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Soren Spicknall Profile picture
Soren Spicknall
@SorenSpicknall
Not as active here these days - feel free to request to follow - he/him - 'We know this world is good enough because it has to be.'
Sep 21, 2023 • 22 tweets • 5 min read
Unlocking for a bit to strip the conspiratorial framing and lies of omission off of this IPI talking point and discuss about what actually happened with the creation, management, and sale of Fewkes Tower + where the proceeds went. Thread below for anybody interested. Fewkes Tower was initially envisioned as a retirement community of sorts for educators. It was financed in the mid-'60s with a 40-year FHA mortgage stipulating that its owner subsidize rents for the target group of retired teachers. This Trib reporting is from March of 1965: A newspaper clipping shows a brief three-paragraph article titled "Loan Granted for Teachers' 30-Story Flat", describing a $3.363 million loan secured by a corporation related to the Chicago Teachers Union to construct a 30-story tower for the purpose of affordably housing retired teachers, alongside community-focused spaces within.
Jul 21, 2023 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
I'm not over this yet, so let's do the math: how much income would it take to afford the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board's example of a "middle class" home? This is the house they chose to highlight in the editorial. A freestanding deconverted three-flat in Lincoln Square, asking $1.05 million. It failed to sell for $900,000 back in 2020, and just came back onto the market this week: redfin.com/IL/Chicago/232…
Jul 21, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Painted in 1988 by Olivia Gude, Jon Pounds, and Marcus Jefferson of Chicago Public Art Group, "I Welcome Myself To a New Place" is a multi-part mural on both sides of the 113th Street railroad viaduct dividing my neighborhood of Pullman from Roseland next door. Some history:

Image
Image
Image The mural was painted during a time of massive change for both neighborhoods - Roseland had rapidly turned from white to Black, while the southern part of Pullman was a white and Latino enclave whose economic stability teetered as nearby industrial employers closed.
Apr 3, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
Last thing I'll say on this for now: public figures should consider the Streisand Effect. I posted some photos of Ja'Mal Green's bus on a highly visible street corner, and because he reacted in a totally unhinged way, I'm now curious about the property owner (his largest donor). Overnight, Green claimed that the property the bus is parked on is going to become a city-owned grocery store if the mayoral candidate he threw his weight behind is elected. He's occasionally talked about city-owned grocery stores before, but never with an address attached. A screenshot in which twitter user @KogalMoon asks Ja'Mal Gr
Apr 2, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
In case it's useful for anybody, a quick thread on what constitutes trespassing (and what doesn't) in Illinois.

