So sad if would-be voters have already tossed this election cycle out w/ trash

I had reason to be wandering through the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday and couldn’t help but notice the dearth of political signs set up on front yards.

Election sentiments of certain voters?

While just a month ago prior to the initial election, Beverly seemed flooded with signs touting the mayoral merits of Jerry Joyce – who got barely 40,000 votes and whose 7 percent support even ranked below that of Amara Enyia’s mayoral campaign.

ON SUNDAY, WITH the run-off election being just over two weeks away and so many people eagerly trying to convince us that history is taking place, I just don’t see the enthusiasm.

I managed to find one lone lawn sign touting the mayoral bid of hopeful Lori Lightfoot – erected by a homeowner along 103^rd Street.

By comparison, I actually found more signs touting Joyce’s campaign – although admittedly one was stuffed in a trash can along with, I wonder, the hopes of whatever individual has already done their house cleaning of sorts.

This shouldn’t be shocking. What with all the candidates who managed to get on the ballot, the reality of the Feb. 26 vote is that two of every three who bothered to vote (and most registered voters didn’t even bother) cast their votes for someone other than Lightfoot of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

I HAVE NO doubt there are many people across the country who are viewing the act of voting again as pure drudgery – after all, they already cast a ballot for the person they think “should have” won.

Is it their fault that everybody else screwed up and didn’t pick their person?

All I know is that this is a depressing sentiment for would-be voters to have at a time when they’re being asked to pick a new mayor for the first time in eight years. The departure of Rahm Emanuel come mid-May is not going to create a great abundance of joy.

Sign looks so depressed and droopy now that it's for a defunct campaign

If anything, there is one sentiment I have heard oft-expressed. It’s that in a run-off election in which there’s really not a whole heck of a lot of ideological difference between Lightfoot and Preckwinkle are those who say they’re willing to cast a ballot for Lightfoot – the candidate who is a Lesbian married to another woman, with the couple raising a daughter.

BUT THE PEOPLE expressing such thoughts say they’re mostly doing so as a way of “pissing off” all the right-wing ideologues who will be grossly offended by Lightfoot’s holding a position of such authority.

Almost as thought they view a vote for her as a great big “f--- you” to all of those types who are enjoying this Age of Trump our society is now entangled in.

As for the rest of the politicians, six of the failed mayoral candidates have since endorsed Lightfoot’s bid – including that of Joyce. It probably would be a significant pickup for her if the people of places like Beverly, Mount Greenwood and Sauganash (the historic enclaves where Chicago cops and firefighters live to comply with residency requirements) were to swing over to her.

In fact, it may well turn out that Lightfoot has a certain level of momentum – with far too many people voting against Preckwinkle solely because she actually has experience on the job and with the kinds of issues that city government would face.

I KNOW IN my case, that level of experience is the reason I’d be inclined to cast a ballot for Toni – which I’m sure will offend all the nitwits who are determined to say they’re using this election cycle to punish her for that “pop” tax she fought for as Cook County Board president.

I suspect many such as this bungalow resident were more concerned Sunday with St. Patrick's Day. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

But I’ve also accepted some two weeks out that Lori has the momentum over Toni – although I also encountered someone Sunday who said that reading the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement of Lightfoot seemed like more of a backhanded bit of praise in that it acknowledged Preckwinkle’s merits for the mayor’s post.

The real key to comprehending this election may well be in remembering that old axiom – talk is cheap. Forget all the rhetoric about first African-American woman as Chicago mayor.

I suspect most people will either hold their noses while voting, or find reasons not to bother. The end result will be Chicago suffering from their ambivalence.

  -30-

We're all Irish on St. Patrick's Day, whether we want to be or not!

Saturday is the day we go overboard with the green, wearing shamrock symbols and even allowing our beer to be dyed to take on the tone of the Emerald Isle.

A past St. Patrick's Day, when Daley Plaza officials felt compelled to dye their water fountains green. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda.

