Tag Archive
Pilsen & Little Village
Pilsen and Little Village are cousins—not only because families often extend across the neighborhood boundaries, nor simply because they are both port-of-entry regions for recent Mexican immigrants. These two are a pair, now more than ever, because of a growing exchange between the two. »
Power Struggle
Into the inferno. In go the orange earplugs, and we step into the belly of the beast. The guide shouts to us over the roar of the furnace, but even with our ear protection in the place is clamorous—a coal plant is a noisy place. More than anything else, though, the heat is intolerable.... »
It takes a village
“W-Y!” Michelle High, a third-year at the University of Chicago, yelled into the cafeteria half-full of middle school girls and their UofC mentors. “S-E!” the girls shouted back in unison, voices filling the whole room. The cheer kicked off Communities Day, an April 30th celebration of community organizations from South Lawndale, a neighborhood in... »
Creative Ecology: Environmental artist Nancy Klehm tries to keep up with her own work
“My work is context specific. It’s about social context. It’s about place. Place refers to more than land; place is about land that has history. It feels more alive,” explains Nance Klehm, an artist and activist based on the South Side. This particular morning, Klehm is in a motel room in Tucson, Arizona. It’s... »
Tacos de Soya: El Faro serves hard-to-find veg-friendly Mexican cuisine
Vegetarian Mexican food is something of an anomaly, right up there with flying pigs and Bat Boy. Which is why the cuisine at El Faro, Little Village’s only expressly vegetarian-oriented Mexican restaurant, is as much an experience as a meal. The experience begins upon walking through the door and absorbing the décor, which draws... »
The Glue Wave: Mortville hosts blankdoggers Wizzard Sleeve
Once upon a time, the singer of a garage rock band (the DC Snipers, if you’re curious) decided to pursue an anonymous solo project centered around echoing vocals, massively distorted guitars, and a crummy drum machine. It would also be perfectly acceptable to say that it revolved around one or two decent hooks per... »
Best of the South Side 2009: Southwest Side
The story of Chicago’s Southwest Side is a classically American one. Immigrants—Poles, Lithuanians, Italians, Germans, Czechs—flocked to the area in the early 20th century after the extension of streetcar lines made it an easy commute. Railroads and stockyards—including the famous Union Stock Yard portrayed in Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle”—brought an abundance of jobs... »
Social Justice High School: Little Village and Lawndale’s experimental high school, four years after the hunger strike
It was two days after a racial melee outside Little Village Lawndale High School led to arrests when an English teacher at the school’s Social Justice High School campus asked her students a question: “What gives you hope?” The most common answer: “Nothing.” Not the success of a 19-day hunger strike in 2001 that... »