IANAL, but I'm a photographer whose work often documents conditions caused by absentee land owners. I need to be fairly familiar with my obligations to property. Trespassing requires more than just the act of setting foot on a piece of property that's stewarded by somebody else. Otherwise, you could be charged with a crime for visiting a community garden, or going to the grocery store, or bringing misdelivered mail to a neighbor.
Apr 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The "powerful bicycle lobby" line makes no sense if you know the first thing about how bike infra is planned, installed, and maintained in this city. Bike lane advocates have made themselves visible, for sure, but visibility isn't power. It can take shouting just to be heard. A snippet from the letter t... In three different neighborhoods I've lived in, one of the main roads I bike on has had protected lanes *removed* without any public input at the whims of an alder or a business. When's the last time they removed a car lane in your neighborhood without months of public hearings?
Apr 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Reporting about the roof collapse at the Apollo in Belvidere tonight demonstrates the chaos that paid verification has brought to breaking news on Twitter. Dozens of feckless "news" accounts spreading exaggerated versions of what happened with no distinction from real reporting. It's now deleted, but at least one paid-checkmark "news" account with a big following misinterpreted initial coverage from a Rockford-based TV station and created a tweet that claimed there had been a mass shooting at the theater. And that got briefly picked up by alarmed locals.
Mar 31, 2023 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
If you're looking for context while waiting for more news, @TheTRiiBE has reported extensively on a strong negative reaction the Lindblom school community had to this interim principal. He fired a popular staff member last fall, igniting a student revolt: thetriibe.com/2022/08/bring-… CPS delayed signing a four-year contract with Muhammad multiple times, most recently in December. In retrospect, the delays seem likely to have been awaiting the outcome of the internal investigation referenced in CPS's statement about his firing. thetriibe.com/2022/12/lindbl…
Mar 15, 2023 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
@JaymalGreen Hey, Ja'Mal. Longtime listener, first time caller. I think your work holding Chase Bank to account a few years ago was cool. But here's the deal: @JaymalGreen I don't know the contents of your heart. I don't know if you regularly questions whether your actions meet the standards set by your beliefs. But I do know what it looks like from outside. And from outside, it looks like you don't really hold your beliefs that closely.
Mar 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Continuing my Roseland and West Pullman Art Moderne documentation quest with 11207 and 11211 S Emerald, designed by B. Albert Comm. Comm was a north sider who was active from 1924 until his death in 1958. Both buildings retain lots of original touches, like their front doors. ImageImageImageImage This remarkably similar building on King (photo from a real estate listing) was designed by Nordlie & Co. and built in 1938 - I'm unsure whether Comm worked with Nordlie at one point, if Nordlie ripped Comm off, or if they were both ripping off somebody else. Image
Feb 14, 2023 • 37 tweets • 9 min read
In this thread: I go from Pullman, Chicago to Fairfax, Los Angeles using two trains, a plane, a number of buses that keeps changing every time I try to plan in advance, and a whole lot of walking. Gonna use the services of somewhere between four and six transit agencies today. A photo of a colorful roller suitcase on a city sidewalk First up: a ten-minute walk to the Metra Electric. There's no route that goes easily from home on the far south side to Midway on the southwest side, so I've gotta head all the way downtown and then get on the Orange Line in order to reach Midway in less than an hour and a half.
Feb 14, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This bears repeating until absorbed. Buttigieg has a super effective PR team for himself, and there's some value to the DOT administrator being a visible public figure, but the work of the Department would be more effectively done by a qualified transportation professional. He seems to have a decent team that understands the headwinds most of the time, so the Department hasn't gone totally adrift. But a competent administrator who knows the organization and the policy landscape (and has the respect of similarly seasoned peers) would've been better.
Jan 5, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Tech salary talk occasionally bubbles up into my view because I do software work, and it's startling how untethered many of the participants are from the material conditions of anybody outside tech. People who *started* at $200K out of college and don't realize they're rich. This is true only for a subset of tech workers, both in the narrow software-driven "tech economy" and in the broader sense that "tech" encompasses so much more than software-related work. But blindness about the sheer scale of personal earnings is common in some tech circles.
Dec 2, 2022 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
I'm not sure yet whether I believe it myself, but I may have located a lost house from the original 1880s Pullman factory town... still standing today, more than six miles away in South Shore. Let me explain: A portion of a vintage Sanborn fire insurance map, showing b Pullman is most famed for its brick rowhouses, which were extensively covered by contemporary press when the town was built in the early 1880s. Company founder George Pullman posited the community as utopian, with indoor plumbing and other rare amenities for laborers at the time. A photo showing a view down a row of attached brick rowhouse
Nov 30, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Everybody's "an organizer" until they have to name literally one organization they've been affiliated with or one campaign, program, or action they've helped put together. Big difference between participating in a thing (petition! march! text bank! strike!) and helping orchestrate the thing. That difference in mode of engagement is important. Nothing wrong with being a participant - that's great on its own - but it doesn't make one an organizer.
Aug 1, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Chicago's bad taste in mayors is a time-honored tradition. In 1869, we elected a guy (Roswell Mason) whose primary claim to fame was that he had illegally built railroad tracks perpendicularly across competing railway's route, causing a train crash that killed 18 people. Other 19th century mayors are notable for such fixations as: attempting to tear down the city's first brick schoolhouse because they believed it was too big (it became overcrowded within a decade), and running northern interference for the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Jul 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Buying tchotchkes at the Donald E. Stephens Monument to Municipal Corruption
Jul 30, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
My neighborhood is about 30% black, 30% white, and 30% latino. It gives my white neighbors daily opportunities to demonstrate whether they learned anything from putting BLM signs in their yards in 2020, or if they still have 911 on speed dial and universally white social circles. At least once a month, somebody makes a gross show of posting security video of a "suspicious" black kid walking through an alley in a neighborhood "safety" Facebook group, or posting complaints about fireworks a couple doors down instead of just talking to their neighbors.
Sep 29, 2019 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
This census tract has a story to tell, and it's not about baseball. It's about racism, urban planning, and how the exercise of political power can actively drain resources from a community that needs them. And yes, it's also a little bit about baseball. Thread: (1/17) What you see in this image has a long history. The southern half is Wentworth Gardens, a Chicago Housing Authority complex built in 1944 for black industrial workers contributing to WWII production. At the time, a majority-black neighborhood surrounded the homes. (2/17)
Mar 8, 2019 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Gather round, children, as I share a timeless tale of fundamentally broken #GovTech:

At the end of 2018, before I started my new job, my fiance explored the possibility of applying for Medicaid until we found a private insurance option that would let her see her doctors. (1/n) Like many states, Illinois's digital infrastructure for public benefits case management leaves a lot to be desired. So even after we found private insurance, which meant that all we had to do was withdraw her case in their system, I knew I had to set significant time aside. (2/n)