Earlier in this blog I wrote about the American Political Spectrum and its peculiarities with regards to the rest of the world.
Here is an even better explanation. It's a key thing that I believe in, and part of the argument for an important future blog post about the differences between corporatism and free market capitalism, which are nothing alike. It's time we realize that it isn't right vs left, but everybody vs the elite. Free business and low regulation results in something completely different than special favors for the biggest corporations and bankers. Indeed, it is the assumption of the power to regulate that allows the people with money to attain these favors. Without these powers, there would be no favors to lobby for.
Redefining the Political Spectrum
Saturday, March 19, 2011
The West Side Before the Bulldozers
As per my previous example, the neighborhoods on Chicago's West Side have been torn apart by poor and short-sighted public policy. There is so much devastation at this point that there is little that is left to save South of West Town and North of Pilsen, which is a huge area.
There's a block (I believe perhaps Jackson?) just East of Ashland that stands out as a short stretch which has not met the wrecking ball. It's now a landmarked area. The stretch of Ashland due West of downtown was previously lined with upper class residences and churches. There was an opulent commercial highrise at the intersection of Ashland, Madison, and Ogden. Ogden and Blue Island were previously important commercial thoroughfares in the same vein as Milwaukee. No more.
UIC's campus demolished the neighborhood and truncated Blue Island short of its climax at it's previously vital intersection with Halsted and Harrison. The Dan Ryan was positioned particularly to destroy Maxwell Street's old neighborhood because it housed the poor. The circle change and the highways it connects have severed the neighborhood instead of giving it its focal point as the civic square would have done. The dividing power of highways is clearly shown in the separation of the neighborhood revolving around Canal, 18th, and Canalport from the rest of the lower west side.
UIC was not satisfied with their original campus, and so set about acquiring land to their south for athletic fields and dormitories, ripping down the original buildings and neighborhood while the poor renters living there were left unable to stop them. This area of indifferent expansion was documented by Charles Cushman in the 1940s
Witness the destruction here.
But the cherry has to be the threatening of eminent domain used to acquire the land around Maxwell Street Market and along Halsted to 15th. The university then proceeded to sell this land to politically connected developer friends of Daley, who erected posh (and cheaply built) new condos and dorms, destroying all of what was left of the neighborhood of old, the neighborhood where thousands upon thousands of new Americans found their first new world homes.
Unfortunately this is the story of much of the West side. UIC continues to creep in to Taylor Street. Vacant lots or conspicuously cheaply built new section 8 housing occupies CHA properties, which were often acquired using eminent domain or the threat to us it.
The old transient hotels which occupied the West loop were ripped down for the very corrupt Presidential towers development and for the stretch of the Kennedy near Greek Town.
The city's way of dealing with the aftermath of race riot destruction on the West Side was to subsidize and aid a developer in finishing the job and destroying all the remaining buildings, including an extant stadium, to simply replace it with a new stadium and fields of parking lots which take up over 12 city blocks. More public housing property occupies land to the parking lots' North and their Southwest.
With the parking lots to its East and huge expanses of public housing property to its West near Western, it is no surprise that the neighborhood between Western and Damen is vacant and struggling. Pockmarked with urban renewal within the area as well both near the Ike and along Lake St, it is hard to maintain neighborhood community when it is separated to the North by rail, the South by expressway, and to the East and West with vast parking lots and with vacant public housing fields, respectively. The neighborhood was doomed with a critical mass of failed public housing and now vacant lots and by massive public policy failures on the East and West which created vast troublesome and vacant property stretches on both sides.
The troubles in the area can be seen by the fact that demolition continues on the most intact stretches of Washington and Warren.
There is a map, by Scott Newman, which shows much, though not all, of the area I just spoke about in the years before 1910. It is instructive since the area has changed so much. A look at the neighborhood before eminent domain gone amok and before the planning era gives both a better understanding the change wrought and clearer context to what little remains. For a building and neighborhood is defined by how it speaks to that which surrounds it. The buildings which remain were not designed for the environment in which they now struggle to endure. Without further adieu (click on the pdf link at this page):
The West Side Before the Bulldozers.
This post is to be continued...
There's a block (I believe perhaps Jackson?) just East of Ashland that stands out as a short stretch which has not met the wrecking ball. It's now a landmarked area. The stretch of Ashland due West of downtown was previously lined with upper class residences and churches. There was an opulent commercial highrise at the intersection of Ashland, Madison, and Ogden. Ogden and Blue Island were previously important commercial thoroughfares in the same vein as Milwaukee. No more.
