I'm still alive
My life over the past two months has been kind of busy and even more complicated. Rather than working on an essay for my first grad school application (U of I, due on Tuesday- but it's online, so I know I'll still be working on it Monday night), I decided to catch up on everyone else's LJs that I've been neglecting in favor of other internet sites.
I don't really know where to start in describing the last couple months without composing a novel that no one will read. So I won't for now. Instead I'll recommend that everyone who's interested in gentrification or Chicago or Chicago history read "Neo-Bohemia" by Richard Lloyd. He was a sociology Phd student at University of Chicago who decided to study Wicker Park. Sometimes he gets bogged down in sociological jargon- which makes for occasional laborious reading, but overall he has a great grasp of history, digs deep with a lot of case studies of individual businesses and people and offers up a portrait of the fact that gentrification is a *gasp* complicated issue that has had its share of both positive and negative impacts on the neighborhood.
It also in some ways reminds me of why I need to get the hell out of the Chicagoland area for a while. People are incredibly provincial. I suppose it's that way everywhere, but living in DuPage for as long as I have it hits home. I'm just sick of having judgments instantly rendered on me because of my zip code. Segments of "Neo-Bohemia" where pretentious ex-suburbanites rant about how much they despise yuppies and people who move into "their" neighborhoods from the suburbs (where they themselves grew up) hit a bit close to home. My real life exposure to that as well as my city-born-and-raised co-workers who assume everyone from the 'burbs is the same and the banality of Neanderthal "not in my backyard" suburban racism and ignorant xenophobia (complete inability to understand the city) make me want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible so I can escape such crass, obnoxious close-mindedness and hypocrisy.
I'm ranting and exaggerating as these aren't attitudes I encounter every day, but the fact that I encounter them at all makes me want to puke. It also makes me more spitefully proud of my Dupage County roots- which is why the racism is especially disheartening to me, not only is it an awful attitude to have, but it's an embarrassment to my home.
This wasn't really intended to be a rant, but on the plus side I think it did help me break my writers' block. Maybe I'll write another entry some time about my week in England (spending Thanksgiving dinner eating Indian food with a Brazilian in Liverpool, meeting an English girl, etc.), my house guest for a week (same English girl), the multiple love triangles I narrowly extricated myself from, the girl that things suspiciously look like they might actually work out with (not the English girl, this one's from Cook County- I'm being cautiously optimistic), although I'd probably want to hit someone else if they made that comparison) the intriguing sociological experience of going to a library at 95th & Halsted, and all the other random messes, complications and absurdities of my life.
I don't really know where to start in describing the last couple months without composing a novel that no one will read. So I won't for now. Instead I'll recommend that everyone who's interested in gentrification or Chicago or Chicago history read "Neo-Bohemia" by Richard Lloyd. He was a sociology Phd student at University of Chicago who decided to study Wicker Park. Sometimes he gets bogged down in sociological jargon- which makes for occasional laborious reading, but overall he has a great grasp of history, digs deep with a lot of case studies of individual businesses and people and offers up a portrait of the fact that gentrification is a *gasp* complicated issue that has had its share of both positive and negative impacts on the neighborhood.
It also in some ways reminds me of why I need to get the hell out of the Chicagoland area for a while. People are incredibly provincial. I suppose it's that way everywhere, but living in DuPage for as long as I have it hits home. I'm just sick of having judgments instantly rendered on me because of my zip code. Segments of "Neo-Bohemia" where pretentious ex-suburbanites rant about how much they despise yuppies and people who move into "their" neighborhoods from the suburbs (where they themselves grew up) hit a bit close to home. My real life exposure to that as well as my city-born-and-raised co-workers who assume everyone from the 'burbs is the same and the banality of Neanderthal "not in my backyard" suburban racism and ignorant xenophobia (complete inability to understand the city) make me want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible so I can escape such crass, obnoxious close-mindedness and hypocrisy.
I'm ranting and exaggerating as these aren't attitudes I encounter every day, but the fact that I encounter them at all makes me want to puke. It also makes me more spitefully proud of my Dupage County roots- which is why the racism is especially disheartening to me, not only is it an awful attitude to have, but it's an embarrassment to my home.
This wasn't really intended to be a rant, but on the plus side I think it did help me break my writers' block. Maybe I'll write another entry some time about my week in England (spending Thanksgiving dinner eating Indian food with a Brazilian in Liverpool, meeting an English girl, etc.), my house guest for a week (same English girl), the multiple love triangles I narrowly extricated myself from, the girl that things suspiciously look like they might actually work out with (not the English girl, this one's from Cook County- I'm being cautiously optimistic), although I'd probably want to hit someone else if they made that comparison) the intriguing sociological experience of going to a library at 95th & Halsted, and all the other random messes, complications and absurdities of my life.