1/22/06 - I've got pans for you! No, I'm not referring to pans that you use to cook. These are a few of my favorite panoramic photos of Chicago. Always a crowd pleaser. Click on the smaller photos for larger ones. Warning! These are huge pics!  - Segun

12/03/05 - Two cities within a city.    I recently spoke with my friend from the South Side of Chicago that I hadn't seen in a while. We were talking about places with good BBQ and I recommended a spot in the neighborhood of Uptown to him. He reacted with a blank expression until I asked him if he knew where Uptown was, which he responded with, "No, I've never been through there." I was amazed at how such an established community within the Chicago conscious could not be known to him. As someone whose lived in both areas of Chicago, I could also identify with him. Chicago is a city of extremes. The most compelling example is the contrast between North and South.     The North Side was historically home to a number of working class communities, along with a narrow lakefront belt of ornate apartments and hotels that served as the pre-cursor to contemporary coastal resort cities. The North Side was designed with winding streets that cut through the otherwise rigid grid. Many of the patterns within the grid itself were built erratically, with districts of streets with varying widths and random dead-end blocks. Beginning in the 1960's to the present day, the North Side saw an enormous increase in popularity, with hundreds of high rises being constructed along the lakefront, along with an increasing upper middle class population. The success of North Michigan Avenue also helped further along the North Side's success. Today, the North Side contains close to 2/3rd of Chicago's population on nearly 1/3rd of the land.     The South Side is patterned similar to the North Side, except it was the historical home to Chicago's rich, with an abundance of wide boulevards with elegant greystone mansions and row houses. It also contained a number of lower class Eastern European, Italian, and Irish neighborhoods and slums, including the infamous Bridgeport. From 1910-1940, nearly a million African-American migrants from the south arrived to the neighborhood, facing forced segregation and housing restrictions to where they could move. In the face of this, a strong community emerged, affectionately named Bronzeville. Bronzeville in its heyday was a center of commerce, culture and entertainment, home to many social movements and celebrities of black culture. The fame of the neighborhood masked the squalid and crowded living conditions of the neighborhood, as the slums of past were now occupied by blacks. Over the years, a racial game of chess was played, as the black population gradually found ways to move out of the neighborhood into adjoining districts, and the white population moved with it, taking with them amenities and jobs. The upper and middle class black population also eventually left. Housing projects and huge expressways carved up the landscape. Today, the South Side is an almost completely black area, stretching more than 16 miles from downtown to the southern edge of the city, and continuing into the South suburbs and Northwest Indiana. It has a bad reputation for crime and is frequently used as an example of bad urban planning and a broken social system.     The North side's streets are cluttered and built up, with few breaks, and continuous, diverse blocks of stores, restaurants and other amenities. A person walking North from downtown would be bombarded with a world of stimuli, from crowded parks to areas with retail that rival a small downtown. New development is everywhere. Examples of infill are so numerous, they have grown to become one of the defining styles of Chicago architecture. People are always milling about, taking advantage of the diverse array of conveniences. One of the biggest misconceptions about Chicago is that the North Side is completely white. While spending time in the corridor from the Loop to Lakeview would give someone that impression, the legacy of forced segregation isn't as strong as it was fifty years ago. Not only are there nearly 100,000 black residents, but there is also a significant population of immigrants from regions of Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, and Africa. There are long streets of Indian businesses, Korean churches, hospitals and a generous number of West African grocers. All of these groups intermingle together in daily activities. There are also a number of vibrant nightlife destinations. One can visit an area such as Wrigleyville and hop from place to place and enjoy food afterwards from a number of establishments, and then catch a train home, which runs 24 hours around the clock. Commuters usually don't have to wait more than 5 minutes for rapid transit and buses are numerous and situated every 4 blocks.     The South Side is more complex and sporadic. As mentioned before, many streetscapes in the South Side have been obliterated by empty lots and housing projects of lower and middle class incomes. Some areas look as if they have been reduced to a countryside. A person walking South from downtown would see life slowly wither away into empty, quiet streets with very little commerce or activity. A number of the vibrant shopping districts left only consist of clothing stores, greasy-spoons, liquor stores, and currency exchanges. The buildings left standing on dead commercial boulevards are usually boarded up, or if not, are used for low-use businesses such as auto-repair yards and storefront churches. I once counted more than 50 storefront churches on a 25 block drive on Ashland Avenue. Strip-malls also dot the landscape, as the land is cheap and corporations who choose to build in the ghetto do so with giant parking lots, a slap in the face to the considerable number of people who cannot afford to drive. There is some gentrification present along a few corridors, though usually the development is only residential and made with cheaper materials than the North side. Street life in the south side can be surprisingly vibrant in the face of this, though at night, a good portion of it relates to vice. Outside of people hanging out, late night establishments are scattered throughout random streets in the area. There are very few safe and concentrated neighborhoods containing bars, clubs, and late night diners. Going out in the South Side usually involves a car and rarely does anyone spend any time in the neighborhood after hours. The exception to this is Hyde Park, which is a pleasant neighborhood located near the University of Chicago. It has its own downtown with enough retail options to completely sustain itself. The South Side also has many white communities, a large growing hispanic community and a Chinese community. However, In contrast to the North Side, rarely will you see a black person in these neighborhoods. They seem as if they are islands, many of them separated by barriers such as rivers or train tracks.     Public transit is also below standards in the South Side. While people complain of long waits for buses in congested areas of Lakeview, commuters waiting on free-flowing streets such as Cottage Grove routinely deal with 30-40 minute waits for buses. When the bus finally does arrive, drivers are often rude and unhelpful to customers. Rapid transit also suffers on the South Side. One of the most pathetic sights to witness in Chicago is the sight of a two-car EL train squeaking through the Loop. The Green Line runs with the lowest ridership of all the major lines. The waits between trains can exceed 20 minutes during the day, and service shuts down early. The same Red Line that runs through the North Side somehow always ends up behind schedule when it reaches South. Hyde Park also is sub-par in transit. The transportation options to and from Hyde Park are not that reliable. The express buses from downtown take an extraordinarily long time due to gridlock and there are no free connections to EL lines. Parking is easy to find, so a car becomes the most convenient way to get around.     All of these comparisons only deal with infrastructure and hardly begin to touch the surface of social problems. That would require enough material to fill a book, with large chapters on violence and despair. In terms of infrastructure itself, what I gave here was just a broad overview of the differences, and it doesn't tackle problems of political corruption and real estate scams. With such glaring differences, one could see how a person living in these conditions can be totally ignorant of the other side, and bitter towards it. This ignorance has recently spawned an adverse reaction in the North Side. Those living in poverty, or forced to move from the projects to North Side neighborhoods such as Uptown, Rogers Park or Edgewater have the tendency to work harder to prove their worth in the underworld network. Many senseless crimes have been committed just in the name of proving to the rest of the city that the North Side is "real". Those efforts have not been in vain, as the CPD recently installed Police Cameras in two neighborhoods in the "North Pole". Perhaps today's South Side will become the North Side and vice-versa. In any case, efforts need to be made to integrate the two sides. So far, a lot of progress has been made. The city of Chicago runs a campaign to commuters touting the cultural attractions of less traveled sights, crime has been reduced, and a wave of gentrification is slowly pushing its way south from downtown. It remains to be seen how this gentrification will benefit the population living there, and it is a controversial topic in the city. I remain optimisitic though, hopeful that one day residents on any side of the city; North, South, or West will have access to an experience just as enjoyable as the other. - Segun