![The Underground Online pt 1/3 - Condemned to Become, Never to Be.
The intersection of Clark and Belmont in Chicago is important to me. Although its relevancy has faded, it is renowned enough to have an entry in the Urban Dictionary:
Clark and Belmont is the neighborhood of nearly every subculture Chicago has to offer, especially the Chicago Punk scene.
This was true throughout the 1980s and 90s. I loved the mix of underground and mainstream. Bandwagon baseball fans meet goths. Transsexuals walk the streets at night. Moms push strollers during the day. Even in the rougher 1980s, long-time residents stayed unlike Wicker Park circa-2000. Only fragments of that neighborhood’s colorful Polish past remain.
Clark and Belmont never developed the haute couture like the trendsetting streets of New York, London, Tokyo or Paris. Hip-hop went mainstream. Car commercials, high fashion and the like. Ministry, a Chicago band, and Front 242, a Chicago import, remain obscure. That’s what happens in cities like Chicago. What starts underground stays underground.
Berlin shares this destiny. Karl Scheffler summed up the condition in 1910 when talking about his city:
Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.
Restless folks are like that. I’m restless. I can never simply be. I’m a filmmaker. In film, people move to Los Angeles in the hopes of being something someday. That’s a terminal aspiration. Like death. People like me are in perpetual motion. We’re always working and never becoming. We remain underground. Always digging.
[Photo: Belmont Graffiti]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldlkucjWng1qzzio5o1_500.jpg)
The Underground Online pt 1/3 - Condemned to Become, Never to Be.
The intersection of Clark and Belmont in Chicago is important to me. Although its relevancy has faded, it is renowned enough to have an entry in the Urban Dictionary:
Clark and Belmont is the neighborhood of nearly every subculture Chicago has to offer, especially the Chicago Punk scene.
This was true throughout the 1980s and 90s. I loved the mix of underground and mainstream. Bandwagon baseball fans meet goths. Transsexuals walk the streets at night. Moms push strollers during the day. Even in the rougher 1980s, long-time residents stayed unlike Wicker Park circa-2000. Only fragments of that neighborhood’s colorful Polish past remain.
Clark and Belmont never developed the haute couture like the trendsetting streets of New York, London, Tokyo or Paris. Hip-hop went mainstream. Car commercials, high fashion and the like. Ministry, a Chicago band, and Front 242, a Chicago import, remain obscure. That’s what happens in cities like Chicago. What starts underground stays underground.
Berlin shares this destiny. Karl Scheffler summed up the condition in 1910 when talking about his city:
Berlin is a city condemned always to become, never to be.
Restless folks are like that. I’m restless. I can never simply be. I’m a filmmaker. In film, people move to Los Angeles in the hopes of being something someday. That’s a terminal aspiration. Like death. People like me are in perpetual motion. We’re always working and never becoming. We remain underground. Always digging.
[Photo: Belmont Graffiti]
