Records & Real Estate Podcast
From Clarinet Rivals to Cultural Chroniclers: Mark Guarino on Chicago's Evolving Music Scene and Urban Tapestry
Remember those battles for first chair in the school band that seemed like life and death? Our latest episode takes that competitive spirit to new heights as we sit down with Chicago's own Mark Guarino, tracing our shared roots from clarinet rivals to carving unique paths through the world of music and journalism. We share a laugh over past musical skirmishes and revel in the rich tapestry of Chicago's dynamic music scene, from the folk and indie of yesteryear to today's alternative country and Americana beats.
Venture with us through the storied streets and parks of the Windy City, where each corner hums with a melody of memories. Mark opens up about the hidden history of country music in Chicago, bringing to light the unsung heroes who've strummed and sung their way through the heart of this metropolis. We get real about the perils of urban development too, reflecting on how it reshapes not only the skyline but the creative lifeblood of our neighborhoods.
Wrapping up, we cast a critical eye over the city's political landscape, examining the performance of recent mayoral leadership and pondering Chicago's future as a potential haven in a climate-challenged world. It's a journey not just through the streets and sounds of Chicago but through the pressing issues that will shape its destiny. Join us, and let the nostalgia, the insights, and the sound of the city resonate with you long after the final note has faded.
Have someone you think should be a guest on this podcast? Let us know! Email your suggestions over to: karen.sandvoss@berealtygroup.com, andrew.wendt@berealtygroup.com
Connect with Karen and Andrew at Be Realty: Be Realty Group
Email the Show: karen.sandvoss@berealtygroup.com
Guest: Mark Guarino, Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival
Link: The Hideout
Link: Jaime Wyatt
Link: The Interview Show
Link: Loyola Park | Chicago Park District
Link: Fitzgerald's
Link: Bistro Campagne
Link: ratboys
Remember those battles for first chair in the school band that seemed like life and death? Our latest episode takes that competitive spirit to new heights as we sit down with Chicago's own Mark Guarino, tracing our shared roots from clarinet rivals to carving unique paths through the world of music and journalism. We share a laugh over past musical skirmishes and revel in the rich tapestry of Chicago's dynamic music scene, from the folk and indie of yesteryear to today's alternative country and Americana beats.
Venture with us through the storied streets and parks of the Windy City, where each corner hums with a melody of memories. Mark opens up about the hidden history of country music in Chicago, bringing to light the unsung heroes who've strummed and sung their way through the heart of this metropolis. We get real about the perils of urban development too, reflecting on how it reshapes not only the skyline but the creative lifeblood of our neighborhoods.
Wrapping up, we cast a critical eye over the city's political landscape, examining the performance of recent mayoral leadership and pondering Chicago's future as a potential haven in a climate-challenged world. It's a journey not just through the streets and sounds of Chicago but through the pressing issues that will shape its destiny. Join us, and let the nostalgia, the insights, and the sound of the city resonate with you long after the final note has faded.
Have someone you think should be a guest on this podcast? Let us know! Email your suggestions over to: karen.sandvoss@berealtygroup.com, andrew.wendt@berealtygroup.com
Connect with Karen and Andrew at Be Realty: Be Realty Group
Email the Show: karen.sandvoss@berealtygroup.com
Guest: Mark Guarino, Country & Midwestern: Chicago in the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival
Link: The Hideout
Link: Jaime Wyatt
Link: The Interview Show
Link: Loyola Park | Chicago Park District
Link: Fitzgerald's
Link: Bistro Campagne
Link: ratboys
Welcome to Records in Real Estate, a podcast about well records and real estates. You'll be entertained and informed as we explore the intersection of these two worlds through interviews with Chicago's most interesting and successful people from both industries.
Speaker 2:That was Andrew Wendt and I'm Karen Sanvoss. We are Chicago Real Estate Brokers, property Managers, avid Music Lovers and your hosts of Records in Real Estate. Hi, karen Andrew.
Speaker 1:We talked to your friend.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:From back in the day.
Speaker 2:My longtime acquaintance, mark Reno, all the way back to kindergarten. We go back Nice.
Speaker 1:So how did you find him? Or think that you know, determine that he would be a good guest because he was a great guest.
Speaker 2:He was a great guest. I reconnected, I believe, through this book, but now I'm trying to figure out how I even heard about this book that he wrote, which is fantastic and that we talk about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just a fascinating guy Chicago historian, lover of music.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a journalist, journalist, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so he knows a lot about the city and the history of the city and he loves this city and the changes that he's seeing. You know sometimes break his heart a little bit, but, man, he is somebody who is keeping the history alive, especially through this book.
Speaker 1:Which is so important. We'll let you listen to our interview with Mark Guarino.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Karen, we're here with Mark Guarino and you guys know each other from way back in the day. Huh.
Speaker 2:Way back when.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's right Back when we were single digits, that's right Fellow clarinet players. That's right. That's right Back to kindergarten.
Speaker 2:Did we go all yeah?
Speaker 3:I guess right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a nice little rivalry, clarinet rivalry.
Speaker 3:Clarinet rivalry.
Speaker 1:That's right, was one of you first chair and one of you second chair, I don't remember.
Speaker 3:David Jenkins was always first chair, david Jenkins, was still in contact with.
Speaker 2:Where are you? Oh, that's right.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:How's he?
Speaker 3:doing. He's good. He's a pilot for United Airlines. No way, yeah, amazing. I'm going to see him in a week.
Speaker 2:Tell him. I said hi.
Speaker 1:I will, oh yeah, I will Definitely the clarinet plane pilot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:He should.
Speaker 3:He was effortless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so he was always first chair.
Speaker 3:I know.
Speaker 2:And then Mark and I, second and third just back, and forth I remember in my mind you used to challenge me all the time. We had challenges, so you had to go in front of the teacher and play a passage and whoever played it better got to sit in second chair Okay, and I remember that. I was second and third all the time Back and forth. In that I was like can he just stop challenging me Like I don't care. That's my memory.
Speaker 3:It's funny because I don't have any memory of challenging that at all. But I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right, I'm not challenging that memory.
Speaker 1:But I think you're absolutely right that.
Speaker 3:I probably did that, and who knows why. I think I would probably like to sit next to Dave, that's probably right.
Speaker 2:Everyone wanted to sit next to Dave that was probably.
Speaker 1:Are you competitive by nature?
Speaker 3:I'm only competitive on maybe certain things. I think I come from journalism and I think daily journalism and that is kind of a competitive market way back. I don't know if it is anymore. But yeah, especially what I'm doing now, it's like you always want to be the first and you want to get it, you want to have something exclusive. So in that world it's kind of drilled into me.
Speaker 1:But my personal life?
Speaker 3:not really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how does that?
Speaker 3:Clearly I've changed Apparently what I was saying. Yeah, I was like I was very Machiavellian. I was like we'll have that second.
Speaker 1:Well, nothing's as important as first or second chair, or third chair.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the band, the great school band. We're not even talking high school or college. No, no, no. St Giles grade school band.
Speaker 1:That's where my band days ended. I was trumpet. I don't think I ever competed or got challenged.
Speaker 2:No one ever challenged.
Speaker 3:No one ever challenged. It's probably an underachiever.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know sometimes it's good just to be bad at something. That way You're not challenged to play in front of the teacher.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 1:So journalism you trained in journalism or got a degree in journalism?
Speaker 3:Actually, I am completely untrained. I've never taken a journalism class in my life.
Speaker 3:I didn't go to journalism school and so I always tell kids that in a way, I feel like we live in this society where you have to let go and you know if you want to do something you've got to. There's something to go do, to go become it, and but in journalism, no, I went to Loyola here in Chicago and my I like to write and I think I wrote a few things for our high school paper, but that was how. I wasn't on the staff of the paper, but it really was. When I went to Loyola I just joined the school paper because I wanted to write and I liked the people who were. It was sort of my little tribe, you know. I liked the people who were on the paper and I just kind of then just got into it and I learned by just doing it.
