Where did yuppies live in 1980? (Chicago, Addison: condos, home, safe area)

[marence]

This is research for a book, and I'm looking for personal opinions and/or recollections.
The character is recent college graduate with a business degree, 21 years old in 1980, and with an "upwardly mobile" new job at Standard Oil. She wants to move into an area that's being gentrified but isn't too dangerous. Would Lincoln Park work? If not, where would she want to live?

[ToriaT]

Lincoln Park would work as well as Lakeview. Many of the upward mobile folks lived in these areas around that time. Dubbed "New Town" which I don't hear the area referred to as that anymore.

Lincoln Park got expensive and people began moving north. Yet it was a pretty safe area.

Places such as Bucktown and Wicker Park had not been gentrified at that time.

[BRU67]

Old Town near North and Wells might be a good choice. It still probably had grit from its days as hippy central in the '60's and early '70's and was pretty hip at the time due to Second City and a still vibrant music scene. That was before my time of course but that's my general understanding of the area at the time. Please PM me to arrange for the royalty payment :-)

[linicx]

I'd put her in Lakeview and give her a room with a view.

[Chi-town Native]

North side, just stay east of Racine and south of Addison.

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by linicx

I'd put her in Lakeview and give her a room with a view.

But make sure the windows open for an obligatory 1980s artistique blowing curtain scene at some point during the story.

[Chi-town Native]

oh, you could also have the character living in Cabrini Green like Mayor Jane Byrne did.

[grapico]

well, if movies have taught me anything....

Gold Coast... See About Last Night... I think they are around Rush/Division

Winnetka ... See Home Alone, plenty of yuppies in their house.


Theres another good one that features a few condos... can't think of the name of it though but I think they were in Printers Row.

[emathias]

I think Old Town/Old Town Triangle would be your best bet. Lincoln Park would also fit, in 1980 it would still be under gentrification but safe. Lakeview would be closer to the starting part of gentrification. Circa 1980 is when the first gay bars started showing up on Halsted.

Royko wrote his "high-rise man" column in 1981. He did it as sort of a parody of yuppie life, so it would seem that a lot of yuppies were enjoying highrise life at the time. So maybe in the highrises along Lincoln Park between North Ave and Fullerton, or in Sandburg Village between Clark and Lasalle and North and Division.

In "About Last Night," (based on the Mamet play "Sexual Perversity in Chicago"), they mostly hung out along Division and in Lincoln Park, and I think they lived in Lincoln Park. The play came out in 1974, and the film in 1986. The locations in the film probably would have been based on experiences of people in Chicago in the early 80s.

[Chi-town Native]

Just touching on the Royko column above (the picture that accompanied it was pure gold, btw), I think the north side lakefront has been pretty gentrified since day one in Chicago. It's the gentrification westward that is really more meaningful in terms of how it changed neighborhoods.

People don't remember anymore, but once upon a time there really were insane differences in culture for every 2 blocks you went west.

I recall a conversation in college where the majority (myself included, doh) were laughing at the idea that Lake View gentrification would ever go beyond Southport!