“Envisioning an equivalent to Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive, merchants gradually converted Oak Street’s townhouses to expensive shops,” writes Michael J.P. Smith in Inland Architect (November/December). “These undoubtedly are successful magnets for a certain grade of consumer. But Oak Street has lost every shred of its former gentility to a monoculture of visually raucous boutiques that jostle for attention like a convention of Ivana Trumps.”
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“When people engage in high-risk behavior they have to accept the consequences. If I play hopscotch on the freeway and get hit by a car, should I expect sympathy?” wrote Newsweek reader Pam Palmer in reference to AIDS patients. Kevin Brown, writing in Positively Aware (December), doesn’t care for her view: “The notion of Pam Palmer and millions of people like her playing hopscotch on the Dan Ryan Expressway fills me with glee. I have some chalk somewhere. I know I do.” But the same issue of the locally published newsletter reports that “gay men are relapsing into unsafe sexual practices”–45 percent of 470 men surveyed at gay bars and social organizations nationwide had had unprotected anal intercourse in the previous six months. “Most of the unsafe sex was found to be outside of monogamous relationships with partners of unknown HIV status.” Hopscotch, anyone?
Justice at last. “From the standpoint of appreciation, on average you were better off if you owned a home in a black South Side neighborhood rather than a white one,” reports Ed Zotti, comparing Chicago’s census tracts from 1980 to 1990 in Chicago Enterprise (December). “Neighborhoods south of Pershing Road that were at least three-fourths black appreciated an average of 70 percent during the ’80s, while those that were at least three-fourths white appreciated only 61 percent.”
