As one who currently lives and works in Uptown, I'd like to say that lots of these areas look familiar today, that we were wise to stay out of the neighborhood as much as possible 40 years ago, that all of us have many stories we could tell about Uptown. I was on the development team that visited this building to decide whether to recommend accepting this gift. I remember Phll Townley, Fred Buss and I and I'm no sure who else came to look at it and decided it would be a usable gift. I remember that the 100 of us who didn't have small school children moved in from the alley during a night, bringing our personal belongings and our mattresses only - We intended to sleep on the top of desks in the various rooms on all the floors in the building and use filing cabinets for dressers.. I remember that the restaurant in our building at the corner of Lawrence and Sheridan was closed and we used that as our kitchen and dining room. I remember there were only two showers in the building one on 4 and one on 8 so we named one "men" and one "women" and waited in line to shower. There was and still is a shower in the basement which some people used. I better stop this but I think it would be great for several of us to look at this man's book and bring back our memories of living here in the 70s. We always felt lucky to have a parking lot. Marge Philbrook On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Shelley Hahn <shelley.l.hahn@gmail.com>wrote:
Jann, I had exactly the same reaction to that photo. It was not about race for me at all. I saw all the pimps and pimp-mobiles around Uptown back in the day ... and that is what this guy reminded me of. I have a very bad feeling about what might have happened to that little girl and her mother. I hope I'm wrong.
Shelley
On Wed, Dec 4, 2013 at 1:27 PM, <LAURELCG@aol.com> wrote:
I'm grateful to Shelley for sharing this. Now I realize how little I really got out into the neighborhood
These pictures are amazing and so is the text, written by a good-hearted man with an artist's eye.
I want to make one comment. The author called both white and black people's visceral reaction to the image of the black man hugging the little white girl racist. I disagree. The creep factor isn't racism. The expression on the girl's face makes me think he was a pimp. The picture nauseated me. Learning how much trafficking goes on has made me more aware.
There are many stories in those pictures,aren't there?
Thank you again, Shelley.
Blessings, Jann McGuire
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