Hey Chicago folks! (especially the Peepish varieties)

[moominmuppet]

My friend burnout_ohio is moving to Chicago later this summer; she's very cool, and I suspect some of you would get along very well. Also, she's looking for insider perspectives on the city, places for broke grad students to live, etc. If you feel so moved, drop a comment here and say hi (her journal is mostly friends-locked).

Comments

[napalmmk9.livejournal.com]

Well, okay, you've piqued my interest.

Does she like gardening? My lame-o upstairs neighbors are finally moving out, and I'd love to help my landlord get someone cool in the building. It's likely to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $800/month (maybe a little less, certainly not much more) for a 700-square-foot two-bedroom place. Which ain't bad for Chicago. I believe it'd be available in mid-july.

I'd be happy to chat with her.

[forestfire.livejournal.com]

Noyt too bad for Chicago? Thats decent for around here even.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

That sounds affordable if I could find a roommate. And yes, I like gardening.

Thanks!

[napalmmk9.livejournal.com]

I'll reply to two comments in one, then.

I'll go down the three place you listed.

1.) Hyde Park.
Cons: Close to nowhere I can think of, almost totally isolated from everyone in the city. It's its own little nearly totally insular community of grad students, from what I've seen (I'm probably too old to know much about the communities of undergrads.) Some people I've talked to have said that if Hyde Park was surrounded by a 10-foot-high brick wall one night, no one on either side of the wall would notice. Because I'm a bastard, I then say that that wall ought to be subsequently filled with water. The public transit down there is abyssmal, as well. There's some El access, but it's never been useful to me to get where I'm going down there.
Pros: ...I'm sure one will come to me eventually.

2.) Oak Park.
Cons: Also, far from everything. It's effectively a suburb, with all the nonsense that the suburbs entail.
Pros: They have better El access than Hyde Park, although you'll still need to drive a great deal. They've also cheaper rents for bigger spaces than many other areas of the city and surrounding areas. Fantastic architecture, if you know where to look.

3.) Pilsen.

Cons: You should probably be able to speak spanish. Can get a little urban-gritty. Mexican polka music and ice cream trucks can drive you to near-murderous rampaging.

Pros: Well, my wife and I live here (and have for the past 5 years), so that's something right there. It's practically spitting distance to the University of Illinois at Chicago. Great bars (read: divey, cheap), fairly near to movie theaters, museums, everything you could want. Cheaper rents than almost anything on the north side. Old, old buildings, slowly going condo (sad!). Public transit is easy enough that you will not need a car.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Pilsen sounds pretty much perfect. My Spanish is incredibly rusty, but I survived in Mexico with it. I love dive bars. And old buildings don't bother me.

I read online that there's a museum in Pilsen currently running an exhibit on Frida Kahlo's contemporaries? That sparked my interest.

Thanks for the help!

[napalmmk9.livejournal.com]

Now, as for the apartment coming up for rent in our building:
Cats okay, but I have a not-well socialized dog, so dog and cats should not be mixed, ever. The landlord has cats and there's never been a problem, we're careful and conscientious. Roughly 700 sq. feet, hardwood floors throughout, good closet space, two bedrooms -- one small (but you can fit a king-size bed in it), one a good deal larger than you'll find in most Chicago apartments. There's a laundry machine in the attic, although it's occasionally broken, so there are laundrymats within easy walking distance.

The best bit: we have a yard. The house sits on a double lot, so there's a side yard, and there had been a coach house in the back for years before it fell down, so we have all that room in the back now, too. We've put in a large vegetable garden (like fresh herbs, tomatoes, fennel, garlic, root vegetables, beans, squash, cukes, etc? All you can eat, come harvest) and a whole bunch of flowers. We've done a lot of work on it and are quite proud of it. Proud enough that it's where my wife and I married each other last september. And we'd love help working on it! Although of course that's not a requirement, it'd just be nice, and maybe it's fun?

The house has a kind of community feel to it. There's me and my lady, and the landlord on the top floor. The open apartment's in the middle. We get along with and hang out with the landlord on a regular basis. She's in her mid-30s and this is her first house. It's all very friendly, and nice. It's worked out very well for us.

For the past two years the middle apartment has been rented by a pair of idiots from Omaha who do little other than bitch and whine. I am glad they are leaving. They're nice enough, I s'pose, but man, I'm not going to miss them. I would love to get someone smart and fun in that apartment, and moominmuppet's endorsement carries a lot of weight!

Let me know if you have any more questions about Chicago, and I'll be happy to help out. If you haven't discovered the Chicago Reader just yet, it's a godsend for apartment hunting.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

That would be perfect if I could afford to live alone in it. Or, if I could find a decent roommate. My budget is about $500-$600.

Thanks for the suggestion about the Chicago Reader. I'm bookmarking it.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I forgot to add: the garden sounds wonderful.

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

I thought of a new question! I'll be visiting in one week and have lined up some viewings in west Pilsen (Cermak and Kedzie). I'm curious though if there are parts I should avoid for safety factors. A brief google search has made me rather cautious.

[patentpink.livejournal.com]

Hey, cool!

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Sarah!

[leveldeaded.livejournal.com]

Hi Lady! I like your username! I live on the Northside and speak highly of it...Napalmmk9 is a close friend, and their house is TREMENDOUSLY wonderful, and if you can move in there, go for it! I have several friends on the northside, the bike lanes are better, the streets are more smoothly paved, but I still go down to Pilsen to mingle with my crew there...and it's awfully close to my job, too.

So hopefully we'll all meet soon!!
Cheers!

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

And how far would that be from UIC and what's the rent like? I like the idea of good bike lanes!

[leveldeaded.livejournal.com]

My place is unusually cheap for my neighborhood (Lakeview aka boystown)...my man and i have a 2 bdrm that's just $900 with $100 parking. Usually a studio here is that much, 1 brs are 1200, 2 brs are 1400+. ooh, speaking of which, I need to pay rent!

UIC from where I live (Clark and Belmont, to be specific) is 6.3 miles by a good bike route that involves only two bad intersections. It's not bad. From the Pilsen place UIC (well, the medical campus) is less than a mile. The main campus is further from Pilsen and easier from my house, it's on Halsted, the north end of which is close to me, and which has a bike route the whole way.

mm...let me know if you want more details. Cheers!

[burnout-ohio.livejournal.com]

That sounds very cool, but definitely like I would need to find roommates to live with. What's the area like in terms of movie theaters, bars, grocery, etc?

Thanks again for the information!

[leveldeaded.livejournal.com]

There are all sorts of bars everywhere, a great movie theatre (Century: http://chicago.citysearch.com/profile/11273273/) down the street, and two decent grocery stores (one expensive and gourmet, one the standard decent fare with discounts) in walking distance.