They might do well to haul in the guys from the city Water Department and just redo the plumbing along Southport Avenue. Maybe it’d be easier if coffee just flowed from the taps.
It could make a dent in all the double parking and sidewalk-stroller jams that block the way as locals surge forth post-sunrise each morning for the first of their day-long drink.
If a neighborhood is what it drinks, then this one is highly caffeinated.
Ah, but we tease. However, it is something of an amusement to keep tabs on all the java being poured up there.
When last we wrote about the great broad strip, from Belmont on the south to Irving Park on the north, (“The New Southport”), the first big sign of change in the neighborhood, said those keeping track, was when Ida’s Beauty Salon, one of those old-fashioned gems with the bronze bubble-top dryers, got bumped to the back of its three-flat for that harbinger of the urban up-and-coming, Starbucks.
Once the Seattle beanery let forth its flow, there came to the neighborhood–in droves–all the taxis and buzz saws and fancy Italian prams (complete with coffee holders, of course) you would expect in the Land of the Settling-In Formerly Swinging Singles.
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Once the old two-flats were rehabbed, a new breed of brick-and-cement manse wedged in on any empty inch of land; retailers sniffed disposable income in the air and snatched up storefronts that had been mom-and-pop Italian delis, sawdust-sprinkled butcher shops and department stores.
Well, nowadays, the street is shaping itself into a little village within the city. It’s a place where the guy pouring your latte knows you take it “half-caf” before you’re even at the register; where the shopkeeper at the natural toystore gives you the beeswax balm right out of her purse because your little paws are chapped and cracked. Before Christmas, an old-fashioned trolley rumbled along the street, with hot cider served to chilled riders.
The landscape isn’t much changed, except the branch library at Southport and Grace Street was leveled for what are advertised to be “gracious condominiums,” starting at $239,000.
Just north of that, a former gas station, now a heap of dirt, wears a big SOLD sign, with no other clue of what’s to come.
What with a post office on the north end, a late-night diner on the south and an endless variety of commerce in between, you could just about live your whole life on Southport these days.
Oh, yeah, and if it’s caffeine you need, you can always pick up a pair of teeny espresso-cup earrings at Whimsy, a boutique, and stash a drop no farther than your lobesor close your eyes, have someone spin you around three times, and start walking. Sooner or later you’ll bump smack dab into a big ol’ pot of Southport joe. You can’t steer clear of it these days.