A lot’s happening in Bridgeport at the moment. Bridgeport art collective Lumpen has launched a new “community newsletter,” the Bridgeport International. Check out their first issue online or in stores around the neighborhood, and make sure to read their endorsements for today’s primary. This Friday Lumpen is holding a combination zine release party/benefit concert for the Whale, the Pilsen artists’ society building that went up in flames in December. Meanwhile, Chicago freelancer John Greenfield wrote a comprehensive tour of Bridgeport for the latest issue of bike magazine Momentum.

Bubbly Creek in 1905; Chicago History Museum

Bubbly Creek in Bridgeport, so-called because (I hope you’re done with lunch) the Union Stock Yards used it as a dump for blood, grease, and animal remains, causing it to, that’s right, bubble. The stockyards have been gone for decades, but according to a recent article in the Chicago Journal, it’s still bubbling, and on hot days the overpowering stench fills the neighborhood. The Illinois EPA and other environmental groups are fighting for the creek to be cleaned up by disinfecting and then raising the minimum amount of oxygen in the water. It’s an expensive and long-term project that the city is reluctant to start. It’s part of a bigger fight from the Illinois EPA and others to get Chicago to disinfect its sewer water before dumping it into the Chicago River and Lake Michigan after heavy rains. The city maintains that it’s not a serious problem because it’s not being dumped into swimming areas, but as Henry Henderson, Midwest directer of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “Human excrement — intestinal miasma — dumped into a major city’s river is dumb, bad, stupid. Knock it off.”
Upton Sinclair’s horrifying account of Bubbly Creek from The Jungle after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »