where does "West Lakeview" end and Roscoe Village begin? (Chicago: appointed, lawyer)

[Chris_H_2]

Is the area around Hamlin Park (south of Belmont, west of Damen, east of Clyborne, and north of Diversey) still considered West Lakeview?

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by Chris_H_2

Is the area around Hamlin Park (south of Belmont, west of Damen, east of Clyborne, and north of Diversey) still considered West Lakeview?

Yes, although many around there consider it Hamlin Park instead or both...

There is a push by newcomers to call that area Roscoe Village, but those that know better never will.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Avengerfire

Yes, although many around there consider it Hamlin Park instead or both...

There is a push by newcomers to call that area Roscoe Village, but those that know better never will.

yep - speaking as someone who was in their summer day camp program as a kid, Hamlin Park is a lot nicer than it used to be, and it seems like a reasonable descriptor for the area as it's a friggin huge park & probably does attract people to the general area.

[eevee]

yeah, so I'm just going to tell folks I live in West Lakeview (we're west of Ravenswood but my LL has been using West Lakeview w/o any trouble). not that it matters to me, but when I told people I was moving to Roscoe Village, they got this idea that I was living further west and north than I'm actually am (I've got a classmate living in what she claims is Roscoe Village near Western and between Belmont and Addison, near that shopping center). granted, most of the people I know are college kids and I think that demographics recognizes the name "Lakeview" more so than "Roscoe Village", esp. the ones not from Chicago.

I definitely got a bit of the "yuppie" vibe, but it doesn't really bug me (though I recently almost got run over by a jogger pushing a Cadillac sized stroller). missing the green space a bit, though I'll have to make a note to check out Hamlin Park. so far I'm liking the area though I already despise the Whole Foods on Ashland (so tiny compared to the Whole Foods on North Ave) and I'm debating whether to bother w/ the Xsport gym near there at all and just go to the Y

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by eevee

yeah, so I'm just going to tell folks I live in West Lakeview (we're west of Ravenswood but my LL has been using West Lakeview w/o any trouble)...

Are you south of Belmont?

I used once lived rally close to there...

[lenniel]

Originally Posted by Avengerfire

Oh lord. I offended a yuppie by using the term yuppie! Discrimination!

I merely briefly explained what happened in Roscoe Village and West Lake View in the last 15 years or so.

So there now should be a term for yuppies to avoid offending them by calling them yuppies?!

Trust me, I don't get offended easily and certainly not by someone calling me a yuppie. I'll stand up and proudly call myself a yuppie, there's no shame in it.
What offends me (very slightly, again, I have thick skin), is when someone uses the word 'yuppie' in a derogatory manner intimating that yuppies are bad for a neighborhood.
Again, I would ask, what is wrong with having well educated, well financed neighbors who are going to improve their property, improve the surrounding neighborhood and in general, make an area more desirable to live in?
I suppose it's personal choice in terms of what type of neighbors you prefer.

[Irishtom29]

Yuppies generally don't sit out on the stoop and their kids don't play lineball and fast pitching (but then maybe no kids do that anymore). They're not very "old neighborhood" kind'a people. And once they take over a neighborhood it's easier to find a place to get "gourmet" cupcakes than a gallon of milk. Or is that a Youth Ghetto thing as opposed to a strictly Yuppie kind'a thing?

On the other hand a Yuppie neighborhod is certainly preferable to a slum. But what I liked was an old neighborhood like Austin in the 50s and 60s that was a relaxed mix of classes, occupations and ethnicities. Back when the people who would today be referred to as Yuppies were just regular guys with white collar jobs. And didn't have the brand names of their clothing ostentatiously displayed on it.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by lenniel

What offends me (very slightly, again, I have thick skin), is when someone uses the word 'yuppie' in a derogatory manner intimating that yuppies are bad for a neighborhood. Again, I would ask, what is wrong with having well educated, well financed neighbors who are going to improve their property, improve the surrounding neighborhood and in general, make an area more desirable to live in?
I suppose it's personal choice in terms of what type of neighbors you prefer.

Your naivete is just amazing, as is your thinly-veiled assertion that being non-"well financed" means you're criminal scum of the earth.

