Charles Gustavus Wicker

The current thaw allowed me to take a stroll in Wicker Park recently. This bronze monument to Charles Wicker was installed in 2006 as part of a huge face-lift in the park including new children's playground facilities, refurbishing of the fountain, and general improvements to the garden, fieldhouse and grounds. Jeff Huebner recently wrote a great article about this sculpture in the historical context of the park, the Wicker family, and the Chicago labor movement for the Beachwood Reporter. Check out his article to find out all about it. In deference to his superior coverage, I'll reserve my comments here to my own reaction to this statue as I encountered it... The figure of Wicker is short, but stout, shrouded in a huge long-coat and topped with a giant stove-pipe hat, captured sweeping the bronze floor of his own pedestal. He sports a Lincoln-like beard, which in combination with the hat makes him seem like a pudgy child all dressed up as his hero, Abraham Lincoln, but stoicly dedicated to his task. The figure is neither graceful nor powerful. It is just there. He seems to stand for a chore, a cleanup that needs to be done, but which has no glory or fame attached to it. I associated him then with the recent renovations done in the park, the cleaning up of this little part of the garden in a city. (Can we change our motto to horto in urbs? It seems more realistic than the obverse.) The rectangular concrete base on which he stands is but a little swath of the vast urban grid all around this little pocket of green. As represented in this statue, Wicker comes off as an everyman with broad shoulders and steely gaze, staunchly aspiring to hero status for doing his tidy little civil duties. The real history of Wicker is more complex and conflicted, but suffice it to say, the artist, being Wicker's great-grandaughter(!), has probably portrayed him in exactly the light he would want to be. The sweeping figure of Wicker appropriates a working-class countenance to effectively clean away the memory of labor-movement ("anarchist") activity in West Town, which was until recently signified by the Lucy Parsons (of Haymarket Riot fame) memorial across the park, by usurping the working class ethic for the body of the land-owning class.

Westtown Cowboy

This cowboy on Chicago Ave. is a beacon to shoppers looking to buy authentic western clothing and accessories at the iconic Alcala's Western Wear, a true family business and neighborhood institution for 37 years. He is seen here rearing up on his horse atop the "Alcala's Parking" sign across the street from the retail store, right next to one of the recently posted "WESTtown" neighborhood banners on a lamppost. The fiberglass horse and rider have been suspended in this "lone-ranger" state of rearing and waving for years, while the red and yellow banner is a relatively new marker of a neighborhood in transition. Alcala's claims to be a little bit of the lonestar state in the heart of the midwest. The storefront of the business across the street boasts another horse (sans rider) on the sign, one on the sidewalk, and a smaller, mechanized one inside the store, available for visitors to ride for a quarter. Ironically, the "Westtown" sign, which seen pointing at the cowboy here seems to indicate that this neighborhood is "western," actually points to the fact that real estate interests have gentrified this neighborhood as a southern extension to the inexorable condo and boutique progression from lincoln park to bucktown to wicker park and now to westtown. In fact, there are many fewer gentlemen strolling this neighborhood in the western garb sold at Alcala's than there were 5 years ago. There are more hipsters and yuppies to be sure, though, on their way to the brand new Dominick's down the street, or to any number of new bars and boutique shops along Chicago Ave. Alcala's is still there, as are some of the cheap clothing and furniture stores that have populated this strip for years. The cowboy on Chicago still rides high, though his neon outline is out of gas. He may be too before too long.