It's St. Patrick's Day, and some of us will go about spewing stories about the Catholic saint driving the snakes out of Ireland. Most of us won't care about a "why" we're doing anything; we'll just want to eat, drink and be merry -- and perhaps get a peck of the lips  off some Irish lass who's in a particularly festive mood.

IN CHICAGO, SATURDAY is the day we'll get the official parade -- the one that ventures downtown along Columbus Drive (the Italian explorer gives up his ethnic character for the day to all the people who want to be faux Irish).

Personally, I don't plan to be anywhere near the parade -- and not because I'm experiencing some anti-Irish sentiment (if I did, there'd be no way I could bear daily life in Chicago). It's more because I just don't get into the idea of parades in general.

Although I will admit to twice having been at the St. Patrick's Day parade to see just how Chicago feels the need to celebrate those who come from places like County Mayo and don't feel compelled to make silly gags about sandwich condiments.

In both cases, I was out there as a reporter-type person. Back in 1993, I covered the parade back in the days when it was still held in downtown proper along Dearborn Street. In fact, that was the parade of which footage was included in the film version of "The Fugitive."

THE ONE IN which they felt compelled to use film snippets of then-Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to show the idea of a political person bloating his ego -- which is one element of what the parades are all about.

I also remember the parade from back in 2002 -- which was the one in which then-President George W. Bush felt compelled to fly in from Washington, D.C., to participate in. To the point where I still remember the heavy security that Secret Service officials put parade spectators through (all those metal detectors and searches) to try to ensure that there wouldn't be a lone gunman-type amidst the green-clad spectators who would suddenly jump out and take a shot at the President of the United States.

Which, if you think about it, would truly be pathetic -- a leprechaun-clad assassin or some fool covered in "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" buttons suddenly wielding a pistol. Personally, I'd like to think that if such a situation had occurred, all the parade spectators in the area would have reverted to a drunken mob and would have jumped the attacker and beaten him silly.

Only place takes pride in its namesake river being green

That would have been a truly unique story -- instead of the one I actually wrote for my then-employer United Press International.

IN THAT STORY, Bush ultimately got into a car and drove off with then-Mayor Richard M. Daley to Gibson's steakhouse -- where they ate a lunch that was far beyond my income level to afford (even though I still remember my editor thinking it inappropriate that I tried pointing out that fact in my copy).

Enough of reminiscing, though. The biggest-name pol we're likely to see on Saturday will be Gov. Bruce Rauner, who likely will figure out pretty quickly that not everybody falls for his "Blame Madigan" rhetoric with regards to state government problems.

The real trick is to think of why we feel compelled to celebrate this particular Irish occasion, and not only in Chicago. I'm aware that Boston and New York also will feel the need to celebrate -- and may even have delusions of grandeur into thinking they "do" the holiday greater than we do in Chicago.

Although considering that we in Chicago do more than just the official parade (which will be from Noon to 2 p.m. and will be broadcast live on WLS-TV, for those of you too lazy to make the trip downtown to see Irish step-dancers galore or that of yet another young lass from Beverly or Bridgeport wearing the sash of the St. Patrick's Day Parade queen, I'd argue we can't be topped.

WE'LL HAVE THE South Side Irish Parade along Western Avenue through the Beverly neighborhood, or countless other celebrations that will take place in neighborhoods across the city and suburbs. I'm sure some will argue there are Pulaski Day parades to give Polish ethnics something to celebrate, and the assortment of Cinco de Mayo events for Mexican-Americans -- although I'd argue the latter have evolved into something so garish that it will rival all the St. Patrick's Day green for the Irish.

Parade became a plot element in film

Perhaps it is all good if it goes so far as to remind those of us in Chicago that we are an ethnic mixture. Which is something I have always felt added to what makes Chicago a special place.

In far too many places, people bellow out they are "American" without having any sense of where they're from or what they really are.

It almost makes all the green nonsense we're going to endure on Saturday just a bit more bearable.

  -30-

EXTRA: Scouring for Sunday parking?

I'm almost nostalgic for this sight

A part of me is twisted enough to want to take my hunk-of-junk automobile out for a ride across as much of Chicago as I can cover come Sunday.

