To the Southside and Back

There are those who look at me and see a smallish Asian girl, with glasses and an air-conditioned desk job, and might be inclined to think that I am far from being a locked out gangsta, set trippin' banger. Well, I am here to disabuse you of the notion that I have no street cred, because I have officially seen the Southside of Chicago. And I don't mean Kenwood (where the Obama home is) or Hyde Park (Univ. of Chicago hosts the nation's largest private police force). I crossed the Midway Plaisance and survived, with all vital organs intact and no wallets mugged.

I only have anecdotal evidence for this, but I assert that the city of Chicago is the most racially segregated in the country. It is absurd how neighborhoods on the Northside seemingly have no minority residents, while large swaths of the South and West sides are essentially black and Hispanic ghettos. There is essentially no mixed housing. In addition, public transportation routes are designed in such a way that traveling to and from the Southside is time-consuming and difficult. Chicago's local government being what it is, I have no doubt that this was purposely done by the political powers that be, to further separate and divide the city. Needless to say, nice girls generally do not travel to the Southside on a lark. Then, what on earth was I doing there?

The adventure started when I kept reading about Soul Vegetarian East, an old restaurant on the Southside run by Black Hebrew Israelites and specializing in vegan cooking. I mean, given the rarity of vegetarian restaurants in Chicago, and the allure of alt-history religious trappings, how could you resist this combination? Besides, the menu was predominantly soul food, and I was curious as to how well you could possibly do soul food sans meat or butter.

Somehow I was able to convince Katherine and Melissa that this was worth a trip to 75th St. Moreover, I suggested a post-dinner trip to Rainbow Cone, another traditional Southside institution. This is at 92nd and Western, which under normal circumstances is not particularly close. However, since we were already that far south and probably never returning again, this would really be the only opportunity we'd have to see it. Oh, and remember how public transportation sucks in this area? Since getting from Soul Vegetarian to Rainbow Cone would require a ridiculous number of buses and transfers, we opted to bike the 6-mile distance in between. After dark, on a weekend night: the prime time for gang-related violence. Ain't no thang.

Over the course of the journey, heads turned at the sight of three young, non-black women pedaling bikes down the street. We were asked where we had come from, as if people wanted to make sure we weren't lost. One woman stopped in the middle of crossing the street and yelled at us, "Ya'll be careful now!" We thanked her as we sped past. One man tried to reverse-racially profile us, and berated us as being University of Chicago students who were about to "go back to Hyde Park and sit on the internet." Suffice it to say, we stuck out like the Rocky Mountains. All this for some ice cream.

I will say that though I never felt threatened, I often felt uncomfortable, and I've done some searching as to why. Was it because I wasn't used to being in an all-black neighborhood? Would I have felt as uneasy in Humboldt Park (a predominantly Puerto Rican area)? We biked through some parts of Chatham, home to the infamous Roland Burris and according to Wikipedia, predominantly middle-class. The streets were quiet and lined with one-story bungalows, much like any other neighborhood, and yet I still fought to quell panic whenever a car slowed beside us, or someone passed next to us on the sidewalk. How does it feel to be a young black male walking around say, Winnetka (a wealthy northern suburb)? Has there ever been a case of reverse white-flight, where whites moved into minority neighborhoods en masse?

Then suddenly, as we crossed to the other side of the railroad tracks, 95th Street suddenly became "safe." Words cannot express the wave of relief I felt as a Borders, Panera Bread and Gamestop came into view. We were in Beverly, a heavily Irish-American neighborhood, home of the annual Southside St. Patrick's Day Parade and Chicago's 3rd highest median income. Rainbow Cone was frequented by a diverse crowd of middle-aged parents with small children, goth teens and blue-collar men. The suburban normality was jarring.

Here's the route we took last night from Soul Vegetarian to Rainbow Cone. Total distance: 5.6 miles. In retrospect, it would've been shorter to take 87th street west, but then we would have missed the scenic part of Halsted and 95th...The colored flags indicate locations of murders in Chicago in 2009 thus far. You can also see that our end point at Rainbow Cone is in a decently well-to-do neighborhood, across the street from a country club.

Getting home posed another problem as none of us were particularly keen on biking all the way back north. The closest train station was the red line 95th/Dan Ryan stop, the southern terminus of the line. For those unfamiliar with Chicago, I will mention that prior to this, the only first-hand story I'd heard about the 95th St stop was from JT, who said that she'd fallen asleep and mistakenly gotten off there once. After leaving the station, she tried to bolt into the McDonald's across the street in a panic. Unfortunately, it was the type of McDonald's where customers have to be buzzed into the restaurant. The clerks behind the counter were ROFLing at the sight of this clearly lost white girl.

Putting that aside, we gamely opted to bike to the 95th station, and had crossed back over into the seedier side of town when my bike rolled over a thin sheet of metal with a loud pop. Egads, a flat tire. I had a spare tube and pump on me, so I could have tried fixing it, but this wasn't exactly the type of location I wanted to linger in. We decided to simply walk the rest of the way to the station, and luckily this only turned out to be three or so blocks. Somehow, being on a moving bike makes me feel invincible while I feel completely vulnerable as a pedestrian. In retrospect, I really should have brought my pepper spray.

I've no regrets about exploring the Southside, however with the amount of unsolicited attention we attracted, it would be foolhardy to go back again. It amazes me that one of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago is separated by the thinnest of margins from super sketchy, impoverished urban blight. Beverly is surrounded by predominantly black neighborhoods that were predominantly white until the '60s. Why was this neighborhood able to hold on to its white population?

And for reference, this is the full map of YTD 2009 homicides in Chicago. From the map, it is clear that incidents happen disproportionately on the south and west sides of the city.