I Hate the Evanston Fourth of July Parade

A brief rant about Evanston and racism and classism

Last summer I went to the Out of Space festival to see a couple of my favorite musicians: Lucius and Dawes.

At the festival, there are two classes of tickets: the lawn seats and “VIP” seats which are basically lawn seats but the area goes up to the stage. Usually, it crowds up close to the stage as people move up - it becomes standing room only.¹ We bought the VIP tickets so we could get up front, got there super early for the opening act, Celisse (who is amazing, by the way). We were literally like one of the first 100 people at the festival - 45 minutes before the opening act.

Anyway, we get to the VIP section and there are a handful of camping chairs placed in the front row, like five feet behind the rail - right where people would stand during a concert, equivalent to the second row. Nobody was sitting in those chairs so we stand to the side. Celisse plays her set, the chairs were still empty, so slid in front of them - tough luck.

Once Lucius took the stage, the owner of the chairs, an older drunk white woman returned from the bar and insisted that we had to move - we were blocking her view. I said, “tough, you missed the whole opening act. You can’t just drop a chair here and come back two hours later, that’s not how outdoor music festivals work.” Things escalated, she insulted me and my partner and dropped the standard North Evanston insult.

Do you even live in Evanston?

Oh boy. Seeing the dispute, security came over. They ruled in her favor - by placing the chairs in the front row and leaving to get drunk, she had the right to an obstructed seated view. Security mentioned something about her being an important person and that’s how it goes. We left the show after that, walking back to my two bedroom apartment, past all the million dollars houses with eNUough yard signs protesting the new football stadium. Yards that in 2020 all held Black Lives Matter signs.

I’d never felt more unwelcome in Evanston. I wondered if this is how Black Evanston residents felt all the time.

So whenever the Fourth of July parade rolls around and I see pictures like this in the Evanston Roundtable, I want to vomit.

To someone who doesn’t live in North Evanston - this picture says a thousand words but the strongest of those words are: you don’t belong up here. This is the dibs system, where neighbors claim little cubes of city land with tarps and chairs roped together. The chairs are put out days in advance on public property. The police even take the time to patrol at night to make sure nobody touches your $15 plastic chair or tarp held down with rocks.

This system ensures the folks who live nearby get enough space for the whole family to spread out and get the best views. The rest of us? Well, we have to stand on the sidewalk. In Evanston, we talk a big game about valuing equality and equity but sometimes the reality is more Orwellian;

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

I hope a storm blows through tonight.

1. For instance, the prior year Jenny Lewis played at the VIP section got absolutely jammed full of people moving up to the stage