For project two, my group and I chose the medium of a recipe book to depict the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago. The book is made of different color construction paper and held together by brown twine pieces. The cover reads “Wicker Park Recipe Book” and on one side, lying vertically, is our gleaned object- a red ribbon that was tied around a cement pot in the park. When you open to the first page, it has the recipe for “Resident Soup” with its ingredients and directions underneath. There are also pictures of the ingredients scattered- such as, a woman in high heels, a man playing guitar, and friends playing basketball. If you turn to the next page, you’ll find a recipe for “Wicker Park Stir Fry.” The stir fry includes the trendy retail stores, bakeries, bookstores, any sort of shop you can find in the neighborhood. The pictures for this particular one show Reckless Records, Mojo Spa, and a vintage sign we found in one of the windows. On the third page is the “Wicker History Cake.” As you can tell by the name, this recipe includes all the bits and pieces of the neighborhoods background. There is a picture we found of Wicker Park in the mid to late 1800s and a photo we took of the statue of Wicker. This book is all hand-made and hand-written and all of the pictures inside are the pictures we took when we went to visit Wicker Park, except for the one from the 1800s of course!
The first decision we encountered was what neighborhood to choose. I have been to Wicker Park a number of times with my mom, aunt, and cousins. They like to go to different neighborhoods and explore the shopping and restaurants and I love to tag along. My group members haven’t really been exposed to that neighborhood so I thought it would be fun. I would learn more details about a neighborhood that I otherwise would think nothing of, and my partners would see a different part of Chicago. Our next decision was what medium to choose. A recipe book seemed to make the most sense. We would be able to each do our part and show the make-up of Wicker Park in a simpler form. The next thing to decide was where and when we were going to meet. We all have different schedules for work and school so we had to find a day that we were all off, which happened to be a Sunday. Also meeting at the actual park seemed to be the most practical. We were all pretty easy-going and communicated well. We didn’t have too many problems deciding who would do what part of the recipe book.
What is the relationship between the realities and perceptions of a community, among what communities are, what they believe themselves to be, and what they wish they were? As soon someone steps off at the Damen blue line stop, and sees the view above Milwaukee Avenue or even as soon as they step out on the street, they can judge that this is a very trendy neighborhood. Wicker Park shows itself as a colorful, historic but hip neighborhood. From the pictures in our recipe book, and even in the ingredients, you can see how the people dress and what the stores look like. It’s almost as if a shop that weren’t vintage or cater to hipsters’ style would not blossom in this neighborhood.
The message of our recipe book is to show the personality of Wicker Park. Chicago is made up of many neighborhoods- big, small, ghetto, upscale, and many different ethnicities. I hope that the audience found out some new information and got a feel of how the Wicker Park community is.
For this project, we could have had more “recipes” instead of just generalizing the community into three separate categories. We did however, make our recipes in a clever way and different from everyone else’s recipes- we used metaphorical ingredients. I feel this really shows the make-up instead of using actual ingredients for real meals.
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