I lived on the west side of Chicago in the late 80s and in Pilsen in the early 90s. They were a blend of ethnic neighborhoods, Italian in the former and artists

I lived on the west side of Chicago in the late 80s and in Pilsen in the early 90s. They were a blend of ethnic neighborhoods, Italian in the former and artists colonies supported by open spaces rented cheaply by the Pomodjarskeys (sp?) in the 90s. They were interstitial spaces true to the Gibsonian form, small ethnic enclaves, industrial wastelands bereft of industry from the 70s onward, that afforded a isolated née desolated place to live. The areas attracted artistic types, ravers, communes and the sense of existing, living in luminal states where structures of power, churches, local government, economic development were strangely absent from the population of oddballs and irregular who could rent a 4,000 square foot loft in a former printing plant for $1,000 a month. No social services, grocery stores, schools or other symbolic anchors of traditional communities were present. The artists were a community but bereft and ignored by social services, forcing them to create their own. A kind of anti-commune abandoned by late-stage capitalism where individual expression, art and music could take root and fester. A Bohemia in a sense of those young and old, who fell outside most normative rules of life in order to pursue their own ideal for living. It existed than and as I drive the Chicago streets of those areas today I sadly realize that happenstance of time and place is gone. Replaced mostly by money. The eviction of the first wave of, let’s not call them gentrifiers, by the commercial gentrifiers seeking to exploit underpriced buildings by boutiques and the final corporate invasion of the Starbucks and potbelly sandwich shop who out performed the local indigenous businesses. It was money and class, not race or anti-bohemian forces which decimated those areas. The neighborhood micro cultures could not compete with $300,000 condo lofts and so it was no more. Places like this have been eradicated nationwide by the flow of money in lieu of culture and money wins.