Ep. 9: Living in Edgewater feat. Tree Caridi
In this episode, longtime resident Tree Caridi goes in depth on the Edgewater neighborhood. Tree, an Edgewater enthusiast, discusses the area's appeal for families, students, and young couples, emphasizing its safe, community-oriented atmosphere and convenient location. The episode delves into Edgewater's evolution, local businesses, and community spirit, offering insights into why it's a desirable place to live in Chicago.
The Living in Chicago Podcast is where I, Jake Lyons, get to interview all kinds of people about the Chicago neighborhoods they live in, work in, and play in. This way, you can learn about the lifestyle pros and cons of various neighborhoods directly from the people who live there (or maybe even learn something new about your own neighborhood!)
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Real Estate in areas discussed:
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Local Businesses Mentioned:
Lickety Split - Website: https://www.lickitysplitchicago.com/ Instagram: @licketysplitcandyshop
Moody's Pub - Website: moodyspub.com. Instagram: @moodyspub
Beard and Belly - https://beardandbellychicago.com/ . Instagram: @beardandbelly
Metropolis Coffee - Website: metropoliscoffee.com. Instagram: @metrocoffeechi
Ann Sather - Website: annsather.com. Instagram: @annsatherrestaurants
Honey Bear Cafe - Website: honeybearcafe.com. Instagram: @thehoneybearcafe
Gethsemane Garden Center - Website: gethsemanegardens.com. Instagram: @gethsemanegardencenter
Loyola University Chicago - Website: luc.edu. Instagram: @loyolachicago
Bang Bang Pie & Biscuits - Website: bangbangpie.com. Instagram: @bangbangpie
Note: the following transcript was generated automatically and not checked closely for spelling, grammar, or accuracy
Speaker 1: safe community, but still want to be in the city. Don't want to be in like an Evanston, you know, or a suburb, but also don't want to be like in the loop.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Living in Chicago, the show where I interview real Chicagoans about the neighborhoods that they live, work and play in. My name is Jake Lyons. I am your host and in this episode, I interview Tree Cariti about the Edgewater neighborhood. Tree has lived in this neighborhood for quite some time and has a lot to say about it. So usually I like to do a couple of little, you know, quick fun fact, kind of factoids about the neighborhood that I'm talking about at the front of these, if there is, you know, anything, but I think she pretty much handles it.
And I look forward to you getting to hear all that she has to say about it and just Chicago and all the other wildness that we get into during this conversation. I will just geographically point you in the right direction real quick. If you're unfamiliar with Edgewater, it is located, it's pretty much the, almost the most North neighborhood in Chicago, just the only one north of it is Rogers Park before you start getting into Evanston and the rest of the suburbs from there.
And it's also, it's East as well. So as the name implies, Edgewater, it's on the edge of the water, the lake is right there. So they get, you get to see a foster beach, Hollywood beach, you know, things like that. So you get to enjoy, you know, depending on where you are, you might have a view of the lake or at the very least, you know, you're not very far from it if you want to get down there.
As far as what does it actually like to live in this neighborhood? Well, I won't deprive you any longer. Let's go ahead and just get right into our conversation with True Health. All right, after some, some ordeal, some technological mishaps of figuring things out, how to get on this call, we figured it out, we problem solved, we brainstorm, we got here, welcome Tree Kareedy, a good friend who is, well, you know what, I'll just let you introduce yourself. I think you can probably do it a better job than anyone else.
Speaker 1: Hi, Jake, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, technology was against us, but we made it through. I am a entrepreneur, a famous to the stars, just kidding. I work with basically making me impossible, possible for the high net wealth income, but my passion is really living where I do in Edgewater. I've been here for 20 years and I kind of consider myself an aficionado of the neighborhood. Like, I'm one of the few people that can walk up and down my block and tell you like, oh, Sally lives down here and Jane lives over there. And I don't know, I'd say that I'm more of a neighborhood soccer mom without playing soccer and without being a mom.
Speaker 2: I guess before we start getting into that, let's even go back a little further. So you're originally from Florida, right? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes. Okay. I was born in Indiana, so a little bit of a Hoosier like you, but raised in Florida and then moved to Chicago in 98. The year of the second famous blizzard came right like six months after I was here. I'm like, oh, so this is why you moved to Chicago from Florida so you can get stuck in a blizzard and get snowed in.
