f r e s h s t a r t

Saturday, July 24, 2004

 

I grabbed lunch and got a haircut in Roscoe Village this afternoon, and then spent an hour or two wandering around, asking people that I met about the neighborhood.  As I was heading towards the train I stopped to pet an old woman's lhaso apso.  The woman was sitting in a folding chair that she had set up on the sidewalk outside her building, and was puffing away at a cigarette.  The dog's name, she told me in her strong Irish accent, was Streetwalker.  I laughed, and she told me a brief but convoluted story about how the dog wasn't going to have a name, but then it's name was going to be Street, and since her last name is Walker they decided to call it Streetwalker. 
"So we have a streetwalker in the family!", she said with a laugh.
She told me about the ups and downs that the neighborhood had gone through in the fifty years she had been there, and insisted that these days it is the most expensive neighborhood in the city. 
"I don't know why," she said.   "There isn't anything around here anymore.  There used to be three department stores up towards Addison, and now there's nothing.  They say that people come for the good schools, we've got Lane Tech over there, but I never see any kids around here."
I told her about all of the young families that I saw walking around back on Roscoe, and she said
"Well, those babies won't be needing the schools for ten years." 
Her entire cigarette had turned to ash by the time she finished repeating her little spiel about the neighborhood two more times and I was able to politely slip away. 

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