Your arguments (I note you can't/won't answer mine) are predicated on the assumption that the new-and-improved neighborhood will be enjoyed by all.

But that's not how it works. Your idea of good (higher property taxes=better services) is not shared by the massive swath of our population that is either retired or works in fields where raises/COLAs or rare or minimal at best. For these folks even modest property tax increases are crushing.

Additionally, as we saw with the housing market crash, values do not go up to infinity and beyond.

I would share your opinions much more if we had a more fair taxation system, but the reality is that your home's value increasing on paper brings with it no benefit unless you want to sell.

All it does is justify the City jacking up your taxes (which should be based on the levy & good services), which all the good little sheep accepted and even encouraged, as it shooed the old-timers out of the neighborhood and meant the developers could put up those god-awful anti-social (see Tom's note on stoop life) McCondos.

I remember people who countered this argument (in say, 2002) with the line "well, these people could always refinance."

1, that was of little help to renters. 2, that ask all of those people who are horribly underwater who never planned on actually paying off their mortgages how smart they are. Now these folks cry for the government assistance/mortgage bailouts that they routinely denied existing City residents. "It's the free market, nobody is entitled to live in their neighborhood, deal with it."

What you're really saying is "what is wrong with having well educated, well financed neighbors who are going to improve their property, improve the surrounding neighborhood and in general, make an area more desirable to live in for people like themselves?"

See the difference? Viewed from a big picture observatory, it's been a land grab, period. I don't see a whole lot of effort in LP or LV to try and preserve affordable housing, what I see are often cold, nasty people who moved next to nightclubs and then complained about the noise. Moved in areas with lots of kids and then called the cops claiming they were a disturbance. Moved in areas with homeless shelters and battered women's shelters and then complained they lowered property values.

Here's the deal - if existing Chicagoans are so horrible, don't move by us. We don't want your vision of Chicago-as-Manhattan, so certainly don't feign shock when your attempts to bulldoze us out of our long-established neighborhoods where we went to school, to church, have family & friends, are met with scorn and derision.

And btw, a little history on how yuppie has been overused to the point of meaninglessness.

Once upon a time the phrase yuppie was largely used (at least in LP and LV where I grew up) as "Young Upwardly-mobile Professional"

The key, key distinction being people who moved in the City purely for work opportunities, and had no plans whatsoever to stay and raise families here. White flight of the 70s likely was on everyone's mind back then.

But after a while, some of these folks decided to stick around, realizing the City has a lot to offer, not to mention increased gridlock every year has made that commute to the burbs a nightmare nobody ever imagined in the 70s.

Again - I could not be any more happy with good decent folks who move into Chicago and want to be a part of the City, to live, work, play, and raise families. I have new neighbors from all over the place, and the vast majority are great.

But I do take huge umbrage at people who see Chicago as a playground/meat-market to drunkenly spend their 20s and 30s and don't have a clue in terms of how the City needs to work for people of all ages, from birth to death. The City doesn't exist just to provide bored, lonely suburbanites a place to get drunk & laid. If you want to be a Chicagoan, you need to take the bad with the good, you can't simply push what you don't like somewhere else without getting some push back.

[Chi-town Native]

So if you want to win over people like me, here's how you do it- work towards a better taxation system, where the public schools aren't funded by property taxes.

As I've posted in a few places in NYC property taxes are actually quite low and stable - the tradeoff is they have a separate income tax. This is a fairer system as it then generates revenue not from speculation on land values, but on ability-to-pay. And while we're talking about fairness, let's start taxing gains on financial instrument dividends the same way we tax income.

[prinsessa]

I would say that Roscoe Village has changed for the better in many ways. I lived there when parents were afraid to send their children to Hamlin park because of shooting and gang fights. We once found a box of bullets in the playground while playing. One thing I don't like about the neighborhood is that it is becoming too expensive for middle class people. For a while new houses were selling for 1-2 million (they may still be....haven't checked in a while). And "older" houses were being bought at crazy prices just to be torn down. Before you didn't want to go to the pool because of all the gangbangers....now you don't want to go to the pool because of all the sunbathers. I still like the neighborhood but there is no way I could afford to live there.