Yeah, that was great. I learned a lot about my neighborhood though. People had a lot of tenacity and we pushed a lot of people's cars out of the way. Yeah. It does a lot of people out. And to this day, we have a unofficial alley snow crew.
We called, nicknamed ourselves and we are still friends 20 years later and went block by block digging each other out of Edgewater. So, you know, there's something to be said for the tenacity of Midwestern people.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's actually, yeah, that's a nice little thing to bring up. Like every time there's a big major snow, especially like the first snow of the season, I'm always heartened by just like all the kind of random displays.
Anyway, yeah, so I was talking about whenever there's a big snow and you always see and I participated in this myself, both from the giver and the receiving, you know, end of like helping somebody whose car is stuck or whatever, you know, okay, I, yeah, I think I know where some salt is or I think I know where a shovel is or let's like look for some cardboard, you know, do that stupid little trick or you put like the cardboard, like try to wedge it into tire to give it like traction. And it never works. That never works.
It has never, ever worked, but it makes you feel like you're doing something. Do you know the cat litter trick? Cat litter trick, sure. If there's cat litter around, that's a good one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sorry. You might have just, I just turned my head because I saw somebody out of my window, but they're not for our building. So there they looked and went, oh, I'm at the wrong address. So apologies.
Speaker 2: That's quite all right. This is mostly a auditory experience for the people consuming this. So that's okay. They're, you know, we go on YouTube, but that might be.
Speaker 1: Well, this is up to me and Enschwater to be quite honest. The interesting part of my particular block here, like I said earlier is it's kind of great that I do know all of my neighbors because on any given day, I have the mail or the packages for the people that live to the left of me, the right of me across the street or two blocks west or east of me on a regular basis. Now we have the same postal service. So it's usually not the regular mail.
It's usually like Amazon. I'm not quite certain if it's just an Edgewater thing, but they don't seem to be able to find their way around an Edgewater. And when I talk to other neighborhoods, they don't seem to have this same issue. Do you have this problem in your neighborhood where you're just randomly getting other people's Amazon packages on a pretty consistent basis?
Speaker 2: Are we talking Amazon packages or like postal service deliveries? Are these the Amazon packages?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes. Definitely sometimes. Yeah, we'll get like a package in our little lobby area. Not lobby, what would you call that? Like the vestibule thing, yeah, little package room. Whereas like this is just blatantly not even the right street, the right numbers, nothing.
What were you reading? But those are fairly few and far between, but it does happen, definitely. You mentioned that the neighborhood is obviously in the 20 plus years that you've been there. You've seen a lot of changes. Would you say, I mean, obviously there's like a pie chart, some of it's good. I'm sure some of it's bad.
What would you just speak to on that? Like has it maintained, has it grown in character even? I mean, it sounds like when you first moved in there, it wasn't much of a happen in place. Maybe have the changes been helpful in that regard or has it taken away from some of the charms that it had when you first moved in or do you want to go with that?
Speaker 1: Most of the changes have been really good actually. The only thing that I would say sometimes is a little bit challenging is now that we have gentrified and we have a lot of the things that everybody wants. We have a handful of these boutique apartment buildings that have come in where very small living spaces with lots of amenities and they're like, you know, $2,000 for a hole in the wall. But the property itself will have like outdoor barbecue and a theater room and like an office space and there's nothing wrong with that per se, but it's a different type of the amount of people that move in. You wind up with a larger population in a smaller space footprint and they're not as community oriented.
They're more about like getting the most bang for their buck. And so the aspect of like knowing your neighbor has changed a little bit. Not so much on my particular street itself because we actually have progressive dinners where like every couple of months we divide up and there's like one house does dessert, one house does, what's like you start off your or derbs and then you have main course and then desserts or somewhere else. So it's like you travel to different people's homes and we have a huge block party.
But then if you go like two blocks north of me, you would think that you're in another country and nobody knows who their neighbor is and it's very much like Lyola students and and there's nothing wrong with that per se, but I like the idea of like if somebody has my package, I can knock on their door or if a prime example a few years ago, I was walking my dog and there was invisible ice on the sidewalk and I had boots on but they it just didn't matter. My dog pulled me because it saw a bunny and I went face down like the whole right side of my face skid on the sidewalk. I was like screaming for help because my dog got off the leash and I was afraid she was going to run out in the road. Not one, not two, but three different people stopped. A car came screeching to a halt because it was a neighbor that knew me jumped out of the car and grabbed my dog.
