A sit down at Standees

all photos by Molly Horan

Not to belabor the point, but the pure diversity bustling on Granville Avenue has really commanded my attention. To find a good gawking spot, I found myself ordering some chicken noodle soup at Standees Coffee Shop and Fountain.

So I scoped out the diner where the generation before me sipped joe in the early 70's. Neighboring business owners have since landed from Mexico, the Himalayan valley, the Far East, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Granville's Chamber of Commerce members are as global today as are their patrons. Familia were lunching at the booth behind a pair of indie Loyola students. Their stories still unfolding, mine would have to start someplace older. knew it best to see... - no. To envision the area through veteran eyes.

The "two older white people" I first scribbled into my reporter notebook would soon jump off the page. Grace, a neighborhood landlord, and Jimmy, a retired CPD homicide investigator, meet all the time, sitting together at separate tables. Their conversation about FOX news reeled me in, and soon I was learning things I could and could not believe - crazy and amazing Edgewater history.

"Everybody gets along with everybody here, - I tell my tenants. You've got the 147 and 151 bus, the Granville CTA; you've got Dominicks, Walgreens, and Payless right there - what more could you need!"

Grace Rubbi tells me many of the same things she tells potential tenants. Psyched to say how and why the neighborhood changed, Grace had all the answers.

The local perps were driven out of the area a few years ago, "and the good people aren't going to let the bad people make it back." Though she gives anyone a break who might have stepped awry at one point or another, to move into Grace's building, you've gotta pass the usual criminal background and credit check. But you've also gotta prove a year's stability on the job. "From Granville to Clark, we're all privately owned properties, and we're not about to let our property depreciate."

"We've really invested in the neighborhood. It's the people who've improved it. Our neighborhood watch meets every month. Our beat cop walks the beat, and our aldermen, O'Connor and Mary Ann Smith, show up to our neighborhood watch meetings. We started a festival on Granville last year and closed off the street from Sheridan down to Broadway. The food vendors set up; have you ever been to Taste of Chicago? Shish-ka-bob! Like that. You can watch the air show from here. We care about our area. We even do a spring cleaning and walk all around; the best yard gets an award. The good people are going to keep the bad people out."

What bad people, right? When I told Jimmy and Grace about the Edgewater Crime Blotter , Jimmy asked, "what crime?" As officer Jim Mcdonough, Area 6 homicide, he's seen a lot worse.

The drug addicts and alcoholics some may remember crawling Granville's corners went elsewhere after enough of Edgewater's people signed a petition to close down two liquor stores on Granville. Even most of the panhandlers found a new base.

So now the upgrades are continuous. A senior park went in by the lake, and another on Thorndale, which is just a couple blocks south, and the next stop south on the Red Line.

So Grace and Jimmy finished their meals and had to get going, but not without shocking me first. "See that old building down the corner by Winthrop, 1255 W. Granville? One of the 9/11 plane terrorists was living there."

With that said, I think the most dangerous have gone away.