How did I get here?

People often ask me why I live here?  Well, there are several reasons we decided to move here.  Most of our friends and family members thought we were crazy to move into North Lawndale.  To be honest, if you would have told me 10 years ago that I'd be living in Lawndale I'd call myself crazy too.

I grew up not to far from North Lawndale, just to the south.  In spite of this it might have been 1,000 miles away.  As a kid a never went into Lawndale.  I knew very little about the area, aside from the occasional news reports I'd see on television.  Lawndale was considered "no mans land"   As a young adult I worked in a hospital in the Douglas Park area.  Working there gave me a glimpse into the lives of the residents of the area.  I heard stories of poverty and a lot of crime and high unemployment.  Aside from my work experience t at the hospital however, I never ventured into the community, so my experience was limited.

Fast forward to 2005. Me and my fiance were looking for a home to start our family.   Unfortunately for us, we were house shopping at the peak of the housing bubble.  Home prices in 2005 were outrageous and for us, a middle class couple, we were limited in our choices.  We didn't want a condo and we didn't want to live in the suburbs.  We both grew up in the city and are urban folks at heart.    2flats and single family homes were out of range for virtually all of the north side of the city.  We never really cared for the south side of the city.   So by process of elimination we began to look at the West Side.

We began our search in Humboldt Park, the Near West Side, Pilsen, and South Lawndale.  The homes we saw in our price range were absolute dumps.  We started to become discouraged and depressed, thinking we would never find a decent home.  Then one day when I did a search online I decided to expand the radius and I started to find beautiful Graystone buildings in Lawndale.  I showed my fiance the listings and we decided to check out some of the buildings.  We both knew very little about the area but were surprised to find such beautiful architecture  ( My wife is an architecture buff. )  The beautiful buildings, along with the wide boulevards, central location, and Douglas Park made us fans of the neighborhood.  Call me a dreamer, but when I  looked at Lawndale,  I didn't see the poverty or crime, I saw the potential.  Like an artist who sees a blank canvas.  I still do, although at each day passes it gets harder and harder to see.

Why a blog?

Why "The Cheetos Diaries"  you ask?  After living in  North Lawndale since 2005, I decided it was time to tell the story of the Wild West.  I suppose I should have started this blog years ago, but  hindsight is 20/20 and my procrastination didn't help.  Better late then never they say. In my 7 years here,  I've seen things that have made me laugh, made me angry, made me sad, brought a smile to my face, and made me question my faith in my fellow man.

I got the idea for the name of my blog after seeing empty Cheetos bags littering the streets and yards everywhere.  At first I found it unusual that there were so many Cheetos bags scattered throughout the neighborhood.  I then came to the conclusion that these Cheetos bags were a  staple food for many kids in the neighborhood.  This conclusion struck a chord in me.  I realized that in many ways, these Cheetos bags were symbolic of life in Lawndale.