'You could hear them yelling “Is everyone OK?” amid the crunching of various shards of headlight plastic and other car parts under the tires of cars still pushing through on Racine, swerving around everyone and ignoring any semblance of safety.' | hollo
Photos from the neighborhood north of Sherman Park, taken between summer 2016 and spring 2022—including a recent unicorn drawing from the sidewalk in front of the author’s house.“It’s always quiet around here until it’s not,” said my neighbor from down the street, petting her big dog’s head. Her dog was sitting contentedly in the grass near the lagoon in Sherman Park, near my house in Back of the Yards.
My relationship with the lady with the big dog is perfectly fine. That day we chatted a little about a car accident that had awakened a bunch of the neighbors a few days prior. One of the semitrailer drivers who parks their rig in an empty lot down the way backed out onto Racine Avenue a little too quickly and managed to reverse T-bone two passing cars speeding in opposite directions. None of the three drivers seemed to be paying attention.
I can’t tell you if any area is safe, and honestly, when there are humans involved, no neighborhood is “safe”—break-ins, bar fights, and homicides can and have happened nearly everywhere. I’m certainly not going to tell you that my neighborhood is either perfect or the worst, especially when you’re a fellow Chicagoan who should know better.
Crashes happen so often here that they’re like mobile and temporary town squares. Conversations about what just happened and whether or not the passengers are OK are punctuated by the exclamations of people who’ve been waiting all winter to tell someone, anyone, “They should put a sign here!” or “I called 311 and nothing happened!”
This has resulted in some completely surreal lineups, if like me you think of summer Saturday nights as a series of backyard concerts. The neighbors on our side of the alley pretty regularly hire full bands and set up elaborate outdoor speaker systems for birthdays, graduations, and the like. Nearby there’s a vacant lot , and last fall it provided the venue for a wedding reception, complete with horseback rides for the kids, a ten-piece band, and fireworks.
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