he South Side, which has a rich history of contributions to the visual arts, has been gaining recognition in recent years for its experimental, emerging, and DIY-style of artists and art making. Often bringing lesser known artists and styles into the fray, these new spaces challenge traditional notions of what a gallery is with their […]
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Posted inFood, Pilsen
The Jumping Bean
t’s Saturday morning at Cafe Jumping Bean, on 18th Street in Pilsen. A middle-aged man in a wool sweater reads from a book called “La Posibilidad de Cambio,” (“The Possibility of Change”) – as he slurps down a bowl of bean soup.
Posted inBridgeport, Features, Lit
Literary Picture Show
A story of stories, John Hospodka’s “South Side Trilogy” is the narrative of a neighborhood that is at once real and out of this world. Told through art, video, poetry, prose, voice recordings, and song, the multimedia work follows the lives of a few residents of Hardscrabble, Chicago, a fictional neighborhood based on Bridgeport.
Posted inArchitecture, Housing, Kenwood
Old Neighbors
The Hyde Park and Kenwood neighborhoods are much more than a pit stop for architectural tours of Chicago. Frank Lloyd Wright enthusiasts get a special kick in witnessing not one, but two of the architect’s most acclaimed works located within just six blocks of one another: the Robie House and the Isidore H. Heller House.
Posted inFar Southwest Side, Features, Housing
Lost in the Shuffle
Just south of Lake Calumet, about halfway between the Loop and the smokestacks of Gary, Indiana, sits Altgeld Gardens. A low-rise public housing development with just over 3,000 residents, the neighborhood looks more like a suburban residential community than like the massive high-rises that dominate the narrative of Chicago public housing.
Posted inFood, Hyde Park
Keeping It Real
The first of Merges’ projects, A10, opened early this month and I can confirm that it is, indeed, a “real” restaurant. There are walls, a ceiling, and waiters, and they do, in fact, serve food. It is also “real” in ways that Hyde Park’s other restaurants are not.