A third grader, Paul Jr. was the youngest in a game that marked the start of the indoor season for Chicago Youth Lacrosse, an organization that offers lacrosse programs for children of all ages around the city. Friday night saw the kids in the gleaming Chicago Indoor Sports arena at Pershing and Ashland. Half an hour before the games were set to start, parents with children decked out in large helmets and thick padding started streaming in. Adults swapped stories of Christmas vacations in faraway places, as kids fidgeted with helmets and equipment in anticipation of the opening whistle.

One ten-year-old boy hopped nervously as he waited for his father to arrive with his helmet. “Only two blocks away,” his mother assured him. “He’ll be here soon.” Twenty minutes later, dad ran in, large sports bag in tow. With his team already two goals down, the boy sprinted onto the pitch with excitement and trepidation etched into his face.

“I had no idea this game even existed till three years ago,” Paul said, “but my son enjoys it so much.” He explained that CYL has seen incredible growth over the past couple of years, an indicator that the sport is no longer a sole preserve of the East Coast. He explained the draw for his son: “Playing up with older kids teaches him to be aggressive, to not get pushed over. It’s a great sport and a good thing for him.

Only one girl was out on the field, ably “manning” the goal for the team in sky blue jerseys. On the other side of the field, her brother stood in the opposing goal. Family tensions came to a height at the end, when her brother made a mad dash forward in an attempt to score on his sister. His shot whizzed by her, narrowly missing the net. Already several goals down, he sprinted all the way back to his post as the final buzzer sounded.

Claire Hungerford

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The communal dining room and kitchen at Northwest Mental Health Center has long been a fixture of programming at the clinic. Rosa Torres, who has worked as a clinical therapist at Northwest for 21 years, recalls how busy the kitchen used to be. Many of the clinic’s Psychosocial Rehabilitation and Support (PSR) programs were conducted here, where patients received instruction in meal planning and food preparation. But in recent years the kitchen has been used less and less, since funding for the meals has long since disappeared. Now Torres and her remaining colleagues, who have to wear many hats in their work as therapists and administrators, take turns providing money out-of-pocket for groceries.

Those in Torres’s field use PSR to refer to many of the programs that serve as material and emotional support infrastructure for adults suffering from mental illness–whether chronic or acute. Included in the health center’s PSR offerings are the various group therapy sessions held by clinicians, such as the Spanish-speaking women’s group that Ana Navarro has coordinated for over a decade.

The announcement of Chicago’s 2012 fiscal budget last October sealed the fate of mental health care across Chicago. The city’s outlined plan is to consolidate the clinics—transferring, for example, responsibility for the entire Back of the Yard’s patient population to the Southwest Side’s Greater Lawn Public Health Center. In the context of the prolonged and dramatic decline in mental health resources in Illinois, the measures will prove another painful blow to an already broken system, suffering from a lack of funding and legislative protection, which used to provide some insulation for Illinois’s mentally ill against homelessness and unemployment.

Northwest, which is located in Logan Square, will be merging with the South Side’s Lawndale clinic. Five other clinics will close their doors: Rogers Park, Woodlawn, Auburn Gresham, Beverly-Morgan Park, and Back of the Yards. Chicago will soon be serving upwards of 5,100 patients with a mere six operational clinics—a third as many as were open at the start of Richard M. Daley’s tenure. Since 2009 funding has seen a 36 percent reduction, a cumulative loss of $33.5 million.

The current mental health system has its origin in the Community Mental Health Services Act of 1963 (CMHA), signed into law by President Kennedy. CMHA called for the closure of state hospitals, while providing funding for mental health care at a local level through federal grants. With federal support, community health centers were able to serve as effective primary care providers for the mentally ill. This legislation was part of a national shift—both in public opinion and the field of healthcare—away from health policy that saw inpatient and institutionalized care as the best method of treating mental illness.

