About a year ago, the Sun-Times ran a story with a ridiculous headline that proclaimed Rogers Park to be the "Venice Beach of Chicago."Wrong, way off.
Rogers Park is the Mayberry of Chicago. It is a backwater neighborhood, avoided or ignored by most of the rest of Chicago, especially the local mainstream media. A small-town mentality keeps Rogers Park and its "leaders" in a not-ready-for-prime-time state of mind. ("Oh!" you scream at your computer screen, "how can that be?!?!")
Politicians who understand the game of politics public life realize that harsh criticism is just part of the terrain they choose to inhabit. Here in Chicago's 49th Ward, however, we have petty amateurs such as Jim Ginderske, an unlicensed electrician who is busy muscling committee chair positions away from other self-proclaimed, unelected "community leaders."
Imagine Mayberry's Howard Sprague with Machiavellian fantasies, and you get Jim Ginderske. He recently exposed himself in a July 2nd interview with the News-Star newspaper. He was asked about a community group and their involvement with the currently controversial attempt to install a Boys and Girls Club in the soon-to-be-opened Gale Community Center (emphasis added):"I would have invited them, but I didn't think they were interested in representing the community," Ginderske told the News-Star, "They've taken every opportunity to be as critical of the alderman as they can. That's OK during an election season, but when the election is over it's time to work together and they've made it clear that they don't want to work with anybody."
In other words, "I'm in charge. Shut up and do as you're told." Ginderske believes that between election cycles we should all just shut up and follow orders. This, then, is the small-town mentality I referred to. Moore allows this in part because it is expedient and in part because he is deeply in debt to Ginderske politically. But, imagine a senator or the mayor of a large city saying that criticism between election cycles is not acceptable.
Meanwhile, the mean-sprited "mayor of Rogers Park," 49th Ward Alderprince Joe Moore, hides from the mainstream press as much as possible. He prefers the comfortable environs of the hacks who frequently pretend to interview him on local cable access shows. Moore is still not used to the Internet, much less the no-longer-new phenomenon of web logs ("blogs").
Even most of the so-called "artists" here are back water hacks. Oh, I'll earn the wrath of a lot of hacks with this, yes. But it's sadly true. Somehow, by some grand mistake, Rogers Park has gotten a reputation as an "artist community." There are some good, productive artists here, to be sure, but not enough for the neighborhood to have a rep as some kind of artist colony. (I produce more visual art in one week than most of the "artists" in Rogers Park produce in half a year. No brag, just fact.)
Moore's office staff frequently blame local bloggers for problems in the neighborhood, even though we simply point out the problems. One example: Anne Sullivan, a Moore staffer, recently told a group of people that bloggers blew a police investigation. This came as a surprise to 24th District Police Commander Caluris. It came as a surprise to the bloggers, too, who had no idea what she was talking about.
We'll continue to examine the small-town, back water, insular, not-ready-for-prime-time atmosphere of Rogers Park in the coming months.
