Busy weekend

Not as an excuse, just an unavoidable observation.

Saturday was a day of traveling. I crossed the entire city, a couple of times.

My morning started with a trip to Cabrini Green, the notorious housing projects on Chicago's North Side. The area is currently undergoing a process of demolition and redevelopment that leaves many people skeptical as to who is actually benefiting from these actions (the consensus seems to be "not the residents"). According to the long-time resident-turned-activist for the Coalition to Protect Public Housing who talked to us and showed us around, 20,000 public housing units have been demolished throughout the city of Chicago, and only 1,000 have been replaced. Relocating residents to the suburbs isolates them and leaves them stranded and friendless. Residents of public housing in mixed-income buildings don't have the same voting rights as the middle- and upper-class residents. He had a few other tidbits, all of it extremely disheartening. Some of the most thought-provoking ideas for me were about human digity--what does it mean to leave in a home that was built with an intentionally crappy infrastructure? Even to call such residencies "projects" is degrading because it diminishes the notion of someone's home.

After the tour I returned to Hyde Park and met up with Corey to go to Trader Joe's. We ended up driving up a packed LSD to Fullerton, driving all the way across Lincoln Park and up through Wrigleyville (on a game day, no less), finally getting to a store all the way at the north end. After groceries we headed back down south to Roosevelt tostop by Target by finally returning to HP around 5:30. I then caught the #6 Bus head downtown to meet Elizabeth for dinner. We had sushi at Oysy (Japanese for "delicious") north of the river, then wandered up to the Borders by Water Tower Place to waste time before having to head all the way back south across the river to catch the Blue Line and Clark/Lake, having forgotten the cross street on Grand. We took the Blue Line up to Addison for our concert at the Abbey Pub: Electric Six ("I wish this song was louder" didn't apply!). Post-concert we wandered south on Elston until we managed to catch a cab all the way back to Hyde Park.

Whew.

Now there are fewer than three days before Scav Hunt.

On a completely separate note, Stardust comes out in August! Every now and then Neil Gaiman posts something about it in his journal. Today there was a poster for the film featuring the tagline, "This Summer a Star Falls. The Chase Begins." Mr. Gaiman expresses his concern:

Not sure about that tagline. Hope they can come up with something sharper before August. (My own suggestion, "Stardust. It's not a sequel to anything," was appreciated but, probably wisely, rejected.)

My feelings exactly. I should probably see Spiderman-3 at some point--I'm sure it's the sort of thing that will be better in the theatre--but I am not feeling particularly motivated to go. Maybe weekend after next.

In the meantime, I'll try to catch up enough on my readings for class in order to spend some time on creative work...but it's not looking good.