Over the past half-century, federal allocations have been starved and legislation distorted into what Mark Heyrman, a professor of law at the University of Chicago who specializes in mental health advocacy, calls “a variety of un-funded, uncoordinated services.” The central deficiency in many respects is a severe lack of human and financial resources, a fact hardly disputable when compared to the Illinois of yesteryear. According to Heyrman, there were 35,000 beds in Illinois available to patients in both outpatient and institutional facilities 60 years ago. Today there are 1,300.

Heyrman believes that successful mental health programs exist—they just haven’t been implemented on a large enough scale in Illinois. One such program is the Assertive Community Treatment, or ACT model. Under this system, patients are provided  “the multidisciplinary, round-the-clock staffing of a psychiatric unit, but within the comfort of their own home and community.” According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, ACT recognizes that “individuals with the most severe mental illnesses are typically not served well by the traditional outpatient model, with various services that the patient must navigate on their own.” Throughout Illinois, ACT is almost nowhere to be found, since it is simply too costly for health providers to offer. Heyrman notes that the number of ACT teams in the state “has declined precipitously as providers have increasingly had to secure funding [outside of their budgets] in order to afford it.”

The consequences of this dearth of resources are perhaps nowhere quite so visible as in city hospitals. Urgent care facilities are increasingly saddled with the severely ill—those who struggle with cyclical but nonetheless debilitating symptoms—and the newly unemployed or homeless. The latter’s need for mental health services would ideally be mitigated by the network of support—as simple as food and cots—that Torres and other long-time clinicians know to be very effective in the treatment and prevention of mental illness.

As the mental health clinics close, these preventative resources—and their benefits—will be in jeopardy. Torres is still shaking her head over the proposal:, “It doesn’t make sense any which way. From a [fiscal] perspective it doesn’t make sense, because of the increased cost of hospitalizations, incarcerations…If people aren’t stable they’re going to lose their jobs, their houses…You’re denying very basic rights.”

For patients, clinicians, and activists alike, the expected drop in quality of care is an unending source of disappointment and frustration. But the defunding is, distressingly, not simply a matter of money drying up. To make matters worse, some say the loss of state dollars is due to gross financial mismanagement.

In February 2008, Illinois’s Department of Human Services was notified of a transition from a state system to a computerized bill payment system provided by a subcontracted tech company, CERNER Corporation. The system was revealed to be largely nonfunctional, as shown in documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act according to the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers. In the months after its implementation, an overwhelming 95 percent of bills submitted to the state government by the new software were rejected on grounds of missing data.

Because the claims couldn’t be processed, the state’s Division of Mental Health elected to withhold the funding necessary to cover the operational costs of clinics like the soon-to-be terminated Woodlawn Mental Health Center. A spokesman for the Department of Human Services, Tom Green, stated that the decision to cut funding on the order of $1.2 million was based solely on the city’s inability to provide billing data.

Michael Snedeker, who has worked for the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers since 2008, recounts an incident that could be an omen of what’s to come: when the roof of the Rogers Park Clinic partially collapsed last year, its patients were temporarily directed to the nearest operational mental health center, North River, where they remained under the care of Rogers Park staff. Roughly half of those patients never sought treatment at the stopgap location.

Snedeker regards this figure as a generous estimation of the number of patients who will make it through the transition. For many of the nearly 2,600 current clients whose local clinics will be shuttered, the forced relocation is more than a logistical inconvenience. A longer commute for patients means a hike in the cost of treatment—especially for those who have been unable to secure coverage and who have long relied on the unflagging generosity of therapists like Torres and Navarro.

“We took it as a betrayal,” Torres says of the budget. “They’re annihilating health, period. Not just the clinics. And especially for Ana [Navarro]—she’s been here 27 years, she’s from this community, born and raised, people from her church come here. So it’s also a betrayal of the community, not just of the clients but of their families too.”

Other patients face the possibility of arriving at a new facility where there are no therapists who speak their language. Meanwhile, relationships that have been built over years are likely to end. As Navarro explains, “We’re merging with Lawndale, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Rosa and I will be going to Lawndale.” The city’s transition team hasn’t yet told them when their clinic will close or where they’ll be reassigned, she says.