Then another neighbor came running from like behind me that like knew who I was and was like helped me up and then another neighbor saw me fall from inside their first floor apartment and ran out of their apartment. So you know you don't find that a lot of places and so even though we've wound up with all these really wonderful things around us, our particular street has generations of families still living in the home like the landlord that owns my building, her son, his wife, and three grandchildren live in her previous home on this same street that he grew up in when he was a kid and went to school here. I can tell you stories like that all up in Nown Hood in the 12, 13, 14, and 1500 block of like well this was built for this generation of the family and now that generation lives here and so what's happened is a lot of the families have been able to stay and keep their homes and really benefit from doing so but then for the people like me who have rented for years and the rent has been really reasonable now that the neighborhood has built up my really reasonable rent went up $350 and I'm used to my rent going up like $35. I know that's crazy for everybody who's out there is probably like $35 but keep in mind people, I have been here for 23 years yes 23 years in the same apartment.
I paid my rent on time, I know where the dead bodies are buried, I kid you not, I found an urn in the basement, we don't know who it belongs to so we just have to keep it because what are you going to do with it? So because of all the things I do in the building for years the landlord had only ever raised my rent $35 a month but now my rent had to go up along with everything else and so and that's what's sort of happening in the neighborhood is people that used to be able to have an affordable rent in Edgewater now are getting forced out or being forced to have a roommate if they don't want to have a roommate or you know having to move a little bit further north to Rogers Park and it's not that there's anything wrong with Rogers Park depending on where you are but if you want to be in Edgewater because you want to be near Andersonville and you've lived in a certain community for all these years you don't really want to be pushed out of it. I feel like it's similar to how the people in Pilsen feel that you know we're living in an $800 a month apartment and the developer came in and bought their building and now they're expected to all of a sudden pay double or leave you know they didn't start making double the money so you know the value of having a good tenant seems to not matter and that that I think is sad and I think that that's what's going to really change the community is that if you have too many years of just a lot of turnover of tenants just so you can have the money valued over the person I think is what's going to hurt our community.
It hasn't gotten that way so much on my particular street but definitely the block behind me I don't know anybody on Granville anymore and I used to know everybody and it's just like all the rental properties got bought out by developers that just were looking to be in a gentrified neighborhood that they could charge anywhere from $2,000 to $2,500 for an apartment that used to be $1,300 to $1,800 you know so that's
Speaker 2: the yeah yeah I mean even even when it's not like those kind of you know developer you know flipper kind of people coming in and renovating it and charging us you know surcharge for that it's even just the more kind of insidious like property taxes keep going up or you know they they sell they sell the place to somebody who's not even going to do all that much work but the place is just worth more now and so the price that the new buyer paid that you know the seller like it's crazy that you've actually found somebody who's like held on to like having the same landlord for that long and they haven't you know decided to cash in their chips and sell that place because I mean I know they profit crazily on that you know on your place now if they were to sell and then like the next buyer even if they came in with the best of intentions they can't not raise your rent because the place they've bought they bought it for so much more and the financing costs is so much more now you know all that stuff like yeah it's kind of the way of the world so man like when you how how you've been there for so long is like that is that's a blessing for sure like that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: and people
Speaker 2: ask me why do you still rent instead of buy and I'm like have you seen my apartment I'm like I have a two bedroom apartment with a full dining room a an office a
Speaker 1: built-in pantry a built-in buffet I have an entire party room in the basement I have an upper deck that sits 24 my landlord lets me plant the entire backyard I have a garage and a place for my motorcycle and storage in the basement and my rent with my garage and my increase is $1800 so if you can tell me where in Chicago I can get a condo with all those things that is spitting distance of a gym a whole foods a CVS a Walgreens liquity split the best homemade custard yes liquity split have it been go don't pass code like $200 go to liquity split if you want the best custard culvers that's not custard that's commercialism go to liquity split it's I can walk literally out my front door through the alley and I'm to the place in three minutes two if I want to go really fast you know it's like why would I leave Aldi I'm walking distance there's an Aldi behind me and a whole paycheck on the other side and if I really walk like three blocks I've got a Starbucks and a Target like why am I leaving yeah
Speaker 2: and the train pretty close to public transit too yeah