Because I’d want to see just how much of a difference it makes now that people will no longer have to feed those new digital pay boxes (we can’t really say we’re “feeding the meter” any longer) in order to avoid a parking ticket.

OF COURSE, THAT would be more of a waste of gasoline than I’d want to encounter. Somehow, I suspect that would cost more than I’d save by not having to pay for parking on the one day of the week that God supposedly told us to rest.

Besides, in my case, I’m going to be with family out in the Beverly neighborhood on Sunday – a massive barbecue being done on behalf of Father’s Day. It will be interesting to see mi padre, even though if I’m comprehending the change in parking policy approved earlier this month by the City Council, that particular area is among those where people still have to pay.

It’s only a dozen of the 50 wards where the new no-paying-on-Sunday policy takes effect on Father’s Day. The rest of the city is going to have to wait until July 1 – which could make Independence Day the learning period for the bulk of the city (particularly those parts up North).

Which means I’m likely to have to resort to my usual methods of scouring for a not-blatantly-illegal place to park my automobile when I make my trip.

IT’S ALSO GOING to mean that Chicago residents and people visiting the city are going to have to keep it straight in their minds where they can, and cannot, leave their automobiles without paying up.

It will be worse when the council later this year is expected to approve enough exceptions for business districts across the city where you will still have to pay on Sunday.

The bottom line seems to be that city officials want to receive credit for doing something to eliminate parking fees – a contentious issue ever since former Mayor Richard M. Daley a few years ago sold off control of parking meters to a private company.

A parking meter alternative? Image by railroadpictures.net

But that doesn’t mean government officials want to lose the money being pumped into those machines. They just want us to quit despising and blaming them so much for having to pay up!

JUST THINKING ABOUT this confusion of where one can park without hassle is headache inducing. It makes me wonder if I need to start carrying aspirin with my when I drive into the city.

Or better yet, just revert back to my habit of using mass transit in the city whenever possible. That’s the easiest way to avoid parking tickets by a cop too eager to fulfill his quota.

  -30-

Metra increases a fare, after saying there’d be no fare increases this year

I can’t say I’m surprised at the outrage some people might be feeling these days toward Metra, the commuter railroad system, for the increase in ticket prices it approved just a couple of days ago.

This increase comes just a couple of weeks after Metra officials told the Cook County Board (which reviews mass transit budgets) that they were preparing a budget for 2013 that calls for no fare hikes. Prices would remain the same, except when they don’t – it seems.

NOW FOR THOSE of you who are confused, keep in mind that Metra technically didn’t  break its word. They kept themselves within the “letter of the law,” so to speak, with regards to fares for the upcoming year.

For the basic fare for those people who ride Metra trains will remain the same. As will the prices charged for those people who purchase monthly passes to allow them to come and go every day without having to make a routine out of shelling out cash!

What Metra’s board increased was the cost of what they call a 10-ride ticket, one that gives you up to 10 rides on a Metra train for a period of up to six months.

The current fare is based on the cost of nine one-way rides, with the 10^th being a freebie on account of the fact that the commuter is coughing up their money up front. Metra gets theirs, and there’s always the chance you could lose a ticket with a ride or two remaining – meaning that they get a financial perk in the process.

BUT COME FEBRUARY, people are going to have to pay for the full 10 rides, which means the only bonus is that you won’t have to wait in the ticket line every single time you want to catch a train.

I honestly believe the fact that they were getting cash up front was a financial plus for Metra that they should have respected. Particularly since it was just this past year that all Metra fares went up – including the cost of the 10-ride tickets (it used to be that you paid the price of eight one-way rides for a 10-ride).

So excuse me for being a little less than sympathetic to Metra for slipping this increase through when their board met Friday.

And yes, I should disclose the fact that I am an occasional Metra train rider who always tries to have a 10-ride ticket on me so that I can just board a train without having to worry about paying for the ride.

CURRENTLY, I’M ON a ticket with three rides remaining. So there is a self-interest I am expressing in this particular rant of a commentary.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just a suburban issue (which is probably how some city dwellers want to view Metra since they probably use the CTA trains and buses for public commutes).

