“They should never have let her camp out underneath the tracks to begin with,” a white man on Nashita’s right harrumphed.
Nashita rolled her eyes. “Marshall, get a grip: the streets are the city’s responsibility. They’re nothing to do with Metra.”
On my own left, an older African-American man said that Hyde Park–Kenwood was an exclusionary community. He wasn’t surprised no one helped out Lydia Zamir before they knew she’d been famous. “This neighborhood likes to think they’re full of liberals but they’re as bigoted and hostile to the homeless as any other place in America.”
Mona Borsa couldn’t figure out how to get on top of the chaos. She paced up and down, whipping her pointer against her jeans. Not even her teammates were watching her.
Nashita shook her head. “Mona’s screaming herself into an early grave. And Curtis is just as bad.” She looked at her wrist. “I’m giving them ten more minutes before I take off.”
Someone in the lobby had handed me a SLICK flyer, which identified Mona’s brother officers. Curtis Murchison was the gaveller. The man with the charts and maps was Simon Lensky. Along with Mona, they were the elected unpaid managers of SLICK. The flyer also thanked Leo Prinz for his stellar work digitizing SLICK’s papers this summer.
I read about SLICK’s activities: a youth sailing program, group swims at the Sixty-third Street beach, fishing trips from the Thirty-first Street harbor, beach and shoreline cleanup days. The trio rubbed me the wrong way, but I had to respect their commitment to the part of the city I treasure most.
Leo finally grew exasperated enough to move some of Simon’s documents away from the table in front of him. The older man glared and ostentatiously picked up the pages one at a time to lay them into a squared-off stack.
I was calculating how much more time to give Coop when crowd attention abruptly shifted to the back of the room: Gifford Taggett had arrived. I’d never seen the park superintendent in person, but his horsey face was prominently displayed in every park building I ever went into. He had thinning reddish hair combed severely back over his ears; that and the horsey face made him look a bit like England’s Prince Philip. The superintendent was flanked by a young African-American woman and a Latinx man—more subtle than wearing a T-shirt proclaiming taggett supports diversity.
Mona and Curtis applauded enthusiastically. Audience members joined in, muted, wary, but conversations quieted. Taggett grinned easily at the crowd, shook hands with people on the aisle, stopped to talk to a few who apparently knew the superintendent well enough for him to linger with them, laughing and buffeting their shoulders before moving on.
A couple of older men were also with Taggett. They had the look of money, even though one, who might have been in his seventies, was wearing baggy khakis and a faded T-shirt. The other was about ten years younger and could have posed for the Wall Street Journal’s Off Duty section: what the wealthy board member wears to community meetings in the summer—linen jacket over open-necked raw silk shirt.
There were a couple of empty seats in the middle of a row. The Off Duty man tapped Taggett on the arm and gestured at the chairs. Taggett gave a command to his support team, who grimaced at one another but buffeted their way across people’s knees to carry the chairs to where the two men directed them—along a wall so they had an easy escape route if they became bored.
Taggett leaned against the wall where the moneymen were sitting, his acolytes still on either side, but standing upright: acolytes cannot slouch in public. Several cops followed Taggett and stationed themselves near the main exit.
Mona got things going, although not quickly: she needed Taggett to know how hard she, Simon, and Curtis were working, and so she detailed the sailing and fishing and cleanup and youth sports SLICK had accomplished recently. Most people, including the moneymen, were focused on their devices, but Taggett, good politician, led the audience in applause.
Finally, Mona turned the meeting over to Leo, to complete the presentation that Coop’s arrival had cut short the last time. “Since we’re graced with Superintendent Taggett’s presence tonight, we thought we should look at the whole picture before we vote on the proposal.”
Leo stood but didn’t move away from the table—he’d learned that he couldn’t hold the computer, push the PowerPoint buttons, and use the handheld mike all at the same time.
Someone dimmed the lights and Leo began flashing images onto the wall at the back of the stage.
He started with a history of the 1930s project that had reshaped the lakefront, when the shoreline was pushed about half a mile to the east. The 1934 World’s Fair had been held on the new landfill, South Lake Shore Drive was built on it. Leo had photos and maps, but he was nervous and clicked through them too quickly for us to admire. By the time he put up the slide showing the current plan, I was only half-listening.
Leo flipped through a series of maps and aerial photos—the current lakefront, projected new shoreline, proposed amenities.
The maps included lists. I could read the headers, but the contents were too small to make out, especially since the paint was peeling on the wall being used as a projection screen. Current park use, anticipated use with the new beach, estimated completion time, estimated costs.
Leo was flipping through the slides so fast that Taggett’s friend in the rumpled T-shirt said, “Slow down, son—this isn’t the Indy Five Hundred.”
The audience laughed, but the criticism flustered Leo. He dropped the laser pointer he’d been using. When he stooped to pick it up, he banged his head underneath the table. Some of Simon’s papers floated off the table; several landed in the audience, which caused renewed laughter, especially when Simon swore and demanded that the presentation stop until he recovered his papers.
Bernie jumped from her chair and gathered the pages to hand to Leo. When he took them, the top one caught his eye and he stared at it, puzzled. He bent over Simon, holding the document in front of the older man, but we couldn’t hear what either man said. Curtis and Mona came over to look at the document.
The mike picked up Leo’s voice saying it wasn’t in the presentation. Mona started an impatient reply, but Simon cut across her, saying it was a preliminary report. “We’ve only asked you to show what we know is in the formal plan.”
Taggett noticed the audience getting restive over the interruption. “Let’s take a breather.” He had the kind of booming baritone that silences a room. “Son, you’ve done a great job. I’m impressed and I’m sure everyone else is, too, but why don’t we let the audience get some questions in.”
A man near the front stood and demanded to know about environmental impact studies. Curtis slammed down his gavel, but Taggett said, with apparent good humor, “Good question. These are early days, and we all know we have a lot more work to do, including getting the feds on board with us.”
The community benefits people wanted guarantees about jobs for local residents; Taggett said he was in active conversations with Fourth and Fifth Ward aldermen. Someone talked about property being flipped along Lake Park north of Forty-seventh Street. The moneymen looked up from their devices at that. Taggett said he’d heard rumors but no one could show him hard data, and the men returned to their screens. I wondered if they might themselves be property flippers.