The following are different jokes about Oak Park that I considered.
- It’s like a Facebook Moms Group with the right to use deadly force.
- Chicagoland’s own HOA
- How many Oak Park Residents does it take to change a light bulb? Unknown; they’re still getting through the land acknowledgement.
- That’s just a straw man argument. Okay, anywhere not Oak Park, that’s just a straw man argument.
The author himself gives one of the better self-owns, the way that the village makes Hemingway one of its favored sons, when his own relationship to it was poor.
I can also retell a story, though have not confirmed, told to me by a friend who now lives in Oak Park, of a park near their house. Enterprising neighbors managed to get a grant to improve it, but they spent as much money on trying to determine what an equitable response to getting the grant was, like they needed to be sure that, if they got this money that they had to spend on the park, what was an appropriate amount to spend on things not in the neighborhood, in order to feel okay about the money.
And in case it is not more commonly known, the number one target is, of course, Berwyn. The third slot is a toss up between Kankakee and Barrington, but number four is Cicero, though I do not know if jokes is the right term, as much as what if gallows humor had a zip code.
The Oak Park interstate exits going to the left and not the right arose out of the town wanting to have as small of a footprint of disruption when the expressway went in. On one hand, the transparently racist history of expressway creation and what ought to be understood as the pro-transit position of this blog suggests that this is a good thing and ought to have been more adopted in general. On the other hand, pro-YIMBY position of the blog, along with the cynicism over the well-to-do suburb having the clout to stop them when so many other affected parties did not, and the facts on the ground (it is both slow and dangerous) mean that I think it is bad. They are supposed to change it but they keep saying that.
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