Speaker 1: yeah I'm right off the Granville red line there's the Broadway bus at one side of me and the Clark Street bus at the other and if it's a beautiful day and I want to walk I've been Andersonville and well I've been Andersonville in 10 minutes someone else is probably there in 20 apparently I walk really fast even though I'm only five four I don't know what that's about but my dad and I have always been really fast walkers and whenever we're walking people like slow down and we're like we're just walking here but yeah so I I love it here and we have a lot of people don't know there's um an Edgewater Historical Society and there's so much like wealth of knowledge there and where I live particular my street is considered Edgewater Glen and there are actual signs that we as a community shipped in and paid to have them put back up because there's a there's Edgewater and then there's Edgewater Glen and there there it's a distinction of where they are in the community and you know we're very proud to be here and you know we uh I'd say our biggest downfall right now is our current alderman our older person um and uh I'm trying to give them a chance but um it's it's uh we had a really wonderful older person and we do not have a wonderful older person now and that is probably the biggest uh the biggest thing I would say is if you're moving to Edgewater and you really care about um who's in charge of your ward this is probably not the ward for you for the next three years but if you're um the type of person who is able to like engage and get involved on your own and really care about your property and and get involved with your neighbors then you can still find affordable housing in a really safe neighborhood with a good school district and wonderful uh walkable it's a very walkable community we have a wonderful Monday farmers market during this like regular year like not during the winter obviously um and uh there's the Edgefest happens here every year and Ann Sather's for the largest cinnamon roll you're ever going to have and Metropolis Coffee the original Metropolis Coffee the very first one is here in Edgewater they used to actually make all of the roasting of the beans were right here in Edgewater now they do the tea here and they do the roasting elsewhere because they've gotten so big but if you go to any of the better restaurants in Andersonville Edgewater and many other like communities in uh for breakfast for brunch at least a third of them are serving Metropolis Coffee and that's right here walking distance and it's really good coffee so nice I
Speaker 2: feel a need that just in case any of the audience kind of has some glazed eyes or whatever the ear equivalent of glazed eyes is um on the the alderman thing what so we're talking about basically like um the local government structure where the city is broken down into wards how many wards are there do you know I know there's 77 like community areas
Speaker 1: I know we're 40 I know we're 48 and I think that there's like at least 70 something so yeah okay
Speaker 2: yeah so I mean each of these 70 wards like Chicago is such a big city that each of these I was I was gonna call them neighborhoods I think they're not quite the same but you know like each of these um areas could have between 40 and 100,000 people in it you know like each of these community areas are wards basically like a bunch of small towns so like the the alderman kind of acts as like the mayor of your neighborhood almost is that like a decent way to yeah absolutely kind of put it in terms that like everyone would at least kind of wrap their heads around um and so they do have a pretty pretty big impact on um on you know just the goings on of your immediate neighborhood
Speaker 1: because we need somebody to fight for us when it comes to like tax assessments um that just seem to be going up up in a way you can speak to that a bit is is an agent yeah
Speaker 2: nobody I I've yet to ever have a conversation with anybody who is like yeah our taxes super low love them you know like our tax bill seems really fair this year I I I just agree wholeheartedly with the county assessor on this one good job guys you know what I'm gonna pay extra I'm gonna pay extra taxes I think you guys uh shorted yourselves a little bit you know I mean taxes are one of those things like who who who's ever gonna have anything nice to say about them but yeah they are definitely um yeah I hear a lot of like you know the the new assessors are coming in and trying to you know make up for what they see as um uh assessments that weren't like properly adjusted in previous years and things like that like I think they you know maybe were given people some breaks during the pandemic and stuff and now you know that's being um corrected I guess we'll say so yeah I don't know certainly uh I know especially like on commercial properties and things like that there's been some really really drastic uh new assessments
Speaker 1: yeah so I I know in our neighborhood what's challenging is to like across the street from us a house will sell for 1.3 million dollars but that particular house the owners went in and gut renovated it and put in like a a chef's kitchen and you know a million bells and whistles and then they want to use that price to now assess the houses to the left and the right of it is the new value and it's like whoa whoa whoa wait a minute now you know this this poor guy who's like owned this house since his it's his parents owned it before him and he is a senior citizen uh pushing 90 and it you know his kids are my age and um and now they're trying to tell him that his property that although he's maintained it he hasn't put anything into like upgrading it and they're trying to tell him that his taxes should be taxed the same as this other house simply because he lives next door to it because that's how