Go out to a neighborhood like Hyde Park where the elevated trains convenience skip by, and it becomes those Metra Electric trains (the ones that are getting new cars that finally will have lavatory facilities) that provide the direct connection to downtown Chicago – along with neighborhoods such as South Shore and South Chicago.

Swing out to the Southwest Side, and it becomes those Rock Island line trains that can take Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhood residents deeper into the city without having to drive a car. It's not just people coming in from Kenosha, Wis. (although there are a few of them as well).

THIS MOVE – WHICH Metra officials say is meant to raise $8.3 million to be used for repairs and maintenance – is going to have an impact on many people,

Which makes me convinced I’m not the only one who feels a bit of disgust – even if an increased cost of a Metra 10-ride is still probably cheaper than the cost of parking one’s car at a downtown garage!

But that’s a rant to be written for another day.

  -30-

Oops! I’m sure police station looked good on drawing board, in blueprints

It always amuses me when I’m passing through the area where the Morgan Park and Beverly neighborhoods converge. Because invariably, I have to pass the area police station on Monterey Avenue.



Watch out for those blooming leaves. They kept a police security camera at th Morgan Park District stationhouse from obtaining images of people who might have been trying to tamper with squad cars. Photograph provided by Public Building Commission.



I’m not necessarily knocking the new structure used by the Morgan Park police district, which looks from the outside (I’ve never had cause to set foot – voluntarily, or against my will – inside) like it is much more spacious and modern than the old structure.

THAT BUILDING HAD the look of a police stereotype – a neighborhood stationhouse that was probably far too cramped for all the activity of modern-day law enforcement that was performed there.

Yet it is a structure that I doubt I ever will forget. A part of me always expects to see the old bunker-like building when I drive through the area, and feels a sense of disappointment when I see the new one.

Similar, in fact, to the feelings I get whenever I drive north on the Dan Ryan Expressway and get to around 35^th Street – half expecting to see that whitewashed brick building where the White Sox play, and instead see the pink building with the big banner reminding me of the seven-year-old World Series title.

So excuse me for letting my sense of humor run wild when I read in the Chicago Tribune this weekend about the “criminal” activity that took place right in the police station parking lot.

BASED ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence, it would seem that the activists who want to be in Chicago for the upcoming NATO conference had some mischief planned for the police.

A chunk of concrete with an anarchist “A” was placed in the parking lot so as to block some police squad cars from being able to move. Police later noticed that someone had been tampering with the lug nuts on some of the squad cars.

Some lug nuts were removed outright, while others merely had theirs loosened.

I used the word “mischief” to describe this activity because it seems the level of vandalism committed here was minor. We don’t get the image of a squad car trying to start up, then losing its tires in mid-chase.

WHOEVER DID THIS is definitely in the minor leagues of vandalism. I’d call him (or her) Mickey Mouse, except that would probably be a libelous statement toward all cartoon characters.

So why am I finding anything about this amusing?

It is the fact that this building, like many others, has security cameras set up so that police can watch anyone who happens to be approaching the building.

In fact, there are those people (even, occasionally, myself) who wonder if the Chicago Police Department is getting carried away with all the cameras it wants to erect.

YET PERHAPS WE should look at the Morgan Park District as an example of the potential for glitches.

Because it seems that the police station has a camera set up on its parking lot. Yet newly-bloomed leaves on area trees literally are blocking the camera’s view.

It is why the police do NOT have any video images that could be enhanced to give them crude pictures of the people who would want to commit such a dastardly deed – which on a certain level strikes me as being nothing more than mischief.

That is why no arrests are imminent. Police do not know who did this, and there’s a good chance they’re never going to figure it out.

UNLESS, BY CHANCE, the people who are doing this are stupid enough (ie., possessing big-enough egos) to think they can go back and do it again. Because now, the Chicago Tribune reports, there are officers positioned so they can watch the parking lot.

I’d hate to be the cop whose duty assignment that day is to sit and watch people park their cars.

