Juan and Jonathan Zaragoza in their restaurant (Ron Kaplan)
Once in a while, you run across a little gem of a family restaurant that treats its patrons like family. Birrieria Zaragoza is that kind of restaurant, and the first time I visited, I had a hard time believing that they hadn’t confused me for a regular. On my second visit, I was one. Read the rest of this entry »
The story of Chicago’s Southwest Side is a classically American one. Immigrants—Poles, Lithuanians, Italians, Germans, Czechs—flocked to the area in the early 20th century after the extension of streetcar lines made it an easy commute. Railroads and stockyards—including the famous Union Stock Yard portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle”—brought an abundance of jobs to neighborhoods such as Brighton Park and New City. For the next half-century, the primarily residential area thrived, until the industry it relied on began to disappear. In the latter part of the 20th century, the Southwest Side experienced a decline in population and prosperity that coincided with increasingly tense race relations in neighborhoods like Gage and Marquette Parks, where school desegregation met fierce opposition from white residents who feared plummeting property values. Residents in some neighborhoods formed community associations to help cope with the conflict—often successfully, as in the case of diverse, middle-class Gage Park. Today, a growing number of Southwest Side residents are Hispanic—approximately 80 percent in Gage Park and in Little Village, where nearly half that number is foreign-born. The area appears to be on the upswing, thanks in part the construction of the Orange Line connecting Midway Airport to downtown, which has been a boon for property values and the local economy. Read the rest of this entry »
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