Torres is most distressed by the uncertain fate of her clients: “We’re staff—we’re used to being tossed around like foster children. But the clients? It’s very humiliating for them…they just want to send ten of them here, move ten over there. And will it be today, or tomorrow, or a week from today?”

Patients’ prospects for dependable treatment will remain bleak as the slated closures take effect, possibly as soon as mid February or March, according to a Greater Lawn clinician. Torres states that just under 40 therapists will be terminated, a figure that does not include the psychiatrists and other clinic staff who will be laid off.

“In terms of the physical size of Chicago alone, six centers is pretty pathetic,” Snedeker says. “And as to the claim that services will be improved, I just don’t see how that’s possible with the reduction in staff that’s taking place.” He foresees a grim landscape of meager mental healthcare resources, which he likens to the food deserts that also plague expanses of the South Side. “Conceivably very soon,” he portends, “in these neighborhoods where resources have been so depleted, a near-absence of care could definitely come about, and I think to a very sobering effect.”

Rachel Wiseman & Eric Fischer/flickr

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On October 25, the assembly hall of the Hyde Park Union Church was nearly empty. Of the two-dozen chairs arranged in rows before a projector screen, only six were filled. The attendees, all beyond middle age, waited expectantly.

This gathering was a preliminary informational meeting concerning a process that Chicago undergoes every decade—aldermanic ward redistricting. The sparse turnout can be seen as emblematic of the public’s obliviousness toward the issue, or, perhaps, their indifference.

Which ever it is, community activists on the South Side are trying to change it.

Mary Schaafsma from the League of Women Voters and Jocelyn Woodards of the South Side NAACP presided over the information session—a “Redistricting 101” meeting—in front of the half-dozen longtime Hyde Parkers.

A preliminary slide exhibited a polychromatic rendering of Chicago’s jigsaw puzzle of political fault lines. Although law requires wards to remain “compact and contiguous,” boundaries have been drawn to circumscribe individual blocks and avoid others. Take the 20th ward, a region that encompasses parts of Englewood, Washington Park, and Woodlawn with one winding tendril that snakes up north and then west to grab a piece of Back of the Yards.

“It looks like Medusa’s hair going in all directions,” Schaafsma observed, gesticulating broadly.

Woodards points out that, thanks to the clandestine nature of Chicago politics, “a lot of people have no idea this is even happening.”

Ward redistricting is a process that takes place in Chicago following every U.S. Census. State law requires that aldermanic ward borders be redrawn in order to ensure that each alderman represents an equally populated district. The deadline for the new map is fast approaching: aldermen must agree upon the new borders this Thursday, December 1.

In the last decade, Chicago experienced significant population loss that was exacerbated by the recession. Approximately 200,000 people left the city from 2000 to 2009, setting the population back to the same number that inhabited Chicago in 1920.

While African-Americans still make up the largest ethnic minority in Chicago, their numbers took the biggest toll, decreasing from 1,065,009 to 887,608 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the city’s Hispanic population grew by 25,000 residents.

These shifting numbers have caused aldermen in City Hall to scramble. The conflicts over space are often complicated by race. Although African-Americans suffered the largest population loss, the Black Caucus—African-American members of city council—is determined to maintain their 19 aldermanic wards. Anticipating a game of political chess, the Black Caucus decided to make the first move by submitting their own map on September 19.

The Redistricting 101 Meeting condensed all of this information into a neat, 60 minute PowerPoint—something the city hadn’t been doing. Schaafsma described her organization’s demands in a nutshell: “All we are asking is that the city engage the public, for equal representation under the law, and for basic government processes.” A bit heated, she quickly chugged two Styrofoam cups of water. “Emanuel has taken a stand-back approach, taking his cues from Daley,” she continued icily. “For example, is Englewood inherently a bad neighborhood or is it because they have six alderman and no one is paying attention?”

But people outside City Council are paying attention.

