Chicago’s infamous housing projects get tourist treatment on …
Block after block, street after street, the town in western Cook County claims to have the nation’s largest concentration of Chicago-style bungalows, and now it has set out to make the most of it.
To the tune of $131,000, Berwyn has begun an extensive campaign to get residents of Chicago to buy a house there. It has rented 14 billboards around the big city - particularly on the North Side — to extol the virtues of the suburb, population 65,000.
Could it be that the appeal for living in bungalows in Chicago neighborhoods has not been so much about the style of the housing but rather the location and other aspects of the neighborhood?
[via WQAD]
Berwyn puts out call of the bungalow
[via Chicago Tribune]
FBI, Fitzgerald, Devine zero in on Melrose Park
“Ghost payrolling, tax fraud, obstruction of justice, witness tampering — you might think we were talking about the Chicago Outfit,” said Robert Grant, special-agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Chicago office. “Sadly, we’re talking about the Melrose Park Police Department.”
For years businesses in Melrose Park were basically shaken down to pay protection money to the local police department in a way that’s not cynical at all rather quite literal. Corruption in the police department is not what Chicago’s suburbs need.
[via Chicago Sun-Times]
Open to the people of Chicago
Free People, the young bohemian arm of Urban Outfitters Inc., set up shop in Bucktown this month, its first Chicago store.
The shop joins a growing contingent of national chains discovering the hip neighborhood that not long ago was an enclave of independent boutiques and art galleries.
It is not news to notice that Wicker Park and Bucktown have been gentrified beyond recognition in the last few years. One could say that Urban Outfitters represents what the neighborhood has become and they’re taking it a step further with this new chain store.
[via Chicago Tribune]
Police: Teen Shot In Wicker Park In Gang-Related Spat
A 19-year-old alleged gang member was shot after a reported argument with the girlfriend of a rival gang member Thursday night in the Wicker Park neighborhood on the North Side.
The shooting occurred at 1356 N. Bosworth Ave. at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, according to a Shakespeare District Police captain.
The gangs involved were Latin Jivers and Harrison Gents.
[via NBC5.com]
SINK BP’S WASTE PLAN
BP’s plan to dump more waste into Lake Michigan needs to be plugged up. Even if the giant oil company proves that the extra waste it will be dumping is no threat to aquatic life or humans, we must have zero tolerance for the release of any additional pollution into our precious lake waters. Lake Michigan is a vital resource for Chicagoans — it provides our drinking water and our beach recreation, and it inspires the soul of our city with a water border, 30 miles long. Polluting its waters affects us all.
BP has been placing ads in the Chicago Tribune defending its actions in Whiting although let’s not be fooled. You can easily draw water from the lake to dilute your pollutants to some percentage that is required by law but in order to put more of those pollutants into the water all you have to do is diluted with more water taken from the lake and put back in. It’s not like they’re taking water from elsewhere to use to dilute it. The net effect is that the lake ends up being more polluted. Do you really want to allow this is the only benefit is an increase of a few dozen jobs in Whiting?
[via Chicago Sun-Times]
