In Our Chicago
Posted by Sylvia Ewing on 7/25/2007I have a not-so-secret bias; I’m unabashedly in love with all things Chicago. From the green of the river to the view from the El, I think this is the best city in the world. I was thinking about this last Friday, as I had occasion to drive through several different neighborhoods. I left Steppenwolf in Lincoln Park and drove down to Hyde Park to meet my daughter, a student at the University of Chicago. She led me to Joy Yee’s, one of Chinatown’s most bustling restaurants. An elderly woman and her adult daughter were sharing rice out of a pineapple polishing off a tasty-looking fish still wearing its head. A trio of African-American women in braids waited patiently in line next to a cluster of Asian teens in black leather and studs. I tried my daughter’s bubble tea, made from fresh fruit and embellished with weird black tapioca balls. It was new and also familiar—this is what makes my Chicago heart sing….
Many black people in Chicago know about Bridgeport and its reputation with regard to race relations, but that’s changing too. My son has been friends with skaters in the neighborhood for the past several years, and challenged my perceptions of it. This night, my daughter was going there to attend the Printer’s Ball, a Poetry Foundation-sponsored event for the indie press. We got a little lost, but did not need the address to know that the hipster parade was marching toward the Zhou B. Art Center, a sprawling converted warehouse that is bringing all kinds of Chicagoans into the community and making a positive impact. The Zhou brothers are world-renowned artists and I marveled at the impact they’re making by investing in their own backyard. After I dropped Eve off, I enjoyed the sights and sounds of a beautiful Chicago night. I traveled through the east side of Pilsen, though old Maxwell Street in its bizarre new “University Village” outfit. People were out and about in Greektown and on the Near West Side, around the United Center. The pulse of the city flows through these neighborhoods and all of the people who live in them. We are the threads that make up the fabric of life in Chicago.
That’s why I’m delighted to help celebrate the rich blues legacy of Chicago and its parallels to the energy and honesty of hip-hop music with Blues/Hip-Hop Intersection, a free one-night only event at Millennium Park. Projects like this are an opportunity to entertain and educate, and find new ways to look at the world. The music is important, but the best thing for me is the chance to bring people together who might not know that they have anything in common. I look forward to playing a part in making our tapestry more beautiful than ever. And I look forward to rocking the house and dancing and singing and rejoicing, on our stage, in our Millennium Park, in our Chicago.