AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Tropic island jerk chicken12/22/2023 Gates’ own Rebuild Foundation, responsible for the BCH’s construction and curation, is solely devoted to the facilitation of community engagement and redevelopment through the arts. One of the manifold South Side projects tied to artist-entrepreneur-icon Theaster Gates, the Black Cinema House, which previously occupied a repurposed two-story flat on the corner of 69th and Dorchester, moved to a repurposed distribution facility a few blocks over at 72nd and Kimbark last fall. (Austin Brown)īest Cinema-Related Arm of Theaster Gates’ Redevelopment-Through-The-Arts Octopus Tuesday-Thursday, 8am-3pm Friday-Saturday, 8am-5pm Sunday 9am-5pm. When you’re eating at Five Loaves, it’s hard not to feel that solidarity.įive Loaves Eatery, 405 E. “We just want this to be a place where you break bread with us,” Simms-Kincaid says. Much recent press has been dedicated to Five Loaves’s recent recovery from theft and fire, but the management prefers to focus on the present. In a neighborhood that’s long been defined by the bonds between its residents, Five Loaves is just as much a town hall as it is a restaurant. Many of the people who were at the restaurant when I came were regular attendees, on a first name basis with the entire staff. “We want people to be able to talk about the issues that affect them,” she says, making it clear that for many of the people who come to Five Loaves, the comfort offered isn’t actually temporary. Even simple gestures, like a signed “Thanks” with a heart on the check, all build on the same feeling of a safe space.Ī quick chat with the owner of the restaurant, Constance Simms-Kincaid, reveals how deep this feeling goes. Five Loaves is, in fact, a family business, and every interaction with an employee feels like you’re temporarily joining that family. Still, the real stars of the show are the servers and cooks of Five Loaves, the ones who tie it all together. There’s a care for the dishes, which don’t have many bells and whistles, Emeline Posnerīut which nevertheless carry a taste that sets them apart from simple “comfort food.” The breakfast offerings are the highlights, with bacon that manages to approach crispy without losing tenderness and eggs that make the word “fluffy” feel inadequate. Whatever your troubles are, they no longer exist from the time you enter our door.” The decorations may not be permanent, but they are certainly endearing.īut the homey feeling is only augmented when one tastes the food. At first I thought it was because of the cutesy signs and tchotchkes found throughout, all offering some variation on the same slogan: “Everything is okay here. Sign up to get the Weekly Digest delivered to your inboxįive Loaves Eatery tastes like home. “You start to see people living in Chatham who aren’t stakeholders,” says Addams, referring to recent transplants, “and one of the things was that younger generations left Chatham and didn’t come back.” Addams doesn’t fault them for that-“they feel successful,” she says, but at the same time, the newcomers don’t have the roots that made their predecessors so tight-knit. However, the community here has felt an upset in recent years. These are people who have been in contact sometimes for decades, and it shows: seeming strangers will turn to each other after sitting down in the same restaurant and turn out to be old friends. “I know people, and I guess some of them know me,” she said.įor Addams, that’s how being a Chatham native feels at its best you’re not just a part of a neighborhood, you’re part of a family, with all of the support and watchfulness that comes along with that. Addams is well-connected too, even if she doesn’t let it show: a brief but friendly interaction with a man who turned out to be a former alderman was nonchalantly passed over. Addams, who has been in the neighborhood for more than fifty years now, has the advantage of both perspective and attention: she knows where the neighborhood was ten or twenty years ago, and, moreover, she knows where it’s going. “Most of the homes had been passed from one generation to the next,” says Claire Addams, a community leader and former board member of the Greater Chatham Alliance. It’s a feel that neighborhood citizens work hard to preserve in a time when the families of Chatham have begun greeting newcomers, renters, and unaffiliated buyers who nevertheless want to be a part of what is one of the most tight-knit communities in the South Side. Block clubs in Chatham maintain a genial atmosphere and preserve a long-standing community within the neighborhood. The first thing you might notice is the lawns: carefully manicured, they bring to mind a preserved vision of the ideal American suburb of the 1950s.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |