This year marks Chinatown’s centennial, an occasion that has the neighborhood awash in color and flush with pride. In 1912 Chicago’s Chinese-American population, almost 2,000 at the time, moved southward to its current location around the intersection of Cermak and…
Tag Archive for Best of the South Side 2012
Heart of Italy
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
Chicago is blessed by two Little Italy’s, though it is difficult to qualify either Taylor Street or Oakley Avenue as a distinctly Italian neighborhood. Both have several Italian restaurants, but with UIC expanding its presence west along Taylor Street and…
South Loop
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
The South Loop is not an easy neighborhood to encapsulate. “It’s not very cohesive yet,” admits Ryan of Sloopin, a blog dedicated to the going-ons in the swathe of land that bleeds into the touristy gleam of Grant Park to…
Far South Side
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
Concrete trammels the Calumet river for all of its serpentine course. It is crossed by steel girder bridges, including the soaring Indiana Skyway, whose massive pylons lift the bulky structure far above the surrounding neighborhoods. This land was once the…
Bridgeport
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
“The older I get, the more I understand that where I’m from and who I am is one of the great anomalies in major metropolitan life,” says Raymond Keeler. More than fifteen years ago, the Bridgeport native and most of…
Woodlawn & Washington Park
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
The communities known as Washington Park and Woodlawn, in many ways, are symbols of Chicago’s South Side. Anchored by the park itself, Washington Park was once a large blue collar community made up of workers from the nearby stockyards and…
Auburn-Gresham
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
In Auburn-Gresham, the streets are filled with renaissance. The word pops up all over the neighborhood. On 79th Street, a park earned the name from Mayor Daley’s dedication on its opening day, when he described Auburn-Gresham as entering a “new…
Bronzeville
by Chicago Weekly Staff •
Once, Chicago’s ‘black metropolis’ rivaled Harlem in its significance to African-American culture. Richard Wright, Louis Armstrong, and Nat “King” Cole all lived here. Clubs such as the Sunset Cafe used to produce some of the hippest jazz musicians in the…