*   *   *   *

The day after Halloween the West Chesterfield Community Association held a special meeting at their headquarters in a stubby brick bungalow on 93rd and Michigan. About forty people gathered inside on cramped rows of metal folding chairs. The crowd was mixed: residents, local politicians, and representatives from community organizations. A small boy ate a Happy Meal, while leaning sleepily against his mother.

West Chesterfield Community Association President Michael LaFargue began the meeting by saying, “We’re all working together because we’re in this together.”

The West Chesterfield residents in attendance are proud of their traditionally strong voter turn-out and enjoy being grouped in the sixth ward with the comparatively stable Chatham community. In other words, the residents don’t want the neighborhood to be tainted with the problems of the neighboring wards. LaFargue gestures to the Black Caucus map proposal, with West Chesterfield resting in an expanded ninth ward. “That’s a very large ward, how can anyone handle that? …We’re going to fight this thing.”

LaFargue introduced Jocelyn Woodards to the crowd, who a week before had assisted in the Hyde Park meeting. Woodards took to the lectern dressed in a lime green suit coat. Behind Woodards, a Holy Bible and a three volume tome entitled Black America rested on a mantelpiece before a wall plastered in large posters with anti-redistricting slogans. Woodards began, “They [the city council] are claiming we lost 200,000 people. Who were they and where did they go?”

“Black people,” the crowd murmured unanimously.

“And what does that mean for us?” Woodards inquired.

“Less representation,” was the resounding reply.

“It’s time for us to get it together and ensure we have the best representation possible.” Woodards’s statement was met with applause and amens.

In an open discussion that followed, audience members voiced suspicion, confusion, and even outright anger at the proposal to move West Chesterfield from the sixth to the ninth ward. The room, heated with bodies and emotion, caused someone to yank the cord of a ceiling fan.

“We need to make sure we maintain the integrity of the community,” an audience member affirmed. “That is what’s wrong with Englewood. It’s like many cooks have spoiled the broth. We don’t want four or five or six aldermanic districts in the community.”

One woman said frankly, “It’s like a slap in the face because we’re subjected to people we didn’t vote for.” The crowd stirred in agreement.

Their suspicion is not unwarranted. While wards have given ethnic groups access to political power and city resources, Chicago has seen politicians resort to gerrymandering—drawing political borders for private political gain—to expand their clout in the city. Redistricting becomes a game that is less about representation and more about maintaining office by lassoing pockets of community areas that will guarantee an alderman’s reelection—historically, districts containing fewer residents with college degrees and which usually have low voter turnout rates. The 14th ward, for example, a predominately Latino community where fewer than one in ten people have graduated from college, has had the same alderman since 1969.

Following the meeting, guests chatted and posed for pictures holding 8-by-10-inch printer paper reading, “We Oppose West Chesterfield Redistricting.” Resident Shirley Adams rose from her folding chair. Putting on her winter coat, she explained she attended the meeting “just to be briefed on what is going on and how much progress is being made.” For Adams, the intentions of the community are clear—“we want to stay in the 6th ward.”

But West Chesterfield isn’t the only neighborhood on alert. A blue leaflet has been circulated around Englewood promoting another redistricting meeting. On the pamphlet reads the following challenge: “You say we are never informed of what is going on in our communities before it happens, well, Resident Matters is trying to change that! Now the rest is up to you!”

*   *   *   *

“I was taught a sign of a good compromise is that everybody walks out of the room mad,” said Fredrenna Lyle at the meeting in the Englewood branch of the Chicago Police Department on November 2.

Lyle—a lawyer who lost her third reelection campaign for Alderman of the 6th ward this spring—defended the Black Caucus proposal. After dividing up their wards legally and with the aid of a professional cartographer from Lansing, Michigan, the Black Caucus let a computer program draw the remaining wards.

Although she explained the Black Caucus’s position logically—one based on sheer legality—a distinct “us versus them” tone permeated her argument, particularly against the Latino Caucus. “They can come up with anything they want. We even gave them an extra ward. This whole thing is a blank canvas in terms where they can go.”

Lyle addressed the lack of congruity in Englewood—a neighborhood fractured into six aldermanic wards: “Englewood is the biggest change [on our map]. It’s about consolidating. The map we’ve drawn reduced the current six aldermen by one. We couldn’t reduce it ten years ago. Your aldermen loved you so much they didn’t want to leave!” In response, the audience laughed wryly.

“Change is scary,” Lyle admitted. “It’s understandable, but we are trying to maximize African-American representation without stepping or trampling on any other groups’ wards.”

She emphasized that the Black Caucus map was not an incumbency plan and blamed the media for propagating such a message. “Not all the alderman [of the Black Caucus] even agreed on this map…We didn’t want individual interest to supersede the interest of the African-American community.” Everyone, she stressed, had to make sacrifices, even if it meant drawing up less-than-ideal ward boundaries to satisfy legal requirements. “You [the aldermen] can have x,y, and z in la-la-land, but in the real world this is what we were dealt.”

“So,” she concluded, “if you can draw a better map, bring it in.”

On November 10, The Latino Caucus attempted just that.

This version included four more majority-Hispanic wards. One new ward on the southwest side would sweep up isolated Latino areas in the 3rd, 15th, 16th, 18th and 20th wards, all of which currently have a black majority. Ricardo Muñoz, 22nd ward alderman, told the Chicago Sun-Times, “If we’re one-third of the city, why are we one-fifth of the City Council? It’s not that we deserve it. That’s the law.”

Chicago’s Asian community is voicing similar concerns. Although the Asian population has expanded 40 percent in the past decade and is the fastest growing minority in Chicago, Asian populations in Chinatown and Bridgeport have never seen an Asian alderman. According to the Asian American Institute, “this lack of government representation is unacceptable…The Asian American community will organize itself…in a call for the importance of promoting transparency and public participation in the redistricting process.”

After being badgered by the public, 33rd ward alderman Richard Mell issued a public notice announcing six public hearings on the City of Chicago redistricting process. This got the City Council’s stamp of approval on October 31. The first meeting was held on November 2, giving community members only one day to mobilize and only three weeks until the actual vote.

The process to approve a new map can be murky and prolonged. Each alderman goes individually into the city’s map room to demonstrate how they want their ward redrawn. The city mapmakers then produce a map. If ten or more members of city council disagree with the proposed map, they can propose another map and the process drags on until a referendum can be held in March, a potentially costly procedure. The most infamous example of prolonging the process was the 1992 referendum that cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

There is a reason that redistricting is so important this time around. Hyde Park resident and political activist Dorothy Scheff made this explicit after the Redistricting 101 meeting: “There is more hope now—for the first time all the aldermen have been elected and there is a new mayor. The aldermen have not been appointed like the Daley crop. [Redistricting] is a problem we have been aware of for generations.” She gestured toward her fellow Montgomery Place retirement home residents and said, “I think now we feel there is a chance for change.”

Settled in the late 19th century by Irish, German, and Czech butchers, the area saw a surge in immigration from Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia at the turn of the century. During and after the Great Depression, these culturally distinct micro-communities united, at work and on the block. The Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee fought for wages and civil rights in the plants, while the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council collaborated with parishes and fought for improved housing, and henceforth became a model for grassroots organizing across the country.

Since the meatpacking plants closed, the face of the neighborhood has changed. Occupation has ceased to define the area. Taquerías and bars are open most of the day and night, factories test out green technologies, and community groups organize 5K races through the very stockyards once stained with blood and grime.

