Chicago and Portland

Lately, I've been really nostalgic for Chicago. I've been remembering lots of places and certain memories keep popping up. Most of them seem to center around my DePaul years or living on Buckingham Pl. I have a super old blog that is going to go away soon but I used to write about neighborhood transitions. I bet if I took that list and checked to see what businesses are still around, I would find very few. Hopefully, I would still find some of them thriving.

I've thought about those neighborhood transitions, neighborhood characters such as burlap man, walking down Roscoe from my sister's apartment to mine, walking down Broadway or Clark to Lincoln Park, spending time in some of the few independent or secondhand bookstores, waiting at the Belmont El, sitting on the Belmont rocks with Elston, Chicago Historical Society (now called something else), eating at Salt and Pepper, beer garden at Sheffields, drinking and watching football at Joe's on Broadway, and even attending mass with my parents at Mt. Carmel. It all feels like yesterday when it is actually 10 years ago. I was using the Google maps streetview thing and I was back on the corner of Addison and Broadway and looking at the window of Joe's on Broadway.

So much of who I am was formed during those years. I miss the time when I had a wide open space to define who I wanted to be and how to live my life. I am scared that the older we get, we don't have as many of those opportunities. I guess I am nostalgic for those times when I was much more carefree and could just roam for hours. For the first time in ages, I am living in a neighborhood that allows me to roam. I live in Portland's Hollywood neighborhood. Instead of 3 flats, think of craftsman style houses. The business district is less dense and much smaller but there are pockets that remind of Lakeview. Okay, much less dense. I guess it is the old and new that remind me of Lakeview and that is about it.

Carrie Brownstein from Sleater-Kinney, recently read an essay (scroll down and you can download the essay) at the New School about living in the Hollywood neighborhood. She talked about the places she walks past that have character and are stuck in the past and how it compares to some of the newer establishments that quickly look old. Unlike Chicago's residential development that so drastically changed or businesses torn down and replaced with something brand new, the Hollywood neighborhood takes a different approach. She mentioned how Mark Lindsay's Rock and Roll Cafe is an attempt to bring back the old - the days of Paul Revere and the Raiders and Yaw's burgers. It is a great essay that reflects much of how I feel about this neighborhood after only a short time.

One regret I have about those days in Chicago is that I never documented those street scenes that left such an impression on me. I want to change that with Hollywood. I feel the need to capture some of this on camera and not through Google's streetview. Like those days in Chicago, I am in a new chapter of my life (really I am trying not to use a pun since I live above a library), I'm reflecting on lessons learned over the years, healing, and figuring out who I am and directions I want to take in the coming years. It is very similar to those Lakeview days. My neighborhood is the background to everything taking place.