But even moreso, I’d hate to be the guy who designed that stationhouse and placed security cameras without taking into account the outside greenery.

I don’t care how pretty it looked on the drafting table (or in today’s technology, on the computer screen).

THIS IS JUST too dippy of a reason for someone not to get caught.

I can’t help but envision the spirits of all those officers who worked throughout the decades at the old bunker-like building (the one whose address was 1830 W. Monterey Ave.) shaking their heads in disgust at the very thought.

  -30-

Battle of Beverly, the sequel? Yet another redistricting brawl to dismay us

MARKHAM, Ill. – It seems that the community activists from the Beverly neighborhood are geared up for a political brawl, and their punching bag of choice will be Cook County government.

These are the activists who engaged in a vocal and visible crusade back when Chicago was drawing the new boundaries for the City Council’s 50 wards.

REMEMBER HOW THE 19^th Ward that historically included all of the Beverly neighborhood was redrawn to stretch into surrounding communities, while also dumping some people on the eastern edges of Beverly into a ward with their neighbors from the Morgan Park neighborhood?

Those people lost that brawl, and it still smarts. Or so it seems.

Because now the Cook County Board is engaged in the process of drawing new boundaries for its 17 districts. The board’s redistricting committee on Tuesday held the first of what will be three or four hearings where the politicians will pretend they’re listening to the public’s interests.

That first session held in a basement courtroom of the south suburban courthouse based in Markham became dominated by Beverly residents – many of whom were the same people who ranted and raged about the redistricting that split up their wards (and put some of them in boundaries with people of neighboring communities whom they’d prefer – for various reasons – to ignore).

ONLY NOW, INSTEAD of screaming about how “sacred” their 19^th Ward is, they’re engaging about how special a place the 11^th county commissioner district is.

That particular district is NOT just Beverly. But it takes in many neighborhoods that encompass the spirit of the Sout’ Side Irish of old – even if their modern-day composition is a mixture of ethnic groups.

It takes in at its far end the Bridgeport neighborhood, which is how it is the political turf of Commissioner John Daley, D-Chicago, who sat through Tuesday’s committee hearing with a grin repeatedly popping up on his face after person-after-person got up to testify about what a wonderful place the 11^th District is, and how incredible a public official Daley is toward his constituents.

“I feel I was lucky enough to have grown up there,” 19^th Ward Alderman Matt O’Shea told his county government counterparts.

NOW DON’T TAKE this the wrong way. I’m not knocking the one remaining son of late Mayor Richard J. Daley who is involved in politics.

Maybe he really is that attentive to the people who voted him into office.

Or maybe the “Daley” name just has that much pull in Chicago, making people feel like they’re something special by being able to say he’s their representative in Cook County government.

Which is a claim that I doubt many people can make. Personally, I have always wondered how many people have a clue who their county board member is?

OR IF THEY really understand the difference between municipal and county government (and no, the joke that a county board member is someone not quite good enough to get elected alderman doesn’t work here – even if there is an element of truth to it).

But listening to official after official, including mayors of suburban Oak Lawn and Hometown that also are in the 11^th District, engage in the rhetorical love is just a bit much.

Particularly since Tuesday’s hearing was likely the only chance for South Side and surrounding people to express their views on redistricting – unless they feel like making a trip to Maywood or Des Plaines next week.

Based on what I heard at that hearing, it seems the whole world wants to live in the Cook County 11^th district with Beverly as its spiritual center, and be represented by a Daley. Hardly anybody else expressed a thought.

THAT KIND OF apathy by the public ultimately is what leads to what likely will be the end result – when the county government does get around to finally creating new boundaries for its districts, there will be a lot of disappointed people.

Because I suspect that for all the talk of public hearings and maintenance of a special room (number 1134 at the County Building, 118 N. Clark St.) where people can use county computers to draw their own political boundaries for consideration, the maps that ultimately get approved are ones being concocted by the politicos in that oldest of political clichés – the smoke-filled room.

That is, unless all the health and wellness initiatives being touted in recent weeks by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle have made it illegal.

