Lincoln Park has newly paved streets, organic grocery stores and salt on the sidewalks.
Humboldt Park has gaping potholes, crumbling corner markets and sidewalks slick with ice.
Trash is strewn everywhere. In the roads, on the sidewalk, in the tiny yards. People lurch around in half-aware states, wearing overlarge clothing. A constant smell of frying food and burning plant matter hangs in the air. Everything is gray. Signs are hand-painted and the words on them are misspelled. Intermittent gunshots.
You can stand on West Chicago and watch the drug deals go down. Puerto Ricans in windowless fifteen-passenger vans selling to stumbling black men in black jackets.
This is the wasteland. Just be happy you only have to look the other way when you drive through it, and not live in it.
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