Strolling the quiet streets on a morning in May you’ll admire the lilacs spilling over the low stone fences, the mansions with the squares of lawn marching to the edge of the boulevards, the funky, vine-covered apartment buildings shaded by overarching oak and poplar. Only after a day or so do you notice what’s not here. There are no movie theaters, for example, and not much commerce generally. There’s nowhere to buy a pair of pants or shoes. There aren’t many restaurants, and only a single overpriced restaurant catering to the culinary affectations of the yuppie trade—strange for a neighborhood with so many wealthy residents. Only in the last few months did the neighborhood get a reliable, clean, and well-stocked grocery store.
Read More of Mr. Obama's Neighborhood off-site...Bill Baar says:
Check Bill Ayers book "Fugitive Days" and you'll see him quote the old phrase about Hyde Park as a place where "White and Black alike unite against the poor."
I think it's an apt description of what Obama's neo-isolationish and protectionist Foreign Policy will bring us... an America walled apart from the rest of the world as Hyde Park walled itself off from the rest of Chicago; maybe with those Blue Police Call Posts to dial 911 should a terrorist manage to land a WMD over ones head.
Relinda says:
It isn't 1971 anymore, and you commenters, as well as Andrew Ferguson sound like you haven't been here since then. Walk around the whole neighborhood (not just the strip from Medici to 57th St. Books) and you'll see a south side neighborhood with a lot of people struggling to stay above water.
Pat Hickey says:
Hyde Park is about as friendly a neighborhood as the little town in Shirley Jackson's great story 'The Lottery' - I spent a great deal of time there in the 1970's ( handball at the firehouse, malted grain beverages at Jimmy's & etc. - we were obvious aus landers from 79th & Wood Street and got that warm and welcome fuzzy feeling from one and all-
' No, I do NOT know where O'Gara's Bookstore is located. - Why would you need to know in the first place?' That is an actual quote from a gent wearing a turtle-neck and tweed on a humid August Day in 1971 at the corner of 57th & Kenwood - Honor Bright.