Seedy

I just finished watching a small spot on WTTW PBS TV in Chicago about the neighborhood called River North around Hubbard and Clark. The area used to be seedy a while back: cheap strip and gin joints. When I moved to Chicago I worked in that neighborhood one block north of the Chicago River. Even then it had its charms such as lots of hotdog stands, hole-in-the-wall-bars, and XXX porn shops. Now it is gentrified.

That area, like all of downtown Chicago, has gotten gentrified over the past 21 years I have lived here. The guys who drink at the hole-in-the-wall-bar in my neighborhood wonder where we'll go to drink after the property gets sold for mid-rise property, as it eventually will.

People wait for the hammer to fall.