Division Dispatch #1

This blog is named Division Street in part because of the way the thoroughfare captures so many slices of Chicago – and its politics – as it moves east from the (mob- and scandal-inflected) Rush Street entertainment district and (the remnants of) Cabrini-Green through the gentrified and gentrifying neighborhoods of Wicker Park, East Village, and Humboldt Park to border separating the (tough) West Side from the suburbs.

As such, we’ll bring you occasional dispatches from Division Street found in the news and elsewhere – including from you, dear reader. Off we go . . .

Division Dispatch #1: “Gentrification is changing the face of East Village but community groups are split over whether to add upscale wine shops, relax liquor rules,” the Sun-Times’s Mark Konkol reports today in “Division Over Addition.”

“East Village has shed its gang-banger-chic image and acquired more refined, Lake View-esque tastes. You don’t have to worry about getting mugged on Division near Damen at 10 on Friday night like you did 10 years ago. And as folks who live there will tell you, the main drag isn’t a hooker depot anymore.”