Best Futuristic Factory
The Plant
Opportunity, for most people, would not be found in a retired meatpacking facility whose rooms are filled with scrap metal and fragmented building materials. But John Edel and his dedicated volunteers see potential in those piles: they are in the process of creating Chicago’s first vertical farm. The repurposed building will eventually house a sustainable, connected group of enterprises—including a beer brewery, hydroponic growing rooms, kitchens for lease to independent cooks, and a souped-up military jet to provide the building’s power. On the tour, you’ll peek into a room on the second floor, where layers of debris reach almost to the ceiling, giving a good picture of what the place looked like before. Edel’s commitment to reusing materials meant they had to sort out what was useful before any building could begin. How will these scraps be transformed into such an eco-wonderland? Well, I won’t go into the details of what my tour guide called the “physics magic” that will occur when the building is fully occupied—but a visit to the space will make you believe it’s possible. 1400 W. 46th St. Tours Monday, Thursday and Saturday at 2pm.  $10 suggested donation (Rachel Lazar)

Best Flea Market
Swap-O-Rama
“You can get anything there,” a neighborhood council member told me. “New, used, or abused.” Spanning nearly a full city block on Archer Avenue, Swap-O-Rama is a one-stop shop where you can pick up everyday supermarket items like fresh produce or shampoo. A labyrinth of shops spill out from the market’s main big-box, giving an ad hoc feel to the bazaar. But some vendors seem to have really settled into the place—a jewelry store has its own security system set up while one woman sells pet food as her son watches TV. Outside, people sell a more motley assortment of wares: an older man revs a chainsaw by a row of dirty vacuums; one vendor displays granola bars next to a Disney princess lamp. And then there’s some stuff you might not want to buy: tons of bikes and bike parts look like they could be stolen, counterfeit films and iPods abound, and men sit and flirt with the woman at a “Free Massage” stand, where a sign guarantees there are “no strings attached.” Swap-O-Rama is the place where you can buy almost anything. But it doesn’t mean you should. 4100 S. Ashland Ave. Tuesday, 7am-2pm. Thursday, 7am-2pm. Saturday-Sunday, 7am-4pm. (708)344-7300 (Rachel Lazar)

Best Yogurt
Paletería Lindo Michocán
Don’t let the line keep you away. The homemade $2.75 yogurt—their most popular item—is more than worth the wait. The yogurt has a thin consistency but isn’t too runny, while the taste recalls sweet milk rather than the store-bought variety. Get your yogurt loaded with guava, bananas, strawberries, granola, and coconut shavings or sprinkles. If you’d rather go for a popsicle or ice cream, you’ll need time to settle on a flavor: there are over 40 kinds of popsicles alone. They also make sundaes, aguas naturales, chocolate-covered frozen bananas (with granola on top), and saltier options, like Cheetos smothered in nacho cheese along with Mexican-style hoagies. It’s also a nice place to sit; sometimes a guitar player will wander in from the street, and kids will sing or dance in time. Feel free to wave your popsicle along. 1733 W. 47th St. Monday-Saturday, 11am-10pm; Sunday, 11am-11pm. (773)475-7506 (Rachel Lazar)

Best Hidden Taquería
Pepe’s Tacos
People don’t come Supermercado La Internacional just to go grocery shopping. They walk past the registers and all the way down the aisles just to line up at the little taqueria counter tucked away in back. Paco’s Tacos, as it is known, has a short menu: five kinds of meat tacos, one cheese-stuffed pepper taco…and that’s it. But when tacos are $2 apiece, made in a matter of minutes and commonly lauded as the best in the city, you’ll be happy with any choice. Most people grab theirs to go, as seating is limited—a framed sign says the capacity shouldn’t exceed 15. Drinks come from the supermarket fridges, and you eat on paper plates, but locals and visitors consider this to be the peak of Mexican dining in the area. Many supermarkets run similar operations, where employees alternate between the register and the grill, but this is the one that can draw a crowd. 4556 S. Ashland Ave. Daily, 9am-8:30pm. (773)523-9745 (Rachel Lazar)

