Tag Archive
Woodlawn
Boarded-up storefronts not withstanding, 63rd Street is a pretty happening place. A terminus of the Green Line, “L” cars rumble above Cottage Grove. Underneath, Daley’s serves up steaming omelets, as it has since the restaurant opened in the 1930s. But the food, shoes, and booze end after only three blocks, and the activity comes... »
Finding Common Ground
Benjamin Murphy wedges his cigarette butt into the gray planks of a picnic table and squints, surveying his sanctuary. In the fading light of a late-May Thursday afternoon, the 65th and Woodlawn Community Garden resembles a living patchwork quilt—some plots in this roughly 1000 square-foot space are lined with misshapen bricks, others are freestanding... »
The Art of Action
Around a rectangular table in a conference room at the Bessie Coleman Library, a group of University of Chicago students and community members are meeting to discuss this year’s Art in Action festival. “Okay, who is taking care of sign-making Monday?” one student asks. Several hands go up from the planning committee, made up... »
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... »
Moving in Circles: When does a new home lead to a new life?
Movement is part of the American dream. Across an ocean to the new world, west to the last frontier, then up the social ladder, out to the suburbs—or so they say it goes. Social mobility and housing mobility are inextricably linked in the national psyche. But there is a darker, less public story about... »
Criminal injustice
Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” was supposed to discuss her book last Wednesday evening in the large central room of the Experimental Station, but the heating went out. So instead, about a hundred of us packed tightly into a small, multi-purpose room next door,... »
A Noisy Protest: ONO brings its provocative musical performance to the Woodlawn Collaborative
Art is meant to draw people together, to forge cultural bonds that cross social boundaries. And yet, for decades, issues of race have impeded the diffusion of artistic innovation across the South Side’s social and racial lines. Although the University of Chicago’s presence in Hyde Park has engendered cynicism from surrounding communities, a few... »
Prophets of Woodlawn
Rudy Nimocks is a pear-shaped man with a pedagogically dapper bowtie and a tough scowl. But as he rises, and the din of the crowded atrium resolves into an attentive silence, a jovial grin melts his hardened visage. He’s clearly pleased by the turnout. “Before we get into the here and now,” he coos,... »
