by Tom Tolan – Part 6 of 6 in a series
The truck’s engine started one more time, and the marchers walked down Bremen Street, making their way between humble Polish flats and duplexes. Parents and children came out on their porches to watch in the chilly, late-afternoon sunlight. The marchers sang, “Siempre, siempre, es hermoso vivir, si aprendemos amar” — “It’s always beautiful to live, if we learn to love.”
by Eryn Moris / photograph by Peter DiAntoni
“I have this stereotypical Catholic guilt like ‘You should be in school, you should be working a straight job, you should get married and have a family,’” he says. “I always have that on one shoulder and then on this other one, ‘You know you should get in a band and book some more shows, call in sick, have a hangover and play that show.’ It’s always this push-pull thing.”
by Kevin Flaherty
Perhaps it is only fitting that Kellner Greenhouses, an oasis of green amidst an urban neighborhood, sits squarely in the Riverwest neighborhood at 3258 N. Humboldt Blvd. After all, Riverwest is a neighborhood of contrasts: luxury condos co-exist with urban poverty; bungalow and duplex residences abut gritty machine shops and heavy industry; and small retailers like the Riverwest Co-op and Kellner reside blocks from the corporate monoliths they compete with like Jewel-Osco and Wal-Mart.
Onstage, the rapport between the musicians is such that the different instruments meld together with ease; the band plays as one with no apparent effort. Solos are traded seamlessly and crescendos and changes in tempo are executed in perfect unison. Most importantly, everyone looks like they’re having fun up there, and the mood is infectious.
News briefs for Riverwest and surrounding environs… June is a month of controversy! A furtive, anonymous person has charged the Riverwest Currents with “censorship.” The River Neighbors Association is trying to muscle the Riverwest Neighborhood Association into changing its name. RNAmail members are pondering gentrification and dog poop. And the Brewzerkus was jailed in St. Louis. CASH has only begun to fight freeway expansion….
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