Best Family-Style Mexican Food 
La Cecina
Although the Back of the Yards is full of great Mexican restaurants, La Cecina stands out for the quality of its ingredients and its relaxed atmosphere. It’s popular among locals, so service can be a little slow when the place is crowded, but the waiters are very friendly and patient, which is nice when your Spanish menu-reading skills are a little rusty. The tortillas were the standout; they were obviously freshly made, and arrived wrapped in a white, embroidered cloth napkin. Everything else was fresh tasting and flavorful too, from the vinegar and chili sauce smothered shrimp fajita, accompanied by rice and vegetables, to the quesadilla de flor de calabaza, filled with zucchini and other vegetables. 1934 W. 47th St. Monday-Sunday, 8am-10pm. (773)927-9444 (Rachel Lazar)

Sophia Anastazievsky

“It’s like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory—it keeps going and going and going…there are a lot of crazy things going on here and we’re one of them.” This is how Samuel Edwin Evans, cofounder of the New Chicago Brewing Company, describes his work. Started by Samuel and his brother Jesse, the brewery, which is currently under construction, will soon occupy 13,000 sq. ft. of the Peer Foods Building in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. In this post-Goose Island buyout world, the brewery aims to utilize innovative and sustainable brewing practices to create a beer unique to Chicago.

Like most brewers, the Evans brothers started off brewing in their backyard. According to Samuel, “when you’re a home brewer, you have a lot more free reign over the process.” Eventually, the brothers began working with an independent brewery in Oakland, California; the company had a contract with Whole Foods that provided aid with distribution throughout California. There, the Evans brothers became familiar with sustainable brewing methods, and they decided to leave Oakland for their home city, Chicago.

The brewery will become the latest chapter in a lengthy heritage of Chicago-made industry. The triangular plot of land at 1400 W. 46th Street that the Brewery’s will call home is situated in what were once Chicago’s bustling stockyards. Formerly known as Whiskey Point, this region was made infamous in Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé, “The Jungle.” The Buehler Brothers Meat Market opened a packing facility here in 1925. In 1944, the building was renamed the Peer Foods Building, when the Buehler Brothers began selling more than just meat from the location, expanding operations to include such zany products as Spanish olives and pie dough. In its latest manifestation, The Peer Foods Building is striving for sustainability—a complete divergence from its past inhabitants. In 2010, the space was purchased by Bubbly Dynamics LLC, renamed “The Plant,” and converted into a sustainable, off-the-grid, vertically integrated operation. A full production farm, sustainable food businesses, a community kitchen, and educational facilities currently share the space.

In keeping with their mission of sustainability, New Chicago Brewing plans to be a true local beer. Their ingredients are not only from within Chicago, but many are from within their own building. Another business in the building grows the hops that are to be used in New Chicago’s beer—brewed in a “hoppy” West Coast style. Other ingredients come from local family farms and community gardens. New Chicago looks to talent, ingredients, and volunteers to create their product, which in turn will be distributed locally in order to keep the profit as well as the labor local.

The New Chicago Brewing Company will be a full-scale production brewery. In its first year it plans to produce a whopping 1,000,000 22oz bottles. The Evans brothers knew that they planned to brew sustainably when they moved to Chicago, but it was not until they found the Peer Foods location that they decided on a larger-scale production.

“The neat thing is the way we get out energy and use waste here,” says Samuel.  A brewery of this size produces 1 ton of spent grain a week, which at normal breweries is simply trucked off to a landfill. At the Plant, however, the grain is treated with bacteria to create a natural gas, which runs a turbine that powers the building. New Chicago’s mission is one of sustainability—of handling waste and creating power from byproducts that would otherwise become an ecological problem. “The only thing that leaves the brewery is the beer itself,” says Samuel.

New Chicago plans to send out its first shipment of beer on March 4th, 2012—the 175th anniversary of Chicago’s inception in 1873. On Saturday, May 5th, they held their second open house, attended by 400 local students and community members who came to see the innovative recycling methods in action. What they are doing is a new combination of processes that have been practiced on a smaller scale, and that often have been discreet from one another. Samuel explained that, “Some breweries are doing parts of our process—but no one does all of these things.”