Speaker 3:And and and that and that transferred once I got out of school and started getting jobs and everything. So yeah, that's kind of an odd thing because I didn't go. You know, it's right down the street from Northwestern's journalism school, which is very expensive and prestigious school, and I didn't ever think of going there.
Speaker 1:I actually have the opposite story. I am a journalism major.
Speaker 3:Okay, interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:Never you know, wrote a lick for any journalist to endeavor.
Speaker 3:In fact I was a communications major, but I remember after the first semester I dropped it because I realized that I felt like in communications, like a lot of it was just self evident to me like what communicate? Like radio, it just seemed like the history, and so I one thing I needed to learn. I knew that I just didn't read a lot, and so I became an English major and so I just felt like I just wanted to be exposed to more stuff. So I was. I ended up being an English major. Nice yeah.
Speaker 2:The communications thing I remember correct me if I'm wrong back in the day you were kind of a ham radio guy.
Speaker 3:You got into that for a while it wasn't ham, you're right, it was great I've gotten really into like the history of radio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, you're like the shadow or the old time, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I collected a lot of those show I just got. I was fascinated by like the golden age of radio in the 30s and 40s and 50s and when I was in grade school, right, and there was a show called those Are the Days which is still broadcast on, and actually this summer they had me on to talk about my book, which was like wow, it's like full circle. It's a different host but he kind of took over from the guy who founded in the 70s. But yeah, for whatever reason, like I just kind of hooked into that, I was fascinated by it. And then as a kid I was reading. I just read all these books about like the history of radio and all the early television and yeah, I got real. It's funny, I got heavily. I remember when I went to high school. I remember telling myself in high school okay, you need to stop this, you need to be like a normal person and go like I do remember because I had just stopped it.
Speaker 1:You know, I stopped, like collecting Cause.
Speaker 3:I thought like you need to be into, like what my peers are into, like MTV and stuff.
Speaker 2:Because I was like this is going to alienate you from having a social life. Well, it's funny because I, when I thought about you doing this, I was like and I did think I'm like that's kind of weird Like why is he into old timey stuff?
Speaker 3:Like this was the, you know, the 70, at least in the early 80s, when you know.
Speaker 2:Madonna and what?
Speaker 3:yeah, right, right, exactly, and I was. I was aware of that too, and I didn't make the distinct decision to like put that away and now go join the rest of them.
Speaker 2:Luckily I had no social status to like ostracize you or anything being you know and nor did you hold a grudge for all of those challenges from back then.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, you can have a challenge after this I feel like clarinet's in the car. I'll be the judge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that I will not win. At least you have a clarinet, so you would win. Oh, you guys win, oh would win.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there you go, and that does it, folks. Thank you for joining this episode of records and real estate. We'll be here. So you know you have a new book. It's probably not new to you. You've probably been working on it a long time so it feels probably an old hat to you. But it kind of combines Chicago. It combines music and journalism and obviously it also combines history, which you've just admitted. You have a love of history. So we talked about your sort of your journalistic roots and your love of history. But you know where does your love of music come from?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I think it even goes back to those days in grade school where I just kind of grew up around music and learning music and you know so music was always around and I think it had. So I think it was definitely rooted in that. But I know, you know it's tough, you know I found like I was really interested in the people behind the music as I got older. I think that came from doing the journalism.
Speaker 3:And when I was at Loyola I would go. You know there'd be little things around the neighborhood I would go cover and I think I think it kind of goes back to sort of like I was really interested in the history of music too. I think it kind of went back to even like the radio stuff like where does it come from? And once you start looking back at you know you can look at something that's happening currently and then once you start unpeeling the layers, everything's rooted in something behind it and clearly that's true of anything in our society, but with music, you know, it goes, it goes, it gets really complicated and really deep, and I just found that really fascinating.
Speaker 3:Nice, and then, secondly, you know we live in a city where clearly the musical roots go very, very deep and they're really interesting, and I found it, I found that just a really rich source as a journalist to write about, because I became interested in like not just kind of dwelling on the past, but what's about the past is happening today, where can you see the past today, and so that kind of that's just really rich source of stuff to write about.
Speaker 2:Nice, yeah, love it. So, speaking of things that you can see today, what are some of the landmarks that stick out to you, especially like around writing this book?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so well, you know, I always became interested in like places, that like where people performed, you know, and that's really difficult because in a city like Chicago is talking to realtors the property values change, they become more valuable and what was there?
Speaker 3:You know, there's this tension between, like, the rising property rates and what was there is, you know, there's a story in the book that I think that has continued from beginning to end that the neighborhoods are constantly changing I'm starting going back to the 20s and because the city is constantly changing and so you have these things that bubble up and they like there's these. Really it creates these kind of organically, creates these like really incredible scenes that couldn't have ever been planned, and then they kind of disappear and then the same thing happens, like over here in this other neighborhood, and that bubbles up and it's amazing for a couple of years and then that kind of dissipates that sort of the continual story of it and I think that sort of tracking that was kind of really, really interesting to me. But also a lot of the same reasons why something would begin and something would end were always the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, economics, economics. The city of Chicago always had a really antagonistic approach to small business owners, especially in music clubs. So a lot of these club owners would just get harassed by the city of Chicago for various reasons and then the clubs would shut down and boy, that's something that just. I first experienced that when long before I wrote this book, in the 90s, there was a club on Lincoln Avenue called Lawn Jacks and that was a rock club that was really like. And again, another continual story through the book is that, like, scenes happen around specific places For whatever reason there's, there's a small club somewhere, there's an own couple owners who are passionate about what they're doing, and it becomes a magnet for all these artists to show up, they get to know each other, they collaborate and then great things happen out of it.
Speaker 3:And that kind of was like Lawn Jacks. It was a woman owned club and for about 10 years they hosted all these kind of underground bands, kind of indie bands that were kind of on their way up. But it became a place for musicians to hang out because and to watch other musicians, even if they weren't playing, and then they would meet each other. So the band Wilco, that was really their kind of clubhouse for many years before they became very well known. But what happened with that club is that it was in the middle of Lincoln Park was rapidly gentrifying. They had a lot of problems with like a big condo building opened behind behind it. Condo owners started complaining about the noise, of course, of course, and so the city inspectors would come in and give them tickets and essentially they were like this isn't worth it anymore, so they closed and then that was the last music club on that corridor. Lincoln Avenue had a bunch of music clubs dating back to the 70s, so all that is kind of gone.
Speaker 3:What are the cross streets there. If you start like, really, where Lincoln Avenue begins, all the way up to like Fortin, all the way up to what's past Fortin, right Wood, around there, yeah, that that long stretch Okay, that was in the 70s that was a long stretch of, like folk music clubs. There was a bluegrass club that was called the Clearwater Saloon there's a photo of it in my book because that's our right where. You know, old town, yeah, that's inherently connected to. So it started with the Earl of Old Town, which is on Wells, right across from Second City, which is now the Bar Corcoran's, and that in the 70s.
Speaker 3:It's a similar story. I'm a passionate guy named Earl Pionkey who was a real Chicago character, just loved folk music and that at the time, you know, coming out of the old town, school was right down the street and so he opened this. He was a, he was not a musician but he was a bar owner and he opened this bar and he knew nothing about music but he would just have put a. He just constructed a little stage and then in the 70s it became like a ground zero for the singer songwriter scene that developed out of it. So that's where John Prine was discovered Steve Goodman and a whole list of other people and then if you go up Wells Street and then you take a left on Lincoln Avenue, it that it kind of had this ripple effect that other clubs started opening up on.
