.

It’s a beautiful pond, but the gap in the city drops my jaw. This neighborhood has several parks, including one with a Michelin starred restaurant in the middle of it and another themed after the Wizard of Oz. Even busier streets (like Fullerton, which I walked along to get here) are lined with trees. 

Go to Pilsen to see how it compares. A former Czech (Plzen) neighborhood, now Mexican, there are no tree-lined streets. Just unrelenting concrete. There is a food pantry that serves Pilsen, Chinatown, and Bridgeport. People stand in the sun waiting for food. All the signage is in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Many of the clients don’t speak or understand English. When I volunteered there, we were told ICE was roaming. If they came in here, don’t talk to them. It’s not mandatory. There is a big park in the center of the neighborhood - it has few benches, and minimal tree cover.

It’s hard to understand Chicago without being here, and even then, it’s hard to fully grasp. It’s easy to understand the north-south black-white divide, but that misses the city’s Latino third. I used to think that Latino was West, which is true, except that the “West” side is historically three - northwest and southwest (white ethnics), and west (black). The West side has remained Black, and the northwest and southwest have transitioned to Latino. 

All of this, and I haven’t even mentioned the Southeast side. People forget about it. 

Nome of these framings tell you what to expect. I was just in Avondale (northwest) to try a new cafe, Milli by Metric¹. I was disappointed to find a line - apparently people are discovering it via TikTok. I was even more disappointed that this new location of a favorite roaster did a poor job with our drinks. Below expectations for a brand I associate with meticulousness.

I wasn’t too happy at this point. The cafe, and clientele, seemed more interested in conspicuous consumption and making nice TikToks than actually good coffee. I hoped my day would right itself. Things were looking bright, because there were a few more hours before the rain started and I had found a Korean market nearby, which solved a Kimchi I wanted to buy kimchi, so we started to walk north to a Korean market wedged between the expressway (extremely and perpetually unpleasant!) and the Metra tracks (a minor nuisance while the train blasts by). 

I liked this. At the front of the store, they had a dumpling stand². At the back, a full restaurant. Every kind of imported produce, down to a box of individually wrapped red apples. They had dozens of options of tofu, miso, sesame seeds, rice, and fish (frozen or fresh). They even had a self-service options - raw shrimp from a cooler, and baked sweet potatoes from a warmer.

Despite having made the 40-minute trek for the express purpose of trying the cafe, it wasn’t until I kept on walking that I truly felt like I was in “the neighborhoods.” 3110 N Kedzie is a neighborhood location, more than the industrial 2021 W Fulton location, but it didn’t feel different than the stores on Randolph in West Loop or on Wells in Old Town. But after we passed Joong Boo, the feeling of a city that I felt comfortable in started to come through. that I truly felt like I was in “the neighborhoods.” 3110 N Kedzie is a neighborhood location, more than the industrial 2021 W Fulton location, but it didn’t feel different than the stores on Randolph in West Loop or on Wells in Old Town. But after we passed Joong Boo, the feeling of a city that I felt comfortable in started to come through.

We passed a closed-for-the-weekend candy factory, with hours written in English and Spanish. I saw the busiest Home Depot I’ve ever seen, with a parking lot full of work trucks. A older man in a Sikh turban carried an Aldi-brand gallon of milk home, nothing else in hand. As we continued into Avondale, signs of Chicago’s diversity began began to show. Where in Lincoln Park, you can go blocks without seeing anyone who isn’t white, you can go blocks here without seeing anyone who is white.

One block was lined with 1920s courtyard apartments, ornamented as buildings were in that era but in a neighborhood that has clearly always been working class. On the next, 3-flats stood right up with the street. Some had gardens - one person even had a corn garden in their front yard³.

We crossed Irving Park Road and the neighborhood got moderately less dense. Here, we walked through a neighborhood with people of many races, and two mosques in buildings that were churches. One Turkish, the other Arab, and a third founded all the way back in 1967.

Down a few more blocks, we got to Lawrence, the main thoroughfare of Albany Park, our destination when we left from the cafe. I was very excited to find a range of businesses of different origins. There was a classic Mexican bakery, but have you ever seen a Guatemalan restaurant? This street had two. I’ve never seen the Ecuadorian flag being displayed on a restaurant, but here they had one. A Guatemalan bakery stood by a dentist’s office of Jordanian origin. A Persian restaurant shared a block with a soon-to-open Turkish cafe, across the street from a store selling everything Middle Eastern from Egyptian Roomy cheese to Persian-style roasted nuts. A Colombian restaurant and a Mexican restaurant occupied two corners, and a Salvadorian pupeseria was just feet away, and Central Asian grocer-butcher-restaurant looked onto the ‘L’ stop.

There was a lot of life in this neighborhood. The Persian restaurant, Kabobi, was stellar. It wasn’t cheap, but the fesenjan and koobideh we ordered were fantastic (especially the fesenjan). At least 10 different countries were represented in the customers who dined alongside us. And maybe the Turkish cafes were trying to go for the TikTok-able look, but they were betrayed by the fact that so many of the clients were families. I got to speak Spanish with the baker, and wished I could have spoke Urdu to the man at the mosque who was trying to tell me the women’s entrance was around the corner (“Woman pray outside” was what he said, but not what he meant).

After eating way past our fill, walking up and down the entire neighborhood (we needed cash for the bakery), shopping at two different stores, and attempting two different mosques (the first was locked), we had to depart Albany Park. The Brown Line terminates there, so it was an easy ride back. Even more fun (for me), I got to ride some of the few ‘L’ grade crossings. The Brown Line does it 6 times! Riding the Brown Line is always fun, since it always has a nice view.

What are “the neighborhoods?” I got a taste on this trip. The neighborhoods are where the people live and work, sleep and shop, and carry out their lives. They’re not trying to be something they are not, nor put on a show. The majority of people in Albany Park, I can say with confidence, did not discover Lawrence Ave via TikTok. It is just a street, in their area, that they like to go to. And that’s what “the neighborhoods” are. It is just a place, that people go to, because they like it.