Move over, Sesame Street on Ice, church picnics and aerobics. Make room for some suburban newcomers–lesbian crooner k.d. lang at the Rosemont Theatre, a goddess festival with a karaoke night in Arlington Heights and Taoist tai chi classes in Palatine.
And if that’s not enough, throw in bands signed to national labels that play suburban blues bars, an African-American fashion show in Schaumburg and a Zen Buddhist group meditating weekly in Palatine.
From religion to culture to nightlife, the northwest suburbs are expanding beyond their mainstream roots to become ethnically diverse and culturally sophisticated. No longer just safe, easy-going places to raise children, the area is quickly becoming a stimulating place for adults–even those without children.
Part of the impetus for change is coming from a generation of educated, professional employees in high-tech industries located along the Interstate Highway 90 corridor. These workers are creating and fostering the same activities they enjoyed as college students or city dwellers.
Made up of the tail end of the Baby Boom generation and the leading edge of Generation X, these suburbanites grew up with a wider palette of experiences than did their elders and are stretching former “bedroom communities” to meet their needs.
They are joined by Asian and Latino newcomers who have brought their religious and cultural traditions with them. Masses in Spanish, for example, are offered at Catholic churches in Wheeling and Des Plaines, and Elk Grove Village has Korean and Filipino Baptist churches.
Some of the new events still have niche audiences. Linda Mowry, co-founder of Arlington Heights’ Prairie Moon Feminist Bookstore, acknowledges that some of the goddess-book discussions have been “tiny gatherings.”
But, she says, she gets calls every week from women moving into the northwest suburbs who are looking for ways to connect with alternative spiritualities or holistic health-care options, such as those showcased last month at the Whole Life Expo at the Rosemont Convention Center.
Large northwest suburban bookstores now stock the scholarly Buddhist magazine Tricyle and its hip counterpart, CyberSangha. And with the arrival of suburban health-food supermarkets have come the free New Age publications that once were found only in Chicago.
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“When several people at my kids’ school heard that I was a Zen Buddhist priest, their reaction was, `That is neat,’ rather than `That is weird,’ ” said Susan Myoyu Anderson of Des Plaines, who leads the Northwest Chicago Zen Group in Palatine. “That is not what I would have expected.”
In terms of entertainment, cultural activities are catching up with population growth, and the northwest suburbs are attracting patrons from Chicago as well as distant suburbs–largely because the venues offer top-name performers in hassle-free, up-to-date facilities.
“I really like coming out here,” said Chicagoan Kevin Loftus, 26, one of the few men in a sea of black-leather-clad women who saw k.d. lang in late October. “I was also out here last week for the Whole Life Expo. It’s safer, more isolated from the city’s craziness. You can just walk from the door to your car in the parking lot. I drove this time, but I took the `L’ to the Expo.”
The Zen group, which meets in the Countryside Unitarian Universalist Church in Palatine, also draws people from a wide area, and Anderson is a good example of a grown-up Boomer who has transplanted her unusual early life into the suburbs. After becoming a Buddhist priest in a monastery in Los Angeles, she married, had children, and is integrating Buddhist practice into her family’s suburban life.
“The Chicago area has always been a rich environment for Buddhism, with every branch represented, but until recently, it was only in the city,” Anderson said.
The group practices Zen with a definite suburban overlay. The facility is wheelchair-accessible, baby-sitting is provided by the daughter of one of the members, and the group is talking about setting up a Buddhist Sunday school. Most of the members are combining Buddhism with their Christian or Jewish faiths.
Down the hall from the Zen group, members of a tai chi class learn centuries-old, graceful stretching movements designed to heal body and spirit. The names of the movements are evocative of a faraway time and place: grasp wild bird’s tail, carry tiger to mountain and strum the pei pa.
Not too long ago, the image most people had of tai chi was of elderly Asians, usually in urban areas, performing graceful movements in unison each day to greet the dawn.
But the ancient form of exercise has become so popular among Westerners–especially middle-age women who eschew the health-club culture–that tai chi classes outnumber yoga in some local community continuing education programs.
