Advisory Group Forms to Clean up Elm Park

posted by chicago pop

Good news about some neighborhood activity to clean up one of Hyde Park's seedier parks and playlots, Elm Park, located on Woodlawn just north of Kimbark Plaza. As we know from the example of the neighborhood parks and playlots, it takes dedicated neighbors to maintain a park and playground's quality. Like a number of others in Hyde Park, this one could use some help.

A meeting of the group is scheduled for Tuesday, July 13, 2010 at 6:30PM, Nichols Park Field House, 1355 E. 53rd Street.

For those interested, a statement of intention and recently circulated contact info is below:

May name is Timika Hoffman-Zoller. I am a resident of Hyde Park who is interested in forming a Park Advisory Council (PAC) for Elm Playlot Park which is located at 5215 South Woodlawn Avenue.

Members of the community and I will convene the initial Advisory Council Meeting for Elm Playlot on Monday, June 21st 2010, 6:30 PM at the Nichols Park Field House, located 1355 East 53rd Street.

At the initial Elm Playlot Park Advisory Council Meeting we will:

· Receive nominations for Park Advisory Council (PAC) officers

(Elections will be held for the offices of President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer.)

· Review and adopt the Park Advisory Council By-Laws

· Create committees deemed necessary and appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the Elm Playlot PAC.

· Set the date for the next meeting

We wish to form the Elm Playlot Park Advisory Council to help provide park visitors and neighbors with a safe, inviting, and beautifully maintained park. Through the development of the Park Advisory Council we can promote unique ways for the community to better utilize Elm Playlot Park, and help develop the physical space and creative programs that will provide a positive impact on Elm Playlot Park and the surrounding community.

Sincerely,

Timika Hoffman-Zoller

773 454-0499 cell phone

zollerfamily@gmail.com

Hyde Park Gets Some Love

posted by chicago pop

This has to be photoshopped, right?

[Source: Chris Sweda, photo in "Hyde away", Chicago Tribune, Friday October 9, 2009]

Post-Olympic bid, post-Obama Nobel Peace Prize, things are getting back to normal in Hyde Park, with a new theater season at the Court, impressive new shows at the Hyde Park Art Center and the Smart Museum, to say nothing of the spectacular success of the 3rd Annual Hyde Park Jazz Festival.

The Tribune, in its wisdom, decided to send a reporter other than Ron Grossman to bring Chicagoans up to speed not on where Hyde Park was, but where it's going. The old attitude cries in its beer at Jimmy's over all the old joints on 55th, and writes comments to the above article like these:

Hyde Park may ... be noted for what it has lost like the Harding Medieval museum, the studios on Stony Island where writers like Nelson Algren, Saul Bellows [sic], used to hang out, the retail shops and apartments along 55th street which gave way to university development. But it is still a nice place to live.

The new attitude knows this old story, but doesn't repeat it as an eternal prelude. It can, symbolically, find the hipsters -- every neighborhood needs a few of them -- that reporter Lauren Viera caught at a Fixed Friday event over at Tati Cycles at 53rd and Ellis.

Here's the view from behind the fixie handlebars:

If Chicago is two years behind the coasts, then Hyde Park is two years behind Chicago -- and so it would make sense that we are beginning to see a nascent fashion + fixie trend in the hood. It seems to be taking on a unique, UofCesque flavor however: Have you seen the Rush Hour with Proust quotes on the top tube? Or the Rivendell Atlantis with Nitto bullhorns shellaced grey and a White Industries ENO? Or the young grad student with the Anais Nin tattoo and shock of neon pink accents to match her anodized Sugino 75s? I wouldn't have imagined this a couple of years ago.

If it pauses to get a single shot espresso at Istria norte on Cornell and 50th, it absorbs talk of Bruno Latour, Carl Schmitt, and art in Shanghai.

Hyde Park: it's not just the Museum of Science and Industry anymore.

Of course we've all known this, even before the Hyde Park Jazz Festival came on line, or the HPAC started ramping up the cool shows. There have been hidden treasures like the Oriental Institute and the Renaissance Society, the footpaths and ponds at the south end of Olmsted's Washington Park, and the morning mists on the great meadow to the north.

Soon we'll be able to add a restored and revived Shoreland and Del Prado to that list, combining the best of what was with what is yet to come.

There's no mistaking that the cultural momentum in Hyde Park has picked up over the last little while. Props to the Trib for noticing.

(Not So) Hidden Hyde Park Treasure

posted by Elizabeth Fama

poster from the Music Department's Halloween Concert: Haunted.

I had almost nineteen years to discover the University's annual Halloween Concert -- nineteen years of raising children (and counting). I meant to go every year, really I did. From the description it looked pretty interesting. But to make it to the 7 PM performance you have to get dinner on the table early; and the 9 PM performance is too late for pathetic me, so we somehow missed it every year.

Well this weekend we went, and it's not to be missed. Make sure you go next year. Take your kids, and wear your costumes. It's raucous, it's wild, it's massively attended (to the point of fire code violations), and the music is great.