(what we) hold up (for)

For the past three or four weeks, 3 classmates and myself have been engaged in the project of exploring a block in the Chicago neighborhood of Uptown.



We had to write a paper on it for the class, and I was purposed with capturing the feel of the block--a more literary endeavor, rather than the traditional research style of the rest of the paper.




I don't think we notice as much of our surroundings anymore as I think we could.

To begin with, you have to take the El to get there. Don't forget that you'll have to append a solid 25¢ to your $2 fare—there was a CTA hike recently. Get on at Foster, or Davis—you have to go to Howard and transfer: the express doesn't stop at Lawrence.
At Howard, stand on the platform till your Red Line comes in. Watch the competing skylines fly by—Jarvis, Morse, Loyola, Granville, Thorndale, Bryn Mawr, Berwyn, Argyle, until the Aragon hoves into view and you're there.
At Lawrence, turn left. While the northern side of the street looks fair, the southern side seems to have fallen into some sort of disrepute. Record all the things that you notice: Chase Bank, abandoned lot, dilapidated housing, Heatland Alliance, public clinic, public clinic, public clinic.
The neighborhood is clean-swept but suffers from too many populants: the streets are filled with people going nowhere, doing nothing—permanently waiting. The northern end of the block is dominated by an obsidian edifice—The Institute of Cultural Affairs; while the southern end is home to a shining glass and steel apartment complex. In the middle, sits a glittering mosaic—created by local youth—that serves as a hope of a middle ground.
There are so many people, but at the same time, the street is empty—the men and women on the block are standing in large clumps in only two or three locations. These clumps expand and contract like jellyfish, darting out tendrils and collapsing in again.
The block seems more a service center, and less a living place: the projects conspiring against you with their bleak neo-brutalist prison style drawing permanent bars through the air.
Everyone is citified, in the ways that you've always been taught by Hollywood to fear: people roaring at one another across the street; a zillion colors (of skin, or clothes, or nail polish, or hair); mock battles occurring all around you—this is vibrancy, this is the diversity that your university pays lip-service to.
This block, for all the problems you immediately notice, for all the needs that Uptown Ministry, Alternatives, Inspiration Café, Sarah's Circle, Heartland Alliance point out to your eye, is alive.

please don't plagiarize--i share my thoughts to the marketplace of ideas because i hope that other people will be inspired to do so as well (well, mostly because i hope people will be inspired to think). plagiarizing is completely antithetical to that. and i'll cry.

this has been a stick up of your internet usage