Outside My Window

I live in Old Town. Its a really weird area. I worked for a company called Careerbuilder for a year and the CEO of the company lives two blocks away from me on La Salle and North. I live across the street from the Marshall Field Garden Apartments. Marshall Field is low income housing mostly populated by uprooted residents of the old Cabrini-Green, which is a block south of me on Division.

The gentrification in my neighborhood is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is unsafe to park your car on or around my street. Sandra discovered that leaving her car unlocked saved her from getting her windows broken. Renee and Ted werent as lucky. If you walk south down Sedgwick Ave, it is impossible to avoid the broken glass from the gross of automobiles with busted windows. Blood also stains the sidewalks at parts and the two remaining Cabrini Towers are a stones throw away.

Blinking blue lights from police cameras surveying the madness appear on every street corner. This is common in high crime areas. Chicago is the only major city in the country that has 24 hour human surveilance. As you descend Sedgwick you begin to smell manure and begin to be aware of the horse droppings on the sidewalk. To your left is a horse drawn carriage business that appears to be on the verge of failing. In the winter it is especially disparring. These animals have no shelter from the weather that on occasion reaches sub-zero temperatures without factoring in windchill.

My roomate and I heard yelling and peered out of our window and watched a brawl that ended when a bystander shouted about the cops. Shortly after a carriage drawn by horses tore down the avenue. followed by a fire engine and barrage of police cars. I felt like I was in the wild west.

I have only heard gunshots twice from my apartment in Old Town. I also heard them twice from my old place in Logan Square. I couldnt ask for a better location. Its a short walk from North Beach, a block or two from Wells St and La Salle (These streets have amazing restaurants and bars), its two El stops from the loop, and a quick walk to the Gold Coast or Lincoln Park.

The Old Town area is also very devoid of tourists (unless they are visiting Old Town Alehouse to see the nude portrait of Sarah Palin or to see a show at Second City).

The Old Town Alehouse is one of the best bars in Chicago. The walls are covered by dozens of paintings by the owner, some being very erotic, others being portraits of the regulars and other familiar American faces.

Old Town was the center of the 60's and 70's counterculture.

"There is a little piece of Chicago Real Estate, west of Lincoln Park, that is the pride of urban conservationists and the despair of bulldozers. It is a community widely known as Old Town...Old Town is full of conflict, full of life; a sometimes maddening but always exciting place to live...It is important to stress that there is no such legal entity as Old Town. Old Town is where you make it."
-Richard Atcheson, Holiday Magazine March 1967

Best neighborhood in Chicago