But whether there is smoke or not, the end result will be just as secretive.

  -30-

People think it’s acceptable to use the old racial imagery? That’s the problem

One summer just over two decades ago, I remember walking into a hot dog stand and – while waiting for my order – overhearing a conversation of some guys whom I had never seen before, and have never seen since.

Their topic of conversation was about crosses. Specifically, the proper way to build one so that it could be lit afire. Their plans, as I recall, were that they were going to erect the cross and burn it in the front yard of someone who had somehow managed to offend their sensibilities.

NOW BEFORE I go further, I should point out that I never heard of any incidents in the neighborhood (I lived one summer in the part of Chicago near Norridge and underneath the flight patterns of O’Hare International Airport) about cross-burnings.

For all I know, these guys were just a batch of meatheads who were all talk. Because I’ll admit that one of them looked at me briefly, then turned his attention back to the conversation.

They didn’t seem to care that I was close enough to hear what they were saying.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we seem to have some people in our society who want to accept the old symbols of racial hatred as somehow acceptable behavior, or something that can be joked about.

I SUSPECT IF I (or anyone) had confronted those knuckleheads, they would have claimed to be joking.

This memory came back to me when reading in the Chicago Tribune a report about an incident last month in the Beverly neighborhood that involved a hate crime.

In that incident, three teenage boys (all white) lured one of their black school mates (all are, or were, students of Brother Rice High School, which likes to think its students are among the civilized people living on the South Side, as opposed to those riff-raff public school kids) to a house – where they proceeded to beat him up.

It seems the black student was being friendly (if not quite dating) a female cousin of one of the boys. So it seems that in the name of racial purity, these three thugs were going to teach the student a lesson.

DURING THE BEATING (which wasn’t subtle, since the three screamed racial epithets throughout), one of the teens got a rope, created a crude noose, and put it around the student’s neck.

From the information provided by Chicago police, it seems that the three didn’t actually try to commit a lynching. The idea was more along the lines of having him wear the noose while being beaten.

Which means that, once again, we have an incident where someone thinks the sleazy imagery of the past is somehow acceptable in the present. Some people just seem so determined to live in the late 19^th Century at a time when we’re in the second decade of the 21^st!

I won’t even be surprised if some people try to dismiss this incident as somehow being a joke, gone bad. This isn’t humorous – under any circumstances.

I’M SURE THERE will even be some people who will look at this case and put their interest in the futures of the three young people who now face charges (two of them are so young that they merely face delinquency petitions – which means this is a Juvenile Court matter).

As though the kid who got jumped was somehow of secondary importance.

I’ll also be interested in seeing what reaction, if any, the school takes. Because while this attack did not happen on campus, these private schools usually have ways of getting involved in the private lives of their students and Brother Rice officials have said they're investigating the matter to see what reaction, if any, they should take.

They’re supposed to be building their “character” for adult life. I want to see how this incident will be used as an educational “experience.”

  -30-

Nobody ever truly happy w/ redistrict, but is Beverly more miffed then usual?

Lately, whenever I use a Metra Rock Island line commuter train to travel downtown (I live within walking distance of one of their stations and I hate the idea of paying for parking), I know when I’m passing through the Beverly neighborhood because I see an outbreak of what I think of as the measles.

Variations are spreading around Beverly



Red blotches all throughout the neighborhoods, on the front lawns of residents who see the potential for the redistricting of Chicago’s 50 wards for the upcoming decade and become ill at the very thought.

THE SO-CALLED BLOTCHES are really signs (bright red, with white lettering) and in style they are just like those signs that crop up every election cycle for people who persist in letting the whole world (or at least anyone who passes by their house) know who they support.

But these signs aren’t for any specific candidate. They literally are about the issue of redistricting – which is usually something that people don’t give much thought about.

But these Beverly residents are giving thought, and they are upset – which is why I get to read sign after sign that says, “Don’t Re-Map Me!” every time I pass through the neighborhood (both headed for the Loop and on the return trip home).

