Chicago is often described as a "city of neighborhoods," and a typical critique of highways is that they destroy, or at least erase from most people's direct experience, such neighborhoods. Not knowing much about what the "East Side" was like before the advent of the Skyway or the process of de-industrialization, I can't offer a judgment on whether the Skyway had such effects on the social life of the neighborhood. It still seems to me to be characterized by a mix of older brick housing and newer, cheaper construction, and many vacant lots. Even on the surface streets, though, it is a passage to Indiana, particularly for the many vans and buses that head through each on the way back and forth to the casinos there.

The immediately-obvious aspects of the East Side's social life are the ones I've represented below, with pictures of bars, lunch places, and parks. This is definitely a working-class neighborhood, with businesses (at least along my route) revolving around shipping on the Calumet River. There are other bars, schools, and shops of course, but I haven't yet taken pictures of them.

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