I’ve been painting a house in Grant Park lately, staying with a friend. It’s quite a neighborhood: head toward the park, you might hear the little train whistle from the zoo, occasionally even animal calls. Really large, nice, old houses – general affluence. Joggers and young mothers with strollers. On the other side of the park live some more friends of mine and there’s the great Youngblood Gallery. In the middle of the park is also a cyclorama commemorating the American Civil War, but I haven’t gone there since various grade school field trips. Up on Cherokee street toward I-20 are a pizza place and another “neighborhood joint” with attractive waitresses. Also a hair salon and a real estate office, though I have no business in either of those places.
But head the other direction towards the big stadium and it’s a very different feel. A neighborhood called People’s Town. I guess the house here is technically in People’s Town, but it feels very much the dividing line between the two worlds. PT is up and coming, but there are still pockets of poverty and crime. So various street characters walking around, hustlers, apparent haggard prostitutes, people who seem to be involved with bad drugs. The street a block behind the house seems particularly untouched by the positive change. People silently mull around at all hours like the living dead, but they mostly keep to themselves.
This morning the police were looking for someone and their copter flew around in circles over the block for like 20 minutes. Cop cars whizzed up one way streets going the wrong way. The air assistance flew off, but soon returned for another loud, revolving session. There is a major interstate quite close, but you can tell the difference when they are monitoring activity on that expanse, or here in the neighborhood. No sirens, but an obvious hunt.
At the end of a day of painting trim and high altitude antics on the ladder, I wanted some beer. There are several little markets here and about, but the only one selling what I wanted is down by the stadium and some unimpressive row apartments. I headed on down, exchanging greetings with older porch folk. The closer I got to the store, the sketchier the neighborhood got. Two blocks from the store there were three guys working a corner. It’s just gotten a bit cold and they had huge bulky jackets on, all in their mid-20’s, tall and I must say, looking rather thuggish. But it was still daylight and I plodded on warily, right through the middle of their conversation. One even gave me a “what’s up?”, his voice thick with chemical of unknown origin.
Heading back, I considered choosing another street, but the alternates are actually worse, and after all I was less than a dozen blocks from the house. Now the group of three had grown to several. I just plodded on right through the middle, feeling about a foot shorter than everyone else. One guy asked me for a beer, “Naw man”, I just kept on walking. There was another group of youths coming toward them, one limping along on crutches. Crutchman said something amusing about me to his fellows, but I honestly couldn’t understand him, other than the spontaneous nickname he had granted me, which was Mario. Shittalking was as bad as the walking of that gauntlet got. I was disappointed this second group of guys felt they had to say something, but I wasn’t in much of a position to do anything about it. Behind me, I heard an animated exchange with the first group, but it was hard to read if it was actual hostility or more shittalking. I didn’t cower and I didn’t linger: just a working man getting his sixpack, kept on moving.
There’s a full moon tomorrow night. I can hear people out there yelling at, and calling to one another in the autumnal chill. Sirens come and go in the distance. I’m in here with my little dog, and a good book, and four more beers…
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