How many of us are from chicagoland orig?

Mike Krumlauf

Mike Krumlauf

Award Winning Filmmaker
Just interested to see.. I know i've spoken to a couple.

I'm from Naperville. Lived in Chicago for 4 years before leaving the state for my slow journey to california (which begins next year.. cant wait to leave colorado).

My time in Chicago consisted of the first 2 years being up in edgewater and the last 2 right downtown next to the lake shore drive bridge. Anyone have any fond memories growing up in the city or burbs there? Maybe ill get lucky and find another napervillian haha
 
I am not but I used to listen to the Sportswriters on WGN.

And watch Deborah Norville on Ch.5 WMAQ-TV.
 
Originally from the Edgebrook area of Chicago, moved to Highland Park, IL when I was 7. Moved to Los Angeles for college when I was eighteen.

I have very fond memories of growing up in Edgebrook. There were tons of kids on my street and we were outside all the time, riding big wheels and bikes and staying over at each others houses. We had epic games of Kick the Can the whole block took part in that would go on for hours.

Highland Park, not as fond memories. It's a beautiful place but I felt pretty alienated as a minority. I managed to make friends when I got there but they peeled off as some moved away and my teen years were fairly solitary.
 
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Batutta said:
Originally from the Edgebrook area of Chicago, moved to Highland Park, IL when I was 7. Moved to Los Angeles for college when I was eighteen.

I have very fond memories of growing up in Edgebrook. There were tons of kids on my street and we were outside all the time, riding big wheels and bikes and staying over at each others houses. We had epic games of Kick the Can the whole block took part in that would go on for hours.

Highland Park, not as fond memories. It's a beautiful place but I felt pretty alienated as a minority. I managed to make friends when I got there but they peeled off as some moved away and my teen years were fairly solitary.
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But hey highland park has risky business and michael jordan so theres that :b... all jokes aside i understand and i dont.. i understand in that ALL rich white towns of chicago have a racist and alienating undertone (naperville included) and im not proud of that.. i dont understand in that im white so their are somethings i just wont be able to understand but i saw these things happen around me so i was not obvious to it.
 
Likely doesn’t qualify, but I lived just off-campus at U of C for two years in the early 90’s. I still remember springtime by Promontory Point, the air rich with the peaceful sounds of automatic gunfire....
 
mcbob said:
Likely doesn’t qualify, but I lived just off-campus at U of C for two years in the early 90’s. I still remember springtime by Promontory Point, the air rich with the peaceful sounds of automatic gunfire....
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Its only gotten worse my friend. Ever since Daley knocked down Cabrini the south sides and west sides have become even bigger war zones.
 
Mike Krumlauf said:
But hey highland park has risky business and michael jordan so theres that :b... all jokes aside i understand and i dont.. i understand in that ALL rich white towns of chicago have a racist and alienating undertone (naperville included) and im not proud of that.. i dont understand in that im white so their are somethings i just wont be able to understand but i saw these things happen around me so i was not obvious to it.
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I was there in the 80's and I'm assuming you're a bit younger than me so it's disheartening it hasn't changed much. It wasn't overt, KKK racism, but a more insidious unspoken racism that was implicit at all times, and occasionally came to the surface. In my case, my best friend's girlfriend cheated on him with a black guy and he became seemingly racist overnight, but those feelings were lurking there all the time. I will say growing up through that gave me a pretty thick skin. Some of the things millennials are triggered by just make me shrug and wonder what planet they've been living on.
 
Batutta said:
I was there in the 80's and I'm assuming you're a bit younger than me so it's disheartening it hasn't changed much. It wasn't overt, KKK racism, but a more insidious unspoken racism that was implicit at all times, and occasionally came to the surface. In my case, my best friend's girlfriend cheated on him with a black guy and he became seemingly racist overnight, but those feelings were lurking there all the time. I will say growing up through that gave me a pretty thick skin. Some of the things millennials are triggered by just make me shrug and wonder what planet they've been living on.
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Yeah, i mean not to get to personal and political (as i know politics are frowned here so sorry) but I agree in that most of my generation is becoming to PC for their own good. I'm all about acceptance and everyone being treated equally, but when a president you dont like gets into office and you have a panic attack and schools like harvard and yale are bringing in puppies to make the kids feel better, it really makes me wonder too. I dont have much in common with my generation, I feel a bit like a black sheep most of the time. In terms of age, i was born in 1990 and i know exactly what you are talking about when you say it as an "indidious unspoken racism".. i saw that happen all the time. Same went for sexuality. If you were anything but catholic white and heterosexual in naperville you usually ended up in a bar fight or two you didnt cause. I believe Naperville has grown since when I was little, but given I was raised around very very wealthy kids and was bullied myself just for "not having enough money to afford 3 floors in my house" (and granted my dad and mom did very well for themselves back then) and then in high school some minor bullying for being a nerd/filmmaker/gay teen, i totally understand it. Everyone in suburban chicago who is white and has money usually has this mask and i think because society is becoming more welcoming to all people, their masks have become thicker because they know their morals are not met with kindness like in the 50s-90s so they have to repress all their anger and hate... dont know why they wouldnt just grow up and be nice.. doesnt take much to be nice to someone :)

Edit: Also need to point out that you were living in the north shore during the John Hughes era and for that i envy the hell out of you!
 
