Tameka Jones of Pretty in Pink Productions has answers. Her speed dating service, Twenty First Dates, presents the opportunity for love at first (or twentieth) sight to the South Side’s lonely masses in the form of fleeting romantic encounters.

Jones, who also operates under the alias “Miss Pretty Pink,” says that the idea for Twenty First Dates came from repeated viewings of the romantic comedy Hitch. In the film, Will Smith plays a “date doctor” who diagnoses men’s romantic foibles, before curing them with dates of both the blind and sped-up variety. Jones says that the premise, coupled with the perils of the fast-paced life led by most singles, inspired her to launch her speed dating service. She says, with a dreamy gleam in her eye, “There’s just not enough time to find dates nowadays. It’s easy here compared to a bar!”

Twenty First Dates occurs weekly in the rear of L26, an edgy dining hotspot in Bronzeville, and is, without a doubt, an updated take on one of love’s most ancient rituals. Female speed daters sit expectantly on the inside of a ring of tables as each new man cycles by. Dates lasts five minutes, before Jones rings a bell that signals a shift to the next potential mate.

Loosened up by the one free drink included with Twenty First Dates’ $25 admission fee, I decided to try my hand (and my heart) at this unconventional, albeit intriguing, new dating ritual. From the outset my encounters were uncomfortable, undoubtedly due in part to compounded flirtatious anticipation and necessarily dry journalistic inquiry.

An innocent, investigative query of, “Do you come here often?” was met with no sympathy in the eyes of my first partner, so I trashed that angle of attack in favor of something more straightforward.  I decided it might be best to evade, up front, any further shenanigans. I found an escape from suggestive banter in the following mundane disclosure: I’m actually a reporter, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about speed dating?

From there, the conversations grew decidedly cooler, but perhaps more pointed. The women whom I “encountered” throughout the night had come to Twenty First Dates for reasons ranging from the brightly curious (“I wanted to try something new!”) to the somewhat more practical (“It’s a good way to get to know someone safely and non-creepily”). By and large, Twenty First Dates’ clientele said they hoped to meet new people. It felt ironic, considering the decidedly modern nature of speed dating, that most daters seemed to be searching for a “more traditional” alternative to the chaotic and stifling world of meat market–esque bars and clubs.

Though few speed daters considered themselves to be conventional (“I am anything but traditional,” one woman assured me), most seemed to hold views tending toward old-style romance. One young lady affirmed her belief in love at first sight, stating hopefully, “Anything is possible in the first five minutes of meeting someone.” When asked if she might catch that kind of spark at Twenty First Dates, she replied, “It might not be tonight, but someday, definitely.”

Another speed dater took a slightly different view: “I’d like to believe [in love at first sight], but I don’t think I can!” The venue, however, struck her as an opportunity for “instant connections,” a fitting and ostensibly modernized version of first-sighted love.

As for the madame of the evening, Tameka Jones affirmed her belief in the reality of love at first sight. “In the first two minutes of taking to someone,” she said, simultaneously starry-eyed and grounded, “You can form a connection that tells you if you’re compatible for the long-term.” The promise of such an apocalyptic spark powers much of the drive behind speed dating. What better place to find Mr. or Mrs. Right than in a quick and intimate environment? It’s enough time to know.

Though Twenty First Dates only launched at the beginning of the month, a surplus of eager daters, Jones’ gusto, and the encouragement of spring seem to promise success. Twenty First Dates will be kindling the fires of summer flings and lifelong couplings for a long time to come.

Twenty First Dates, L26 Restaurant, 2600 S. State St. Wednesdays, 8-10pm. $25. 

(Lily Gabaree)

Ain’t She Sweet Café in Bronzeville serves up a smoothie worthy of a billboard—but glistening condensation and an upright straw meet their match with a decidedly solid sandwich. Originally opened in 2006 at another location two minutes away, the café relocated to its current space in 2010. Everything still seems new, and crisply clean, save for one exposed-brick wall. The set-up is simple: seating for twenty or so at small wooden tables, and only a countertop spread with cookies and brownies separates the dining area from the kitchen workspace.

Works by local artists adorn warm gray walls: a colorful painting declares, “I VOTED FOR OBAMA.” Black-and-white photographs of street scenes from Bronzeville’s past hang as reminders of the remarkable history of the surrounding neighborhood—Louis Armstrong’s old home is just around the corner. A wall-mounted TV quietly plays infomercials; a temptingly cushy couch shares a corner with a tic-tac-toe board.

The menu has comfortable standards—saucy sandwiches and crisp paninis, soups and smoothies, brownies and shakes—with some creative twists. Neighborhood favorites, according to the menu’s asterisked designations, include “Da Steve,” piled high with turkey, turkey ham, turkey bacon, cheddar, peppers, and more on a croissant, and the “Caribbean Jerk Chicken Wrap.” My companions ordered the Reuben Panini, the Chicken Caesar Wrap, and the Sweets Panini (chicken). After we ordered, a server presented us with paper place mats and a bag of chips each, though there was no promise of them on the menu.

The Reuben Panini proved heavy on the sauerkraut but not overly flavorful. The Sweets Panini (chicken, tomato, turkey ham, provolone and honey mustard) was better received amongst the group, though too light on the provolone cheese. The best came last in the Simply Panini. Simply furnished with deli turkey, tomato, spinach, Swiss cheese, and dabs of mustard, the panini was perfectly toasted, and the mustard surprisingly spicy.

More unusual were the accompanying frozen beverages. The vanilla milkshake came “blended with milk and flavor boosters,” as the menu reveals—perhaps the root of the  strange aftertaste. The culinary creativity continued to flow with the Muscle Up Smoothie. Composed of chocolate milk, banana, and peanut butter, the concoction was a bit like drinking liquefied Reese’s cups. While exciting for the first few sips, it turned overwhelming towards the end of the meal, certainly keeping its promise of hearty sustenance.

And then came the Very Berry Mixer. A friend (who frequents Jamba Juice four times a week) was suddenly silent after her first sip. Her eyes squinted thoughtfully, and, with the air of one betraying a dear friend, she spoke quietly—“It may be better than Jamba Juice.” Passed around the table, everyone confirmed the Very Berry’s superior fruity bliss; it was reminiscent of childhood popsicles, a blueberry-raspberry-strawberry summer in a sip.