Ironically, the northern corner of the Plant’s land has a deed that prohibits the sale of alcohol, a throwback to the early 20th century, before Prohibition, to a space that was designated by religious forces as alcohol-free. In keeping with tradition, no beer will be brewed in that part of the property, as it will serve as the facility’s parking lot.

Shoes for sale at Swap-O-Rama; Leah Reisman

Buyers beware: at the Ashland Avenue Swap-O-Rama, you can buy everything and the kitchen sink. Set just north of the once-booming Chicago stockyards, the flea market is a sea of vendors, shoppers, and products on a sunny Thursday; by noon, there’s a long line of bargain hunters waiting to pay the $1 admission fee. Inside, offerings range from costume jewelry to used power tools and all sorts of knickknacks, all for bargain prices. Less focused on antiques than some North Side markets, the Ashland Avenue market caters to a more everyday crowd: families stock up on fruits and vegetables while expectant mothers peruse hair dyes and baby clothes. Here it is possible to find a little bit of everything. Located in and outside of a large building with red, white, and blue candy stripes, the flea market has an air of history; while the building is worn, the business is brisk. A Polish-American shopkeeper offers antique sewing machines and aprons, fiddling with an aged teal Singer machine while chatting with customers. A vendor who has been selling authentic Italian food products at the market for fifteen years claims business is great; according to him, the Ashland flea market is the place to be because the management treats the vendors well and shoppers are looking for deals. Antoinette Johnson, who has sold shoes, movies, and miscellanea for four years at the market, proclaims that the trick to successfully selling wares is getting to know your customers and what they’ll pay. “If you’ve got something nice, you’ve got to stick to your price,” she says. “But if you bring something back three, four days in a row, you’d better let it go.” According to Johnson, the Ashland Avenue market is different from other swap meets in Chicago. “You can come here and sell anything. At the other, bigger markets, such as the one in Alsip, you need commercial stuff to be successful. [At the Ashland market] people buy, they want to buy.” There is an air of camaraderie to the market community. Buyers and sellers joke and shout, flirting and offering dates as well as doing business.

However, not everything is cheerful. Even the flea market’s fluid economy has taken a hit due to America’s financial crisis. According to Johnson, business is tough nowadays, and it’s harder to make a good profit. An appliance salesman who is a 40-year veteran of the flea market trade echoes her concern, claiming that sales are terrible and that the market itself has become more hectic and harder to maneuver. Internet reviews agree, with visitors on Yelp giving the market only two stars, calling it is dirty, disorganized, and disappointing. One commentator denounced the  politics of the management, which allegedly mistreats the vendors and allows thieves to run rampant. Several reviewers commented on the existence of stolen goods at the flea market.

Despite such skeptics, many vendors and shoppers sing the praises of the flea market. One shopper with a rolling cart says that she comes to the market to “get peace.” She says, “I get all of my stuff here. I could go to Marshalls, but I can’t stand faceless department stores. Instead, I come here and get it for a little cheaper. I can get my party dresses, my cleaning supplies, everything I need!” With the relocation of the Maxwell Street Market in University Village a decade and a half ago, many vendors relocated to the Ashland market, which according to some shoppers improved the quality of the goods at the swap meet.

Aside from its commercial opportunities, the flea market is valuable for the culture that has grown around it. A vendor who refers to himself as Dresser Johnny proclaims that the swap meet business is like “MeTV,” but in real life. According to Johnny, “You can make a living in good times and bad times in the business. You just jump in a van on junking day and find all sorts of great stuff. In the past, I’ve sold Gibson SGs, Rolex watches, marble statues…” Johnny, who has been in the business since 1995, claims that you’ve got to be a character to be successful in the flea market trade. “You’ve got to be nice to the kids. My father is from the Appalachians, he’s not some big lawyer dad, and I followed in his footsteps—like father, like son.” According to Johnny, the swap meet business is the best job in the world. “I’ve been constantly employed since 1995. All around me, people are losing jobs, but I’m sitting pretty right here.”
Ashland Swap-O-Rama, 4100 S. Ashland Ave. Open Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 7am-4pm. $1 entrance fee.