In the good old days before the world got complicated, you could take your tennis racket over to the public courts at Waveland and the lake and play for hours without charge.
Many other tennis players at Waveland agree; their gripes are yet more fallout from general superintendent Forrest Claypool’s plan to turn Park District operations such as parking, tennis, and golf over to professionals.
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Frank played almost every day in the early years. “I can remember when the south-end [courts] used to have clay surfaces, but that was eliminated because of maintenance problems back in 1971–August of ’71 to be exact,” says Frank. “They put in liquid cement and there has been some trouble because the cement masons had a strike and the surfaces were not finished too well. When someone falls down they tear open their legs. It’s not a smooth surface. It’s very hard on your feet. So many of the more experienced or frequent players will play at the north courts.”
The lines at Waveland grew so long that in 1978 the Park District did away with the old honors system in which players reserved the courts by posting their rackets in wooden holders along the fence. Instead, the Park District brought in supervisors to police the flow of players, and imposed a playing fee.
In May the board voted to raise the summer fees from $20 to $30 for adults and from $15 to $24 for senior citizens; they also brought Mid-Town in to manage the courts. “We’re not in the tennis business, but Mid-Town is,” says Mehrberg. “They pick the most highly qualified people to run the courts. They can bring in people like Billie Jean King for a lesson. They have the tennis experts. Let them do their thing.”
Corcoran goes a step further: he foresees a time, if Claypool’s policies continue, in which user fees are applied to almost all public facilities. “Claypool puts a halo around privatization, but it’s a slippery slope–fees never go down, they always go up,” says Corcoran. “Then what are the senior citizens supposed to do?”
In the opening weeks of last November’s Republican Revolution, it seemed that Mayor Daley’s chummy relations with House Speaker Newt Gingrich might protect Chicago from the onslaught of federal budget cuts. Daley was Gingrich’s favorite Democrat, about the only one the Georgia congressman had a kind word for. Apparently Daley was affable and nonthreatening, or maybe Gingrich wanted to suck up to Daley’s white ethnic constituents.
