my weekend made me feel vaguely athletic. it was nice. up to madison with mb to pick up the latest version of his southern wisconsin bike ride book from the printers and deliver it to the local bike shops. i got a little ego boost out of the whole thing, because every shop we stopped in had some clerk who was really excited to get more of the books, saying how they sell out so quickly, and i got to feel a little more like an avid biker than is actually true, just by being the tagalong. on sunday we did our long run for the week, in preparation for the san diego marathon - 15 miles around lake monona and its bay. it would have been wonderful if only the water fountains would have been on. i have never been so excited to see a bottle of warm grape gatorade as i was at the end of that run.
but that's not really the point i wanted to address... on running around lake monona, i couldn't help but notice that madison's hippies seem to be moving. the last time i ran that route, which was a while ago, there were still a few stragglers left on spaight street, which is now all upper-middle-class youngish families with kerry-edwards stickers on the back of their subarus. the shiny new luxury apartment complexes moving in next to the hemp stores and organic bakeries on williamson street are not helping matters any. later on, moving past brittingham park to the south side of monona bay, i found the displaced hippies. they seem to be taking over the southern part of the bay near the formerly infamous bernie's beach of drug dealing and open container infringement fame. the shady lakeside liquor is still there, but now it's flanked by a bahai center, a natural fibers store (not hemp? tell me how), a salon, and purple and orange homes with flowers in the yard.
when i met up with mb at the end of the run (you didn't think we were running this together, one of those romantic "oh, let's stroll along the lake" couples, did you?) i asked him about the moving-hippie phenomenon over breakfast at come back inn. (quick digression - yup, it's still delicious. the swearing waitress who tried my bloody mary when i asked her why it tasted like taco is gone, though.) after the expected urban-development conversation (which my blogmate and i would like to have more of, if mb would introduce us to his urban planning friends), i returned to wondering - really, where are the hippies in chicago? do we have any, or are we doomed to floofy martinis at uber-clean "sports lounges"? bucktown = yuppie. wicker park = still a little gritty and artsy, but as mb points out, in that haight-ashbury kind of way where the punk institutions are still there but flanked by real estate and fancy-pants mono-syllabic restaurants that nobody can afford. ukrainian village = ? punk, but hippies? grand/chicago area = possible, but hard to tell. as dwtacc suggests, hanging out on the quad in hyde park? hp has enough academic weirdness, green space and liberal indignance to support hippies, but it's hard to find them between harold's chicken shack and the complete lack of bars. and don't get me started on the magic-johnson-teaming-up-with-starbucks-to-bring-the-magic-of-megacorporations-to-the-inner-city coffee shops right on campus, where clearly the underprivileged college students are in dire need of another latte option.
i'm still lost on this. dwtacc? mr. honesty with your cool artsy girlfriend? anyone? where are the hippies? i guess i have to wonder at my motivation here... i'm not a hemp jewelry girl, i don't wear patchwork pants, i don't follow around jam bands. i'm not even a vegetarian. but i want to know that there's a place to live where those people can get their free-range whatever for lunch without it being a concept. maybe i selfishly just want to find chicago's version of come back inn and the weary traveler. or find shaggy grad students for my blogmate. or cheap real estate. or redeem myself for the key lime martinis i drank on vacation.
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5 comments:
So you've noticed all the changes happening on the east side of Madison? There are still plenty of hippies, etc. in the Williamson/Atwood area, but there are also $200 sq/ft condos popping up along the street. Williamson has come a long way from the skid-row days of the 1930's-1970's. A lot of those young families you see are ex-hippies who moved into the neighborhood when it was cheap and stayed.
I think some of them have jumped across East Wash to the Old Market neighborhood. You still have Bernie's Rock Shop and a place you can get spaghetti with soysage. Also, further down East Wash, you'll find hippies buying and renting relatively cheap places there.
As for the South Side, it is a changin', too. Kind of akin to the Williamson area of the late 80's/early 90's. Madison has managed to ghettoize the worst elements into the Allied Drive neighborhood. By the way the press talks about it, you would think that area was as bad as your south side.
As for the Come Back Inn, get it while you can. There are plans to redevelop almost the whole block. It would have started in the next year or two, but the plan hit a snag. There's always Bennett's with Porn 'n Eggs, which, somehow, I haven't made it to yet, despite 13 adult years in Madison.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,
Henry
"porn 'n eggs?" really? first of all, how could a person possibly know about such a thing for 13 years and never check it out? second, is my blogmate holding out on me? how could she not have told me about this? i'm feeling a little hurt... and i was already kind of on the war path about the orgy of madison reminiscing in which i can only marginally participate. granted i had a good laugh about going to eat breakfast in the "hippie" section of madison (what else is there?), only to discover that the only thing on the menu was pancakes... but really, we're going to have to dumb down the wisconsin talk!
i always thought it was "smut 'n' eggs," but regardless, i've never been there. blogmate: should we bring dwtacc, given your theory re: this issue?
i read the state journal's article on the impending demise of the come back. for some reason the staff there deny it when asked.
i have mixed feelings on a one-street ghetto. how can something both be an oxymoron but also true?
First of all, I didn't know about it all 13 years. More like the last 8. I was a sheltered high-school student and skipped town for college. Also, that's on Park Street, which is, like, the next neighborhood over. My homies can't protect me there. I'm in the uppity, yet hippie Williamson neighborhood. Yes, that passes for territories in Madison.
Oh, and it is Smut 'n Eggs. I was wrong. I heard there was some cowboy bar in Chicago that had karoke and porn. Know that one?
suddenly it occurs to me that, in addition to having a really good 80's night, the shim sham (one of my favorite new orleans bars- now deceased) used to have a monday night feature known as punk 'n porn. it was actually kind of disappointing as i recall- i'd imagined weird black and white retro goth porn, but really it was just the usual stuff.
but maybe we've tapped into some kind of interstate phenomenon...
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