The Taoist form, a set of 108 movements developed by monk Moy Lin-Shin and brought to Canada in 1970, is taught in Illinois only in the suburbs. Classes are held in Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Glenview, including several in nursing homes and senior citizen centers.
“We get people who would never go into a health club,” said Margie Butler of Arlington Heights, a systems analyst at United Airlines who is president of the Taoist Tai Chi Society of the United States-Illinois. “No matter what your physical condition, you can do tai chi. We would like to expand into Chicago some day.”
That kind of reverse pollination–the suburbs having something new to offer city-dwellers–is a small but growing trend in entertainment.
Tim Orchard, president of the Entertainment Group, which books the Rosemont Theatre and Rosemont Horizon, says the suburbs are attractive entertainment sites because of economics and location. The 2-year-old Rosemont Theatre ranks third in the nation in attendance and revenue for 3,000- to 5,000-seat theaters.
“Ask your customer: `Do you want convenience and accessibility, a modern theater that has a spacious lobby and plenty of restrooms and nice, comfortable seating areas?’ We have it,” Orchard said. “Or do you want to fight traffic and fight for parking and stand out in an alleyway waiting to get into a theater?”
The Prairie Center for the Arts in Schaumburg has grown from presenting one show a month in 1986 to more than 50 a year, said director Betsy Armistead. And Elgin Community College’s visual and performing arts programs drew patrons from more than 200 ZIP codes last year.
“That tells me we’re getting the message out there,” said program director Randy Green, who was executive director of Chicago’s Civic Opera House for 11 years. In that job, he tried to lure suburbanites to Wacker Drive. Now, he wants to keep local patrons close to home.
When performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson came to the Chicago area last month, she skipped downtown venues and performed at Elgin Community College and the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn. Green and the College of DuPage cooked up the deal, which resulted in back-to-back sellouts.
Green had similar success a couple of years ago in persuading Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a popular South African vocal group, to add a Midwest tour to its schedule. The nine stops included Elgin Community College.
Clubs such as the Beale Street Blues Cafe in Palatine and Porter’s Oyster Bar in Crystal Lake feature well-known Chicago blues bands and national recording artists. Jackhammer’s in Schaumburg has hired headliners ranging from rocker Joan Jett to country star Daryle Singletary.
Beale Street owner Joe Barrutia, who used to own Blue Chicago on State Street, said the biggest problem he faces is getting suburbanites to realize the options that exist in their back yard.
“People think they have to go into the city for entertainment, but what they really need to do is look in the listings in the paper and see what’s out here,” he said.
Northwest suburban officials also have come to view the arts as a vital part of their economic engine. One new development in downtown Arlington Heights, a six-screen cinema, has set aside two of its movie screens for arts films.
And the Bog Theatre strives to produce quality drama as well as help restore the luster to downtown Des Plaines.
“A lot of younger people are moving and starting up businesses in town,” said Dan Tomko, the Bog’s artistic director. “We hope to use the Bog to create a downtown artistic presence, a place the community can rally around.”
The northwest suburbs also have produced their own hit rock bands. The Smoking Popes, a power-pop-punk band out of the Lake in the Hills-Crystal Lake area, could be the biggest group to emerge from the Chicago scene since Glendale Heights’ native son Billy Corgan made Smashing Pumpkins the band of the 1990s.
Popes’ lead singer and songwriter Josh Caterer said his suburban upbringing was good for his songwriting. And it may be a boon for Carpentersville. Caterer lived in the village until he was 13 and immortalizes it on the band’s new “Destination Failure” album: “I drove all the way from Carpentersville to see you here tonight/And it was worth it,” he sings on “You Spoke to Me.”
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Caterer sees a connection between how rock critics assess his music and life in the suburbs.
“I’ve heard a lot of people say there’s a certain innocent or naive quality about the words I write, and that’s probably a product of being suburban,” he said. “You don’t get corrupted by too much stimuli out there. There’s a certain purity of life to it.”