Curbed Chicago is in the final round of Curbed Cup, a contest to select Chicago’s best neighborhood of 2011.
The finalists are Uptown, which won last year’s Curbed Cup, and West Lakeview.
West Lakeview? To add an element of whimsy (absurdity?) to the contest, Curbed included an amorphous neighborhood which may or may not exist, depending on who you consult. Here’s how Curbed describes it:
West Lakeview, including Southport Corridor and Wrigleyville, is an esteemed shopping and boozing destination, that much is known.
What isn’t known is what turf Curbed includes in its West Lakeview boundaries, since you’ll often hear disputes about the boundaries of both the Southport Corridor and Wrigleyville and Curbed hasn’t given its definition of either. For all the years I spent studying neighborhood boundaries in Chicago I never heard anyone – other than Curbed – refer to Wrigleyville as being a part of West Lakeview.
Here’s the little bit I know for sure about “West Lakeview” – it doesn’t exist, even remotely, in the sense that Curbed uses it.
I’m familiar with two versions of West Lakeview. One is a largely-abandoned attempt by real estate agents to rebrand a part of North Center bounded by Diversey Ave (2800 N), Addison St (3600 N), Ravenswood Ave (1800 W) and the Chicago River. We’ve made inconsistent references to that West Lakeview in the past. The other is the area served by the West Lakeview Neighbors group: Belmont north to Addison, Racine west to Ravenswood. Few outside of the area, and not all of its residents, refer to it as West Lakeview.
If you Google the term, the most common references are to the North Center variant of West Lakeview.
You won’t find West Lakeview on the City of Chicago’s semi-official neighborhood map (pdf).
If you want solid information about neighborhood boundaries in Chicago, consult our Google Knol and our neighborhoods page.
The contest is absurd anyway. The criteria are vague and it’s decided by an online poll, so you probably just end up with the neighborhoods with the most Curbed readers in them winning the polls.
I’m not a fan of these “best of” and “neighborhood vs neighborhood” concepts but if it gets them hits…whatever.
I do think that Curbed needs to get it together with the facts to become a more legitimate site to read. The listing, sales, and neighborhood info is often wrong or misleading
They do a nice job of posting on a great variety of interesting topics, neighborhoods, developments, going ons etc… around the city. I enjoy checking in. They just need to watch the facts rather than try to sound snarky or quirky.
The “West Lakeview” v Uptown thing is a disaster. You could say Lakeview west of Racine v Buena Park or something. As many know, Uptown is an entire Community Area with many different pockets. Personally I would live in Uptown west of Ashland but not Uptown near Kenmore and Lawrence for example. Lakeview around Southport Ave and Lakeview west of Ashland are different worlds too in the eyes of our clientel.
“That much is known”.??????
Should the curbedsters should have included definite definitions of the territory of each neighborhood in this esteemed contest? Definitely.
No reasonable definition of “West Lakeview” would include “Wrigleyville”. At best or worst “West Lakeview” would start at Racine and actually Southport makes more sense for an eastern starting point.
Their whole series of awards is merely meant to drive viewership up. Which is fine in and of itself. I mean the naming of Eric Rojas as “Agent of the Millennium” is the moral equivalent of the WMD search prior to the start of the Iraq War.
On a more serious note the offense some people take at the naming of Uptown or Hyde Park in this contest is amusing. Throwing out the word “ghetto” either shows a complete lack of understanding of what a real ghetto is like or an overinflated sense of the glory of being an online troll.
Uptown will likely will this contest not necessarily because it’s had the best year of any of the contestants, but because it has the most widely read and arguably best neighborhood blog in the city. That would be Uptown Update for those of you not in in the know.
Ultimately this contest is nothing more than a tug o war between a neighborhood with a widely read blog and a neighborhood that people can’t even define.
The best part of the contest is how seriously offended some people get at Uptown or Hyde Park even being in the contest. It’s a friggin’ meaningless online poll. It’s nothing but year end amusement for the masses. An online opiate if you will.
Now I see no reason for a real contest for which neighborhood had the best year, but if one were to be held then a panel of people with no ties to any of the nominated communities would have to be judges.
Seems like too much work for something as silly as “Neighborhood of the Year”.
PS
Go Uptown!
Ha, IP.
I’ve never been mentioned in the same sentence as the Iraq War. I’ve heard there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but that’s probably close. I’m outraged.
Speaking of outrage, the anger on the Internet over neighborhoods etc… is unfortunate. On Curbed, everyblock and so forth, even the conspicuous folks get crazy worked up with their rants…on the Internet. The time and energy may be otherwise spent on something positive, like shoooing the poor out of Uptown.
Eric,
I’m outraged that you’re outraged. It’s an outrage.
I watched Werner Herzog’s Antarctic documentary the other day “Encounters at the End of the World”. One of the scientists he interviewed spoke of a parasitic worm that lived its entire life in the anus of another larger critter.
Online trolls are parasitic worms living in the anus of the blogosphere.
As for shoooing the poor out of Uptown I would like to shoo the shooters out of Uptown. However, between killing each other and ramming police cars on LSD and ending up in county jail they seem to be self shooooing so to speak. I suspect that those who have survived the recent shootings in Uptown will be spending the next few decades as guests of the State of Illinois.
To quote the late great Richard Pryor, “Thank God, for Penitentiaries”.
Good times.