Unfortunately Jeff Huebner’s article “The Panic in Wicker Park” [August 26] is heavy on the griping and petty finger pointing and light on a more substantial analysis of gentrification; a real and present danger. What seems painfully absent are the voices of the dispossessed, either from the street, the recently evicted, or the workers and manufacturers in whose lofts all these artists/realtors are squabbling over.
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Instead of devoting 11 long pages to a reductionist he said-she said variety of drama between strong personalities, Mr. Huebner could have produced a critique of gentrification and exposed all the multifaceted agents that aid and abet its continuum. His article did nothing to demystify the quasi-metaphysical notion that somehow artists inhabit cheap real estate and then get priced out of the neighborhood. Mr. Huebner should ask why were all these lofts/manufacturing units vacant in the first place. As is typical of discussions sympathetic to the plight of artists and their work/dwelling problems, what is glaringly left out is the rest of the community. What would have been a more compelling story would have been to look a little further afield and examine why small industries that once inhabited West Town’s (now overpriced) condo/lofts were not able to sustain production, and how the people that used to walk to these corner factories have lost their jobs, been unable to pay escalated real estate assessments or rents, have been forced to seek McJobs, jobs in the suburbs, or remain unemployed. It is into these former workplaces and their family dwellings that artists and their followers have moved.
Having been party to this discussion for quite some time now, I’m eager to see the same media attention afforded to a more substantial analysis that really answers the question.
