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<li><p>memake, sorry, but I was responding to your comment about “miles and miles” of Chicago to the north, west, and south of Hyde Park to be “off limits” to Chicago students, and also to the suggestion that they do not “travel all over” to do community service. As I think my post makes clear, I don’t disagree with you about the west, but so what? South, there is a lot of folklore and concern, but kids go there and do things (including past Woodlawn – my kids once called me up from an African restaurant somewhere around 79th St.). And north just doesn’t feel impacted the way you and pollutioncontrol imply. A couple of months ago, I walked from 59th to 47th and back through Hyde Park, and never had the sense that I had left a positively wealthy community. My daughter, I know, has ridden a bike downtown, not just along the lake shore (which people do as a matter of course) but also on Martin Luther King Drive, which goes right through Bronzeville. (With others, yes . . . but she wasn’t ever much of a solitary bike-rider or someone who walks long distances alone for the fun of it.)</p></li>
<li><p>spark is right that downtown isn’t necessarily “happening”, although my kid has made a lot of use out of Millennium Park and free admission at the Art Institute, and there is some “happening” going on in neighborhoods like Pilsen and Chinatown that are more downtown than northside.</p></li>
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