Neighborhood | CHICAGOOD

Chicagood is an online magazine launched by The Chi-Town Project. It is a magazine for social conscious Chicagoans that focuses on social awareness issues and those who step up to make Chicago a better place for tomorrow. We also like to have fun and celebrate what it means to be Chicagoan and what is good in our city. Be Chicagood.

We love saying that we live in the greatest city in the world. The beautiful skylines, innovative monuments and strong-willed spirits that dwell within the city gives us more reason to boast about Chicago’s greatness. However, as we progress into a rapidly changing future, many of our great city’s downfalls become glaringly obvious as we strive to become a world class city. Poverty, corruption, education and gang violence are only few of the many social awareness issues that have surfaced within Chicago’s inner walls. That’s where The Chi-Town Project steps in. We serve as a platform of fresh ideas, as a series of projects with the ability to ignite passion, discussion and action among Chicagoans for the greater good. Together we can strive for one ultimate goal: guiding Chicago to a better tomorrow. As a curation of social goodness, we celebrate not only the city’s identity but also the achievements that define what makes Chicagood. Join us as we inspIre. dreAM. aCHIeve.

Fresh Moves gives a fresh look on ending food deserts

Take a CTA bus, add a grocery store with the initiative to end food deserts in Chicago and there you have Fresh Moves. Fresh Moves is an organization in the city of Chicago that aims to end food deserts through a mobile produce market. The organization took an old CTA bus and revamped into a mobile produce market that travels to different neighborhoods delivering fresh fruits and vegetables.

After three community activists Steve Casey, Sheelah Muhammad and Jeff Pinzino came together it was decided that the Fresh Moves non-for-profit would address the issue of neighborhoods in Chicago not having direct access to healthy fresh foods.

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Chicago: The 10th Best Biking City In America, According to Bike Score

Walk Score is a pretty well respected site that measures how walk-able a city. It’s simply a software algorithm that judges how walkable an address, neighborhood, or city is based on various data.

Walk Score recently launched a new service called Bike Score which examines how friendly biking is in the cities across America. Chicago managed to crack the top ten with the same score as NYC. Continue Reading →

Chicago Public Housing Comes Down. Did it Decrease Violent Crime or Just Moved It Elsewhere?

Chicago Magazine had an interesting article that explored Hanna Rosin’s fascinating and controversial article in The Atlantic, “American Murder Mystery,” which claims that tearing down public housing in high poverty neighborhoods didn’t decrease cime and poverty but rather pushed it out to the outer neighborhoods and suburbs. Rosin mainly explored Memphis but Chicago Magazine makes a compelling comparison that draws many similarities with Chicago.

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Walgreens to Expand Hiring Disabled

Walgreens, the nation’s largest drug store chain headquarted in Deerfield, IL is piloting a program to hire cognitively and physically disabled employees in its retail stores across the country.

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1 Logo a Day- Chicago Designer Brands Every Chicago Neighborhoods

Steve Shanabruch is a designer from Chicago. He loves both, so he decided to bring them together into an ambitious but awesome project, called The Chicago Neighborhoods. Steve will be branding every one of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods with a logo. He plans to release one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until he covers them all.

He describes the project as, “One designer’s take on Chicago.” My vision might not match yours, but I hope that we can agree that a neighborhood with a logo is better than a neighborhood without.

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Chicago Pastor’s Rooftop Vigil Sucessful

“I would call it very depressing and frustrating that we’re living in such a great city but yet we still experience violence and gunfire on a day-to-day basis,” Rev Cory Brooks said. “It breaks your heart because there’s so much hopelessness.”

For the past three months, Rev. Corey Brooks began a silent mission, not in front of 100s at a church, but instead on top of a vacant South Side motel in a tent next to kerosene and electric heaters. The motel was a haven for drug dealers and prostitutes just across the street from his New Beginnings Church in the 6600 block of South Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The dilapidated and abandoned motel is an unlikely place to find a pastor, but that place would change in the near future.

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Local Bike Shop helping Southside Youth

Blackstone Bicycle Works may appear to be a humble community bike shop, but it’s actually a lot more than that. In addition to offering repairs and sales of refurbished bikes it is also the only bike shop in Chicago that offers over 150 local youths the opportunity to work in a retail setting. They learn how to build a bicycle and how to conduct themselves in a work environment. Once they log 25 hours, they’ll be able to earn a bike of their own! The incredible video by Seattle’s Best Coffee’s Brew-lanthropy bring together a wonderful story of what Blackstone does and the impact it has on the youth of Chicago south side. Blackstone became the first reciepient of the Seattle’s best Coffee Brew-lanthropy award which included a break room makeover, a years worth of coffee and hot chocolate. Congrats Blackstone. Well earned reward!

You can definitely tell how happy the kids are, the passion they have and the effects of having something valuable like Blackstone in their community. For that, Blackstone Bicycle Works is Chicagood.

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Social Media used for Social Chicagood.

Social media is forever changing the way we communicate and share information. It’s also having a positive effect in sharing vital information that keeps Chicagoans safe and helping each other. Chicago is quickly embracing technology as it aims to be the next Tech Hub of tomorrow.

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5th annual Restaurant Week Kicks Off

For ten days, over 200 restaurants will offer special prix fixe menus starting at $22 for lunch and $33/$44 for dinner. This a great opportunity to get out and dine out in Chicago on a budget.

For a complete list of all the restaurants participating this year, check out Restaurant Week Chicago.

Which restaurants will you be hitting up?

Blog of the Day: Chicago From the Roof Tumbler

We love looking down at Chicago from our plentiful rooftop views. It offers some amazing views and angles that you can’t find elsewhere. Apparently someone loves it much more than us and dedicated a tumbler blog just for Chicago from the Roof views. Armed with a simple Samsung Galaxy S2 this Chicagoan sure does capture some amazing shots!

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Chicago Neighbors use EveryBlock to Jumpstart First Farmers’ Market in Ten Years

This is something we thought was Chicagood and had to share with you.

What began as a simple question on EveryBlock last year by a Chicagoan named Jeff Parker: “Is anybody interested in working with neighbors to bring a farmers’ market to the Jefferson Park area?”, quickly turned into a reality as people responded, shared information and resources to make it happen.

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Chicago History 101: Take a Bite Out of Chicago History

Chicago has a lot of history and great food. Put them together and you have a city of amazing food culture. In observance of Chicago Restaurant week Domu has put together a comprehensive list of Chicago’s oldest food establishments. There are 58 in total and many have been around for hundreds of years! Check out the full list after the jump.

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