Will tents again be erected by bums and boozers in Loyola Park?
Yesterday, The Bench photographed a sophisticated tent that some bums erected on the pier at Loyola Park Beach at Pratt Avenue.
Is this a harbinger of things to come as the weather gets warmer? Or is it just more of Alderman Moore's "big tent" philosophy?
"If the tent cities return," Gordon said, "well...." he trailed off, exasperated. Indeed, many residents of Rogers Park will be upset if "Joe Moore's Tent City," as many here call it, returns to the park along Lake Michigan on Chicago's far north side.
The blue tent was sturdy, holding up against steady, near-gale force winds from the north. Loudly flapping, the tough blue plastic tarp was secured with a number of ropes and wires, tied to the pier's railings and to stakes pounded deep into the sand.
Like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, the tent stuck out like a sore thumb. Like a Wright house, it was drafty and chilly. Like a Frank Lloyd Wright house, it had been built by people who did not give a rat's ass about what the neighbors would think about the structure.
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The officers obviously (a) don't know this pier or the people who fish from it and (b) are not fishermen themselves.
"Just some fishermen who left their crap on the pier," they radioed in,"get Streets and San over to clean it up."
If the officers had been fishermen, they'd know that nobody would fish from that point of the pier, with dry land on one side and about six inches of water on the other.
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If they knew anything about this pier and the people who fish from it, they would know that fishing is done only from the very end of it.
The tent remained on the pier overnight. Is it still there?
SEE UPDATE 4/16/08
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