Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(only occasionally cleaned) adorn the tables. Nowhere in sight is a souvenir store that
sells trinkets, “authentic” barbecue sauces, or club t-shirts.
Yet, this social space now exhibits a few subtle alterations amid the South Side re-
vitalization. Notably, Beebe's recently instituted a $5.00 cover charge for its live shows
after decades of free admission (it is open and offers live music on Fridays, Saturdays,
and Sundays). The owner Jackie Smith has instituted this reluctantly, with an eye to at-
tracting more affluent customers to her club. While deeply desiring to operate a local
neighborhood club, one that attracts “[her] people and [her] musicians,” a competing
desire is to create what Foucault (1970) would call a “total blues upgrade space.” This
cover charge is potentially one small step to this eventual creation. This imagined space
is Smith's (2003) “smart, appreciated musical venue … with top-notch players … and a
profitable, electrifying electricity [sic].” It is underwritten by “attentive, great audiences
paying a fee to be at the club.” Smith here imagines a place, “with thankful customers
buying drinks and eating the place up … where alive, diverse people and crowds who
know the music know that they are seeing some of the best blues in the world.” Her
club, in this idealization, would be an in-demand forum for the blues, with a wondrous
producer (performer) and a consumer (customer) experience.
The Contemporary Redevelopment Governance and Its Plans
Chicago's redevelopment governance post-2000 has spurned the policy uncertainty that
markedtheWashington,Orr,Sawyer,andearlyDaleyIIregimes(1984-89).After2000,
a more confident governance moved into an aggressive “transform Chicago” mode.
This entity, following Mayor Richard Daley, “found its druthers and mojo,” and pushed
harder to upscale and reaestheticize Chicago's social and cultural fabric. At the heart
of this, Daley and the governance's highly effective new oratory—global-speak—now
boom across Chicago. This oratory had arisen in the 1980s and spoke of the need to
redevelop Chicago as an emergent global city. Post-2000, this rhetoric increasingly in-
voked an ominousness and foreboding city reality, and glaringly provoked the public
(Koval et al. 2006; Wilson 2007). “For the first time,” the
Chicago Tribune
(2000)
opined, “Chicago can be a global city—if it wants to be. But does it want to be?” To the
Tribune
, “Chicago virtually symbolized the Industrial Era and was one of its big win-
ners.… But the Global Era presents new challenges. Chicago is not meeting them…. A
city that loses the world's attention will wither into a backwater, much as once-mighty
cities such as Venice remain today, picturesque and ignored.” It is now or never, to the
Tribune
(2004), “city eclipse is at the doorstep….”
In the post-2000 period, Chicago's redevelopment governance changed its vision of
and its' relation to the South Side. This now taut, bold governance has extended its
tentacles geographically and has deepened its “rediscovery” of “South Side authenti-
