Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Melting Pot
My whole life I have lived in a suburb of Indianapolis called Avon, IN. Avon was a town made up of subdivisions and chain restaurants; a place where the language was English, and the color was white. Moving to a large metropolis like Chicago I didn’t know what to expect, besides crime and crowds. But as I began to meet Chicago’s many streets, I realized something I had not stopped to think about. Chicago was diverse, in a way that I had never expected. Entire communities existed in the city in which a different language was spoken, a different god was worshipped, a different culture thrived. I thought I knew Chicago because I knew Sears Tower and John Hancock and the “L”, but Chicago is an iceberg of a city, and I have only seen the tip.
Walking from the John Hancock Building to Humboldt park I realized that Chicago is a city with two faces. One is modern, neat, and wealthy. The other is old, colorful, and chaotic.
The Loop to me represented the first face of the city. Business and enterprise are in the air, and beautiful contemporary skyscrapers line the streets. As I walked further west, the scene changed. The buildings shrank, and the people were no longer hustling to get to their next engagement. They lingered in the streets they lived on. They were a part of the community, not just pedestrians passing through. In Humboldt Park I discovered a neighborhood of proud Puerto Ricans. This was a place I felt comfortable walking through, where the signs bore the Puerto Rican flag, and a memorial was dedicated to a Puerto Rican nationalist. A calm pond was home to a family of ducks. This was not the Chicago in postcards, but the Chicago one can only discover when wandering.
Pilsen was a place unique to me. It was the home of working-class immigrants, originally Eastern European but today Mexican. I expected to find a blighted community, where poverty and crime were rampant. Instead, Pilsen was a community that felt like a family. My first interaction there was with a woman on her porch who was happy to help us find the National Museum of Mexican Art. Gorgeous murals were keystones of the neighborhood, dedicated to Mexican identity and peaceful protest. One particular mural helped me to understand the problems associated with gentrification, a struggle that many young people in communities like Pilsen have to deal with today. Frequently during our mural tour, our guide encountered friends and members of the neighborhood that he knew well. I was amazed by this because I had always had the impression that people in the city were essentially strangers, and yet the people of Pilsen knew each other far better than I ever knew my neighbors. Pilsen was a place that defined itself, and didn’t rely on the perception of those who had never even been there.
In Albany Park, I saw diversity in its truest form. This one neighborhood that I had never even heard of was home to the most diverse group of people I had ever seen. Walking down the street I saw signs in Korean, Chinese, Spanish, and English with no barrier separating them. People stood on the street selling food that they had made with their families that day. As we walked along, our guide (a long time local) had a story for every corner of the neighborhood, which really brought the history of the place to life. Albany park is a prime example of the “Great American Melting Pot” in which cultures from across the globe meld together. This is what makes Chicago an incredible place to call home.