Speaker 2: the assessors should be should definitely be be more nuanced than that I mean it should work the same as an appraisal where you know just because of something's next door obviously there are a whole lot more variables than just than just that you know what's one of the finishes like what are the what has been going on which a lot of that stuff the appra- the the county assessor is not necessarily going to be like privy to you know that's why that's why permits and all that kind of stuff are such a big deal that's why the you know the city really doesn't like you doing um like major renovations to your place without uh pulling the proper permits and getting you know getting all that stuff straight in the way because that's how they know what is going on in your place and what you know how to how to tax you and stuff like that so um yeah and I mean I know I guess so I guess on the you know I don't I don't know everything about like the inner workings of how things are taxed like that if you ever try to like you I feel like you need like a math degree to really figure out like how uh how property taxes work on like a deep level in Chicago but I mean I know it has a lot to do with like what the schools and municipalities and things like that in your immediate area are saying that they need which um you know I don't know how I really don't know how like involved the alderman gets in that or if they would have that they even could say about that I really don't know
Speaker 1: don't even get me started on the schools because that's the other thing that's ridiculous is that way that we fund our schools um not just an edge water in um Chicago in general because everything is funded based on your taxes instead of them just taking all of the tax money if the if the city of Chicago and yes I'm about to get on a soapbox people so you might want to fast forward through this point or Jake might wind up editing it out but um the way that Chicago funds education for Chicago public school system is that whatever area that you live in the taxes that you pay for the area that you live in theoretically go to your school the problem with this is that if you live in a low income area and then the amount of taxes that you pay is actually less. So essentially what you're saying is that because I make less money, I don't deserve, my children don't deserve to have a good education. If you live near a better income bracket, living situation where everybody is paying more into taxes, so the school is being funded better, then they have more resources. And so that's also the fundamental flaw of the way that the appraisal system works because you're appraising these houses like way up here to people that can't afford them, then they're getting boxed out of the neighborhood that has the decent school in it in the first place and pushed out to a lower income school. And the reality is, is if we just were to take all of the taxes that are paid in to the city of Chicago equally and divide them out amongst every school child, they would have resources for everyone.
But instead, we're gonna have a school that the kids are walking around with brand new MacBooks and the school that the kids have one textbook to share between three kids and they have a classroom set that they have to leave there. And that's part of why I always get on my soapbox about the appraisal system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, I definitely see where you're going with that. I don't think, it's not necessarily true that maybe that's how the schools are funded based on just like the income levels or the property values in the neighborhood that that school is located, but it's not necessarily true that the children in that neighborhood will go to that school.
Speaker 1: Correct, correct. So just because you live in that neighborhood doesn't necessarily mean that you'll go to that school. Depending on, so you can elect to go to your neighborhood school if it's a decent school and you wanna go there, but even if you elect to go there, there might not be enough spaces for you.
So I'll give an example. Walter Payton is a magnet school. So you could literally live in Walter Payton, although being a magnet school, is not located in, let me clarify this, it now is a more desirable place to live in the city, but when it was first built, part of why they were able to secure the land was because it was not is a desirable place to live in the city. So here they built this state of the art when the best schools, not just in Chicago, in the United States, okay? And the crux of it is you could live walking distance of that school, but because it's a magnet school, doesn't mean that you can go there because you have to get approved in through a lottery.
Yeah. And then the opposite of it is you can live walking distance of one of the worst schools, and it's the only school that you'll get to go to because you didn't make it into any of the magnet schools, even though you wanted to go there. So you can have a student that is considered what they would consider of the gifted program and they won't get to go there because they have to go to their neighborhood school or the parent that has to elect to send their kid to the neighborhood school because their work won't allow them, like they just can't get them to the other school. Like I have friends that if their situation wasn't what it is, their kids would be in their neighborhood schools, but they're able to work it out through their work to take their kids elsewhere. But one kid, they commute 45 minutes one way to take their kid to school. Hard to do. That's hard to do, especially if you're a single parent with three kids.
What do you, how do you do that? So that's where I get on my soapbox about, so we're charging all this money in the neighborhood, but then the schools in the neighborhood aren't good enough for the kids that live in the neighborhood to go to, but you're still overtaxing their parents to live there. It's like A plus B does not equal C in this equation. You know, like, where's the math working here?
It's not, you know, if you're gonna appraise them at this high rate, take all their money, the least you have to do is provide them with resources. So sorry, we're not talking about Edgewater anymore. You can, you feel free to edit any of this out.
Speaker 2: This is all relevant information to somebody who, you know, might stumble upon this podcast. You're looking to learn about, yes, Edgewater, but also, you know, what are these things like? What's your life actually like in Chicago?
