Let me
sweep a couple
stereotypes from the
board:
Why do I
sweep? I lived in a
farm town for
18 years. I knew little of
cities before living in one. What I was
fed as a lowly member of the non-city livin'
general public was a
chunk of
stereotypes.
Stereotypes that I fought until they were proven right. These were not
proven:
Yeah, my
neighborhood is pretty central in
Chicago. Now I'm not saying all inner cities are like this; I merely take this time to
comment on the
observations I make in my everyday life.
What does my day
consist of? Well, you can check the
day logs for a
taste.
Otherwise, I ride the
CTA bus through
Cabrini Green (the world's biggest
failure of a
housing project ever) to work. I work at an
Internet company in a
Mexican/
Polish area, which is
fairly clean and quite
bustly. I ride the bus back home, which isn't
safe at night, but it's not a
shooting gallery. Peoples' cars are
broken into. The "
gunshots" I heard back in
July after I moved in turned out to be
fireworks. I am
paranoid when I walk at night. I do not
venture west near
Cabrini. I go through two heavy
gates and two locked doors to get to my
apartment. I avoid my
dumpster out of
fear of weird
trash nomads. The
population of my neighborhood is
diverse.
I could go on about where I live for days. I will
spare you that. Let me just note that I like it here. I like it a lot. My house feels very
secure. I
fear not the renegades of Cabrini when I'm home. I like the inner city. I will now call it
home.