Such welcoming coziness and gustatory satisfaction made it all the more surprising that, when we walked in—at noon on a Saturday—we were the only customers. Eventually things picked up a bit, several customers trickling in at a time, many ordering a sandwich to go. Perhaps it is more crowded during the week: Ain’t She Sweet bills itself as a meeting spot for local young professionals and friends. With six years of business behind them (two right next door to another café, the Bronzeville Coffee House), they’ve clearly tapped a certain market.

Their secret lies in their ability to make regulars out of passersby. I suspect we’ll be returning for the smoothies and the wonderfully friendly servers who bestow drinks with pleasant remarks. We munched happily on our chips and sandwiches, sipping our shakes and smoothies, and debated taking a Very Berry to go—alas, it was finished even before we managed to make it out the door into the afternoon sun. 526 E. 43rd St. Monday-Friday, 10am-6pm; Saturday, 11am-6pm. (773)373-3530. aintshesweetcafe.com

Courtesy of Kimberly Veal

For a bunch of atheists, the conversation was in some ways unsurprising. Gathered in a Bronzeville Starbucks, the group broached all the major talking points—evolution, the Bible, zealots. The inaugural meeting of the Black Nonbelievers of Chicago (BNOC) also brushed with more intimate topics, such as the members’ personal trajectories towards atheism and issues with faith. But perhaps the most unusual thing about this meeting of black nonbelievers—a designation meant to cover atheists, agnostics and freethinkers—is simply that it happened.

Less than 0.5 percent of blacks in America self-identified as atheists in 2008, according to the U.S. Religious Landscapes Survey by Pew Forum. African Americans are the country’s “most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in the nation”: according to the Pew survey, 85 percent identify as Christian (more than any other racial or ethnic group) and only 12 percent are religiously unaffiliated. Kimberly Veal, the group’s organizer, says that because of these numbers, “There seems to be this misconception that we’re an anomaly, that there’s no such thing as a black atheist or a minority atheist.”

She and others across both the city and the country have been working to dispel that idea. Veal, who hosts a weekly Internet radio program called Black Free Thinkers, has tried to raise the visibility of black and other minority nonbelievers and to encourage more to come forward. Social media have made it easier for nonbelievers to find each other online, and translating these connections into real life has been important to getting the movement off the ground. The approach seems to be gaining traction—several of those at the meeting were introducing themselves for the first time.

 ***

In a highly religious community, where a lot of social activity revolves around the church, nonbelievers can feel alone and uncomfortable sharing their questions, even with those closest to them. Veal, who grew up in Auburn-Gresham, explained, “There are quite a few of us that have these thoughts and feelings but we have no one to share them with.”

But that is all changing. On that late January afternoon, the group of nine crowded itself around a big table and Veal, who wears her hair in dreads, spoke a bit about the goals she has for the organization before the conversation flowed smoothly into a lively, open exchange that touched on a multitude of topics.

Although there was no paved path from believer to nonbeliever within the group, questioning the foundations of their belief allowed each of the nine to consider the value of a new way of life. Cheryl, a compact woman in her late fifties, recounted that her atheism grew out of a long and thoughtful examination of her faith, a process that took somewhere between five and ten years. Ultimately, it led her to discover a “really basic dishonesty about being a believer.”

Most of the nonbelievers at the meeting were raised in religious families where church played a central role. Jason spoke about growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness and recounted how he was “disfellowshipped”—a process of formal expulsion from the sect that essentially cut him off from his family. Although going from a Jehovah’s Witness to atheist is perhaps an extreme experience, coming out as a nonbeliever in the black community and statistically becoming a double minority did not seem to have been an easy process for anyone.

Engaging in critical conversations about faith with others seemed to be a key catalyst in the move toward nonbelief for many at the meeting. Jason, Jerry, and Matthew are co-workers at the Social Service Administration, and pointed to the support and friendship they provided each other as crucial to their development as atheists. Jason says he “attribute[s] Jerry to helping me come out. He did question me on a lot of things. I would talk to him about some stuff and he would ask me questions. And I knew that I couldn’t in my heart explain it.”

As the meeting slowly broke down into smaller groups, people relaxed and started opening up. Cheryl asked how they dealt with having to “basically rebuild [their] whole social network.” She explained, “I find that I’m in the process of doing that.” Reggie, Jerry and Frank all suggested that if she could make clear that her nonbelief didn’t mean relinquishing her morals, she would likely keep many of her friends, even those who were very religious. But not everyone got such a positive response. Matthew told the group that he lost his two best high school friends after he told them that he was an atheist.

The stakes also moved beyond just friends and family. Frank, who had kept fairly quiet for the first half of the meeting, recounted a story from his involvement in a predominantly black, non-faith-based organization whose focus was completely non-religious. While at a meeting of the organization’s board, he chose to step out of the room while a prayer was said. For some other members of the board, his decision was discomforting. After someone voiced concerns directly to Frank in the meeting, he realized that his time on the board was likely coming to a close. Although he is still actively involved in the organization, he was not invited to return to the board.

It was evident from the ties that developed over the course of the meeting that they relished the opportunity to join a community where faith didn’t go unquestioned. Their experiences revealed that being a minority nonbeliever carried social and professional repercussions, and Veal commended everyone for “the courage to come out and tell everyone I’m a nonbeliever and this is why.”

 ***

The numbers in surveys may not tell the whole story about this group of nonbelievers. Reggie suggested that there are far more atheists in the black community than the statistics indicate. “The community actually has more of us than most people think,” he said. “A lot of the guys who go [to church] are going just for the women. They’re supporting the wife, the girlfriend.” However, some women, Veal conjectured, “may not necessarily believe but [go for] the services, daycare, food.” Veal emphasized the need to provide those services to people in need without proselytizing them.

This is intimately connected to the organization’s purpose. One of Veal’s core goals for BNOC is providing “community-based solutions.” It is already incorporated as a non-profit in Illinois, and they hope to attain 501(c)3 status by the summer. She aims to build up the group’s capacity for providing social services that are often mediated by religious institutions.

