HuffingTon Post Chicago's Most Walkable Neighborhoods: Us not You

I don't know the South Side - but on the North Side nothing compares to Andersonvi­lle. Darling comment on today's Huffington Post Chicago!

Gentry liberalism has established a strong presence on the Internet, where such websites as MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post are lavishly funded by well-heeled liberals. These and other sites generally focus on foreign policy, gay rights, abortion and other social issues, as well as the environment. Traditional middle-class concerns such as the unavailability of affordable housing, escalating college tuitions and the shrinking number of manufacturing jobs usually don't rank as top concerns.

Kotkin and Seigel 2007

Let's walk this one through. If you are a working stiff, married with children, paying taxes, if Catholic, or Rahm Emanuel two tuitions for private schools attended by your kids and public schools for everyone else, belong to the skilled trades, serve the public as a police officer, fireman, teacher, nurse, city worker, or mid-level professional, you are the problem

Your carbon footprint is keeping down Capt. Planet and his Green Rangers, because you own a home, run air-conditioning, have two vehicles ( you and the Missus) which you use to drive to work, to WalMart/Sam's Club/Best Buy/ Outlet Malls and to your rentals in Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan.

You do not take Public Transportation, you bastards!!!!! You need to get to feed your breed, see them set for school with lunches and hugs, and fight traffic in order to get to work on time.

The Walkable Gentry Neighborhoods with loft one bedroom condos starting at $145,000 like the ones in Printers Row, for a better Class of Person to walk to Whole Foods, CSO, Galleries, Bistros, and Venues are what you are not. You and your breed need to live in bedroom communities like Edison Park, Albany Park, Garfield Ridge, Clearing, Midway, Chicago Lawn, Gresham, Brainerd, Chatham, Grand Crossing, Hegewisch, Beverly, Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Yep, I do.

My kids, parented by this single old widower Dad, needed to go to Catholic Schools. Damn my eyes.

I, like thousands of my tax-paying neighbors who bucked up for the TIFS and snappy wrought iron street scapes in Printers Row, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square, Old Town, and other walkable communities, can catch a bus every forty minutes on Western Ave., but that would necessitate forgoing child care in order to schedule a proper and timely path to work. Instead, we tend to drive all the streets we can in order to make it to the Dan Ryan, the Tri-State and the Stevenson and road rage it to work. Just kidding, we helots, in fact, tend to be more courteous and safe drivers . . .as a demographic of course.

When not carbonate-ing Mother Earth, we do, in fact, walk.

We walk to Mass on Sunday; the kids walk to St. Cajetan, St. Barnabas, St. John Fisher, Queen of Martyrs, Christ the King, St. Margaret of Scotland, St. Christina and St. Walter. Some walk to the very excellent Morgan Park Academy which is way out of my wallet and a few others walk to Sutherland, Clissold, and Mount Greenwood CPS elementary schools.

After school the kids bike or walk to Kennedy, Beverly, Monroe, Mount Greenwood and Ridge Parks for parish athletics ( football mostly but some basketball and volleyball) and Little League in the summers.

We walk to Jewel on 103rd Street. County Fair on Western, Fair Play on 111th, CVS and Walgreen pharmacies every twenty feet, Java Express, Beverly Bean, Dunkin Donuts and Kean Gas for coffee and even a . . .Starbucks!!!!!!!! on Longwood at 103rd. Street

Why shucks there's even an art gallery, Jack Simmerling's Heritage Gallery, a few paces from the Starbucks as well as Calabria Imports, and a gourmet cuisine shoppe. Shoot we got us a castle to look at on Longwood at 103rd Street.

I have no doubt that every neighborhood is walkable in some manner, though hitting the sidewalk with your rump facing the in-coming rounds might be de riguer on your ambulation in some food desert communities.

Making the comfortable cozier is too often the role of the Media. Watching WTTW, listening to Public Radio or glancing at the organs lapped up by soul-patch knit cap crowd of trust-funded urban adventurers, and hipster-doofus hangers-on, would tend to make one believe that living a happy, productive and community centered life is a bad thing. The Walk Against Breast Cancer** began in Chicago's helot neighborhoods.


Huffington Post Chicago, serial Gold Digger Arianna Huffington's bully dunghill for affluent Progressives offers the Chicago's Ten (10) Most Walkable Neighborhoods and they are - Printers Row, Near North, Gold Coast,Sheridan Park, Dearborn Park, Noble Square, Park West, Old Town, Lincoln Square and Dearborn Park. That settles it.

Get this explanation:

According to Walk Score, their ranking is intended to measure how easy it is to live a car-free or "car-lite" lifestyle in any given location. The site's algorithm awards points based on the distance an address is from any number of amenities including parks, coffee shops and grocery stores. (The score doesn't, the site notes, take into account pedestrian design or safety.) The site argues that better walkability can help an area's environment, health, property values and even community involvement.

