Slacker Friday - Altercation - MSNBC.com
Name: Rob BreymaierHometown: Chicago, ILEric,I wanted to point out an issue that irritated me regarding Joe Buck's speech about Chicago south siders waiting so long for a championship. Near the final out last night, Buck spoke about how south siders had waited so long for their team to win the World Series. He then named neighborhoods on Chicago's south side to add to his point. The neighborhoods cited were all predominantly white or traditionally white neighborhoods that are have changed to mixed race neighborhoods including:
Mt. Greenwood - a notoriously “exclusive” neighborhood on the edge of Chicago's southwest side.
Bridgeport - A traditionally Irish-American neighborhood that has more recently seen some Latino growth.
Beverly - A traditionally white neighborhood that is now roughly divided into a white half and a black half.
Hyde Park - A fairly admirable racial mix but unique by income and the University of Chicago.
As if that weren't enough, Buck went on to name ethnic groups. All were European (Irish, Italian, and Polish). Buck entirely ignored the African American population that makes up the majority of south siders. He also ignored the growing Latino population and the Asian population that make up significant neighborhoods on the south side. (Chicago's Chinatown is on the south side.) Fox also cut to Jimbo's where all of the patrons were white. I'm not trying to call Buck a racist here. But, even something that should be as innocent and inclusive as the World Series shows just how segregated a society we are. How could Buck not mention African Americans in his little heartfelt speech about south siders? What was it that made them invisible to him?
The first apartment I lived in, when I first moved to Chicago after graduating from UT-Austin, was a loft converted building on 19th and South Halsted, squarely on the edge of the South Side...
Tags: Chicago, /Neighborhood, /Podmajersky
Podmajersky place, and I lied and called myself an artist: the residents of all the Pod places were supposed to be artists. I mean, in a certain sense, I fit the description, but not literally, as I've never tried to support myself being an artist. I think I put “poet' on my application, and had some song and dance about how I've 'dabbled' in various other visual and audio arts (which, by the way, I have video of myself acting in a Sam Shepard scripted play).
At that time, Maxwell Street was in full swing, complete with dudes standing around oil barrel bonfires, overly-amplified blues guitar players, and a flea-market of stolen goods, including the tires recently stolen off of your car, or the tool box taken from your trunk.
Wow, we met the Podmajersky leasing agent (Maureen somebody - an incredibly sweet woman) one April morning, and drove down Halsted to her office, and suddenly we crossed into Maxwell Street. Yowsa. We looked at one another with trepidation, but then every turned out ok, and we rented the loft space, lived there for a year, yadda yadda.
We purchased our groceries at the Egg Store, a Chinese produce store just on the edge of Bridgeport, and since we were new Chicago residents, explored the city both north and south of our apartment, including the above named 'hoods.
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update: next morning, sober. I don't even know what my point was. Oh well, file under rambling personal reminiscences about Chicago.
