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.

Critical Mass, June

Now that warm weather is here, what could be better than a long bike ride with hundreds of other people? It's been about 6 months since my last one, so I decided it was time to hit up Critical Mass, particularly since this would be Ana's last chance to attend a Mass before she moves to Berkeley. So, after work, we grabbed our backpacks and helmets, and Katherine grabbed a Rhode Island flag and hat.

Katherine: Look, I even brought a costume this time! I'm Rhode Island!
Everyone else: Wait, what? Why did you bring a costume?
Katherine: Aren't we supposed to have costumes? Oh wait, last time we went in October, and it was Halloween...

At least she didn't look out of place with the flag-cape. The Mass always attracts plenty of sideshow-like acts, and this ride was no exception. There were small children, Bush protesters, acoustic guitarists singing about Carl Sandburg, people in underwear, and "Less gas, more beer" signs. We roughly followed this route, which took us through lots of parts of the South Side I'd never seen before, past a building that smelled like a muffin factory (yum!) and another building that smelled like manure (gag). At one point, the Mass wound its way to Ashland and 31st, and I wasn't sure why we were all stopping, until I realized someone had lit a colored smoke bomb. After much cheering, angry honking and many Chicago hold-ups, we continued on our way, and ended the ride 3 hours later at the 31st Street beach.

That was the good part of the ride. The not-so-good part of the ride came when the cops started breaking up the Mass and arresting people with beers. Granted, this is obviously an open container violation, but this was the first time I'd felt a hostile police presence at a ride. (Usually the cops help us cork intersections.) As I watched in horror, a cop yanked a beer out of one guy's hand and threw it on the ground, then shoved him in the back of a squad car. He threw the guy's bike into the trunk and then roughly slammed the trunk. It didn't shut, and the crowd collectively groaned. A voice shouted, "Let my people go!"

We forged on. At a subsequent intersection, a crowd had gathered menacingly around a car with the crumpled remains of a bike frame underneath. I'd seen the cyclist earlier, toting a small dog in a basket. "You killed my dog!" he yelled at the driver. She leaned out the window and pointed angrily, "Well, that guy put his bike on my car!" "She won't get away with this!" the others shouted, "Take pictures of her license plate!" The crowd jeered, and cell phone cameras dutifully began clicking. We decided to stop rubbernecking and move on before some sort of vigilante bike mafia action took place.

At this point, we realized that the crowd had thinned substantially, and we couldn't see anyone ahead of us. Oy! Luckily, there were spotters posted at intersections directing people where to go next. We paused at a light to regroup. "Mass up, mass up!" went the exhortations. "Cars are starting to cut us off, mass up and stick together!" How do you keep a band of bikers together if they don't know where they're going and there's no official leadership? Somehow, people emerge from the woodwork to direct traffic and block intersections. Like self-correcting RNA transcripts, the Mass is surprisingly resilient to failure.

This being my third Critical Mass, and one fraught with tension from non-bikers, I gave some thought as to why we mass, and what statement is being projected. I've spoken to other cyclists who say they don't support the rides and see it as a gratuitous display and disruption of traffic. We could debate till sunrise about whether the publicity and education generated by the rides outweighs the ire raised in drivers and the occasional arrest; I don't think you can say definitively whose side is in the right. However, in a post over the CCM listserv, Adam Kessel raises a very good point to the critics:

The main difference that CM makes, I believe, is in the time between rides, when otherwise depoliticized cyclists start to take action; to write letters to their representatives and city councillors; to argue with their neighbors, families, and friends; to become increasingly aware of the primary role that the private automobile plays in determining foreign and domestic policy, in separating out rich from poor and black from white, in causing more deaths, injuries, and illnesses than all of the leading 'public health' villains.

Critical Mass promotes a vision where cycling is mainstream, an alternative option to our car-centric culture, a place where fear is eliminated and bikers feel safe to ride in traffic, as traffic. For a brief, ephemeral afternoon, we ride in an imaginary cocoon, united with strangers. And then I leave, alone but mobilized with a message. Looking back at the number of people I've convinced to start biking, I think I'm doing pretty good.

On Chicago Nightlife

In general, I don't frequent areas of Chicago which are considered dangerous, unless you count trips to Hyde Park. As with living in any urban area though, it's sort of intuitive that you need a little extra vigilance as you go about the city, particularly at night. On the other hand, I've always been pretty laissez-faire about safety precautions. This is probably a product of having lived in suburbia most of my life, and combined with equal parts omnipotence and hubris, I have no qualms about say, running at night along the Lake Shore path.

This morning, for the first time, I felt a little nervous about being a single female in the city. To explain, I had a 6:30 am flight out of O'Hare, heading to JFK for a weekend in NY before trekking home for Christmas. When I booked this flight, my decision was based mostly on price, plus I figured I could make the most of Friday if I landed at 9:30. Now, it takes about an hour and a half on the train to get to O'Hare, plus time to check in and be bored at the gate...I ended up setting my alarm for 2:45 am.

At 3:30 am, I had gotten to the entrance of the station, just as a train screeched away. I silently swore to myself. (If only I hadn't stopped to brush my teeth, if only I'd packed my computer the night before...) This turned out to be a rather costly error. The red line only runs every 20-30 minutes at this time of night, and more irritating, there were 3-4 girls at the other end of the platform screaming and arguing vociferously. One of the girls seemed to be circling another around a bench. I glanced around nervously, eyeing the security guard in the ticket booth.

As the din increased, the security guard ambled over to the other end of the platform to investigate. A train pulled up, but much to my dismay, it was traveling in the wrong direction. A few people got off, craning their necks at the commotion, and one guy exclaimed, "Damn bitches, this silliness has got to stop!" and strolled over to the other end to "help." Shouts of "Bitch!" and "You ain't no sista of mine!" Good god, I thought, it is far too early in the morning for this, and if someone pulls out a gun or something...The clamor was now growing louder, as the group moved up the platform toward me. The Mediator Guy had his arms wrapped around one girl, to pin her arms back, and he was telling her to calm down and go home. Meanwhile, her taunter was yelling "Fuck you! You can suck my titties!" and as she rounded the bend, it was quite clear that you could indeed do this, because she had taken off her shirt and bra. Have I mentioned that it was far too early in the morning for me to handle this?

Luckily, a north-bound train pulled up, and I hastily clambered on. The squabbling sisters got on as well, and the train sat there for another 5 or 10 minutes as the fight continued on the train. Christ. I'm not sure what the end result was, but we finally got going and the fight was definitely a popular subject for the CTA workers on board.

All in all, it was a little more excitement than I'd bargained for. Let's see how the Orange line fares when I fly back through Midway.