My favorite all-time Mexican restaurant is Azteca Tacos in Pilsen, 1836 S. Blue Island Avenue, Chicago, IL 60608, 312.733.0219
I’ve eaten there many times over many years. I was still in high school the very first time I ate there. My father and I went to the Fiesta del Sol when it was still on Blue Island Avenue. Rather than eating at one of the vendors from the fiesta, we went to Azteca Tacos and ordered our food through the window with wrought iron grating as we stood on the sidewalk.
It was kind of like eating at a restaurant in México. Authentic Mexican food is served by authentic Mexicans. The food is so delicious–¡Riquísima!–and they serve you large portions. It’s like being in México. Street merchants walk in to sell you everything from chiclets to blankets. Once an elderly man came in with a boom box and a book with a list of songs in Spanish. I picked two songs that I recognized and he sang them for us. I paid him $10 and he left the restaurant with a smile.
I like going there with my friends because it’s a nice place to hang out for a few drinks. Granted, it doesn’t look like a luxury restaurant, the seats in the booths are worn down a little, and the bathrooms remind me of México, but the food and the ambience make up for everything else. You have to go there at least once in your lifetime!
When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time in Davis Square Park in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. The park is located between Marshfield Avenue and Hermitage Avenue, 44th and 45th Streets. There are larger parks in the city, but when I was five, the park was huge.
My mother always took my brothers and me there to play whenever it was nice out. Basically, if it wasn’t raining, my mother would take us to the park to play no matter how cold it was. I loved going down the slide, which was the biggest slide I had ever seen! All the kids said it was the world’s biggest slide and I believed them. Come on, I was only five years old at the time. One day, I fell of the top of the slide because one of the kids told me to slide down one of the supporting poles instead of sliding down the slide.
When I was too afraid to go down the pole, he demonstrated how I should go down by doing it himself. Well, my legs didn’t wrap around the pole exactly right and I fell for what seemed an eternity and landed on my right arm. I cried because I was in so much pain! My mother came running over to see what had happened to me. She took my brothers and me home immediately. She massaged my shoulder, but I kept crying.
She called a friend of hers who immediately came over. She looked at my arm and shoulder, and then boiled some herbs on the stove. She then rubbed this pungent concoction on my shoulder and arm that made me gag and massaged me forcefully. I remember crying even more while she did this. Actually, I remember feeling much worse after her “cure.”
Davis Square Park had a field house where we would go after school in the fall to play floor hockey and in the winter to play basketball. In the winter, they would hose down the baseball fields so we could play ice hockey. Every day after school, I would play hockey all afternoon and evening long. I just loved playing hockey. I would have been a great hockey player if it weren’t for my one weakness: I couldn’t skate very well! However, I was fearless. I turned out to be a very good goalie. As long as I was standing in front of the net, I could block slapshots with my stick or chest, and I could catch the puck and give it to one of my teammates. My team usually won because hardly anyone ever scored on me.
The park had a swimming pool where we spent as much time as possible, although that was extremely limited because of their schedule. For reasons unbeknownst to us, the schedule alternated between a boy’s day and a girl’s day when we could go swim without an adult. In the afternoon and evening, families could go swimming together. I could never go because you needed an adult to take you. My mother never took us because she refused to wear a bathing suit. In fact, I never saw her go in the water when we went to the beach.
Our time at Davis Square Park just flew by. When it was time to go home, my brothers and I wanted to stay. It seemed like it wasn’t until we were really having fun that my mother would decide we had to go home. But we had to go home, my mother told us, because they let lions loose at the park at night. She told us this every time it was time to go home.
At first, we went home without questioning her. Then, I started thinking about the logistics and safety of maintaining lions at Davis Square Park. But my mother always had an answer for every question I posed. “Where do they keep the lions?” “In the basement of the fieldhouse.” “How do they let them out?” “Through the steel plates that cover the basement windows.” “How come the lions don’t run away if there’s no fence all the way around the park?” “Because the love the park.” “What’ll happen if I don’t go home with you?” “Fine! Stay! But don’t come home crying to me when the lions eat you!” “Wait for me!”