What are these things that are kind of governing what your experience here is gonna be in a lot of different ways? So yeah, no, it's all good. Vote for Tree. We're gonna run for something. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Right, run for public office. Ironically, there actually is a high school here called Senn that for a while, it was a really awful high school and like kids did not wanna go there. And the community fought against it first, but eventually it got approved and the military school came in and took over half of the high school. And in doing that, it now has allowed that school to flourish and it has one of the better theater and art programs in the city because they got this renewed money from the military academy going in there. So now in Edgewater, you have a school that if your kid wants a opportunity to get their college paid for through the military, they can go to the local high school in this community, be part of the ROTC program and then that will allow them to help pave the way into college and then through college, they will get funded because they were in the ROTC. It also has a theater and an arts program as well as because of these other programs, the regular education of the school has gotten better.
And they have not one, but two football teams because they have the military team and the regular team. And so the school went from like, oh my God, people are like trying whatever they can not to go to the community school to people actually moving to the community so their kids can go to school there. So yeah, it's really changed from where, because when I was there 20 years ago, it was like scary, I would walk my dog there and you were just like, the principal was happy if you were there with your dog because you were keeping the drug deals from happening on the front lawn. And now you go and it's like everything looks like a, you think that you're at the Morton Arboretum at the front lawn of this school.
Yeah. And there are two good neighborhood elementary schools now as well. And there's also a two private, you can go to NCA which is Northside Catholic Academy which is walking distance right at St. Gertrude's church from where I live. But there's also St. Ignatius is here as well. So there's lots of good school options within Edgewater. And NCA is very well known for, it's K through eight and they have a really rich education program.
Speaker 2: Nice. Thanks for the school breakdown there. I'm still learning that the whole school system here is definitely a blind spot for me a little bit just because like obviously, and then I don't have kids yet and like, I know I always hear all these stories about how like the landscape is to navigate for people especially when you get to the high school age. But yeah, so that was all educational stuff there. Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: I'm like so boxed about the kids. Yeah, yeah. They're the future man. I mean, I don't have any. I'm sure about them. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If somebody were to visit Edgewater, just like the greater Edgewater area, not necessarily just like right where you are, but you know, Edgewater in general, for just one day, what's like the perfect day in Edgewater? Okay.
Speaker 1: For sure, go to Berger Park. Sit on the rocks. If it's spring or summer, there's a wonderful restaurant in the Park District building that like has an outdoor cafe area to sit at. I definitely recommend having lunch there and then walking north. It's gonna sound a little crazy, but Loyola's campus is beautiful. And if you walk up north and just like, don't walk, when I tell people walk on Loyola's campus, don't stay on the sidewalk. I mean like walk into Loyola's campus and walk through the campus. It's a beautiful like walk up to Sheridan Road.
And then you can, right, as you come around the corner to Sheridan Road, you'll know that you've got to where I'm gonna tell you because the Sheridan Road will dead end. You think you're gonna drive into a building, but instead you go to the right and there's this beautiful area of rocks in the sidewalk that you can sit on. There's a little private park just to the immediate right. And there's a beautiful sculpture that they just put there and it's this huge glass bulb that you can like see through and it's just wonderful. And it sounds a little crazy, but just past that on the left, if you're sitting on the rocks is one of the most historically beautiful cemeteries in the world. And you don't need to go walking around the cemetery, but it is just beautiful to like look in and see all the statues. And so if it's like early in the morning, it's a great bike ride to like bike up there from, if you're, especially recently, they've added all these bike trails. So like you can safely bike all the way up. And if you have time, you come from Edgewater, you can bike up to the Baha'i Temple and come back down.
It's one of the things that I always tell people to do if they only have a day. And when you're like, if you're looking for a great place to eat, even though it's not in Edgewater, it's Edgewater adjacent. And so I always tell people, go north on Clark Street to Honey Bear Cafe. It will never let you down. It is the best breakfast place. You cannot be missed. If you know...
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you know that you're coming, go on their website in advance and reserve your table. They have pancakes that are a mile high. They make the best shrimp and grits and cat fishing grits. Oh my God, to die for. Coffee, if it's during the nicer months, they have a wonderful outdoor patio with a great mural.
Speaker 1: And that is, I can't miss. And so even though it's like Edgewater adjacent, it's still, we still sort of claim it because it's like, yeah, it's just outside of Edgewater. And then the place not to miss for sure is go to Lickety Split. You'll find every old-fashioned penny candy, they're no longer a penny, but you'll find them all the candies from when you were a kid. And every unique flavor of soda that you thought you never would wanna try will be there.
