Borders

I know it happens and is unfailingly there, luring in a corner.
It came this week, and as always I was - am - unprepared for it.
It's often a matter of time; sometimes an unexpected trigger does the trick. Pressure release. Then the building up starts all over again.

A walk in the neighborhood worked small wonders two days ago.

Boots on, camera on the go - I just wanted to get coffee in my favorite little joint, Z&H (pronounced 'a la French' "Zed et Hasch" please). Crisp air and a jolt of caffeine were the elected remedies of the hour to fight the dreaded anti-matter.
As soon as I stepped out though I realized that I wanted more.
Was it the strap around my neck, the sunlight playing on the leaves or the solemnity of my thoughts? I decided here and there that I wanted to celebrate my surroundings. Discover all their secret beauties. Unveil their overlooked treasures to the world. Let the ugly sister - the
forgotten, neglected, slandered one - rightfully shine.


As I was strolling among the impressive mansions of Kenwood I remembered the first words I really wrote about the neighborhood. It was under the form of a Yelp Review on Promontory Point. A pleading for the South Side:

Chicago suffers from one terrible plague.
One cannot immediately see it when one walks or drives around the city.
But they are there.
The invisible lines.
The "last" frontiers.
The streets one cannot cross without losing their neat and proper Northside identity (and God forbid, their wallet) : Western and Roosevelt.
Let's say California and 18th street for the bravest souls.

That is such a shame.
As an outsider I will never understand why people in this city are so closed-minded. I have been living in the infamous South Side for a few years now, gone to school there for longer than I'd want to and I am still alive, in one piece, safe and sound, thank you very much.

Guys, here are some news:
The other half of the city is worth the trip. And by "trip" - I don't mean an endless bus/train/horse-carriage ride.

Hyde Park - for one - is pretty well mapped out by the CTA and hosts a few crowned jewels: my building (uh-hmm), a few Frank Lloyd Wright houses, a pretty famous intellectual box where fun comes to die, the president house, and a lot of other hidden treasures.
And the Point.

So yes, of course some sad or mean-spirited people will tell you that the Point is not that idyllic or charming. Gosh, there are rats running out there!!!!!! Really?!?!? A natural park by the lake with rats? I can hardly believe it........I heard you can also encounter bees, flies and ants....so beware.

But really Promontory Point is one of the best spots in the city to host a bbq, an impromptu picnic or just to relax after a long bike ride.
And to jump in the water for a swim.

Some of the things I like about it:
- you have a kick-ass view of the city skyline. Almost unobstructed. Pretty sweet IMO.
- FREE parking!!!!!!!!! Yes - you read that right. There is a full free parking lot exclusively reserved for the Point AND lots of free street parking on 55th street and around. No millions of quarters needed.
You've got to love it. South Side perk, guys!!!
- bbq pits, lots of garbage bins, coal disposals = perfect for all the grill fanatics out there.
- drinking foutains!!! My fave is just at the entrance - after the underpass. It's is a nice sleeping deer - I call it "The bi-biche statue". Those of you who know me will know why it's close to my heart....
- 2 watering holls nearby : Bar Louie and The Cove. Winners!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing better than cold beer to heal your sunburns .
- lots of grass and trees. Shade or sun, you choose. A lot of space to play frisbee, volley-ball, badminton, or to improve the Guiness World Record of pit spitting. Whatever you are into.
- one of the most diverse crowd of the city. Spotted last weekend: shirtless U of C students lost in their textbooks (a rarity - well, the shirtless part at least), families grilling and dancing to Michael Jackson (RIP), couples cuddling on patchwork blankets, frat boys trying to impress the girls around, little kids learning how to ride their bikes, older dudes coming for their daily swims. Black, white, Asian and everything in between.
Love the rainbow.
- a great spot to swim. No beach but rock access to the lake. Makes it more adventurous and give you the chills!!!
- bathroom access
- excellent bride spying-spot (!!!)

It's all worth it.
Go and enjoy.

I remember wanting to shut up all the loud mouths who kept saying that they would never set foot in the South Side for fear of being shot. I knew of course that that was incredibly naive and childish and probably really limited 'range-of-action-wise' but I still wrote it. And posted it. 104 people found it useful, cool and/or funny according to cryptic Yelp criteria.
And it was even voted ROTD (review of the day) on September 2nd.
Some people out there were, are ready to listen.

But I am probably only preaching to (already) converts. The ones that do live around here, even deeper south if possible (yep, it is and it doesn't make you die); the ones that work here, in our desolated part of the city where everything seem to be so different.
I am not going to repeat what I wrote about the Point, and our 'half' of the city. But I am still not over the narrow-minded people I come across each and every day. This segregation de facto that is so ingrained in their minds just doesn't make the slightest sense to me.

To say that we don't have to face the same problems in France would be a lie. Of course we do - and if you fly to Charles de Gaulle you will most probably be welcomed be the grisly Northern Parisian banlieues. Long bars of buildings, tags on the walls, a general feeling of abandon and despair that is hard to pin down with words. The banlieues are our ghettos. Broadly speaking.
But what is totally fascinating here - in the worse sense of the word - is the clean-cut delimitation of things. One side of the street is good, the other is evil. One is white, the other black. Getting off at the Austin station on the green line tells the whole tale: Austin in the boulevard that delimits Oak Park from the city of Chicago. West of it - Frank Lloyd Wright and young Hemingway, bourgeois families and young professionals in search of living space. East - the last stretch of what is surely one of the worse parts of town. Going down the steps from the platform to the street was the beginning of the partition. At the bottom, two lines would clearly emerged - and each one would go its own way without as much as looking at the other.
That happened every day of the 10 months I lived there.

Hyde Park is different. Borders still exist - and unmistakably so. Most people won't go west of Cottage Grove, north of 47th and south of 61st. It's an unspoken rule at the university. But still Hyde Park is an exception to the 'rule' of American urban neighborhoods (and as an avid reader of Loic Wacquant I am painfully aware of how schematic all this is) in the sense that it hosts an extremely diverse community. Races, social backgrounds, educations, nationalities - it's almost the epitome of the melting pot. A simple trip to the produce mart sums it all. It's incredible to witness, and the richness of its people constitutes one of the reasons why I came to love it so much.

Hyde Park and his twin Kenwood are great places to live and take another pulse of the city. A slower one, less fancy, less glamorous but more real. And the mansions on Woodlawn and Greenwood, between the 51st and 47th streets have nothing to envy to the Lakeview ones. They are gorgeous. Rusting behind ivy, proudly showing off their red brick facades or the detailed craftsmanship of their wrought iron gates, the residences of Kenwood bask in their former and present glory. Yes, criminals do live here too and burglaries, assaults and murders are committed every year. But there is also this sense of peace I don't feel anywhere else in the city, a a sense of completion and authenticity that I deeply cherish.

I know I won't convince anyone who doesn't want to listen to come on the other side of the border. And I might even be happy about it. Because it makes it our own, and maybe we don't want to share it after all.