I recently discovered that the Chicago Reader has a website. This alt-weekly was my favorite newspaper growing up. Many an after-school Thursday I would pick up a reader and head for the Why Not? cafe on Belmont and Seminary for a junk salad, 3-4 cups of coffee and a half a pack of cigarettes.
Ahhh.... youth.
Anyway, this week's Reader has an article about a sweetheart deal that would have the Chicago Park District lease a sweet piece of Lincoln Park real estate to the very posh and very private Latin school for a soccer field of which Latin will have exlusive use.
Lincoln Park High School (my alma mater) features prominently in the piece - a Chicago Public School, LPHS uses adjacent Oz Park for their athletics. There isn't really a defined soccer field and the patch of park used by LPHS' soccer team features ankle-breaking craters and a manhole cover that is itself covered with a piece of green carpet. As the piece says, LPHS players share their field with "the football team, softball players, dog walkers, Frisbee throwers, nannies with baby strollers, pot smokers, you name it."
Naturally, community activist types are questioning the Latin deal, particularly the part that gives Latin exclusive use of the soccer field during the times of day/year that any other school (especially the unwashed public schoolers) would want to use it.
Interesting stuff. The private school kids get the lakefront playground while the public schoolers get a dirt pit. Will Daley let it go through?
