Cleansing the Neighborhood

We had Chamber of Commerce weather on Sunday.  Well, I could have used another ten degrees, but it was close enough.  Pic-left shows tourists taking pictures of this temporary statue just south of the Tribune Tower.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the Olympics, but I'm too lazy to find out.  Note that Jeanne Gang's Aqua building is looking mighty fine.

Huge crowds along the Mag Mile.  Pic-right shows some more tourists taking pictures of the silver-painted street performers.  Or, rather, the picture would have shown that if I'd been a little quicker.  While the street performers are hardly what draws tourists to Michigan Avenue, they are indeed part of the scene, like the American Gothic Olympics statue or the tulips or the horse & carriage drivers.  Who would possibly be against the street performers?

Uh, well, Ald. Brendan Reilly of the 42nd Ward, for starters.  The Sun-Times reports that he wants to toughen the licensing statutes:

You know, I can't prove this, but I think there were street performers in Streeterville before most of those condos went up.  You'd think the condo buyers would have known the kind of neighborhood they were buying into. 

But I guess people in Hyde Park are the same.  We have plenty of folks who move here and complain about not being able to buy clothes in the neighborhood.  Hey, you take the good with the bad, you know.  Maybe I'm no different, wishing for L-level rail transit. 

Of course, Ald. Reilly is worried about more than just noise.  Apparently, it's just anarchy on the Mag Mile these days:

It's not just a noise problem. Troupes of "bucket boys" set the stage for pickpocketing and snatch-and-grab incidents.

"There is a criminal element. Some crews use their performance merely as a distraction to lure unsuspecting tourists. And there are people in those crews who are tasked with reaching into people's shopping bags, purses or wallets to make off with their valuables," Reilly said, noting some drummers have "lengthy criminal records."

How would Ald. Reilly know that some drummers have "lengthy criminal records"?  I'm kinda suspicious of that.  Frankly, given the preponderance of 42nd Ward residents working in the financial industry, I'd guess that many of Ald. Reilly's own constituents currently (or in the near future) will have "lengthy criminal records."  Consider the case of Michael Segal, who probably stole more than all the pickpockets in the city over the last twenty years.  The really successful thieves wear a coat & tie; they don't bang on buckets.

I can't prove that Ald. Reilly is making up stories here, but in all my time on the heavily-policed Mag Mile, I've never seen anyone reacting to a pickpocket-- talking to police & pointing, yelling, "Stop, thief!" or any other similar behavior.  Consider me suspicious.  Very suspicious.  Suspicious enough to wonder if things would be different if these street performers looked more like Michael Segal.

I'm just glad we have a little more tolerance here in Hyde Park, where no one would ever entitle a blog article "The Landlords of Hyde Park: How to Go Ghetto at 55th and HP Boulevard" and then complain about the "cheeseball" look of a tobacco shop, a (former) hair weave business and a hair design salon.  Sure, the building doesn't look well-maintained, but those are basements and we're lucky there's any retail there at all. 

If you're going to complain about a corner in East Hyde Park, how about this one pic-right, that I suggested would make a great place for a coffeehouse?  That corner is just deadly dull.  It would truly be improved by one of "ghetto" buildboards with a liquor advertisement.  Odds are that a handsome, albeit two-dimensional, black man would then grace the corner, larger than life.