And in smaller type, they read, “I am 19^th Ward.” The Beverly Area Planning Association takes credit for spreading these signs around the ward.

WHICH HISTORICALLY HAS been the Southwest Side ward that is centered around the Beverly neighborhood. The fact that the ward and the neighborhood come so close to coinciding is a good chunk of why that neighborhood has significant political pull in the City Council.

But it also makes it a largely-white community and ward surrounded by African-American neighborhoods and wards.

The ward may not look the same soon

Which may well mean that in an attempt to bolster the political pull of racial minorities on the South Side, any redrawn ward boundaries are likely to take a few people who now are a part of the 19^th Ward and Beverly and put them politically in with the ward to the east – which represents a good-sized chunk of the neighboring Morgan Park neighborhood.

But it also crosses over those invisible barriers that often separate race in our home city.

WHAT ALL OF this comes down to is that there is a very good chance that a lot of these people who are complaining about not wanting to be removed from the 19^th Ward and Beverly (they’d still be a part of the neighborhood, regardless of where the ward boundaries are drawn) are really saying they don’t want to be a part of any non-white majority ward.

It is the ugly tension that is a daily reality for the neighborhoods of the South Side. It might not be a blunt and brutal as decades past, but there are places where races glare across the street at each other – and the wrong word can spark a brawl.

Which means that when I call these signs a form of measles outbreak, I’m only being semi-sarcastic. Because it almost strikes me as being an illness.

People wanting to cling to a ward number because they don’t want to be perceived as living somewhere else – even though nothing about their actual residence has change – can’t be that healthy for one’s mind.

BESIDES, THERE’S ALSO the reality that population shifts mean that the current boundaries can’t stand.

The Beverly Review newspaper, in reporting about the local resident concern about the issue, cited the fact that the current 19^th Ward (as it existed in the 2000s) is 1,200 people too few of the 53,912-total that all 50 wards are supposed to have.

But the 21^st and 34^th wards to the east have even bigger shortfalls, and the easiest way to resolve them is to make that ward boundary shift that is going to rile up the natives something fierce.

Beverly would be far from the only neighborhood split up politically. Chinatown officials ranted about how much their community was hacked up among so many districts during the past decade, and one version of a new ward map being considered has the Back of the Yards neighborhood split among five different aldermen.

BY COMPARISON, BEVERLY residents ought to be grateful for what little might happen to them.

I happen to realize that this pride in neighborhood is a significant part of what makes Chicago unique and special. The idea that people who live in Beverly think of it as a special place where they desire to reside is something that we ought to be encouraging in all the city’s neighborhoods.

But the sight of all those signs from Beverly residents who don’t want to associate with neighboring Morgan Park is something that manages to give me a touch of a chill up my spine every time I see it while riding the Rock Island line.

And it also makes me a little bit proud to say that nobody I know personally who lives in Beverly has one of those red rashes popping up in their front yards.

  -30-

South Side Irish w/o alcohol almost like a Cubs ballclub with a championship

Can you have the South Side Irish parade without the stink of alcoholic beverages wafting through the air?

A comeback?



I’m sure there are some people who will be skeptical, and some may decide a new event would not be worth their time if the police are going to be expected to check everybody’s packages to see if they’re trying to slip a liquor bottle into the proceedings.

BUT I COULDN’T help but get a little kick out of the reports this week that people in the Beverly neighborhood want to resurrect the parade that for 31 years created a spectacle along Western Avenue near 103^rd Street and for some people was the REAL St. Patrick’s Day celebration.

As opposed to the official city-wide parade that in recent years has been held along Columbus Drive (leading to quips about ol’ Italian explorer Cristobal becoming an honorary Irishman for the day).

The parade in Beverly ended after the 2009 version largely because the crowds coming in from all across the metropolitan area were so intense, and literally were bringing so much of their own liquor into the neighborhood.

The event had become a virtual Intoxication Fest. That last parade had 54 people get arrested – one of whom thought it somehow made sense to hit a police officer.