Looking deeper into Walk Score's Chicago report (with a nerdy-fun map to match), HuffPost Chicago wanted to highlight the top ten neighborhoods identified by the site, the majority of which are within walking distance to Lake Michigan.

While some of the neighborhood names are a bit dubious -- when was the last time you heard someone neighborhood-drop that they live in Dearborn Park or Park West? -- the rankings are interesting nonetheless. Chicago's walk score averages 74 (out of 100), while all the top 10 neighborhoods cleared the 94 marker.

Really? All of the neighborhoods deemed "walkable" by the good folks at Huffington Post Chicago happen to be home to Chicago's Gentry Liberal* demographic. And that Greek pastry, Arianna, worries about Class? You either got or you haven't got Class,because you work at it. Class does not come with a trust-fund, or the hook-'em-through the lips divorce settlement paperwork.

The point of these trendy polls is not to inform, but to exclude. Fair enough.

Take a walk.



Mighty nice out!

*

But what kind of liberalism is emerging as the dominant voice in the Democratic Party?
Well, it isn't your father's liberalism, the ideology that defended the interests and values of the middle and working classes. The old liberalism had its flaws, but it also inspired increased social and economic mobility, strong protections for unions, the funding of a national highway system and a network of public parks, and the development of viable public schools. It also invented Social Security and favored a strong foreign policy.

Today's ascendant liberalism has a much different agenda. Call it "gentry liberalism." It's not driven by the lunch-pail concerns of those workers struggling to make it in an increasingly high-tech, information-based, outsourcing U.S. economy -- though it does pay lip service to them.

Rather, gentry liberalism reflects the interests and values of the affluent winners in the era of globalization and the beneficiaries of the "financialization" of the economy. Its strongholds are the tony neighborhoods and luxurious suburbs in and around New York, Washington, Boston, San Francisco and West Los Angeles. . . .

Although many of the newly affluent are -- as is traditional -- politically conservative, a rising number of them are turning left. Surveys done by the Pew Research Center indicate that an increasing number of households with annual incomes greater than $135,000 -- the nation's top 10% -- are moving toward the Democrats. In 1995, there were nearly twice as many Republicans (46%) as Democrats (25%) in this category. Today, there are as many Democrats (31%) as Republicans (32%).

The political upshot is that Democrats now control the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts, according to Michael Franc of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

In part, this is because the Democratic gains in the 2006 elections were in affluent districts once held by the Republicans. In Iowa, for instance, the three wealthiest districts now send Democrats to Washington, and the two poorest are safe Republican seats.

Perhaps the best indicator of the growing political power of gentry liberals, however, is their ability to generate campaign contributions. Chiefly drawing on Wall Street, Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this year's Democratic presidential candidates have raised 70% more money than their GOP counterparts, according to the Wall Street Journal. The securities industry, which awarded Republicans 58% of their campaign dollars in 1956, gave the GOP only 45% in 2006. In the newest sectors of the securities industry, most notably hedge funds, Democrats are favored. This year, hedge fund managers have given 77% of their contributions to Democrats in congressional races, reported the Journal.

Gentry liberalism is not an entirely new phenomenon. Its intellectual roots can be traced to historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s 1948 book, "The Vital Center." Schlesinger himself was the archetype of the gentry liberal. A product of Harvard University, he was as comfortable in the fashionable precincts of Manhattan's Upper East Side as he was advising presidents in Washington. Schlesinger was suspicious of the traditional liberalism of President Truman, who baldy appealed to the basic interests of returning middle- and working-class veterans of World War II.

**

May 2011 -- At 8 a.m., Sun., May 8, thousands will fill the streets of the historic Beverly Hills/Morgan Park neighborhood for the annual Beverly Breast Cancer Walk.

What began as a small walk among friends is now the largest of its kind in Chicago’s Southwest area. The walk’s evolution honors the lively spirit of its participants. It also shows a resolve to continue battling a disease that has touched so many.

The three-mile route starts in Ridge Park (96th and Longwood Drive) and includes historic Longwood Drive. To help alleviate parking, a trolley service will transport walkers from the east end of Little Company of Mary’s parking lot at 95th and California.

The annual event has raised more than $1 million for breast cancer treatment. Register early to receive a T-shirt with your $30 entry fee. The entry fee for children ages 18 and under is $15. Same-day registration is $5 more and shirt sizes are not guaranteed. To register for the Beverly Breast Cancer Walk visit www.beverlybreastcancerwalk.org or call 708-229-5066. To take a free breast cancer on-line risk assessment visit www.pursuingpainfreecancer.org/breast .