Speaker 3:Holsteins and somebody else's troubles Clearwater Saloon is talking about. The Kingston Mines was not a blues club when it started. It actually was a. It was a folk club and a theater right where the Brown Elephant was. I don't even think the Brown Elephant's there anymore at the corner of Lincoln and Fullerton.
Speaker 3:So, and then down Wells Street there was a club called the Quiet Night, and so Wells Street had a couple of clubs too, and so it's sort of like, as property values go up, then all of these clubs kind of shut down and they move somewhere else. You know, they're constantly moving. The people who started these clubs may retire because they're older, so somebody else may take it up. So it's this constant moving organism in the within the city.
Speaker 1:Is there a? Is there a? So I mean, I guess what you're saying is there isn't one, but would, if you had to, pick, a sort of a central hub where music and people are collaborating around music in the city right now? Is there a place, or?
Speaker 3:I hate to say there isn't. There really isn't. And I think that has to do with what we're talking about, in that, like the city has become almost like it's just over the top in terms of it's just not affordable and also a lot of artists like have are they're kind of moving out too and so there's not like a central corridor at all. Like like the 90s, wicker Park was kind of a place that had. I mean, there's a whole, it's like you know it's talking about lounge acts with all this kind of well, it was indie rock bands but my books about kind of country alternative country bands, but then there was all this like commercial rock scene happening and that was really focused on Wicker Park and their clubs there.
Speaker 3:And also the thing is the double door and the other thing that's kind of central to it is like the musicians have to live somewhere too, right, and so, like they lived in the neighborhoods, they could walk to the play, you know, they could walk to where they're playing or cafes and hang out. So there was a whole thing, and then that bubbled over to Logan Square and that's kind of where the scene was and that's kind of gone too. So it's sort of like yeah, it's been kind of decentralized anyways, yeah.
Speaker 2:Do you think it will coalesce at some point into something, or is that just the?
Speaker 3:nature of the beast? I don't know. You know, I think that you know, the music business has changed so much that, and that's really affected the live music business there's still a lot of clubs to play. I think that there's also like alternative spaces too that have kind of popped up that people now are used to going to, that are not club, they don't sell liquor, but the basically that kind of the house concert model, but it's in an art studio or it's in a somebody's loft or like a brewery or something. So I think that, yeah, I don't know if it'll ever come back, if I think Chicago is an odd the way it's shaped, so odd because of the lake. So everything is inherently you have to go west for anything.
Speaker 2:You have to go west or south.
Speaker 3:You know you can only go north. At a certain point that ends, and so you have to go. So how far west can people go?
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 3:It's kind of like, and then there's southwest and south side and everything like that. So it's kind of a weird. The nature of like, how Chicago is shaped, is kind of like, kind of affects what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Well, your book I don't think we've given the title is called Country and Midwestern Chicago and the History of Country Music and the Folk Revival.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love this book. It's so fun to read. I've bought a couple of copies for a friend Nice. In fact a former guest on the two dudes that own, is it Orbitz?
Speaker 1:Orbitz, orbitz.
Speaker 2:I brought them one oh nice Thank you. You know, loved the history of stuff. I was like, oh, this is going to be right up their alley. Yeah, it reads like a novel. Yeah, I can't every time, maybe it's because I know you. When I read it, I'm like I can't even imagine what it would have was like to write this book because, the amount of detail and tracking of people and the depth that you go into.
Speaker 2:I mean you know letters from the widow of somebody you know, like that played in 1932 and talking how did you, how did you research this book?
Speaker 3:It's a tough question to ask because it kind of was sort of like this thing that I didn't really necessarily know about going into it, and so I had an idea of like the outline for the book, you know. So I kind of knew like here's probably what I'm going to cover, but as you get into it it's sort of like you have no idea, like what you're going to discover. And people you talk to, people you know the journalism was a really good background because, you know, I one thing I liked, I liked interviewing people and so I liked hearing people's stories. So I already knew that I started in the middle of the book where I knew there were people who were still alive. You know the people. I figured the parts where everyone's dead. I was like I'll get to that.
Speaker 1:There's no real rush for it.
Speaker 3:So I was like I'll start where there's people still alive, and then people would turn me on to other people or tell me about things that I didn't I had no idea about. So a lot of it was like a learning experience for me because I didn't, and I think that's good. That's true of a lot of things where you don't know what you're going into, and so if it's a discovery for you, it's going to be discovery for the reader. If I knew everything, then it would be boring, I would just be transcribing Right. And so I had great conversations with people who I would learn about things. I would have to kind of stop and rethink what I thought. But the research, you know, I went to some of the obvious places to go see what people had, like the country music hall of fame or some special collections here and there. People gave me things there were. I just kind of stumbled upon some things. So it was kind of all over the place. It was sort of like a detective hunt in many ways.
Speaker 2:That's really cool and you do such a good job of honoring everybody that you mentioned in the book and there are thousands of people that you mentioned in this book, and it really, you know, every person in a small way contributes to this.
Speaker 3:This, you know, glacier of music throughout history and it's really cool you know I covered music for a long time. I was a music critic for a long time and I would go cover big things at the United Center and but then I was always interested in smaller things too. And one thing I learned from that experience and it was very humbling that, like the majority of musicians or music that's out there is made, is like that's 99 percent. The stars represent the 1 percent and I think people only know the 1 percent and because the working model for musicians is, in Chicago especially, it's really a working class model. There are musicians who, whose name you may not know, but they're making a living being musicians in.
Speaker 3:Chicago and I think that's an old story, and so I saw this book as, in a way, kind of like those, those are the people that tell the story of that of like of my book, and also like tell the story of books about the blues and the development of jazz and everything like that, and I felt like it was really important to focus just on those people than really focusing on anybody bigger, because I felt like that that's really, that's the undercurrent that keeps moving through all of these decades of the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And so because I'm sure a lot of people have covered the blues and the jazz. Not a lot of people covered the country.
Speaker 3:How did?
Speaker 2:that come to be.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, it was sort of that I couldn't believe. You know, when I was writing about music I would cover a lot of the stuff from the 90s. You know that was my time, you know so, and I was. What was great about that that decade was, you know, you always hear about the 90s Grunge Rock and all this other stuff, alternative Rock, which was all there and fine, but underneath it was this kind of like subculture of like alternative country and there were bands sort of rediscovering, who are like our age, you know, who are at the time, were in their 20s and discovering older music. Because a lot it was the CD era was reissuing a lot of stuff. It was interesting. It was a lot of different eras of like reissues that impacted generations.
Speaker 3:So you had all this music recorded in the 1920s and 1930s, maybe a little beyond, and you know, kind of the fundamental, like when recording technology was new and so people went out and recorded people playing on their porches, playing wherever, and so that's out of that. You had, like the Carter family and all these kind of pioneers of what we consider to be pioneers of country music, but then all that stuff went away and people forgot about that music and then in the 50s, the Smithsonian, a lot of small labels. They reissued all of it and so people in their if you're in your 20s and the 50s you just this is the first time you ever heard this stuff. It blew your mind and that impacted. Like Bob Dylan was one of those kids and he was really impacted by that early folk music and then that pushed things into the 50s or the 60s. You know that impacted that generation. So now you move forward in time and now you have formats change and in the 90s all the Smithsonian again and all these.
Speaker 3:They were reissuing all the stuff Robert Johnson and these kind of landmark box sets on CD for the first time and all the people from who were in their 20s then were really for the first time discovering Doc Boggs and Carter family and, like Robert Johnson, and were playing, wanted to play those songs and that impacted. And at the same time that was happening stadium country was happening at the very Garth Brooks and all that stuff and it was unrelatable in many ways to people who were just learning about country music. And so you had people who weren't necessarily from Nashville, they were kind of indie rock. Kids were playing that music for the first time in Chicago was really ahead of the curve of the Americana movement, because all these great artists kind of came out of that scene I was talking about and there were labels here and there are studios, and it was this incredible time and they kind of really really took off and radio stations, and radio stations were a big part of that.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so it was a really kind of boy, it was a really kind of creative, like explosion really, and I can only think of classified as that. By looking back at the time I didn't really realize, but then when it kind of like dissipated, I realized that was completely unique.
Speaker 1:Did you know you wanted to write about it at that time? Or were you just a kid? Well, I was. I had a job.
Speaker 3:I was a music critic for the Daily Herald. I got a job in 97 as the music critic. So part of it was I was just really into it and so I wanted to write about it. And the other thing is that there was an audience for it too. There were people going to these shows and who were excited about it, and but it came very organically. I was very unusual as someone writing for a daily newspaper in the suburbs to write about that stuff. It wasn't that those names didn't really become household names until about a decade later.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask. I mean, this is kind of an ironic question, but is there a band that somebody might know of that you're talking about?
Speaker 3:Well, wilco, of course, came out of that whole scene too, but, like Andrew Bird who's playing this week in downtown Chicago on Nico Case, the handsome family Ryan Adams was here for a bit. All of the you know, the Waco brothers, robbie folks, people like that.
Speaker 2:Who did the forward of your book?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was really grateful for him. It's a great forward. I got to get it. Yeah, he's a really recent and incredible writer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how did that come to be?
Speaker 3:I, you know, I've been interviewing him since the 90s so I kind of got to know him and I've written about him for so long and I wrote about him for the book and I just you know, I just asked I felt he was kind of a perfect, he was kind of like an archetypal artist for the book in that like he, he really knew the music really well at the time I mean still clearly. But his first record, which was like a 96 or 97, it sounded very. It sound that the instruments sound very traditional classic country but his lyrics had a very modern sensibility and very funny and witty and also he he knew the classical conventions of the Golden Age of country where he would just he had great like song lyrics, like the buck owns could have sing songly songs and he also had this like real punk rock energy to his live shows. It was, I mean, the first time I saw him. I didn't know who he was and I was blown away by this guy who had this. I'd never seen anybody who had this man at crazy energy.
Speaker 3:It was funny. And these songs that sounded like they were old songs but they were new songs and he didn't. And the one thing I liked about him was he never dressed like. He didn't wear a Western shirt, he didn't, like you know, wear cowboy. He just looked like a guy, just kind of like a Chicago guy, who walked out of a bar and just got on stage and just did all the stuff. And you know, and it was that, that's also what was great about him too, and so seeing him now he's this legacy artist, he's a great bluegrass player.
Speaker 3:You know, it was really great to kind of watch artists like him and many others kind of like get better over time, like develop his, really like develop their music and songwriting. So yeah, I just asked him. He said yes, yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1:Really great. So you probably don't remember. You know all of the articles that you've written and that sort of thing. But in just doing a little bit of research I went on your website, which is lovely and robust and like has seemingly most of what you've written. You know, I found a blurb that you did for the Daily Herald on a concert at the Metro of Empire Weekend. Yeah, like one of their first shows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think he's saying in the article that they went through all 14 songs that they had and we don't have anything else. So but I also thought that this was in. I mean, metro is obviously right down the street from our office?
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, Great, great club. So you know, you say in the article, these days it's all about media manipulation. The smarter you can make it seem like a band is famous, the quicker the band will actually become famous. Yeah, Is that still true of today? Is it like? Is it true more on sort of the is the onus on the band itself, just to sort of do some social media manipulation to like make themselves seem bigger?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I mean, at that point, you know it was, that was pre-social media, that vampire weekend phenomenon Actually, and there's nothing that band has turned. You know, it was fine. I think that that they were at that point. They were on, I think, covers of magazines when, right when they had their first record coming out.
Speaker 3:And I think that, like, what I was focusing on was the idea of hype and paid hype, and so they clearly had a machine behind them before they even right out of the gate. And so, like, why, all of a sudden, am I hearing about this band everywhere? I'm supposed to like them?
Speaker 3:It's because there's a lot of people behind it who are getting paid a lot of money to make sure you know that and so it's not like really organic is what I was kind of saying, and I think that one of the I think that is still going on I one of the problems of I don't know if it's really a problem, but if you it's a problem, if you think it is a problem, in that like you have artists who are kind of like thrust into the spotlight immediately but they have no experience, like they haven't really spent years learning what they do Right, and so it's like they are immediately playing large venues, I think of.
Speaker 3:Amy Winehouse as the tragic example of that, as somebody who was just immediately famous and but she had no, she never a lot of experience playing many years playing small clubs, and I think it really kind of threw her.
Speaker 3:And as we kind of move forward in music, as much more manipulation, you have artists who aren't necessarily in bands and they're recording music just in their bedroom on a laptop, and so it's much more artificially manufactured, that sort of live component is gone and they're just making tracks and uploading them to websites and stuff like that, and so they're not necessarily have any experience like I. You know, I guess I am a traditionalist and I think, like, your weight is valued to me by like, can you stand on the stage and convey a song or whatever you do to an audience who doesn't know you and move them? It's a very old, it goes back to the beginning of time, you know, and I think that a lot of people can create things on their laptop, but they don't have that other thing, they can't perform it live, or they. And so I think that definitely has become more of an issue, because the music has become broken down more of artifice.
Speaker 1:I guess Are there, you know? I mean we talked about some of the bands that came out of the scene that you sort of cut your teeth on, but are there newer bands that you think do a good job of conveying, you know, feeling on stage?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean there's yeah, of course there's tons of great bands out there. Who are you know playing every night? Who are you listening?
Speaker 1:to these days. I'm gonna rephrase the question. I've tried to really refine this question. I mean it really really throws people but I've moved from like what is your favorite band?
Speaker 3:Oh, it's funny because when people when they found out what I did, especially when I was doing it full time, they were like, oh, who do you like? And I would always go blank. You know, I have walls of music at home and I can go look at it, but I always go blank because I know that, like, whatever I say is gonna sound like I like Bob Dylan.
Speaker 3:Yeah just like you know and I. But I know there's stuff out there and I think, mike, I've never been a good person to like pull things from my brain immediately, but I know if I was sitting in front of all of it I could be like, oh yeah, this, this and this I really like, and also it changes too. I will go through these cycles. Like there's a singer who I really love named Jamie Wyatt from Sheila's in Nashville and I think she's on her third record and she's this like incredible singer and these records are kind of classic. They're kind of classic country songs but they're her second record. This is a record called Neon Cross that was produced by shooter Jennings, who's whale, and Jennings son and man, oh man. The songwriting is really good. She's a great singer and she's a great example of someone who just been like doing it for a lot of years, and so I really she's got a new record out that I've been really enjoying.
Speaker 1:See, that's, that's the answer we're looking at. Yeah, yeah, all right, good, good, so you know, it took me a little.
Speaker 3:I had to pause there for a second. I had to build up to it.
Speaker 1:My brain was like Well, it's funny because you know I should take some of my own realtor medicine. I mean that you know it's, it's told, it's taught to realtors and I subscribe to this that you asking somebody just for a referral is a ridiculous question Because their brain literally breaks just what you just did. You need to be specific, like is there somebody, is there a family that you know of through your kids t-ball class, that you know might be talking about moving or is pregnant or you know? So like you can kind of focus them on on a shorter or a smaller group of people, so that they can actually run through the Rolodex instead of just being overwhelmed by 500 people that they know in their lives.
