Russell Ingram
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Best Resale Shop
Best of Beverly & Morgan Park 2018
Beverly
Opinion: Why Are Our Home Sales Up? Because of the People Who Live Here
How community-driven organizing, not politics, has strengthened Beverly and Morgan Park
Russell Ingram
Last month in Crain’s Chicago Business there was an article about how home sales in Beverly are on the rise and some of the reasons why. Before saying more about that article, a couple of declarations are in order here.
Best of Beverly & Morgan Park 2017
The Walker Branch Library in Morgan Park (David Daruszka)
- Best Public Library in a Castle
- Best Mom & Pop Grocer
- Best Place to Find Something Fishy
- Best Pizza Not From a Pizza Parlor
- Best Anarchistic Arts Organization
- Best New Alternative Space
Beverly Hills (its proper full name, often shortened to Beverly) and Morgan Park are the Castor and Pollux of the South Side. Eternally joined as “The Village in the City,” they have earned a reputation as a place of good schools, gracious homes, and comfortable middle-class living—a bastion for city workers. An ancient glacial ridge runs along the length of the appropriately named Longwood Drive, topped by magnificent homes. Morgan Park, named after early estate holder Englishman Thomas Morgan, was a village in its own right until its annexation to the city in 1914. Beverly Hills, named not after the Los Angeles neighborhood but the town of Beverly in Massachusetts, became part of Chicago in 1890.
Best of Beverly & Morgan Park 2016
Best of Beverly & Morgan Park 2015
Hannah Shea
To those who grew up here, Beverly means idyllic streets for learning to ride bikes, summer outings to Rainbow Cone and Sunday mornings at their local churches. To those from the surrounding areas, Beverly is the hub of the Southwest Side. They celebrate their 21st birthdays in the bars on Western Avenue, go out for a special dinner at Pizzeria Deepo or Franconello, or take in a show at the Beverly Arts Center. It has much to offer outsiders, yet is also known to have a tenuous relationship with the communities that border it.
The Beverly Arts Center Showcases Student Talent
Sitting in the empty four hundred-seat theater, I spoke with program coordinator Jonathan Moeller before the festival began.
Beverly
DMITRY SAMAROV
Rainbow Cone, stately old homes, Top Notch Beefburgers, and the South Side Irish Parade. The highest natural point in all of Chicago. Continue reading
Best Surrealist Duo: Sal Campbell and Sandra Leonard
COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS
This year the theme for the annual Chicago Artists Month (CAM) is “Crossing Borders.” In a city with so many distinct community areas, the topic seems particularly applicable and the event’s definition of borders includes “actual physical borders, or conceptual, genre or societal boundaries.” Continue reading
Lemonade Tea, Afternoon Conversations
A look at the Beverly Arts Center’s new executive director
On one of Chicago’s few pleasant March days, a group of community residents and art patrons from across the city sat basking in the sunlight in the gallery of the Beverly Arts Center (BAC). Continue reading
Goddamn Lemonade
A young Lemon Andersen walks into a poetry reading. He’s just triumphantly concluded his jail sentence. He’s heady with freedom, so ready for change he’s followed a hipster’s invitation to the open mic. “I’m greeted with love,” Andersen says. “And a quick pat down.” He mimes the motions of a frisk with an edge of cool comedy. The intrusion hardly breaks his stride, shimmying down his back like a dance move. The action of his one-man theatrical autobiography “County of Kings” has admittedly whisked us to worse places this evening. We’ve watched his mother Mili die from HIV, we’ve seen his family variably incarcerated, and we’re wondering what happened to his fifteen-year-old fiancée, conspicuously absent since Andersen’s trial for coke dealing. Continue reading