UIC's campus demolished the neighborhood and truncated Blue Island short of its climax at it's previously vital intersection with Halsted and Harrison. The Dan Ryan was positioned particularly to destroy Maxwell Street's old neighborhood because it housed the poor. The circle change and the highways it connects have severed the neighborhood instead of giving it its focal point as the civic square would have done. The dividing power of highways is clearly shown in the separation of the neighborhood revolving around Canal, 18th, and Canalport from the rest of the lower west side.
UIC was not satisfied with their original campus, and so set about acquiring land to their south for athletic fields and dormitories, ripping down the original buildings and neighborhood while the poor renters living there were left unable to stop them. This area of indifferent expansion was documented by Charles Cushman in the 1940s
Witness the destruction here.
But the cherry has to be the threatening of eminent domain used to acquire the land around Maxwell Street Market and along Halsted to 15th. The university then proceeded to sell this land to politically connected developer friends of Daley, who erected posh (and cheaply built) new condos and dorms, destroying all of what was left of the neighborhood of old, the neighborhood where thousands upon thousands of new Americans found their first new world homes.
Unfortunately this is the story of much of the West side. UIC continues to creep in to Taylor Street. Vacant lots or conspicuously cheaply built new section 8 housing occupies CHA properties, which were often acquired using eminent domain or the threat to us it.
The old transient hotels which occupied the West loop were ripped down for the very corrupt Presidential towers development and for the stretch of the Kennedy near Greek Town.
The city's way of dealing with the aftermath of race riot destruction on the West Side was to subsidize and aid a developer in finishing the job and destroying all the remaining buildings, including an extant stadium, to simply replace it with a new stadium and fields of parking lots which take up over 12 city blocks. More public housing property occupies land to the parking lots' North and their Southwest.
With the parking lots to its East and huge expanses of public housing property to its West near Western, it is no surprise that the neighborhood between Western and Damen is vacant and struggling. Pockmarked with urban renewal within the area as well both near the Ike and along Lake St, it is hard to maintain neighborhood community when it is separated to the North by rail, the South by expressway, and to the East and West with vast parking lots and with vacant public housing fields, respectively. The neighborhood was doomed with a critical mass of failed public housing and now vacant lots and by massive public policy failures on the East and West which created vast troublesome and vacant property stretches on both sides.
The troubles in the area can be seen by the fact that demolition continues on the most intact stretches of Washington and Warren.
There is a map, by Scott Newman, which shows much, though not all, of the area I just spoke about in the years before 1910. It is instructive since the area has changed so much. A look at the neighborhood before eminent domain gone amok and before the planning era gives both a better understanding the change wrought and clearer context to what little remains. For a building and neighborhood is defined by how it speaks to that which surrounds it. The buildings which remain were not designed for the environment in which they now struggle to endure. Without further adieu (click on the pdf link at this page):
The West Side Before the Bulldozers.
This post is to be continued...
Friday, March 18, 2011
Every time I have to buy new blades for my razor I feel like I was ripped off. Really, 30 dollars for six cartridges? You have to be kidding me! I thought there must be a better way, and I imagined to myself a future where I would shave like a man should -- with a knife, not some silly feminine comfort 5 blade piece of crap plastic thing. Anything more than two blades, for the record, is simply egregious.
Voila, I have found the solution! The modern shave is all wrong. It feels wrong, uncomfortable, and ineffective. Well, it seems there is a reason for this! This is not the way men are meant to shave!
Firstly, I've been giving or throwing away any cans of shaving cream I have. I haven't used the stuff for several months. My face has cleared up. My shaves are faster. I use only hot water, but oil or soap works too.
Shaving cream is a racket, like Mr Jeff Tucker says:
The Shaving Cream Racket
Here is a man who says he took Tucker's advice and it worked wonders for his face:
A satisfied dude
But I've recently come upon an even more important part to correct shaving: the straight razor!
Have any of you men ever gone to a real barbershop where men cut men's hair and there's an old style barbershop pole and they shave your neck with a razor?
Yeah, well this is the thing they use. (By the way, Salons are for women, and it doesn't matter if they say they're unisex. Only men should be cutting men's hair.)
This is what men used to shave with before the recent past.
Here is an account of what I'm talking about, how to use it, care for it, etc.
Using a Straight Razor
I've resolved to use this shaving method from now on, no longer shelling out 30 dollars every so often for something which likely costs a sixth of that to manufacture.
I urge you to consider doing the same.
Voila, I have found the solution! The modern shave is all wrong. It feels wrong, uncomfortable, and ineffective. Well, it seems there is a reason for this! This is not the way men are meant to shave!
Firstly, I've been giving or throwing away any cans of shaving cream I have. I haven't used the stuff for several months. My face has cleared up. My shaves are faster. I use only hot water, but oil or soap works too.