Although specific plans and collaborations are still being worked out, Veal hopes to focus on health and education initiatives in underserved communities on the South Side. Ultimately, she hopes that BNOC will open a “resource center that will focus on educational advancement and career training.” Given that several members of the group have a background in technology—Veal works in IT—a likely component will involve providing computer literacy training. By pushing science and reason, BNOC hopes to benefit South Siders professionally as well.

***

The first nationwide collaboration BNOC is participating in is the “We are Humanists” billboard campaign. Coinciding with Black History Month, the advertisements, which appear in Chicago and six additional cities nationwide, all read: “Doubts about religion? You’re one of many.” The ads juxtapose images of a historical black, freethinking figure with someone currently involved in the black nonbeliever movement. Zora Neale Hurston, Frederick Douglass, and Langston Hughes have all been co-opted for the campaign. In Chicago, the billboards greet South Side ‘L’ riders along the Red and Green Lines.

The effort is coordinated by African Americans for Humanism (AAH), an affiliate of the Center for Inquiry, both of which promote secularism and are based in Amherst, New York. Although AAH came into existence in 1989, it has recently revamped its programs under a new director, Debbie Goddard, and coordinated with African-American atheist organizations across the country. After a successful AAH conference in the spring of 2010, Goddard helped shift AAH’s focus to supporting local organizations of nonbelievers by providing resources and encouraging collaboration between groups. The ads were a “pie-in-the-sky idea” at first, Goddard says, but the project moved forward with funding from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to advocating secularism.

The AAH billboards are more an invitation to join other African Americans in questioning their faith than an assault on religion as such. BNOC seems to take a similar inclusive, non-combative approach. An oft-repeated word at the meeting was “community.”

The goals of both BNOC and the AAH campaign are significant in the ways they differ from the methods of other atheists, in particular the New Atheists. The most prominent members of this group, known as the Four Horsemen, are Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, and the late Christopher Hitchens. New Atheism aims to counter and criticize religion by rational argument and, in doing so, has often drawn criticism itself for being too heavy-handed. BNOC instead aims to establish networks of nonbelievers

The immediate, short-term culmination of the “We are Humanists” campaign will come on February 26, which has been designated as a National Day of Solidarity for Black Nonbelievers and will be marked by events across the country. In Chicago, BNOC is organizing a meet-up at the DuSable Museum of History. At the museum they will hear about Lorraine Hansberry, a nonbeliever, Chicagoan, and playwright most famous for “A Raisin in the Sun,” which was inspired by her family’s attempt to move into the Washington Park neighborhood in 1938 when racially restrictive covenants still existed.

The event aligns with another one of Veal’s missions, which is to promote the historical contributions of black and minority nonbelievers to society. One poignant example is that of Bayard Rustin, a foundational member of the civil rights movement, chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington and adviser to Martin Luther King, Jr. However, being gay and a nonbeliever kept him from playing a more publicly prominent role in the movement. Veal believes that recognizing the important contributions made by secular communities can have a profound impact on shaping public opinion of nonbelievers.

The hope is that the outreach campaign, the day of solidarity, and increasing presence of black atheist groups at a local level will help the movement keep its momentum. AAH is currently organizing a series of events at historically black colleges and universities in coordination with local groups. In Chicago, Goddard is working on organizing a national conference on the University of Chicago campus in May with the UChicago Secular Alliance.

This kind of outreach—the kind that brings people together—seems to be the most effective. Reggie recalled how he once spoke to a woman about atheism and explaining to her what nonbelief entailed. When he was done talking, she replied, “I’ve always thought that, but I heard no one else say it.”

courtesy of Zol87/flickr

The Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments in Bronzeville are a sorry sight. At one time, this building was among the city’s largest housing projects. It was built in 1929 by Julius Rosenwald, owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company, at the request of Rosenwald’s friend, Booker T. Washington. Stretching west from Michigan to Wabash and north from 47th to 46th Street, the affordable housing was created to relieve overcrowding after the Great Migration.  Rosenwald—who also funded and served on the board of the Tuskegee Institute, an institution dedicated to improving the education of African-Americans across the country—intended the building to serve as a new beginning for blacks in Chicago. Now, the massive building’s windows are all broken or boarded.

In addition to providing housing, the 400-unit complex originally included fourteen stores (four of which were black-owned) to encourage economic development. During the building’s history, a long list of Bronzeville’s most notable citizens lived in the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments, including musician Quincy Jones, the boxer Joe Louis, and the city’s first black librarian, Vivian Harshe. The massive and ornate building served as one of the cornerstones of Chicago’s Black Metropolis.

As time went on, however, the structure’s fortune changed for the worse. Mismanaged federal funds in the mid-1970s and a change of ownership marked the beginning of several decades of neglect. By the late 1980s, the complex was overrun by poverty and drugs. In the 1990s, problems arising from urban blight, the inability of the new building owner to pay off the structure’s mortgage, and the failure of its drug elimination programs finally forced the condemnation of the building, and by 2000 all tenants had been evicted. By 2003, the National Trust for Historic Places cited the building on its list of the eleven most endangered historic places. The Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments seemed at the end of its life.

¬ ¬ ¬ ¬

For 25 years, Bobbie Johnson has led the fight to preserve the Michigan Boulevard Garden Apartments. In the early ’90s, Johnson moved into the housing project as a drug elimination coordinator under a Housing and Urban Development program. “It was like New Jack City,” she said, referring to living conditions in the apartments at the time. “It was a big drug business in a small habitat.”  Living in the complex until the building was condemned, Johnson became strongly established in the Garden Apartments community as a voice for change through her efforts as a drug elimination coordinator.  Having previously worked as a nurse, her motivation stemmed from a passion for caring for people in need. “I came to preserve the humans,” she says. Since the evictions, former residents have rallied around her to fight for the building’s preservation.

Her relentless pursuit to save the building led her from organization to organization over the past decade, in search of support.  “After a while I came to understand how politics work and how the community works,” she explained.  Beginning with the support of the Chicago Urban League, Johnson leaned on an array of grassroots methods and community groups to spread the word in the community about the value of the building, while at the same time attempting to sell the economic value to private companies.

After over a decade of struggle, a deal potentially worth $170 million has been reached to preserve the building. The potential for commercial development coupled with the activism of those like Johnson attracted the attention of Landwhite Developers LLC, who have purchased the building with the intention of renovating it. The deal will draw on funding from as many as fourteen sources—including the City of Chicago, which has already approved $58.6 million in revenue bonds for the new project.

