Food metaphors for Logan Square

Today’s Gapers Block “Detour” features a piece on political newcomer, Green Party candidate, Logan Square resident, Jeremy Karpen’s quest to represent the neighborhood in the Illinois House: “Campaigning for Change in Logan Square.”

The race promises to highlight many of the neighborhood’s economic, social and political complexities.

And indeed the article highlights such hot-button topics as the Mega Mall and the G-word (gentrification).

Paul Levin of the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce compares the neighborhood to a layer cake, and the 2005 closing of Abril Mexican Restaurant is juxtaposed with the 2005 opening of Dunlays on the Square:

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Urban laugh track

Logan Square inversion

Logan Square once again features prominently in the national news media in the August 13, 2008 issue of The New Republic, (not sure if it’s) on newsstands now (but it’s definitely on-line). In the featured article, “Trading Places,” author Alan Ehrenhalt writes:

…The massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end.

Chicago — including specifically Logan Square — is much used as an example of demographic changes causing an inversion of the traditional American inner-city poor/outer suburb affluent, pattern of settlement.