Speaker 3:So I think also like I, I come from daily journalism where you work on something one day really really intently and you're the expert on it, and the next day it's gone and you're onto the next thing and you forget about it, and I think that's trained me to like. I'm always so, because I've been listening to Jamie White recently. She's on my mind but you know I would have to go back and go look like, okay, who you know who's on my radar here. There's a great band in Chicago. They just released a record, a new record called Rat Boys, and they are. They're kind of in the mold of what I'm kind of talking about. They're really young band and boy. Their audience is kind of really exploded. Cool, yeah, yeah, and so I really like them. Do they have any shows coming up in Chicago?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 3:I know they played few shows this summer. I think they seem to be traveling, going to Europe and stuff. They're really great.
Speaker 2:The Rat Boys, yeah, just.
Speaker 1:Rat Boys. Okay, yeah, Nice, I do really like it seems like there are more you know sort of current country artists coming to Chicago. I mean, a lot of them are playing at the Salt Shed, you know Tyler Childers, and it's nice to see that there are more, seemingly more sort of country artists.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's a product of kind of this Americana thing that you know a lot of the history record music is about creating genres and identifying genres and selling it to an audience and that thing I was talking about in the 90s it was called. It was called Alternative Country because it was considered an alternative to stadium country. That's where mainstream country had gone the furthest in the 90s. By that point it entered stadiums and that you know big kind of rock sort of show. So now you have this alternative country underneath it. It was really those two factions.
Speaker 3:And then, like a decade later, they started calling what was kind of alternative country Americana, because now bigger labels started signing those artists who are on these small labels, all this alternative country. Because the alternative country thing had recognized there's an audience out there for this music. So it was not being served, but now it's being served by these little mom and pop labels. So a decade later major labels are saying, okay, let's get a couple of those and let's actually get some of the same artists, let's just sign them to bigger labels. And now we'll expand this audience and that really so. Tyler Childers really kind of benefited from his career, benefited from what was going on 20 years earlier by this kind of development of this alternative Americana genre that now is sort of a dominant genre on country music today that Jason Isbell and everything and all those people really have roots in. It really goes back to the 90s Because all that music was being ignored by major labels.
Speaker 3:They just were really interested in this really heavily kind of pop flavored version of country music which is still going on for sure, but now it's sort of like there's this genre that's really identified. There's a major audience that could fill the salt show when these people come to town.
Speaker 2:Is the term Americana an old term or did somebody dub it, and if so, do you know who came up?
Speaker 3:with it. I don't, you know, the term Americana has been around forever just to talk about Americana culture or something. You know that, something kind of rooted in something old, you know old, that's very unique to American history. So the term's been around a long time but in terms of the associated with music is still kind of relatively new. And now there's an Americana Music Association, there's Americana Fest in Nashville, there's now a Grammy category, Americana category, and so, yeah, it's become like something that's it's a really, really big genre of music.
Speaker 2:I was just wondering if because you know there is always a thing that you talk about music with people, at least around here and in my life you know? What do you like to listen to? Oh, I listen to everything except country.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:And so country became this, I don't know, just kind of a bad word or something being for people in the North, I don't know. But now if you dub it Americana, then you know, right, it's cooler.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah it seems like there's more of kind of an urban sensibility to it and yeah, I know it's funny because it's just these genres become. They become empty after a while because country music well, what is country music? It's quite a lot of things to different people.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And you can't really pinpoint what it is. I think everybody can all agree what kind of classic country is you know? And but then after the 60s it just kind of splintered so many different ways. What is you know? And now it's a bunch of different things. So yeah, it's funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you talk about some of that in your book about the term country. You know it was like Southern or something here. I don't remember all the ins and outs. Well, it was first kind of you know when you go back, way back.
Speaker 3:You know the artists that are today considered pioneers of country music. That term didn't exist at all when they were around, and they were called the Hillbilly Music.
Speaker 2:Hillbilly.
Speaker 3:Music it was called Hillbilly Music, marketed as that, whereas, like black musicians were, that was being marketed as race records to black audiences. So you have the race records, hillbilly Music, and they didn't really know what to call it and basically they were just, you know, records with stringed instruments. Sometimes they would actually be called that, like voice and guitar, and it really wasn't those terms really weren't. You know, because if you think about it, the recording industry was still kind of an infant form too and they were kind of still the industry was still developing and figuring out like who's buying, who are auditing? You know, as also the technology started entering more homes, record players Like that was not, that was something only rich people had initially, you know, and so then it became much more of a staple of homes.
Speaker 3:The industry got bigger and there's demand for different types of music and so that's what kind of like the kind of the record buying Cause before you would just kind of like the record, you know they were almost like pieces of furniture, you know they would be in your living room and so what you were playing on it wasn't as important as just like the piece itself. It was kind of a novelty. So it, yeah, it's really interesting how fast. You know it's the same thing that we kind of look at with like technology today, with like streaming, is a new, relative, still relatively a new thing, and that's changed everything. You know, it's really changed how we get our films and television shows and music and everything, and there's that's kind of created the sort of like hyper categorization of media into our homes, and so it's like everything's a reaction to the technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, yeah. If you are interested audience in learning more about this, read the book. It's really cool.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do have one last question, and then we'll take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit more about Chicago. I found your book on Amazon. I have it in my cart, but do you know, and I did stop at, I think it's called Roscoe Books, Roscoe, but is there a local bookstore where you know there are copies?
Speaker 3:still Sure, there should be in Chicago. I mean the, the like the bookseller on Lincoln Square on a bridge books, and Lakeview, the book stall up in Winnicka. You know these are places I've done events at or they've, or the what's the city lit books and Logan Square's great, they're really great bookstore. They've done a lot of my events. So all the kind of independent booksellers in Chicago should have it or the order it for you if you don't have it, and then it's online.
Speaker 3:You can buy it from the university of Chicago press website their catalogs online or from Amazon.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, cool. Well, in the show notes when this airs, we'll make a make sure there's a link to where you can buy it, To the book to where you can buy it All right, let's take a break, hey Karen.
Speaker 2:Mark. Nope, your name is not Mark. Who are you, andrew?
Speaker 1:Do you have record to share with us?
Speaker 2:I do Nice, I do. I'm excited about this one. It is an album called the Returner.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:By Allison Russell.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I literally just started listening to it yesterday, okay, but found it because I read a weekly magazine called the Week and they've got a little blurb about music and up and coming artists and whatnot. So I check them out.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I've got four and a half stars or something which is not usual, and it is a delightful record.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 2:I wanna dive deeper into it. Allison Russell is contemporary, she's bluesy, she's. There's a kind of a disco song there's I don't know it's upbeat, but the messaging is very real. She talks about what it's like being a black woman in America. Because she talks about the history she mentions, you know, all sorts of things that are culturally relevant and issues and whatnot, without being laden down by oh God, this is a political record or anything like that it's very enjoyable and even if you wanna just put it on the background so yeah, I won't say much more about that because I don't know too much about her history or anything, but check it out. Allison Russell's the Returner, the.
Speaker 1:Returner. Great, I'm gonna look forward to checking that out, thank you. So we're back with Mark Guarino, and this is Records in Real Estate. I'm not gonna ask you a bunch of real estate questions, but you know we do often talk a lot about Chicago on our podcast and lifelong Chicago in.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I grew up in Oak Park along with Karen. Yeah, and been in the city I have since I was 18. Yeah, nice yeah. First apartment was when I was 20 in Rogers Park, cool yeah.
Speaker 1:I lived in Rogers Park yeah.
Speaker 2:Rogers.
Speaker 1:Park is underrated. Oh yeah, I love it. So what is I mean? These are difficult questions meant to be rapid fire. Difficult because your brain's not gonna land on something. What's your favorite thing about Chicago?
Speaker 3:You know, I think the character of Chicagoans I think is one of my favorite things. You know I think that it's a city that doesn't really take itself too seriously. I think that's embedded in the character of the city. And then the history of Chicago, I think, is really fascinating. The more you learn about it you really learn how Chicago plays such an important role in just the history of the country and its location and everything like that. It's really kind of endlessly fascinating to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about your favorite venue?
Speaker 3:That's a tough one, but I would have to say maybe it's not because there's a bunch of them. One of Metro is like that I went to first met. I first went to Metro probably when I was 20. And it's just. You know, it feels like home going there. It's such an important venue, not just for Chicago but for, you know, the rest of the country in terms of bands playing there, feeling like they really made it when they made Played Metro.
Speaker 3:But I think the other venues is for me, Fitzgeralds and Burwin. In the 90s for me A lot of the music I talk about in my book really was playing there. Bill Fitzgerald and his family brought up a lot of great music from Louisiana and Texas and all over the place to play and they were really only playing Fitzgeralds, old Cajun bands and Texas singer songwriters, and so when I went there in the 90s I was, a lot of my friends went to go get advanced degrees and I was feeling like I got my PhD at Fitzgeralds. I go there all the time and I learned a lot. Yeah, and that's a great example of great clubs. If you have a great someone curating the music, you can go there any time of the week and you know what's going to be there. It's going to be really interesting and important and I feel like that's the place for me.
Speaker 3:And then the other venue is the Hideout. It was again a club. That is a great music club but also a great community room too, so they have events that you're not going to find anywhere in Chicago. I'm doing it, I've done events for my book there where we've done focusing on different aspects of the book and I don't know. It's the type of place you can only the hideout would be the only place to host something like that and open their space up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've seen, I think it's called the interview show. Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah that's the hideout staple.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, what is?
Speaker 1:that about. It's kind of like a late night talk show format, but you know and live, yeah, live, every like Chicago.
Speaker 3:I mean, he's had everyone, from mayors of Chicago to musicians, to artists, to boy. You know, ron, the gamut have been out there.
Speaker 1:I know, his name is Mark too, right, mark Bezer? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Mark Bezer. Yeah, oh well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really. I don't know, is this still?
Speaker 3:going on. It's still going on, yeah you should.
Speaker 1:Definitely you'd, karen. It would be center cut. Karen San Vos, I think. All right. Do you have a favorite restaurant? You get out to eat much.
Speaker 3:I do, boy. Now that's the tough one Beester or Champagne. I know I'm saying it wrong, it's a French restaurant. Lincoln Square is probably one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:Nice. Somebody else just told me about this place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's on sunny side, off of sunny side, on Lincoln Avenue. Okay, I really, really love that place. It's a great restaurant yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm supposed to go there tonight.
Speaker 2:It all comes around. That's very I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I know I'm saying the name wrong, it's but it's yeah.
Speaker 2:It is. It looks like Champagne though. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're supposed to go there. We rescheduled, but yeah, I'm supposed to go there tonight. That's funny. Yeah, that is so funny Funny how the world works. Do you have a favorite street? That's really an interesting one. I think Like it could be like a western or like a section of. It's definitely not western. It's probably one of my least favorite streets because of traffic and everything I would have to say.
Speaker 3:You know, one street I always loved was Glenwood, because it was just kind of this lovely street that goes through so many neighborhoods and that's a great one. I guess I'm being heard in Northside Centric, but I think I was. I always loved Sharon Road too, because Sharon Road starts around here and goes. But it was this grand road that when I was in high school, when I was in college, sometimes I would get on Sharon Road on a Sunday afternoon and just drive all the way up to, like Lake Bluff. Oh, I've done that so many times.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's a great and you can. That road really was built for the advent of the automobile too. You know it really was built for you see photos of like old cars and they would just it before highways. It was here on the road Right, and so I have a fondness for that.
Speaker 1:I told earlier this year we had two 20-something like early 20-somethings working for us on our commercial division and one of them was just starting a relationship and that was one of my, my suggestion. You probably thought me old and funny, but I'm like just take her on a drive up Sheridan Road. You get glimpses of these parks, you get glimpses of the water, you see these magnificent houses. You can take her up to the Botanic Gardens or whatever, and so, yeah, it's just a beautiful, beautiful drive. Yeah, absolutely, chicago is made up of a bunch of parks. Do you have a favorite park?
Speaker 3:Well, I do. Yeah, I have a couple of them. One of them is Loyola Beach Park, and the reason I love that is that it's very long and it's very wide and it's kind of still kind of undiscovered in that people, because it's the only beach and park that's not on the water, that's not cut off by Lakeshore Drive and so it's hidden. You can go down Sheridan Road and not know it's there, and when I was younger when I discovered it I was really fat. I just couldn't believe you could walk at the end of the street and then drop down on sand and I take my dog. I still take my dog up there all the time.
Speaker 3:Because it's the greatest mix of people too, I think. A lot of like you go to a lot of the parks below the lake and it's like everyone looks the same, they're all the same age, and up there you have people speaking Russian, you have Africans, you have a lot of old people, you've got a lot of young people. It's really like the greatest mix of people that I can't think of. Any other place in Chicago that really fits that. So you go there on a summer day and it doesn't feel packed at all, and so it's really a very pleasant place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's one of the reasons I like Rogers Park so much is because just this melting pot of different cultures.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, it's really. I feel like all the rapid fire gentrification that happened kind of ended. It ends up in Rogers Park. It hasn't really become like it's its own unique. Yeah, it's almost like its own city. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the real estate joker you know is Rogers Park has been up and coming for 40 years.
Speaker 3:Well, that's it, 40 years it always, always.
Speaker 1:But yeah, you're right. I mean, and a lot of developers in their early 2000s converted out these apartments and I bought a condo up there which is still in existence, but a lot of them failed. Because you know, if things are going so well that you're that these developers are now looking for inventory up in Rogers Park, you know that it's probably coming to an end and you should get off that train Right.
Speaker 2:Because, it's too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're, you've. You've missed the window. Yeah, what is your least favorite thing about Chicago?
Speaker 3:Let's see what's my least favorite thing. Well, traffic is one. I think the well I'm on a real estate podcast. You don't want to hear my answer, wow.
Speaker 1:That's fine, okay. Okay, I'll tell you.
Speaker 3:I think it's been overdeveloped and I think that the overdevelopment has made it unlivable in many ways, to be really frank, and I think that you might have. And it started happening in the late 90s, but now it's been like you have like a single family home. That's a perfectly fine single family home. It gets demolished and they build like a six-flat bomb or something like that, and those come with six cars and and then this happened under the date a ROM administration almost hugely, where you have like a building gets torn down. They build a giant building and every single one of those has a parking, has a car, and so now what's happened is that it's tougher to get around the city because there are more cars, there are more people, you have neighborhoods that don't feel human level anymore, and I think that has really destroyed the character of a lot of these neighborhoods. And so what has made Chicago great was the character of the neighborhoods. Now you've got, you've got your you are literally not you, I'm the general you.
Speaker 3:It's being stripped out. And so now what do you have left? Blant, suburbia, and I think that is a really overall problem in Chicago, and you have strips that just look like Gulf Road and Schomburg and there's nothing about Chicago that feels. And so my book is all about, like all these great things that happen in Chicago and all these, you know, and it's a culture book, I get it, you know, but that stuff is all going to disappear because of what's been happening. The overdeveloped Chicago People are going to realize well, we're so great about living here in the first place, we forgot you know, because it's gone.
Speaker 3:And that, to me, is something that I've written a lot about, and it's really I and I'm not the only one it just seems to seeing that happen is is, I think, also it makes me really sad, too, really sad, sure yeah Sad at the point of finding somewhere new, or maybe.
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, I think that you're seeing it already. You're seeing people moving out of Chicago. You care about like, oh, you know we're moving. People are moving out of Chicago because of the crime. People are moving out of Chicago because, like, they can't afford to live here and so a lot of artists are living, you know they're. It's weird, this is reverse migration of people moving to cities outside of Chicago. You know we were talking about earlier. There's really no central corridor for stuff anymore, because it's been, because you can't do it anymore. And I think that is sort of the real unspoken problem that Chicago is going to be facing is that it's cultural economy. You'll always have the fine arts, You'll always have nonprofit theaters and ballet companies and because that's funded by the government, you know, and so that that'll always be there and museums. But what you're not going to have as much is that, like the art galleries, the music clubs, it's going to be really difficult for those to hang out anymore, because the city's has been overdeveloped, Is there?
Speaker 1:a way to work, to bring those back.
Speaker 3:I, you know I'm not smart enough to know the answer to that in terms of like city. You know, I think it takes the city, it takes political will to recognize that. But the problem is the money is so good that it's just tough to say no to any of this stuff that I think Lincoln Yards. It's like the worst example of what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3:I think that is what. If that fully goes through, it'll, frankly, destroy the north side of Chicago. You're creating a city within a city and you're building all these made the plan is to build all these major mega developments and a short blueprint, or a short, you know, geographical blueprint. How is that sustainable? How is that livable? How is that going to be? How are you going to be able to get around when you're adding a city within a small, within a neighborhood in a city? It's not.
Speaker 3:But the people who are behind Lincoln Yards add a lot of political, you know, power with our past administration and so I think the pushback to that was people. There was a lot of despair over that when that was going to happen. I went to a couple of those public meetings and I was amazed by people just were in despair over it, but nobody was listening to their voice because we already saw what happened with Bucktown and Wicker Park. Those were vibrant neighborhoods and those were architecturally incredible neighborhoods in the history of the city and people bought those buildings and brought them back to life and it's great. You know, this vibrant economy and those neighborhoods those are now. You know, developers came in, they raised all the houses. They built these super-sized mansions with gates around them, which might, by the way, is very why are you living in the city with people to gate around your house, I don't know why Kind of goes against the whole nature of being in a city, living around your neighborhoods, but anyway.
Speaker 3:But that neighborhood has become just kind of like there's nothing special at Wicker Park anymore, just a bunch of tourist trap restaurants and there's really nothing. You know, there's a lot of people coming in from the suburbs and tourism, and there's nothing really. It's like rush street, you know, and there's no real small business owners there anymore. It's a lot of go-down daim and it's all franchise shops, right. And so what do you want in your city? Do you want your city to have, you know? Do you want to look like a suburb? Do you want it to just be Southboard? It's a great example of that Franchises from left to right.
Speaker 2:The same ones that are in Schomburg.
Speaker 3:So what do you want your city to be? And I think those are the questions that people have to ask themselves. But you know, I know I'm going on a long rant to your question, but I think that is a it makes me it's. I'm not someone who lives in the past. I really believe that things change and you try to roll with it, but that's the one thing that I think is really making Chicago. It makes me very sad for Chicago.
Speaker 3:It was the hyper development of Chicago and how Chicago, the North side especially, has become just like suburban hell.
Speaker 1:Is there a neighborhood that still sort of maintains its character?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, of course we talked about Rogers Park because of the fact there's no money to be made there.
Speaker 1:So Rogers Park has been. You know it's a residential neighborhood. Capitalism is a problem.
Speaker 3:Well, no, not really capitalism, but I think it's because it's a better, it's a. It's a highly dense residential community without a lot of commercial corridors, and I think that's what. That's what's kind of prevented that from being always taken. It's just so dense. How do you you?
Speaker 3:know you can't you can't tear down that entire neighborhood, but there are neighborhoods in Chicago that literally they've been so. So, anecdotally, I used to live on Damon off Irving Park Road in the very late 90s and that was right before all this was starting to happen, and I remember that there was, you know, beautiful little two flats that are mostly still there, little bungalows, and you know it's like I love you're talking about your favorite streets, I love Damon. I love Damon. Because of that it felt like a little small town. It was like so Chicago to me.
Speaker 3:And then what happened was they start tearing down most of Damon and so they start building. They tear down like the beautiful little grandma's bungalow, art Deco bungalow, and build the shoebox three flats. And those shoebox three flats were built so poorly they don't even like they're falling apart. Now they were falling apart five years after they were built and they're ugly and they're and nobody there wants to go in and raise their family there, so they're made for flippers. And so now you have a neighborhood that was.
Speaker 3:People live there for generations. Their kids went to school down the street, they went to church over here, they built, they opened small businesses around there. It was a classic Chicago neighborhood and now you flip that neighborhood for just real estate flippers and is that good for the city? Is that good for like, why would anybody want to live there? And temporarily, right, and so I think that to me, is a. I found that really, when I first saw that happening, I was like it, just it was. I was in shock and but it's just. It made me really sad. It's just like you can't have a neighborhood just built just for investment. You have to build neighbors that people want to live in for a long period of time and they don't want to live in those neighborhoods because, or you know, clearly people are living there, but it's like, but are people going to live there to stay?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a transient, yeah, everything becomes transient.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly so.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking about, you know Chicago and progress. You wrote a article that was what's the word, I don't know. Something is published. Published, yes, they have to be published. In the Washington Post when former mayor Lightfoot was sworn in and it was a hopeful article, that's. You know. Your quote is when Lightfoot is sworn in Monday, the outsider will usher in an era of hope in the city long run by a political machine. Right? Do you still feel like her Mayor ship did? That ended sort of the political machine is that?
Speaker 3:is that what we're seeing next in Brandon Johnson or Well, I think it was true that she came out of the. She was, she really was a reformer and I think that's what got her to office. People and I talked to voters, people voted for her because they were very sick of and I think like the Lincoln Yards example I'm talking, people are just so sick of these insider deals of and they were just like can we just get somebody from the outside who recognized so, like with the Lincoln Yards thing, she would talk about that like that's bad for the city. But of course when she got in she didn't do anything about it. But I think two things one is that she was hip with COVID and that was that hurt all anybody who was mayor of any city Anywhere had a real difficult time with that. And then you had the social or the rest of George Floyd's order in 2020.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those two things were really the death knell for any big city mayor, because you know, these are major disruptions to any city life. But I think that the way she handled that at the towards the end of her term, she came very paranoid and she became very stubborn. She wouldn't listen to people's all those things that I think the office kind of Corrupts some of these people. They get in, they just get overwhelmed and they can't, and so their instinct is to Lash out at critics, and I think people saw that. I think it made her seem very small, and so I think that so she was tossed out of office.
Speaker 3:The new mayor come in and he had the same thing of how he was gonna be an independent. He's only been mayor for about a year, so there's not much of a track record. I think it's been really an unimpressive track record so far. His proposals are Very naive. He wants to the city to run a grocery store instead of. That to me seems like Not really. The way you solve a food desert is to have you know the city. Chicago is now gonna.
Speaker 3:You know food business you know, and again to the food business and to deal with all the graft and corruption that would Inevitably be part of that. The immigration crisis that's happening in the city. We have people sleeping on sidewalks outside police stations in December 15th or whatever the day today is yeah, and he's completely failed in that point and he's had since his beginning of terms to seriously handle it. So I don't know I mean, I don't know if he's from the quote outside as well. I think that you need to have some kind of. I think we live in this era of just. You know, there are a lot of problems in society, and so the natural thing is select. Somebody can promise you a lot who has no experience in government, no experience working with different people, no experience in creating policy, and that sounds really good, but the what I think we're starting to learn is that you kind of need some of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah and you need to be a serious person. But sometimes being a serious person is not that sexy or fun, right, and so it's. So you're seeing that at the federal level, you're seeing at the local level. So I mean, I hope that I wish him well and I hope he's got three more years, so I hope that things will, you know, he'll kind of find a groove.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you should be hopefully learn on the job. I think you're right. Yeah, you know, mayor Lightfoot was unable to do that because of all the tumult that was happening.