The new plan for the building is similar to the original, in design and spirit. The renovation will include new community spaces, including a daycare and community service offices, and commercial properties, echoing the original goals of the project. “I didn’t spend 25 years fighting to save a building,” says Johnson. “I did it to leave something for those who come after me.”

Walking around the area immediately surrounding the apartment complex today, one can see empty lots and boarded-up buildings—reminders of the stark reality of recent strife. But when ground is broken this coming spring, the dream of Julius Rosenwald, Bobbie Johnson, and others will be reborn. Johnson plans to invite community musicians to perform alongside Quincy Jones and Wynton Marsalis when the building finally reopens It would be a fitting tribute to the building’s legacy, or perhaps more so to the hope for its future.

Courtesy of the artist

On a Friday night at Blanc Gallery, a visitor unabashedly ran her palm along a series of seven panels. Her fingers first grazed scraps of black roofing paper, continuing to another panel of hot-pink vinyl stretched over studio debris, and ending their run on pieces of Bazooka bubble gum laid out like tiles. The cardinal rule of any art gallery—Do Not Touch—was suspended.

Connie Noyes’s exhibit “Pink | Space” invites the viewer’s touch. In fact her art thrives on interaction, for example with the artist herself. On November 18, dressed in a tiered tulle skirt and a webbed black top, Noyes mingled with visitors at the opening of her show. Her white wig bobbed as she went from person to person and piece to piece.

The genesis of the “Pink | Space” exhibition was a simple question. Noyes asked herself, “What is my space?” To come to an answer, she looked inside humanity for something we all share: the color pink. “It’s the internal color of muscles and organs unconcerned with external racial, class, gender or spiritual differences,” she says. “It is the color of humanity—the color of universal love.”

To express her own “pinkish physical self” for “Pink | Space,” Noyes uses what she describes as “trash from the floor.” One piece titled “If you can’t hide it, decorate it” consists of scattered, irregularly shaped bulges affixed to the wall. On the opposite wall, squished pieces of pink bubblegum hold together a cracked porcelain platter. White, black, and neutral shades are incorporated into the works, interacting with the pink by blending together and contrasting with the feature hue.

Another piece takes a more personal route, featuring a chopped-up bride doll. Recently divorced, Noyes came across a doll at a garage sale that resembled the frilly moppet she had as a child. The doll’s banged-up condition seems an apt symbol of vulnerability following the end of a marriage.

This exploration of material inspired Noyes to develop a second endeavor based on the human connection that pink represents. The phrase, “in the pink,” can mean both the pinnacle of a moment and being in prime condition, especially in terms of health. These simultaneous meanings created the starting point for a much larger project.

“At this very pinnacle moment,” she explained passionately, “we need to come together to do something better.” Noyes’s second pink-based project is “In the Pink: The 1,000,000 people art project,” centered on a website currently under development. The site aims to connect one million people around the globe, across many backgrounds and disciplines, to network and create dialogue about projects they are passionate about. The project is an extension of Noyes’s personality. She explains less than modestly, “I connect a lot of people together. It feels like I’m a resource.”

Noyes kicked off the first “In the Pink” dialogue two Saturdays ago at Blanc Gallery, titled “Symposium for Change.” A medical doctor, a steel manufacturer, and a composer were asked to share their passions. Noyes said the symposium went well, with “really interesting talks and thoughtful questions from the audience.” She hopes to put an edited recording of the discussion online.

The two projects go hand-in-hand, as Noyes engages in conversations of her own through her artwork while fostering a larger dialogue in her forum. Noyes encourages viewers to interpret her work through their own perspectives. “I’m putting myself out there, and through that vulnerability people can come towards me. It can be very powerful,” she says. Whether by encouraging visitors to touch her artwork or asking them to click and post on her website, Noyes’s talent of engaging the viewer in her art goes hand in hand with a willingness to expose her own life.

Blanc Gallery, 4445 S. King Dr. Hours by appointment only. (773)952-4394. blancchicago.com

Nathan Worcester

On a weekday afternoon in Bronzeville, the intersection of 47th Street and Cottage Grove is busy. Pedestrians flow along and mostly obey the red “Don’t Walk” sign. Some stop to chat with friends, while others hustle through the early autumn chill. In the northwest corner, cars inch through the McDonald’s drive-through line. On the eastern side of the street, people stream in and out of Save-a-Lot, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, and the Urban Partnership Bank. But on the southwest corner there is an empty lot of well-packed dirt.

“Is it really becoming an apartment building?” asked Darnell while waiting for the bus with his girlfriend. “I just knew the liquor store was closed. There weren’t any posters up saying what would come in.”

The city bulldozed Pappy’s Liquors in early October. According to Bernita Johnson-Gabriel of Quad Communities Development Corporation (QCDC), the city purchased the parcel through a negotiated sale. “The owner of the property knew that we were marketing the property and was okay with it. Early on in the six year period, they had been negotiating with the developer.” As for Pappy’s, “like in any other community, the liquor store had been problematic.” But the owner of the liquor store didn’t own the space. “It wasn’t really his decision or option because he was just a tenant.”

The now-empty parcel is the last needed for the completion of a six-year project led by the non-profit QCDC and the neighborhood’s former alderman, Toni Preckwinkle. The city will sell the site to Mahogany Chicago 47 L.L.C., a Columbus, Ohio-based partnership between developers Skilken and Adam Troy. Then Mahogany will own all the land they need, and construction can begin on a mixed-use, mixed-income development, “The Shops and Lofts at 47.”

* * * *

Skilken’s website advertises “The Shops and Lofts at 47” as an example of the firm’s ability to “capture opportunity in underserved markets.” Per their plans, retail space at the site will total 55,000 square feet, including a 40,000 square foot anchor store and seven or eight small shops. According to Skilken President Frank Petruziello, “we saw that 47th and Cottage was the most high-profile intersection from a retail standpoint in the 4th Ward. That was consistent with then-alderman Preckwinkle’s vision for the community.”

The residential portion of the development was originally slated to contain condominiums. However, since the collapse of the housing market, the plans now call for apartments. In a phone interview, Petruziello estimated that roughly 20% of the residential units would be offered at market rate, while the remainder would be rented at varying levels of subsidized rates.