And the homemade custard is just to die for. And then one other can't miss is if you're, go on Thorndale, coming from Sheridan Road. You make a left onto Thorndale. There is a house that used to be a standalone mansion that they repurposed into a multi-use facility. And they use it for everything from weddings to bar mitzvahs. But on Tuesdays, during the spring and summer months, they do free music in the backyard. And they also have one of the most beautiful murals, all mosaic that is every type of nationality is represented within that mural.
And it's just beautiful to see, especially when the sun glit hits it. And then I saved two of the best for last on purpose, Moody's Bar and Grill. Best blue burger you're ever gonna have, best hamburger period hands down. If it is daytime and nice out, wonderful outdoor patio, cheapest pitcher of sand grilla you're ever gonna get, largest oversized sizable salad with fried jumbo shrimp. In the summertime, they switch the menu over a little bit in the winter and they have like a steak on the menu. The indoor has a fireplace and the nice cozy atmosphere. It's not fancy.
It's not ridiculously expensive either. Keep in mind they have one fryer. So if it's busy, you're gonna be waiting. But that's okay, cause it's worth the wait. But on a beautiful day, just to sit out on that back porch is so wonderful. And then Beard in the Belly has partnered up with a pie.
It's Beard in the Belly is on one side. And then the same storefront has the most amazing homemade pies and they have handheld pies, savory ones, but then they also have seasonal and it's every unique flavor you can think of. And they are to die for. And yeah, a slice of pie is $6. It's worth every penny of that. Every storefront. I believe it. Yeah, so those are my big ones. Yes, they're mainly food.
Speaker 2: That's the going rate for a quality slice of pie in the city. And it really is worth it. You go into these kind of mom and pop places where it's just like you're never gonna have a slice of pie quite like this. Thanks for my birthday the other day. We went to, have you ever been to Bang Bang Pie? Yes.
Speaker 1: The Logan Square? I love it. I love
Speaker 2: it. So there, I don't think like exactly what it was, 6 or 7. Yeah, a comfortable place to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so good. So, so good. And yeah, so I recommend, I recommend like go to Moody's for a burger and solid fries. Like it's one of those places like they're very simple. You're gonna get burgers, fries, onion rings, a salad, a steak, oh, they're sloppy Jane, not a Joe. They're sloppy Jane. I don't know what they do to that meat. But it's like crack.
And I don't eat bread as you know, I just get the meat. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. It's so good. It's so good. It's disturbingly good. Maybe I'll have that one.
Speaker 2: That's actually a couple, that's a good point to bring up. So the fact that, yeah, you don't eat bread, you also don't consume alcohol, right? Like you've pretty much never, you've never been even like tipsy in your life. So those like two things that I think a lot of people would probably associate with Chicago is like, okay, deep dish pizza, this is a place that loves their bread, you know, anywhere you go, it's gonna be hard to avoid bread. Oh, you know, it's cold eight months a year. Like what is it, what does it people do when they're just going to bars and drinking and watching sports or whatever, you know, and they're like, yes, that is a lot of what we do. There's a lot, if you like bread and you like drinking, a lot of that to go around in Chicago, but you are proof that you don't, that's not all there is, you know, right? Like you can have a good time and you can very much have a lot of really good meals in a lot of places without those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, I name the places that I would love to go. They're definitely our bars in the neighborhood. We have a wonderful independent experiences. I will always talk up that place is a great place to go. It's our, if you're gonna buy alcohol in our neighborhood, I recommend you buy it there because it's a small mom and pop and we had to sign off and approve them to be here. Most people don't know this, but our ward is a dry ward in the sense that you can't get alcohol to CVS here when it was a jewel, you couldn't get alcohol at the jewel drugstore either.
You can get alcohol at the Whole Foods, but even when it was a Dominix, we had different hours than any of the other places and we don't have like a bunch of convenient stores. And it is intentionally that way because when I first moved here 20 years ago, it wasn't safe to walk up and down Grandville. There were drug deals happening all the time and we really cleaned up the neighborhood. And so, we don't have any problems with people drinking. We just don't like the element of the 24 hour liquor store.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. That's always like the classic, you know, just the, those are just one of those like magnets for trouble, you know, 24 hour liquor store is for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Oh, the Diesto Joe, I'm so sorry, but I have to say, if it's a Wednesday night and you like to play board games, go to the Diesto Joe on Broadway. It's open board game night every Wednesday.
