Memoirous

Something I’ve noticed lately is a nostalgia for dive—or maybe it’s simply plain nostalgia for what used to be. I see it in blogs such as Lost City , Ghost Signs , and Uptown History . As soon as something’s gone we begin to miss it the most. Read here the Richard Nickel’s story of how he lived and died to save some of Chicago’s most fabulous landmarks. Recently I helped curate Portraits of Uptown: Photos by Bob Rehak . Between 1973 and 1977 Rehak a young copy editor at Leo Burnett ad agency downtown took photos in Uptown, preserving in film and now digitally what the neighborhood used to be. His collection of over 5,000 images is a virtually treasure trove. We had our opening reception Friday at Everybody’s Coffee and the place was packed out. I talked with several people who lived here during that time period and they all said what a great place Uptown was! Yet . . . you look at the photos and it looks like a dump, a dive, a ruined city. Trash swirling at t...

A friend just posted at her blog ( click here ) about how she was recently rescued by her friends when the car she borrowed because her’s had suddenly stopped working got towed while picking up her daughter from school. I know, convoluted. But in a matter of ten minutes life got even more complicated, Usually this happens to me when I have especially low blood-sugar and can no longer function rationally—that’s when crazy gets even crazier. Why is it that things decide to go haywire when I need to either eat or pee? Anyway, Tammy blessed me with her blog by basically telling her readers I was a saint. Not really. So I wanted to pay it forward today also. Wednesday I had to drive up to Winnetka to pick up some artwork for a show I will tell you about at the end of this blog post. Driving back at a relatively slow speed I hit what felt like the curb. It was that abrupt. Wham! But, what was likely a pothole. I swear I NEVER saw it. Right away the car did this far-rump, far...

I’ve written at this blog before about media saturation. Where even something as significant as the War on Poverty gets churned over and over into a sound byte. Anyway, I listen to NPR in the morning and been hearing about the impact of this far-reaching legislation. At least that was how it was envisioned. I can tell you from my experience living in Uptown these past few years—it feels like a War on the Poor. When I first came to Uptown it felt like a VERY DIFFERENT place. There was trash every where, people lived in their cars, vacant lots were full of trash. Every weekend a building burned. I and a number of other residents worked to improve the lives of the people around us. At times it seemed like a war, being surrounded by rubble and the wounds typical of those living in poverty. I remember one guy, a terrible junkie who would come by for our neighborhood feeding program. I remember thinking, He could be my brother. He was young and somewhat attractive—as if he’d...

Bob Rehak was a young man in the 1970s who took the Purple line in from Evanston into the city to his job downtown in advertising. His passion though was photography, and what he saw from his train window as he passed Argyle, Lawrence, and Wilson L train stops intrigued him. There was a variety of life out on the streets below the tracks. Messy, disturbing life. I’ve noticed that many creative people are somehow energized by chaos, and Bob Rehak was somehow curious enough to bat away his fears, get off the train, and walk the dirty, trash-filled sidewalks with his camera and take photographs. Though I don’t know if he would classify it as “taking” as he describes people in Uptown in the mid-1970s though mostly poor were generous; they gladly gave Bob permission to photograph them. Uptown was a port of entry for immigrants because of the relative low-cost housing in the neighborhoods. There was a large population of migrants from Appalachia, social activists, the down-and-...