The development is just one of several occurring in the Quad Communities (North Kenwood, Oakland, Douglas, and Grand Boulevard), many of which are being drawn in by the QCDC or similar organizations. “There will also be a development coming to 44th and Cottage Grove”, said Johnson-Gabriel, adding that a dialysis center will likely arrive at 43rd and Cottage in the summer of 2012. The city is pushing a lot of the development in the area, as most such projects receive some financial support from the city, although the degree varies on a case-by-case basis.

* * * *

Back at 47th and Cottage, residents have their own thoughts on development. Many people say that the neighborhood needs an inexpensive big box store. Walmart is a popular choice. “We’ve got a bunch of Targets, and a lot of Save-a-Lots, too,” said Bridgest, who was eating with some friends at McDonald’s. At Save-a-Lot, Seerena, who was grocery shopping with her three children, agreed that the community needs more affordable options for buying groceries.

“The street does not lend itself to a large big box, but probably some midsized retail would be fine,” said QCDC’s Johnson-Gabriel. She guessed that a big box store could be sustained on the State Street corridor near 39th Street.

Beautification is also a popular desire. “Beautify the park, businesses, surrounding areas,” said Bridgest. Nicole, another shopper at the Save-a-Lot, wanted some sort of community youth center. “It’s time for change because the area is getting out of control,” she said.

But Johnson-Gabriel disagrees: “All the ingredients for creating a safe, healthy, and vibrant community are here.” She’s not alone in taking this view. “It’s pretty peaceful most of the time,” said Bridgest at McDonald’s. “Everybody knows everybody.” Not long after, he paused to greet someone who had just walked in.

Nonetheless, some residents seem to think it’s not the right time for a big new development, including Grace, an on-and-off resident of Chicago for over fifty years. When she learned that the corner of 47th and Cottage would be getting a mixed income development, she scoffed, “They need to put in a mini-police station.”

Waiting for the bus to take him to Howard Area Alternative High, Will wasn’t happy about the liquor store closure. “I’m mad as hell!” he laughed. After taking a more serious outlook, however, Will thought the mixed-income development could be good: “as long as they have security, it’d bring more jobs.”

Maggie Sivit

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Many South Side residents are used to long waits for buses. But for members of five Southwest Side neighborhoods, the wait is going on its 14th year.  In April 2008, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, as part of their 30-year plan for the city, held a series of meetings in Little Village, where residents vocalized their need for better transit. Soon afterwards, the community decided it was time to restore east-west bus service along a main commercial corridor in their neighborhood that was cut by the Chicago Transit Authority in 1997. Organizers from Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) met with community members who both remembered a historic 31st Street bus and expressed interest in bringing back the service. They worked with the CTA to locate a source of funding. That summer, the CTA received a federal grant earmarked for the 31st Street bus totaling $1,067,659.

But today, there is no bus along 31st Street. In the neighborhoods the street cuts through—Bronzeville, Armour Square, Bridgeport, McKinley Park, and Little Village—east-west bus service is lacking. Between Cermak Road and 47th Street, Chicago’s grid system of bus service breaks down, leaving large areas of white space on the CTA system map and roughly 200,000 people without a direct route. The #35, #39, and #60 buses provide service along 35th, 39th, and parts of 26th Streets, but the #35 and #39 terminate near Kedzie Avenue, and the #60 diverts north to the loop at Western Avenue. No bus provides a straight route from the lake to Chicago’s western boundary. “You have to hopscotch—go past where you need to go to get where you’re going,” says Bridgeport resident and community activist Maureen Sullivan.

The grant the CTA received in 2008 as part of the Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) program of the U.S. Department of Transportation was a victory, but it came with a catch. The program requires that 50 percent of the transportation project’s operational budget be provided by state and local funds.

This has proven to be a major roadblock for the 31st Street bus campaign. The implementation and operations costs for the proposed route are estimated by the CTA to be approximately $2 million, not including the portion of the expense to be covered by fares. The CTA must match the $1 million grant in order for the bus to become a reality, at least for the trial period. In an e-mailed statement, the agency stated, “Currently, there are no local match funds identified to implement the project.”  Residents have waited for this to change for the past three years.

The CTA has drafted a route to connect to the Red and Orange ‘L’ Lines as well as the new Rock Island district Metra stop at 35th Street, though the proposal has not been finalized. It would provide transportation for working, transit-dependent residents of the West and near South Side to major workplaces such as Domino Sugar, Prima Plastics, and Dearborn Produce. Teens and families could access parks and the 31st Street beach. The route would end at Cicero Avenue, traveling north a few blocks through a commercial center to Target. LVEJO has also proposed that the route extend north on its eastern end, running express on Lakeshore Drive to McCormick Place and the Museum Campus. Mike Pitula, a community organizer and LVEJO’s director of public transit, claims that currently, “this area has no direct bus access from the West or South Side.”

Although the grant specifies that the 31st Street route provide access to jobs, Pitula argues that this service is important for two more reasons: to contribute to environmental efforts and to create safe routes to local schools.

The proposed bus route would service De La Salle Institute and Illinois Institute of Technology in Bronzeville, as well as Holden Elementary School in Bridgeport. And, more urgently, the 31st Street bus would provide safe transportation to a school in dire need of it. According to a survey conducted by LVEJO, Little Village-Lawndale High School is the only high school in Chicago that does not have CTA service within 2.5 blocks. According to Pitula, approximately one-quarter of the students who attend LVLHS must cross a gang boundary while walking to school. Violence has spiked along 31st Street since 2009. One of two closest CTA stops to the high school is on Cicero Avenue, but Pitula says there have been reports of young women being sexually harassed after school on a nearby bridge. “While it wouldn’t be a magic bullet, having a bus route would be one way to prevent these interactions from happening,” he says.

Schoolchildren aren’t the only population the bus would impact. Older residents have struggled with the lack of bus service for a long time. Senior citizens with limited mobility, who can’t get to checkups at Mercy Hospital or to the senior club at Piotrowski Park, have been particularly vocal in the 31st Street bus debate. Tom Gaulke, a pastor at the First Trinity Church in Bridgeport has heard his parishioners complain and summarized their dissatisfaction: “all these little old ladies at the senior home can never make it out anywhere.”

