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Hyde Park Herald
Park District installs gate along Lake Shore Drive service road to Promontory Point
The Chicago Park District installed a swinging gate at a service entrance off of South DuSable Lake Shore Drive Friday, the district’s latest move to curb personal vehicle access to the lakefront. The gate was installed just south of Promontory Point, between 55th and 56th streets on the east...
Katzman corrects the record
First, thanks for the incredible article about my life and times in the last issue. The writer, Max Blaisdell did his best to transcribe a zillion details which is very difficult to do perfectly. One detail is significant. In the part of the story where he writes that in 1978 the Chas Levy Company sent "goons" to persuade a man across the street from my Hyde Park Bob's Newsstand to sell his lease to them so they could do harm to me, that isn't correct. While the incident DID happen and their stated plan expressed to the man who held the lease from the Illinois Central Railroad was to knock a hole in the brick wall of the viaduct at 51st and Lake Park face me so they could sell magazine at 50% off the cover price and put Bob's out of business, the men who approached the man who owned the lease there and sold fruit sand vegetables to commuters morning and night, were executives from the Levy company. Regular people, not physically threatening in any way. The space's owner, a proud and dignified Black man, was highly offended that they would try to use his space to harm me no matter how much cash they offered him to leave, and that the men felt he would be easy for them to push out of the way. He refused to deal with them, and he himself, mockingly, threatened to call some of his friends to "mess them up" unless they got the hell out of his little shop under the tracks, which they instantly did, he told me years later. I never knew this story until his last day of business in 1983. His name was James and he was a real life hero secretly saving my business during a bitter war for distribution in Hyde Park and the jobs of about 20 adults and children who sold newspapers and magazines to the public.
Washington Park Pool, let us swim!
Since the beautiful Washington Park Pool opened for the season last week, I have attempted twice to use it. However, its rules and schedule are so mysterious that I have so far found swimming there pretty much impossible. My first attempt was on Juneteenth. I was excited to see it...
'A Little Night Music' at Theo
Theo is completing a season devoted to Stephen Sondheim with “A Little Night Music,” the sweet-sad 1973 paean to desire, regret and second chances with a book by Hugh Wheeler and a suite of wonderfully witty and wistful songs. Inspired by Ingmar Bergman's 1955 film, “Smiles of a...
Chicago Public Schools announces safeguards for laid-off employees as teachers union decries staff cuts
Editor's note: This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters. Facing a murkier financial outlook and a budget deficit, Chicago Public Schools has launched “layoff prevention pools” that will guarantee displaced employees positions at other schools — and pay through the next school year.
U. of C. talks Washington Park development plans
In the first of a series of public neighborhood meetings, the University of Chicago presented plans Wednesday to turn a corridor of Washington Park into a thrumming hub for health care, science, arts and culture. The projects, which surround the Garfield Green Line station stop, span the recently opened fossil...
A month after reopening, One Stop Foods owner says code violations remediated
The owner of One Stop Foods, the Kenwood grocer that was shut down by the city in April over building code violations, reopened the store and says he fixed all identified issues. “We’ve been continuing to do all the work that was required of us,” said Dennis Kladis, One Stop’s...
Who’s running for the local Chicago school board seats?
For the first time in Chicago history, voters this November will get to elect members to the city’s school board. As of Monday, more than 40 candidates have filed to run for 10 open seats on the new 21-member Chicago Board of Education, with the remaining spots to be appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Each of the 10 seats represents a district in the city mapped out by the Illinois General Assembly this spring.
Quantum technology companies set for big tax incentives under new law
CHICAGO – Gov. JB Pritzker on Wednesday gave final approval to a plan to bolster the state’s tech industry, including an incentives package – backed by $500 million in the state budget – aimed at making Illinois the nation’s leader in quantum computing. The package...
State opens migrant shelter in former East Hyde Park hotel
A state-supported shelter for migrant families transitioning to independent housing is open in a former hotel in East Hyde Park, officials said Tuesday. The building can house up to 750 people, according to an announcement from the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS). It’s one of two new state-supported shelters set up in the Chicago area, along with a former hotel site near Midway Airport.
Sunny skies bring big smiles to South Shore rodeo
As young riders groomed their horses ahead of the Broken Arrow Riding Club’s annual speed and action rodeo on a sunny Sunday morning earlier this month, hundreds of showgoers eagerly set up lawn chairs and grills around the South Shore Cultural Center arena. Nearby, a couple of dozen people enjoyed a cool swim at the beach.
JPAC launches survey of park conditions
The Jackson Park Advisory Council (JPAC) is undertaking a months-long survey of park conditions in order to document landscaping and maintenance issues to report to the Chicago Park District. The park will be surveyed in five sections throughout the summer by volunteers and JPAC members on specified days. JPAC’s president,...
Morgan Shoal shoreline redesign wades forward through criticism
Relations between the city and preservation advocates over the proposed redesign of the Morgan Shoal shoreline hit troubled waters last week at the latest community meeting for the project. "I am disappointed we were not permitted to be in the same room," said Amanda Englert of Advocates for Morgan Shoal...
Paul Sereno’s Fossil Lab bridges past and present in Washington Park
Paul Sereno, a world-traveling paleontologist with a mission to get more young people into the sciences, has brought some of that world to Washington Park. Sereno’s new Fossil Lab opened last month and houses more than 50 tons of dinosaur bones and other specimens collected during his decades of excavations. At once-monthly open houses and on school trips, community members can get an up-close view of fossils millions of years old, including a Tyrannosaurus rex and the nearly complete remains of a 40-foot crocodile popularly known as “super-croc.” Among his tens of thousands of specimens on display are also the remains of humanity’s early ancestors, Homo sapiens.
Guts and ink: Bob Katzman’s bygone Hyde Park
Robert “Bob” Katzman may have left the newspaper trade behind, but his arrival at the Herald’s office at Experimental Station, clutching a box full of weathered news clippings, breathed life into the tales of his scrappy days in Chicago’s once-thriving, now nearly forgotten periodical distribution business. As he laid out the yellowed pages neatly on the conference table, tales of his remarkable, turbulent life came flooding out of him like a brook overrunning its banks during a storm.
South Shore housing protections need broader support, leaders say
Almost a year after an ordinance designed to prevent South Shore residents from displacement was introduced, city leaders said at the second annual Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) summit that it has little chance of passing this year absent wider public support. Organized by the Obama CBA Coalition, the June 22...
Daniil Trifonov electrifies the audience with the Bates Piano Concerto
Mason Bates, a former composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO), returned to Orchestra Hall last week to hear the first CSO performances of his piano concerto composed in 2020–21. It was composed for and dedicated to Daniil Trifonov, who was the soloist for these performances. It was a...
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The Hyde Park Herald, Chicago's oldest community newspaper since 1882.
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