What made Lincoln Park go from a "bad" area to a "yuppie" area? (Chicago: neighborhood, live in)

[Chi-town Native]

I think clearly we have answered the OP's question. That answer is the decline of the arcades.

[xavier xerxes]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

Lasser's was a soda pop company operating out of a little factory building on maybe the 2200 or 2300 block of north Sheffield. They had a ton of flavors, and gave free samples - a very handy place to periodically swing by on my walk home from school, I used to walk in right behind adults to give the allusion I was there with my parents.

Yeah I remember that place, just forgot the name,
I remember getting free pop sometimes.
The building is still there, atleast the last time I drove through,
it had a garage. That was cool, something almost out of
Stand By Me.

Yeah I would walk home from Oscar Meyer down either sheffield, racine
or seminary. Lill street art gallery has moved too right?
I knew the kid whos parents ran that.

I miss Romas, that was a good pizza place on the corner of Webster
and Sheffield, my parents would take me there all the time, and they had the old fashioned jukeboxes from the fifties.

[xavier xerxes]

Originally Posted by Avengerfire

It was on Western across the street from Lane Tech where the Fed Ex Office (Kinko's) is now. The building it was in was torn down.

It closed down (1995-6?) a few years before the Fun Zone did. I can't remember what year.

Yeah, I used to go to those arcades,
and the one on broadway north of diversy.

I remember going to a friends bday party
at the chicago game co.

Personally I liked the Fun Zone the best,
The Century Mall really was quite a cool place in the old days.
Its ok now, just kinda dead, but atleast its still got the same old structure
and its now back to being a movie theatre.

Poor Kids nowadays will never know how exciting it was
to play games in a video arcade, atleast not like it was then.

I guess we have what Dave and Busters now?

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

I think clearly we have answered the OP's question. That answer is the decline of the arcades.

That's funny.

[GreatLakesDrifter]

Originally Posted by Chi-town Native

I think clearly we have answered the OP's question. That answer is the decline of the arcades.

LOL, A perfect example that correlation is not always equal to causation.

[It'sAutomatic]

Does anyone know what the deal is with Larrabee Street? For about a mile north of North Avenue, there are nothing but what appear to be decades-old teardowns, some of which are kind of strange. It really stands out from the rest of the neighborhood. I'm wondering what used to be on this street and why it was all removed.

[Avengerfire]

Originally Posted by It'sAutomatic

Does anyone know what the deal is with Larrabee Street? For about a mile north of North Avenue, there are nothing but what appear to be decades-old teardowns, some of which are kind of strange. It really stands out from the rest of the neighborhood. I'm wondering what used to be on this street and why it was all removed.

I believe most of both sides of Larabee were businesses including warehouses and small factories originally from North Ave to Armitage. Over time they were torn down. Don't forget that area was pretty crappy for more than a few decades.

This map from the 40's show it was zoned for business:

Historic Map: Page 062 - Chicago - North , Lake View, Atlas: Chicago 1946 Land Value Blue Book, Illinois - Historic Map Works, Residential Genealogy ™

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by It'sAutomatic

Does anyone know what the deal is with Larrabee Street? For about a mile north of North Avenue, there are nothing but what appear to be decades-old teardowns, some of which are kind of strange. It really stands out from the rest of the neighborhood. I'm wondering what used to be on this street and why it was all removed.

I've always wondered about this as well. The modernist townhouses there are still more affordable than most Lincoln Park housing. They are getting older, and have really tight layouts without much space to grow. I've only ever been in a couple of them.

[NearWestSider]

Originally Posted by It'sAutomatic

I spent the earliest days of my youth at Clybourn and Janssen, from about 1988 to 1993. There's not much I remember, but my parents have told me a few things about the area from back when. The area was not particularly nice at the time; there were some vacant lots on our block filled with garbage. Some of our neighbors were also white southerners. I've been back to my old block and there have been a LOT of teardowns, and it's very clean.

I remember in a previous thread, someone mentioned that the last gang-related shooting he could recall in the area was in 1984, and there was no more after that.

^ Another reason that immigrant neighborhoods gentrify: people move there from abroad as a point of entry, not to stay. Pilsen is a great example, where half of the population turns over every 10 years. There have already been several generations of people who have moved there as a starting point to American life, and then later moved to other neighborhoods and suburbs in search of greener pastures. The current occupants (Mexicans) leaving and being replaced with new ones (hipsters/yuppies) is as natural as can be. People who fight to keep the neighborhood Mexican seem to forget that hundreds of thousands of Czechs have resided there over the span of almost a century.

Clybourn/Webster is my old stomping grounds, and I'm although I'm astounded to here you call it Clybourn/Janssen (Janssen does not go through to Clybourn), that's OK I'll still call you a neighbor, because you always leave a part of you heart in a neighborhood where you've spent important years in our life.

At any rate, I may or may not have known your parents, but I assure you I would recommend it with no qualifications to anyone who wants to live on the North Side. I've not found a better combination quiet and urban anywhere in Chicago.

Today, I live one hundred feet from Pilsen. And the reality on the ground is that it is, as all immigrant neighborhoods are, in a state of flux. The current immigrants/newcomers are hipster white kids and UIC students, and newcomers ALWAYS create tensions with the locals. I would venture to guess that 99.9% of the locals would like it to stay Mexican. Unfortunately, reality intervenes, and reality is that Pilsen is no longer as attractive to immigrants from Mexico as it used to be.

So the harsher reality is that the alternative to hipsters and UIC students is hard-core section 8 ghetto blacks from the areas just north of the tracks. Which makes white suburban kids not look so bad in comparison, and, because of the way racial boundaries are drawn in this city, creates the sense that by renting to them you are not selling out your community to the same degree as you are if you rent to blacks.

Its a similar mentality as when Mexicans moved into Cicero. The basic "they suck, but at least they pay their rent" mind-set that makes the newcomers more palatable while simultaneously justifying anti-black racism under the pretext of admitting outside groups based on their NOT being black and thus not the same level of threat.

FYI, Pilsen has its own history of anti-black racist attitudes and behaviors (including beatings and house burnings) going back to the 1950's when the blacks first showed up on the West Side, and Mexicans HAVE engaged in this kind of stuff. It is not as well-documented as the violence in Cicero or Bridgeport, but I assure you it is not by accident that the Burlington tracks have held as the border between black and non-black Chicago. Anyone telling you it is a friendly border is lying through their teeth.

And even today, when the sun goes down, you'd damn well better know which side of the tracks you belong on, which means if you are white or mexican, south of the tracks. If you can't accept that, you can't live on the West Side.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by NearWestSider

FYI, Pilsen has its own history of anti-black racist attitudes and behaviors (including beatings and house burnings) going back to the 1950's when the blacks first showed up on the West Side, and Mexicans HAVE engaged in this kind of stuff. It is not as well-documented as the violence in Cicero or Bridgeport, but I assure you it is not by accident that the Burlington tracks have held as the border between black and non-black Chicago. Anyone telling you it is a friendly border is lying through their teeth.

And even today, when the sun goes down, you'd damn well better know which side of the tracks you belong on, which means if you are white or mexican, south of the tracks. If you can't accept that, you can't live on the West Side.

It's also simply a gang turf thing. It's not young mothers and middle aged folks out there engaging in a race war any more, it's Latin Kings and Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, etc., etc. And while geographical borders *often* follow racial demographic lines, that's not an exact science either - you have the whole People-Folk alliance issue which has gone the whole enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend route.

On a lighter note, this is funny, even if staggeringly too long:

What Was the Hipster? -- New York Magazine

I made it through a few pages, then I had to quit.