In May 2011, after three years, LVEJO decided to take action once again. “This spring, we realized there was a deadline coming up,” said Pitula, “you don’t just get a grant and sit on it forever.” The CTA claimed in an August community meeting and in an e-mail statement this past week that the $1 million will not expire. But according to the Federal Transit Authority’s website, JARC funding is available only for a total of three years after apportionment.

According to Pitula, the CTA has applied for a one-year extension of the grant. “It’s a fairly routine procedure,” he says, but the current phase in LVEJO’s campaign is to put pressure on the Federal Transit Administration to approve the extension. They expect to hear back before the end of the year.

This summer, working under pressure of an imminent deadline, the campaign expanded to encompass other communities along the route. In fact, some groups were already vocalizing their concerns about the bus route’s progress independently from LVEJO. According to Pitula, the campaign began in two places simultaneously three years ago: Little Village and Facebook. The Facebook page was created by lifelong resident of Bridgeport and video store owner Joe Trutin as part of his campaign for state representative in 2009. He and the Little Village activists have since joined forces, with Trutin rallying residents of Bridgeport and McKinley Park. He’s also taken on the task of gathering data to bolster their case—over the last few months, Trutin has been measuring the width of streets in attempt to refute one resident’s claim that 31st Street is not wide enough for bus service. He and Pitula have fought all opposition, however small, but Trutin says only two members of these communities have publicly voiced it.

Though much of the organizing has been centered in Little Village and Bridgeport, the issue crosses many neighborhood boundaries and has engaged many people. In late August, the CTA held a meeting with community members at the McKinley Park library. In addition to residents of Little Village, Bridgeport and Chinatown, senior citizens from Armour Square and McKinley Park came to emphasize their dependency on transit. “We showed them that we were a diverse group of people who had a common goal,” says Connie Ma, who works at the Chinese American Service League in Chinatown. Many community organizations have signed on to the campaign, from church groups and cultural clubs to the more extreme Citizens Against Terrible Transit. Pitula expressed that his goal this summer was to build “a cross-town coalition composed of residents along this route,” and it appears he has been successful.

At one point in this process, some residents—bus drivers and mechanics who could contribute their skills to the community—tossed around the idea of providing their own bus service. Pitula summarized this project as a “worker self-managed bus cooperative” that would be organized by the Chicago chapter of the Industrial Workers of the World. “It would be a demonstration for the CTA, but also an alternative model of transit to provide work and service for people in the community,” he said. The idea, added Ma, would be “to utilize the people the CTA has laid off.” While progress on this alternative has stagnated over the past few months, the idea of an independent bus service is not foreign to Little Village. Pitula remembers a free shuttle service along 26th Street that was disconnected a few years ago—a single school bus that residents could flag at street corners, funded by advertisements on its exterior.

The push for a 31st Street bus is a fight to provide South Side residents with easier mobility, a need that other Chicagoans recognize. Sullivan, who lives and works in Bridgeport, points out that the major expressways are easily accessible from the near South Side, but there are many people in these neighborhoods who do not own cars and their movement is, as a consequence, limited to their own neighborhoods. To some extent, a 31st Street bus would unite the neighborhoods it serves and reduce this isolation. “Once people travel, they start exploring,” Trutin explains.

The people behind the 31st Street bus campaign realize that theirs is an uphill battle—to add a route at a time when CTA trends have tended towards increased fares and cutting service—but pressure on the CTA is building. The project has received letters of support from one state senator, two state representatives, and three aldermen, according to its Facebook page. The $1 million needed to implement this route is less than one tenth of one percent of the  CTA’s annual budget, but Pitula nonetheless has taken them at their word that the agency does not have the identified funds.

Residents of these communities will not stop fighting for the 31st Street bus—some have already been fighting for 14 years. In the meantime, local organizations are simply asking for acknowledgement by transit officials. The CTA claims that service along 31st Street was originally cut in 1997 due to low ridership, but Ma argues that the people who the decision affected were the people who needed it most. “If one person needs the bus more than someone who has a car, shouldn’t it be more important that the first person receives this service?” she asks. While a bus would be a major victory on many levels, the immediate issue is a lack of communication between the CTA and the people it serves.

“We just want a confirmation that the CTA sympathizes with us on a human level,” Ma reflects, a sentiment she said many expressed at the August meeting. “But they kind of stared blankly at me.”

Chelsea Leu

The name White Castle brings to mind myriad associations—nickel meals, greasy sliders, and Harold and Kumar. But whenever you think of White Castle, it’s hard not to picture one of the actual restaurants. Since the chain was founded in the 1920s, the company has relied on its trademark design to make it more recognizable among consumers. Each branch, the company dictates, has to look quite literally like a castle—Chicago’s Water Tower castle, to be precise—complete with turrets, crenellated walls, and white porcelain brick. Effectively, the buildings themselves became wordless advertisements, glistening roadside invitations to come in and eat.

White Castle #16, at Wabash and Cermak, was built in 1929. Weathering the Depression and the eight decades that followed, the porcelain structure slowly lost its sheen. But, in 2010, after its current owner was awarded a $280,000 grant from the city to rehabilitate this Chicago artifact, the White Castle’s façade was returned to its former gleaming white glory. In September, the site was deemed so important that the Commission on Chicago Landmarks awarded White Castle #16 the “2011 Chicago Landmark Award for Preservation Excellence.”

While the building itself is gaining preservation notoriety, the food won’t be receiving any awards for historical accuracy. In fact, the former White Castle now houses two separate but related restaurants—Gourmet Chicken and Chef Luciano, both owned and operated by father and son team Dave and Rocky Gupta. The two restaurants occupy the same enclosed space, though each has its own special fare. Chef Luciano (Dave’s alter ego) serves Italian staples with, as their menu says, “Cajun, Jamaican, African and Indian” accents. Gourmet Chicken, on the other hand, serves fried and roasted chicken, fried okra, and incongruously, Indian dishes, such as curry chicken and naan.

Rocky can constantly be seen in the kitchen, moving between the two sides of the restaurant, while Dave makes appearances on the customers’ side of the counter, his friendly face crinkling with a smile as he wishes visitors an enjoyable meal. One wall of the brightly lit space is painted a bright vermilion, while the rest are covered with framed newspaper clippings and photographs of happy customers. Racks of homemade and hand-labeled bottles of hot sauce, lemonade, and ginger beer flank the ordering counter—a flavorful spread that seems a far cry from what the eighty-year-old building originally offered.

