12/20/2023 0 Comments 55 st johns highland park![]() “Though we come from different backgrounds, I’ve always felt welcome. He was born in Mexico, and for years now, has trained many children in Highland Park. ![]() ![]() Mike Guadarrama is co-owner of Pound4Pound BoxFit, a boxing gym on the north side of the city that he opened with friend Genaro Mendez in 2012. “And it’s not lip service it’s also somewhat the history of the place, too.” She noted that Andres Tapia, who grew up in Peru and served as Highland Park’s housing commissioner, was elected to the City Council last year, the first for a Latino here. “But there has been a push to bring Latinos onto more boards and into city positions,” Hinden said. Her staff, many Latino, some of whom grew up here, are not shy about noting the racism they occasionally experienced in the local schools. “There is so much right in Highland Park, but it’s also not an easy community for everyone, because of haves and have-nots,” said Bobbie Hinden, director of Family Focus Highland Park, which works to help low-income families become better included into the community. ![]() When residents mention Highland Park’s “diversity,” they often mean Latino. Highland Park, however, is 90% white and 9% Latino, according to the U.S. Here is where the majority of Latinos live in Highland Park, not far from Highwood, which itself is home to a Latino community. To the north, the city shares a border partly with Lake Forest and partly with Highwood. Its western border runs alongside the North Branch of the Chicago River the lake is a natural border to the east. Highland Park, which occupies 12 square miles of Lake County in Moraine Township, is shaped like Michigan - like an oven mitt. Heidi Smith, executive director of the Highland Park Public Library, moved here with her husband 16 years ago and they bought on the south side of town, “but also the cheapest, smallest thing we could find.” Being Highland Park, they also moved in next door to an architect, who helped them expand. Plus, we’re not fancy! There are little, teeny homes here, too!” It suggests we’re protected from the world. Besides, who cares how rich people are if they’re being shot at? They’re people. Census, the median home value is $535,000, though even a cursory glance at real-time real estate prices shows way higher. Here, Tom Cruise, left alone in his parent’s palatial home, danced in his underwear for “Risky Business.” Here, John Hughes returned often for WASP-y images of comfort in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” in “Sixteen Candles.”īut it is affluent, I say. Ironically, America has known a version of Highland Park, without knowing what it was looking at. But unlike other rich suburbs, it was also established partly as a refuge for marginalized - namely, Jewish - families who weren’t welcome elsewhere on the North Shore. Like many rich American suburbs, it was established in the 19th century as a retreat for the business class, a refuge from the messier, growing metropolis within commuting distance. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)įirst off, with 30,000 residents, this is not a village but a small city, at least three times as large as its neighbors. ![]() People place flowers on July 7, 2022, at a memorial at the scene of a mass shooting that killed seven people and injured dozens of others during the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. As a Lake Forest resident once explained to me: Though at Highland Park, differences stand out. Trace a finger on a map, moving north from Evanston to Lake Bluff, along the Lake Michigan coast, though Winnetka, Kenilworth, Lake Forest, you pass from one manicured bedroom community to the next. Indeed, before national media portrayed it as a gentle Mayberry, international press fixed affluent to its name and front pages somehow imagined a utopia - “Nowhere is safe,” screamed one Washington Post headline - Highland Park had long been lumped in with the rest of the North Shore. It is a town shouldering some misconceptions - of what a Midwest suburb looks like now, and what sheltered still means.ĭespite appearances and that smell of fresh-cut flowers wafting through its neighborhoods, this has never been a monolithic place. Pretty wealthy, just not as uniform as some of the suburbs that surround Highland Park. And Highwood, to its north, has a poverty rate only slightly above Chicago’s. But actually, Glencoe, to its south, is much richer. On the Fourth of July, after a gunman killed and wounded dozens during the holiday parade here, social media was alive with expressions of shock and grief, outpourings of sympathy and surprise at where this happened ― but also reminders that Highland Park is one of the wealthiest suburbs in America. Highland Park, located on the North Shore of Chicago, sits between the suburbs of Highwood and Glencoe. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |