Other Neighborhoods
Moving away from the University and Hyde Park is impractical for many current students, but other neighborhoods on the South Side offer several advantages for those willing to make the commute. The first is price: pretty much anywhere on the South Side is inexpensive compared to Hyde Park, and larger, more interesting apartments are available for less. (Just be careful—sometimes “interesting” is realtor-speak for “decrepit.”) The second is diversity: the commercial strips of Pilsen, Chinatown, and Bridgeport host shops and restaurants with products that can’t be found in Hyde Park. The third, related advantage is less tangible: living away from the hub of University life may make one feel less confined by the ivory tower, a quality especially desirable to recent graduates, grad students, and people with no connection to the University to begin with.
The process of actually finding an apartment can be tougher than in Hyde Park. One tactic is to simply canvass the neighborhood, looking for signs put up by individual landlords. This is also a good way to assess the character and safety of the neighborhood. Another is to read the local bulletin boards and newspapers. Look for both in coffee shops and grocery stores; Bridgeport has an especially active classified section in the Bridgeport News, published every Wednesday. Landlords on the South Side seem to post less often on Craigslist than owners from other parts of the city, and citywide rental listings rarely have a good selection of apartments away from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Illinois Institute of Technology campuses, so putting in some legwork is worth the effort. (Helenmary Sheridan)