IF ANYTHING, THE event had become an embarrassment to the public perception of Beverly – which always used to like to think of itself as some sort of upper-crust neighborhood where people settled once their families had worked their way through immigrant status and had established themselves of sort.

The “lace curtain Irish,” so to speak, rather than those who had to work with their hands engaged in physical labor for a living.

Of course, Beverly also has become one of those neighborhoods on the fringe of the city limits where municipal workers who must live within the city boundaries choose to purchase homes.

So I’m sure much of this bad behavior from out-of-neighborhood people was probably occurring in the proximity of the actual homes of police officers and mid-ranking city officials.

PEOPLE WITH PULL used it to yank the plug on the parade.

And now, those people in the neighborhood with some pull are hoping they can resurrect an event that they can say is the parade – only on a smaller scale that might not attract so many booze-hounds.

That will be the trick.

Because the South Side Irish parade of old attracted people from all over who merely wanted to revel with the smell of cheap beer wafting through the air.

I LITERALLY RECALL one time I took a Metra Rock Island line train (the one from Joliet to LaSalle Street Station that makes several stops throughout the Beverly neighborhood) into Chicago on the day of South Side Irish.

It may have been a Sunday, but that train was packed with people bringing their own coolers loaded with liquor. Some of them were engaged in some serious drinking on the train – which means they likely were loaded before they ever set foot in Beverly.

I don’t even want to think of what they did once they got into the neighborhood, or how many local residents wound up having their lawns or alleys (if not both) urinated upon that day – although I’m sure those Lake View neighborhood residents who experience the same thing 81 days a year (whenever the Chicago Cubs play at home) would sympathize.

Reading the reports about a neighborhood meeting this week to discuss the potential future of South Side Irish, it seems local officials want to create something resembling an Irish festival along Western Avenue – with the parade itself being a small part  the events.

THEY THINK THAT might encourage people who bring kids, whose presence might discourage all of those buffoons who are merely looking for a chance to get intoxicated in public (as though there aren’t enough other opportunities for them across the city).

In fact, James “Skinny” Sheahan (brother of the former county Sheriff and city alderman) went so far as to say this week, “there should be no alcohol during the parade, period.”

It’s a nice sentiment. But I’m not sure how practical it is going to be to expect police to inspect every single individual who decides to come to the event.

Because like I wrote earlier, this event in the past attracted some serious crowds. Unless you’re willing to divert a significant percentage of the Police Department to crowd control duty in that one neighborhood AND start running checkpoints to get to everybody – similar to if Barack Obama himself were to come to Beverly and appear in open.

I JUST DON’T know. Are there devices similar to metal detectors – ones that pick up the presence of filled booze bottles?

About the only alternative is to create an event on such a smaller-scale that it only attracts the residents of Beverly who can walk to Western Avenue.

A “private” parade? It may well please the locals to have this all to themselves. But it defeats the spirit of the old South Side Irish, which was to create an ethnic celebration for the masses to enjoy.

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GOP tries to resurrect itself on far South Side

Down in that magical part of Chicago known as Beverly Hills and Mount Greenwood (although I have heard some local residents of the latter neighborhood call themselves 'West Beverly'), the Republican Party is trying to resuscitate itself.

It used to be many decades ago that the far northwest and southwest sides were the bastions of Republicanism in Chicago, where local residents who had moved along somewhat on the path toward assimilation ("lace curtain Irish," they were called by their detractors) thought the politics of the Democratic "machine" were just too sleazy to be taken seriously.

But Chicago Democrats have assimilated virtually all who live here. Now, the 41st Ward up near O'Hare International Airport is about the only place that still has local officials who call themselves Republican. Even they are more than willing to make alliances with Mayor Daley and the Democrats. They truly do fall under the slanderous RINO acronym.

So although I lean Democrat, the political junkie in me finds it refreshing to learn of attempts to bring back some competition in local politics.

This web site (http://www.19thwardrepublicans.com/) was brought to my attention. I wouldn't mind in the least if the GOP were able to get its act together sufficiently in future years to make for real general elections in the Second City, not the token brawls that take place following a bloodshedding Democratic primary.

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