The August Issue Of Chicago Magazine

Even though I have lived in Denver for 40 years, I still subscribe to Chicago Magazine, to keep up with what is happening in my old home town. Evidently, the magazine has foregone the annual Best of Chicago issue this year, and replaced it with "The Best of the New Chicago," as seen in the photograph on the left of the magazine's front cover. This article features the "58 people, places, foods, and finds" that emerged from the pandemic. None of which was very impressive, in my opinion. Much more interesting were several other articles, one of which was about how the city hosted the Bassmaster Classic back in 2000, the most prestigious fishing tournament in the country. The only problem was that none of the contestants could find any fish in Lake Michigan.

The other article was about the time back in the 1990s that MTV decided to set their hit reality TV show "The Real World" in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. For years, the neighborhood had been populated by working class Poles and Hispanics, and it later became a center of art, music, and theater. This was the neighborhood where Chicago author Nelson Algren once lived. Back in April of 1972, I took a number of photographs around the area for a city planning course that I was taking at the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of which can be seen on the right. Those homes look pretty damn nice to me.

Naturally, by the 1990s, the neighborhood was undergoing gentrification, and artists and struggling residents were being forced out by rising rents. When that trendy TV show, which I think was an early version of Big Brother House, decided to film the show at a house in the neighborhood, it triggered protests and demonstrations, making for an exciting time for one and all. I never heard about this incident at the time, and it was really enjoyable for me to read about it now. And by the way, the area is now super trendy. So much for the power of protests. On the left is a photograph I took of one of the younger Wicker Park residents back in 1972. Hopefully, he and his family actually owned their house, and were able to continue living there. If so, that house would be worth a fortune by now. In which case, a victory for all of us.