Monthly Archives: January 2002

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29 January 2002
You know you’re a New Yorker when… what? Responses vary considerably: some apply to the anonymity and drive of any large city. One alludes to mobility (switching apartments); another to stability (having family in the city). Hm. BTW: a snow emergency will likely be declared tomorrow. Comings and goings: the new dorms and dining hall have opened at the U of C, but Bistrot Zinc on Southport (my first sidewalk creperie) has closed and will probably be demolished, since the property’s been sold.

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25 January 2002
“Do we need the overkill of ribbons and commemorative quilts, haloed seraphim perched on top of the burning towers and teddy bears in firefighter helmets waving flags, in order to forget the final minutes of bond traders, restaurant workers and secretaries screaming in elevators filling with smoke, standing in the frames of broken windows on the 90th floor waiting for help, and staggering down the stairwells covered in third-degree burns?” – Daniel Harris in salon.com

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24 January 2002
News: Pierre Bourdieu, whose theories on the persistence of social structures (“cultural capital”) reinforced my cynicism at a refreshingly early age, has died.
“You are ugly! U G L Y Ugly! I am a man and I am nowhere near as ugly as you!” – man on the #66 bus last night. I was listening to something else at the time but still managed to share a “what’s wrong with this guy?” suppressed grin with a fellow passenger. Oh, and it turns out that a co-worker was the mysterious person who poked me as I stepped off the train in the morning. See the joys I’m missing by not riding transit?

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23 January 2002
Today started slightly damp and cloudy, with promises of more rain and stiff winds, so I decided to forego the bike commute. Bad idea. Cycling takes ~25 minutes (from locking the apartment to unlocking the office door), even without flouting the law; transit typically takes about 30 minutes. Today, I just missed a bus, only to have a pair of buses roll up 5 minutes late, then couldn’t board the first train that rolled by, since standees tend to crowd near the doors and block entry for those trying to board close to downtown. In the end, it took 50 minutes. The day was brightened by the motorman on Blue Line run 105 (?), who proclaimed his train “the happy train,” wished all aboard a pleasant day, and asked passengers to cooperate in getting people aboard – “we’re all in this together.” Thank you.

Speaking of biking to work, one of these days I’ll have to check out the little cluster of Italian shops at Grand and Noble that I’ve been riding by all these months.

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21 January 2002 Even less special: on Saturday, while annoying
the sales staff at Barney’s with the presence of riff-raff kids, I heard
Autour de Lucie’s “Faux Mouvement.” Maybe French pop isn’t quite as obscure
as I thought. And okay, so there’s been a delay in getting the WTBAC pages
up. Oh, and for the voyeurs out there, new photos of yours truly are
available.

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17 January 2002 Two reactions to the snow,
from today’s Chicago Tribune: “I enjoy snow in small quantities on
the weekend as long as it doesn’t interfere with my travel plans.” – Alex
Vayslep of Lincoln Park “Especially in Chicago. Ice and snow
preoccupies. And now, heat preoccupies. Weather does occupy government’s
position.” – Mayor Richard M. Daley

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16 January 2002
Updated Home with new contact info, including
instant messaging alias. Yes, I’ve given in and signed up. In other news,
the staff at my friendly local coffee shop put on a Yann Tiersen CD (okay, so it was the
“Amelie” BOF, made for North American distribution with English liner notes)
on as they closed up this evening. I feel less special. Oh yeah: it snowed
today! Three inches!

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15 January 2002 “It’s my parents’
fault for being so liberal. Nobody ever told me to go to law school — they
just wanted me to be happy.” So said a Toronto artist in the Globe &
Mail,

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13 January 2002 Metropolis magazine this month
includes a neat feature on sustainable architecture in New York and some of
the most thoughtful post-Sept. 11 coverage I’ve seen. Site news: I plan on
having functioning pages for the West Town Bicycle Advisory Committee up by
Thursday; check for the link.

gentrification whining

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archive of CCM list post chicagocriticalmass : Message: Re: [*CCM*] ON TOPIC gentrification stuff

ehol wrote:
> To address gentrification without considering also the process of
> slumification is to look at only half the story.

And to whine and whine and whine about gentrification without realizing
that Chicago is actually *net* “slumifying.” Over the 1990s, Chicago –
relative to the suburbs – got poorer and more heavily non-White.

Sometimes I wonder whether the people who whine about gentrification ever
leave the North Side. “No room left in the city?” Ever seen West
Garfield Park? Lake Calumet? Englewood?

Without the gentrification that took place over the past 40 years, Chicago
would be another Detroit, St. Louis, Buffalo, or Cleveland – a bombed out
shell of a city, home only to the destitute, perpetually begging spare
change from economically dynamic suburbs. We wouldn’t even be having a
conversation about sustainable transportation, because we would be
completely resigned to the reality of transportation in suburban
America: driving. We wouldn’t bother bicycling, since the roads would be
impossibly potholed, no corner would be safe from stray gunfire, the
entire city would be nothing but vast stretches of vacant lots and
abandoned buildings slowly dripping masonry onto the streets
below. There’d be nowhere to bike, much less anywhere to bike to.

We can talk and talk and talk until we’re all blue in the face about how
gentrification is A Bad Thing in the abstract, but ANY considered
examination of the actual policy ramifications behind urban policy would
conclude that gentrification, while ugly, is the only way for cities to
keep their fiscal heads above water in a society and under federal and
state governments which have been virulently anti-urban in their
decisions.

Sure, I wish things were different. I wish, first of all, that good urban
neighborhoods weren’t a scarce resource available only to the highest
bidders. I wish that stratification, in all its forms (race, class,
whatever), weren’t nearly so prominent in our society. I wish that
carbon and energy were more realistically priced, to prevent their
profligate waste in transportation and building systems. I wish that
people were more willing to walk and bike around.

I don’t wish that gentrification would go away, I only wish it were
tamed. “Gentrification” is a nasty term for an immensely complex issue
that’s (as I said before) merely a microcosm of the overriding issue of
American political economy: how to give community needs a voice in the
cold logic of the market. As Joy Aruguete said in the article link Kerry
posted, “When the gentrification issue is framed for political purposes
and people don’t look at the complexity of it, that hurts everyone.” (The
author of the article, of course, chose to ignore that complexity, but I
digress.)

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9 January 2002 Okay, I
finally uploaded a revised version of the scrivener archive (see the end of
the column). I’ve been updating this column regularly for more than a month!
No other news of note.