News flash: Chicago has changed in 15 years

I'm in Chicago after a decade away. Given the smashing success of our non-Thanksgiving boogie-board extravaganza in San Diego last year, we decided to once again blow off tradition by having Thanksgiving dinner in Chicago with my best friend from college and her husband and their families. (I guess that sounds: traditional, but not our tradition.) It's also a great opportunity for Rick and I to do the Bataan Museum March with the kids. We're doing museums three and four tomorrow. I can feel my kids getting smarter by the hour.

We're staying in a two-bedroom apartment in Bucktown. We opted to skip the Chicago tourist strip for something further afield. I love neighborhoods--especially funky ones. And when I was in school in Evanston, Bucktown and Wicker Park had just the right funk factor. I remember this area as being block after block of beautiful, if decrepit, homes and flats, bodegas, check-cashing stations, and old-man bars. Fantastic used clothing and furniture. Good cheap Polish food. Some blocks were downright dangerous. Life was good.

Imagine my shock when I arrived here to discover that Bucktown and Wicker Park have changed. Just a little. This is now the kind of neighborhood where there are at least a half dozen places to buy a $500 black dress, but no place to buy toothpaste. There are sports bars. And day spas. That is some fucked-up shit.

This is adorable, but I can't brush my teeth with it.

A few years ago, MTV filmed The Real World Chicago in Wicker Park. While they were finishing the house, disgruntled hipsters picketed it. (I really, really love neighborhoods where people picket and firebomb things they disagree with.) I get the sense that about 90 percent of the people I see walking down Damen Avenue today would not only not protest The Real World house, they probably moved here because they filmed The Real World here. Not that there's anything wrong with that...oh wait, yes there is.

I don't know why I'm surprised that fusion small-plate restaurants have supplanted hot-dog joints in this nabe. After all, 16 years in San Francisco saw the Upper Haight change from crack dealers and gunshots at night into a neighborhood dominated by Google millionaires and i-bankers who can afford $2mil for an family home that a family can actually fit into. It happens. And it's not like I haven't changed too. I was a little bit poorer, more toned and less wrinkly the last time I hit the town in Wicker Park, too. I guess we're even. Still--where do people in Chicago go for a good $50 couch these days? Somewhere, I hope.