Speaker 3:I think that she was. I think anybody in that role would have been just like roasted. But I think towards the end of the term she really proved she. She had a lot of gravitas going in and a lot of people riding a lot of hopes there, and then she just seemed very small at the end of it and she could have risen to the occasion a lot more, but instead she just she could not take any criticism, she just would. She seemed very reactive, reactive to things instead of leading, and I think people see that and that's why they wanted to change.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it's, it's pretty interesting, dynamic well, let's, let's end on a sort of a positive note. Karen, do you have any?
Speaker 2:I know I'm Just so forlorn doing it's one of my channels to bring the room down. Well, my, my hopes for Chicago and I do believe this is that, because of climate change, people are gonna flock here. It might make exactly what you're talking about with over development even worse, but Chicago is gonna be the place to be. Yeah, fresh water. Yeah, we are not on fire, we're not on the coast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm curious to see what's gonna happen when everyone flocks here. It might be a nightmare, but Eventually, I mean you know, hopefully they're.
Speaker 1:They're. I think there are there two neighborhoods. You know I live in Avondale. Yeah, avondale kind of is still, you know, kitschy and has, yeah, a Bug museum and a horror museum. That is in those two flats that you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a guest on early on who has a record store in Portage Park. You know it takes a while for these things to develop.
Speaker 1:But eventually, you know there is a neighborhood that is affordable to artists, that they all sort of right right too, and you know, I think, I think it's possible that that that happens because there's a lot of space, right, it might have to keep going west, right, right. But then you know, as what's happened, you know it, neighborhoods become more affordable too because they they become less popular. You know, I mean, you've kind of seen ups and downs with Lincoln, like the stretch of Lincoln in Lincoln Park, you know when, right, there was a lot of hipness to it and now it's a wig shops and regs, stores and stuff, right.
Speaker 1:Right right right, and eventually I mean landlords just have to deal with the fact that nobody really wants those types of stores and they're, you know, in their neighborhood, and so maybe they'll Cut their rates a little bit to make it a little bit more affordable for people to come in. But right what, you know what? What is possible for Chicago's music scene?
Speaker 3:Well, you know I think that it's kind of what you're saying I think that having music in neighborhoods that normally didn't have music before, and so you're seeing, in places like Avondale already, you know, there's music clubs opening there that just didn't exist before.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm and hopefully it'll happen in place like Portage Park and Jefferson Park, and so I think that, as artists, just kind of go out and find spaces that are more affordable to do things in. That's just gonna. It's gonna widen the net. It won't be consolidated. It's the ones that used to be the north side of Chicago, everything east of Western, you know, up to the lay, up to the Evanston, from Old Town. That was the quarter you know that was like a real that no longer is gonna exist. Yeah, I think now it's like it's spread out more. So I think that is kind of what things are gonna look like, spread out both north and south and west.
Speaker 1:I think yeah it does sound lovely to have a central spot to go see a bunch of music in the night, yeah, but here we are hopeful that that can happen again. Yeah, never know you know, if not, we'll just jump it in uber. Well, mark, wonderful to talk to you. This has been an outstanding conversation, karen, thanks for having me, you know, reconnecting with mark and yeah, so fun to see you.
Speaker 2:Here it's been decades, yeah.
Speaker 3:I have to go see you play piano.
Speaker 1:I don't write on you know, when we have, maybe on the on the February 15th, when we have a listening party, you guys can bring your clarinets.
Speaker 2:That's a nice suggestion, but I think that I think that you know on paper sounds good, but in practice I feel like, as the night goes on, and if you, you know, we imbibe enough, yeah, those that might happen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Never say never. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thank you, oh, no, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I Andrew.
Speaker 1:Yes, Karen.
Speaker 2:I have a very serious question for you right now.
Speaker 1:Mmm.
Speaker 2:You ready.
Speaker 1:Give me a second.
Speaker 2:Okay, anyway, yes, all right, shoot, I'm ready. Are you ready? Okay, why journalism?
Speaker 1:Like why journalism for me, like what a major in journalism are you?
Speaker 1:specifically, why should the world care about journalism both? Mm-hmm. Well, how much time do we have? We talked to mark for a long time because he was fascinating, so I will try to keep this short. I love writing. I you know, as a as a kid, as an idealistic kid, I wanted to change the world and I thought I would do that through my Dean, which I think is you know, maybe, why anybody gets into journalism or writing, maybe not, I don't know, but I'm. Interestingly, you know mark talks about that. He was doesn't have any journalistic training. I Went to school for journalism at Indiana University and, after taking a class called media ethics, which is essentially just a clever title to alert Journalism majors that Journalism is a business, and that you're going to be writing for a Business and you know you always have to like kind of keep that in the back of your mind but not be compromised by it.
Speaker 1:And, and you know again, I was 17, 18 years old and so idealistic and once I discovered the journalism was a business, which of course it is everything. Otherwise, you know, the system collapses. I didn't want to write for anybody anymore and so I added English as a second major and Thought that maybe I'd be a writer someday. Maybe I still will be a published writer. I should say I, you know, I just I don't know. I just love writing and I love thinking about things and expressing opinions in more of a long printed word format.
Speaker 2:Do you feel that this? I Usually don't do a follow-up question, but in this day and age, I am afraid to write anything. I'm also not a good writer and I don't I find it torturous. But I'm afraid to write anything on any social media platform because of the fact that my opinion is going to be, you know, denounced or attacked or whatever, no matter what the opinion is. And so I'm just like I don't want to have that Discussion, I don't want to have that argument, I don't care, and so I tend not to say things and I, which is a shame Because my voice isn't being heard right, but how do you feel about that when you put something out into the world?
Speaker 2:because you're doing a newsletter right now? We use letter.
Speaker 1:I'm doing a newsletter. I mean I really send it to our company and might start sending it to our clients, but I do post it on my website and you know, then I do link to it on social media. Yeah, I mean, I think, in order to you really have something to say, you have to sort of vanquish that fear. Otherwise, you know you are, you might as well be Writing for a corporation who wants you to write there. You know, be a right there shill, that's the right term. I don't know that's right term. Anyway, you know so.
Speaker 1:So you're you know if you're gonna be compromised, you're gonna be compromised, and so if you have fear about what you're writing, you're compromising to that fear and you're falling into a trap that you know are the construct of our society has set for you, and so you need to write fearlessly. I'm not important enough to get canceled, but I don't think my opinions would necessarily Get me canceled. But yeah, I mean, I, I took me a long time to to to get to a point where I I Without worry, but I think that is the the process of becoming a writer is Mostly to Vanquish those fears so you could write without a filter.
Speaker 2:That's great. Yeah good answer, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Why journalism for the world. I mean, I you know, even with all that I've said, it's the only way that information gets out there, and a lot of it is certainly compromised these days, but it's in, journalism actually was formed out of propaganda, and so that's not, that's sort of inherent within journalism and it's incumbent on us to Cut through all of that and kind of find the truth, yeah, which is hard. Again, because journalism is there to sell papers or, you know, create viewership, to sell advertisements, I shouldn't say sell papers.
Speaker 1:So yeah and so that's part of the reason why I gravitate to literature is because I feel like an author who's writing about a period of time might be a little bit more true to those sort of prevailing feelings that are happening at those times amongst his cohorts which, or his or her cohorts.
Speaker 2:So so you know like painting a more clear picture of the era, the time, other factors going into it? Yes, just the headlines.
Speaker 1:Yes, as opposed to reading what the history books tell us, because who knows who wrote that and for what reason? Yeah, totally All right, Thanks yeah this has been an episode of records in real estate. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed it. Today's episode was brought to you by be realty. Be where you want to be. Be realty.