Shaving cream is a racket, like Mr Jeff Tucker says:
The Shaving Cream Racket
Here is a man who says he took Tucker's advice and it worked wonders for his face:
A satisfied dude
But I've recently come upon an even more important part to correct shaving: the straight razor!
Have any of you men ever gone to a real barbershop where men cut men's hair and there's an old style barbershop pole and they shave your neck with a razor?
Yeah, well this is the thing they use. (By the way, Salons are for women, and it doesn't matter if they say they're unisex. Only men should be cutting men's hair.)
This is what men used to shave with before the recent past.
Here is an account of what I'm talking about, how to use it, care for it, etc.
Using a Straight Razor
I've resolved to use this shaving method from now on, no longer shelling out 30 dollars every so often for something which likely costs a sixth of that to manufacture.
I urge you to consider doing the same.
The Valley and Eminent Domain
There was an old neighborhood called 'The Valley' on the West Side, bounded by Ashland on the East to Ogden on the West and from Roosevelt to about 15th street.
It has been wiped off the face of the earth by the UIC Medical District's ability to use eminent domain for expansion. It was once Chicago's most important Dutch neighborhood. There are only a couple of homes remaining, but here are two links, one to pictures of the area circa 1970s and the other an account of childhood in the neighborhood pre-1920. This is a fascinating account, and particularly interesting to me as it confirms my ideas about what environment is best to raise children in. I want them to be surrounded by things that are fascinating and make them think about the world. To my mind, there are few environments better for that purpose than an old urban neighborhood possessing Jane Jacob's ideals regarding urban cultural and commercial diversity.
Here are these fascinating web pages:
photos of The Valley
The Account of Childhood in The Valley during the Progressive Era
Here is another link detailing the neighborhood's last gasps in the 90s. It is easy to understand the anguish a family feels when forced to move from a home that many generations have grown up in. And it is instructive to note the destructive power of government, fully on display on that section of S Ashland. Drive down toward Pilsen and one will find to his West fields of nothingness supposedly waiting for Medical District development..
only, apparently Costco is going to build a store at 15th and Ashland. Seems the medical district wanted to seize private homes for income properties and corporate welfare.
What an ode to eminent domain this is!!! Corrupt? Chicago way? Naaahh. And neither was Maxwell Street's demise either, right?
Poor, poor obliterated West Side. Note that this shit doesn't happen in wealthy areas. Here's the article about the last families:
House on the Rocks
The standard argument for powerful government is the proclaimed need to help the poor and disenfranchised. Here, shamelessly displayed, is their propensity towards the opposite. Nearly every battered and struggling ghetto or "ghetto" (where the term is given by rich outsider NIMBY folks) can legitimately trace its struggles to large scale government acts.
One can go through the map and point to their destructive influence.
HUD
CHA
FHA
IDOT
Daley's vacant property policies
DEA
More on this later.
It has been wiped off the face of the earth by the UIC Medical District's ability to use eminent domain for expansion. It was once Chicago's most important Dutch neighborhood. There are only a couple of homes remaining, but here are two links, one to pictures of the area circa 1970s and the other an account of childhood in the neighborhood pre-1920. This is a fascinating account, and particularly interesting to me as it confirms my ideas about what environment is best to raise children in. I want them to be surrounded by things that are fascinating and make them think about the world. To my mind, there are few environments better for that purpose than an old urban neighborhood possessing Jane Jacob's ideals regarding urban cultural and commercial diversity.
Here are these fascinating web pages:
photos of The Valley
The Account of Childhood in The Valley during the Progressive Era
Here is another link detailing the neighborhood's last gasps in the 90s. It is easy to understand the anguish a family feels when forced to move from a home that many generations have grown up in. And it is instructive to note the destructive power of government, fully on display on that section of S Ashland. Drive down toward Pilsen and one will find to his West fields of nothingness supposedly waiting for Medical District development..
only, apparently Costco is going to build a store at 15th and Ashland. Seems the medical district wanted to seize private homes for income properties and corporate welfare.
What an ode to eminent domain this is!!! Corrupt? Chicago way? Naaahh. And neither was Maxwell Street's demise either, right?
Poor, poor obliterated West Side. Note that this shit doesn't happen in wealthy areas. Here's the article about the last families:
House on the Rocks
The standard argument for powerful government is the proclaimed need to help the poor and disenfranchised. Here, shamelessly displayed, is their propensity towards the opposite. Nearly every battered and struggling ghetto or "ghetto" (where the term is given by rich outsider NIMBY folks) can legitimately trace its struggles to large scale government acts.
One can go through the map and point to their destructive influence.
HUD
CHA
FHA
IDOT
Daley's vacant property policies
DEA
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)