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Mike Krumlauf said:
Also need to point out that you were living in the north shore during the John Hughes era and for that i envy the hell out of you!
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My teen years were straight through the middle of the 80's so I was definitely at ground zero for all that. It was one of those things where it wasn't exactly like that, but the more kids saw those movies the more they modelled themselves after them. Wasn't my experience for sure but I was an anomaly, a Dominican, movie obsessed nerd. I think the only thing that saved me from bullying was that I sprouted to 6 foot 5 when I was fifteen. This is where racism played to my advantage. Nothing was more terrifying to these white suburban boys than a large black man (even though I wasn't technically black) so they didn't mess with me, even though they all probably could have kicked my ass as I was asthmatic and unathletic. My poor sister wasn't as lucky. She was ten years older than me and spent most of her teen years in Edgebrook before we moved. Edgebrook was fine for us as kids, but she had to go to High School in in a different neighbourhood with a bunch of Irish Catholic cop kids where she got called the N-word to her face and suffered a lot of abuse. Amazed she got through it intact.
 
I should add, be glad you weren’t a gay teen in the Chicago burbs in the 80’s. Being openly gay wasn’t even an option and straight kids got bullied for even seeming gay.
 
Batutta said:
I should add, be glad you weren’t a gay teen in the Chicago burbs in the 80’s. Being openly gay wasn’t even an option and straight kids got bullied for even seeming gay.
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Oh i know. I mean as much as Hughes is my #1 idol in life, i have the sensibility that he was a tad homophobic given how liberal the word "fag" is thrown around in his films, then again those were just the times so maybe he was just staying true to 80s teen lingo talk? I cant imagine a man with so much empathy to misunderstood teenagers and adults would be a bigot himself.. then again.. not many non white characters in his film.. again could just be representation of the times in north shore chicago which in the 80s was a sea of white.. most of it still is.. for sure lake forest, omg that town...still looks like the set of ordinary people.. town is stuck in time lol
 
For sure, fag was our go to insult during that time so it was definitely accurate. His portrayal of minorities was dismal. Long Duck Dong is pretty cringey. I lived right on the border of Lake Forest. They shot a scene of Ordinary People at the McDonalds a block from my house. I always found it hilarious that Mr. T lived in Lake Forest. He drove the locals nuts because he chopped down a ton of trees on his property, I think because of his allergies.
 
Not to point out the obvious - or maybe it's beneficial - but that kind of stuff was present in every single state.

Today - in 2019 - I still experience a culture shock when I travel to certain places.
 
NorBro said:
Not to point out the obvious - or maybe it's beneficial - but that kind of stuff was present in every single state.

Today - in 2019 - I still experience a culture shock when I travel to certain places.
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True, but lots of the areas of Chicago and its suburbs have grown with the times... others have not.
 
Batutta said:
For sure, fag was our go to insult during that time so it was definitely accurate. His portrayal of minorities was dismal. Long Duck Dong is pretty cringey. I lived right on the border of Lake Forest. They shot a scene of Ordinary People at the McDonalds a block from my house. I always found it hilarious that Mr. T lived in Lake Forest. He drove the locals nuts because he chopped down a ton of trees on his property, I think because of his allergies.
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Yeah, I remember my mother telling me that story about Mr.T.. I actually have a funny story about Lake Forest via my mom... in the 70s my mother was a caretaker for the lady who owned hienz ketchup i believe and she lived on the property in lake forest (its right along the interstate and is now a costco). One day when she was there a young man in a sports car came up and began flurting with my mom and asked her out on a date and my mother said no... the ketchup lady ran over asking why she could have possibly said no to one of henry ford's great grandsons... i'll tell you why.. cause i wouldn't have been born hahahahahaha :b

Also, John Hughes lived at 855 E. Westminster in Lake Forest. 4 years after he died Lake Forest with the help of his family opened the home to the public and i got to sit in his office chair with his typewriter that he wrote bueller on... that along with meeting Nancy in 2016 has been a true blessing for me. I have his company logo tattooed on my left arm :)
 
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