Gourmet Chicken and Chef Luciano aren’t devoid of their own history. Here the workers all wear the same black T-shirts, proclaiming that Gourmet Chicken has been “proudly serving the South Side” since 1982 but the legacy of White Castle still (quite literally) surrounds them.

The Guptas are conscious of this legacy. To celebrate the completion of the renovation last November, they offered their take on White Castle’s famous Depression-era five-cent burger deal—a two-piece roast chicken dinner with rice pilaf for a nickel. But their mission of bringing gourmet yet affordable food to Chicago seems in direct contrast to the assembly line-produced fast food of White Castle. As a chef, Dave sees bringing tasty, nutritious, and affordable food to his customers as a life mission. This belief was the driving force behind his decision to switch from fried to roasted chicken dishes in 1988. Though some scoffed that roasted chicken wouldn’t sell, Dave firmly believed that “if you give people choices, they will make the right choice.”  Gourmet Chicken and Chef Luciano, then, occupy a unique niche—neither fast-food chain nor pricey fine dining, but  a simple, two-part eatery where the staff look after their customers.

Still miss that quick-and-dirty White Castle fare? While the former White Castle #16 no longer serves Chicagoans, a modern-day, functional White Castle is visible just across the street—a testament to the chain’s power as a cultural icon and, perhaps, the unchanging tastes of the American palate. According to White Castle Inc., the chain “is more than a company. It’s an experience that transcends time, space and sometimes, rational thought.” Though it may sound like hyperbole, it seems as if this mantra still rings true in White Castle #16, even though its royal burger days are done.

49 E. Cermark Rd. Monday-Saturday, 10:30am-8pm. (312)326-0026. chefluciano.com

Devin Cain, Claire Hungerford, and Kelsey Gee

“Gimme just a minute,” Harold Lucas says. “I’m gonna go inside and get one of those hoity-toity cocktails from the gallery.”

Lucas deserves his drink. For the past half-hour he has been guiding a whirlwind tour of historic Bronzeville. He is 68 years old and a recent survivor of a heart attack and double bypass surgery. For most of the tour, he has had to shout to be heard over the roar of his trolley tour bus and the murmurs of its passengers. The air inside the trolley is thick with the scent of perfume and champagne and most of Lucas’s audience consists of people half his age, elegantly dressed, and eager to amend, reject, and praise his version of their neighborhood’s history.

This is only the first of four tours that Lucas will give tonight, but even the challenge of these two hours pales in comparison to the decades that the lifelong Bronzeville resident has spent dedicated to this 1.7-square-mile section of Chicago. As the head of both the Black Metropolis Convention and Tourism Council and the Bronzeville Online Visitor Information Center, Lucas has worked, he says, to ensure that Bronzeville is recognized as the city’s “premiere destination for African-American tourism and cultural life.”

But his is not the only vision of the neighborhood on display Friday night in Bronzeville. Twenty-four-year-old Columbia College graduate Tempestt Hazel joined with Lucas to present “The Future’s Past”—an art exhibit and community retrospective at the Blanc Gallery, which aims to provide an “introductory glimpse into the histories of Chicago’s Black Metropolis.”

Devin Cain

Hazel is not a Bronzeville resident, and did not grow up admiring the neighborhood’s long cultural history. She was pulled, instead, by what she calls serendipity. “I don’t drive,” she says, “so I spend a lot time walking and observing different parts of Chicago and their varying types of architecture.”

It’s obvious why Bronzeville would fascinate someone with an eye for design—stately three-story homes, beautiful churches, pristine glassy office buildings and restaurants, and recently flattened empty lots all line Martin Luther King Drive, a boulevard once known as South Parkway.

Devin Cain

The project started off as a way to highlight these historic buildings, but later, Hazel decided to try to bring a new perspective to her depiction of the neighborhood. She enlisted the help of four other artists—Stephen Flemister, Krista Franklin, Emmanuel Pratt, and Amanda Williams—and began to construct silhouettes of historic Bronzeville sites to adorn the wall of the Blanc Gallery.  Along with the silhouettes, the artists have begun to collect and display memorabilia that tie in with the neighborhood’s heritage: old playbills, records, posters and scraps representative of an artistic past.

“These are all works in progress,” Hazel says. “Over the next four weeks you’ll be able to watch these pieces evolve. That’s what makes it interesting—the change.”

The ostensible goal of “Future’s Past” as stated in a gallery news release was to bring “today’s residents into visual contact with yesterday’s heroes.” But yesterday’s heroes look remarkably different from the artists and curators that made this reflection possible. These new champions of Bronzeville represent a shift toward a community that can engage with the city at large in a conversation about what makes a neighborhood—and who should belong.

        *         *        *

The art on the gallery walls is only one portion of the exhibit—Harold Lucas’s interactive tour completes and troubles the subjects behind the frame. Outside the Blanc, Lucas leads his trolley bus tour down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive,  stopping at several historic places, including the Supreme Life Building, the Lutrelle Palmer House, and the former sites of the Regal Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom, which have been demolished.  Each of these buildings also features Hazel’s art, which is displayed in the windows and brought to life by the soft halogen-glow of interior lighting.

One patron on Lucas’s tour calls out, “You missed the Ida B Wells house!” Lucas replies, unfazed, “Hold on just a minute, we’ll get to that.” Occasional shouts from the back of the bus remind the rest of the attendees that Bronzeville’s history does not easily fit one uniform interpretation. As Hazel says, “it changes a lot depending on whose telling the story.”

The Future’s Past exhibit is not just art for art’s sake, but it’s not a passive collection of historically significant facts, either. Bronzeville, the neighborhood which was once known across the country as the “Black Metropolis,” a center of African-American culture and entrepreneurial activity, is now often associated with its problems of economic stagnation and crime. Lucas attributes many of these issues to the Chicago Housing Authority, whose large-scale public housing projects, including the infamous Robert Taylor Homes, which isolated the neighborhood from the greater Chicago community and, he says, contributed to the “breakdown of the black family structure and values.” Today, the Robert Taylor Homes no longer stand—the last building was razed in 2007—but in Lucas’s eyes, the damage they inflicted remains.