They have over 200 games. If you don't have anybody to play with, there's a pink cone, you put it out on your table and somebody will join you. So that is something that any extrovert introvert that is a board game person should know about this water.
Speaker 2: It's every Wednesday night and
Speaker 1: it's a great place to go when you first are moving to the city and you don't know a lot of people because nerves are really nice to everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so bottom line, who would you say that the Edgewater neighborhood is best suited for? And why would somebody want to move to Edgewater over any other neighborhood in Chicago?
Speaker 1: If you were looking for a place that is gonna have, so I think it's mainly, there's three criteria. It's great for families that are looking for a safe community, but still wanna be in the city.
Don't wanna be in like an Evanston or a suburb, but also don't wanna be like in the loop or in Wicker Park. So that is one segue. It's really wonderful for students. Anyone who's going to Northwestern, Loyola, even DePaul, we're like really located great for the trains to easily get to any of those campuses, especially easy enough to find two and three bedroom apartments to partner up with people when you're in college or grad school and make the rent affordable. And young couples as well, like if you are working from home, it's the type of neighborhood where there's enough to do and it's a walkable community. It's a bikeable community.
It's easy to get to anything. You're not that far from the highway to get highway access, but it also is quiet enough that if you're working from home, you don't feel like, oh my God, there's a siren going by every 30 seconds or I'm just like in the middle of noise. You want to feel like you're in the city, but also feel like you can be productive and I feel like Edgewater allows a little bit of both.
And there's enough things to keep you busy that you don't have to go too far away to find what you really want. It's 15 minutes to Evanston for the movie theater. So you're centrally located to Evanston and it takes you, like I'm 15 minutes from Evanston and I'm 15 minutes from Michigan Avenue Water Tower Place from Edgewater. In decent traffic, you can pretty much get to anything that you don't have in your immediate community. And so it checks off a lot of boxes.
Speaker 2: Nice. Good word. Cool, so you've highlighted a lot of businesses in the local area, which is awesome. That's exactly what you were supposed to do. I'll have links to as many of the places that you mentioned as is practical in the show notes and things like that. Is there anything that you would like to highlight or promote about yourself or even anything else in the neighborhood that you wanted to get to, but didn't?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so about myself, yes, selfless plug here. I recently started making custom pens and I have a really, it's called Love, comma, Tree Inspirations and I'm gonna be going officially live with my own website at the beginning of the year, but there is also a little craziness. I started getting sick and tired of spending $100 having my nails done and I was like, I'm gonna do this myself. And then I was like, hmm, I could sell these nails and get them for like 50% off. Huh, I can sell these nails to other people. So I actually have a website as well where I am selling my Hello, Love, like press on nails. So nothing that we have to like leave in the podcast, you can feel free to like edit it out, but I wouldn't mind if we could like put the little link if somebody like is interested. They'll like follow the little link, that would be good. And then the only shop that I left out that isn't Edgewater, it's Edgewater adjacent that I think we should definitely clue in is Getsemane, the nursery is like the best place to get live plants, Christmas plants and one of the hidden gems is if you have never been into their gift shop, they have like, they spend so much time curating and finding unique gifts from all over the world.
So if you have that person, then it's really hard to find a gift for and you haven't found that gift yet, Getsemane might have it for you. So I think that they should be in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've driven by it a hundred times. I've never gone in there, but I always admire it as I'm driving by it. I was like, that looks like a really solid place to go buy a plant.
Speaker 1: But once I took Eric there, now he goes all the time on his own. He's like, what? Oh my God, I got a gift for somebody, I'm going there. Yeah, nice. Awesome. All right, well I think,
Speaker 2: yeah, I think I'm good on my end. Thank you so much for all your time and sharing all your expertise on Edgewater and Chicago and the school system and all the stuff that we were able to get into. I knew I had a feeling this would be a fun meandering in a good way kind of conversation. So it looked up to the hype.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not sure if that was perfect. Different generations on a podcast together, what do you expect? I'm gonna like, state on topic. I mean, this is me now. It's not the Gen X way. No.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that means. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It means we're the last key generation, you know? Like what? A cut? That's a cut? It doesn't need stitches. Throw some dirt in it. Throw some dirt on it, yeah. Yeah, you know. Nice. That type of thing. So have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Siri, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome, bye bye.