I met Mayor Richard J. Daley at Davis Square Park for the first time. Our neighborhood had a slight gang problem, so Da Mayor decided to start up his own rival gang called the Centurions. In theory, the Centurions would provide an alternative to street gangs. All my friends and I joined even though we never even thought of joining a gang in the first place. But we had a lot of fun! We played all kinds of organized sports and sometimes we even won a trophy. I really loved it when they would load us up on a school bus and take us the White Sox games for free!
Snow was falling as I drove to school today. In all of my Spanish classes today, some students asked me if the exam might be canceled tomorrow because of the snow. Of course, there would be class tomorrow! This is Chicago!
This one particular student was sure that if it kept on snowing, I wouldn’t be able to get to campus and give the exam. However, in Chicago, a snowstorm is not merely a meteorological event. Every snowstorm, and other major climate changes, are political events of major consequences in Chicago.
You can trace this back to the snowstorm of 1979 that was improperly handled by Mayor Michael Bilandic. A few heads did roll after the snowstorm, including Bilandic’s. (I’m sure a few heads also rolled after the Chicago Fire in 1871.)
Luckily, I was living in sunny, southern California at the time. I know that even if we get three feet of snow tonight, I will be able to drive from my house in Beverly on the south side to UIC near downtown. Chicago will not be slowed down by such an insignificant snowstorm as that! Every time meteorologists predict even the remotest possibility of snow, city workers are on standby all over the city and even salting the streets before even the first snowflake has formed. Sometimes, there is more salt on the streets and sidewalks than snow. Yes, my dear students, I will be at UIC on time tomorrow morning to give you your exam. I love Chicago, the city that works (especially at Chicago overtime rates).
I saw the play A Steady Rain written by Keith Huff at the Chicago Dramatists Theater, 1105 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60622. I really enjoyed this play because we see many of the dangers of being Chicago police officers. The two officers, Joey and Denny, have been friends since childhood and now they are also partners on the force, so they work well together even if they haven’t forgiven each other for some of their childhood grudges. They undergo some amazing turns of events throughout the play. I must admit that I had heard some of these stories as a police officer. In fact, I could tell when partners had worked together for a long time because they would have an act all worked out that they would perform whenever they met rookie officers. They would tell wondrous tales of harrowing arrests and narrow escapes from gunfire. However, I doubt that either of the two officers could have experienced all of the events that Joey and Denny experienced in A Steady Rain. I would recommend this play because you can get a better idea of what it’s like to be a Chicago police officer.
I really love Chicago and I love theater. So, if there’s a play about Chicago, I will go see it. And that’s why I went to see Hizzoner, Daley the First at the Beverly Arts Center, 2407 W. 111th St, Chicago, IL 60655. Yes, gentle reader, there are theaters on the south side! I was lucky enough to get tickets because they sold fast, and all the dates were sold out almost immediately.
Hizzoner was written by Neil Giuntoli who also stars as Richard the First very convincingly. Neil is a talented writer and actor who captures the persona of Daley very accurately. So much so, that some of the audience members began speaking to him at times as if he were the actual Mayor Daley. Of course, Neil responded as if he were the actual Mayor Daley. And he was quite witty, too.
Growing up, Mayor Richard J. Daley was the only Chicago Mayor that I knew. Da Mare would show up to some of our park district events and we got to see him in person occasionally. So, when he died, I was a bit shocked.
As a bonus to seeing the play on the south side, I met some of my previous acquaintances. For example, I had gone to the birthday party of a Chicago police officer the night before and I met a couple at the play who was also at the party. I also met my former 18th Ward Alderman Thomas Murphy who is now a judge. I was pleasantly surprised that he remembered me because I only met him a few times. For Halloween, I would take my sons to Trick or Treat at his ward office, which was right next door to his law office. Once he told me, “Go next door. They have better candy there.” And when we went next door, he was there, too, passing out candy.
Chicago USA 