Devin Cain

On top of that, Bronzeville has struggled with forces outside the realm of the political. Natural disaster wreaked havoc on the neighborhood this past year after a fire at the intersection of 47th and King Drive destroyed several treasured Bronzeville institutions. The Blu 47 bar and restaurant, the Jamaican Consulate, and the Spoken Word Café—one of the original hosts of HBO’s Def Jam Poetry series—were all consumed by the blaze.

But in spite of a number of setbacks, multiple projects are currently in the works for the revitalization of Bronzeville.  Jimalita Tillman and her mother, former Alderman Dorothy Tillman hope to re-open the Spoken Word Café in Ald. Tillman’s former political headquarters.

Meanwhile, Eileen Rhodes, a real estate developer and owner of the Blanc Gallery where the “Future’s Past” exhibit is now displayed, has partnered with the chef of the historic Parkway Ballroom, Cliff Rome, to open up a restaurant with broad appeal. Their vegan-friendly, “gourmet on the go” hot dog restaurant, H-Dogs, is located on the site where the Spoken Word Café once stood, and Rhodes hopes that it will attract more of the students from nearby universities to Bronzeville. She believes that more inclusive, colorblind solutions such as creative local businesses and art attractions will reinvigorate the community.

But for some, Bronzeville needs more than just free enterprise, and some community members want to ensure that the new business growth will not come at the expense of the neighborhood’s cultural and ethnic integrity.

*         *        *

But beginning his second tour, Lucas sets out his vision for the future of Bronzeville. He hopes the neighborhood will resist gentrification and retain a population that is at least “60-percent African-American.”

Lucas sees the success of black businesses in Bronzeville as being key not only for the prosperity of its residents, but also for the advancement of other black Chicagoans. “The rise of the black middle class in Bronzeville,” he insists, “will bring about the emancipation of this city’s African-American community.”

The question of neighborhood gentrification doesn’t come with an easy answer. In fact, the issue of racial change in Bronzeville is so charged that few people other than Lucas are willing to speak out publicly.

“Harold takes a hard line and polemical view of neighborhood development,” Rhodes notes cautiously in an e-mail, preferring to take a more apolitical stance.

But even if the other organizers of the event are unwilling to speak out on the issue of race, all those involved with “Future’s Past” seem united in their view of who their audience should be, and who will inherit this cultural legacy.

The project targets community members and challenges them to consider bygone realities and future possibilities for the neighborhood. Its intended audience isn’t just arbitrary. Because “Future’s Past” is aimed at those who are already somewhat familiar with Bronzeville’s past, the organizers are able to delve more deeply into personal histories.

With touching candor, Lucas discusses the Chicago Military Academy. A large, boxy building, the Academy is remarkable primarily in the role it played in his own life—he protested in front of the building while he was homeless, when the city threatened to tear it down. “I prayed almost everyday for those walls,” he says, his voice quavering.

Lucas’s version of Bronzeville history is more idiosyncratic and intimate than what you’ll find in the pages of a textbook. He avoids trite statements about many of the area’s most famous residents and entertainers like Nat King Cole, Richard Wright, Louis Armstrong. Instead, Lucas chooses to champion the underappreciated leaders and social architects, whose thoughts and achievement have blended with Lucas’s own. Chief among these local heroes are Earl B. Dickerson, a prominent attorney and the first African-American member of the Chicago City Council, and John H. Johnson, founder and editor-in-chief of the Negro Press, Ebony, and Jet Magazine, respectively. “These guys are up there with Malcolm, and Dr. King,” he says, “They’re definitely in my top-ten heroes list.”

Though the show was designed for Bronzeville residents, they are not the only ones coming out to catch a glimpse of this piece of Chicago history. “To be perfectly honest” Hazel says, “this show is for the people of this area, but the really interesting part of the show is that it has attracted a very diverse crowd. I’m not going to say that anyone should or shouldn’t come and take part in the neighborhood’s culture.”

Returning to the Blanc Gallery after Lucas’ tour, it’s hard to reconcile the stories and emotions of the tour bus with the scene inside the exhibition space. The interior of the gallery, like that of the new H-Dogs just down the road, is immaculate, white, spacious and brightly lit. The walls are lined with artist installations of old playbills, records, black silhouetted figures and drawn outlines of the old project houses, but it all feels slightly distanced, and less intense than the raw oral history.

The purpose of the exhibit is not only to retell stories of the way things used to be, but also to look forward to the new. In Hazel’s opening speech, she introduced the project with the oft-repeated phrase: “you have no future if you don’t have a past.” In context, she was able to bring out the power hidden in the truism. New projects and entrepreneurial ventures are helping reestablish the link between the Black Metropolis’s historic greatness and the new and evolving community that is taking root today. These are not big steps, but as Lucas says at the end of his tour, quoting his hero John H. Johnson, one needs always to “dream small dreams.”

The ISF Bank was founded in the 1930s to serve the South Side’s African-American community. It has since grown from a one-room office on 47th Street to a multimillion dollar entity, and now hosts the Shred-o-Rama twice a year. The event, as executive Assistant to the Chairman and CEO Cynthia Williams explained, is designed to let people “get rid of old papers that they obviously don’t need any longer, for purposes of protection.” In one fell load, everything from old bank statements to top-secret national security files can be destroyed forever.

The enormous “Accurate Document Destruction” truck, which was provided by the city’s largest mobile document elimination service, dominated the parking lot. The hulking white beast hummed and whirred with each new load of documents, clanging and banging in a cacophony of noises as it ripped apart everything it was fed. After dropping off stacks of paper, the newly lightened participants could wait and watch their documents torn to bits, monitoring the job on the truck’s internal monitor. There was no need to worry about overwhelming this Leviathan with mountains of classified files: at a past event, a single person brought in three carloads of legal documents. While this season’s Shred-o-Rama saw nothing quite as dramatic, people showed up with paper in all sorts of receptacles, including cardboard boxes, trash cans, and laundry hampers. Once all the records and statements had been obliterated, attendees were invited into the bank to enjoy free hot dogs and potato chips.

The festivities did more than inspire good cheer, however. All the shreddings collected were recycled, turning thousands of sheets of secrets into fresh, unblemished paper awaiting new secrets.