- nbhd -
wicker park & bucktown

Wicker Park is like Chicago’s Silver Lake or Williamsburg. Teeming with the hipper of hipsters. Great restaurants, great bars. Coffee shops galore. Verging on the point of becoming a little too commercial to even be considered hipster, pretty much completely gentrified. To people in Lincoln Park or West Loop, it might still feel artsy and quirky, but to the artsy types in Pilsen or even the neighboring Logan Square, it’s encroaching on general popularity among Chicagoans.

But when it comes to local shops and favorite spots, Wicker is in a way, a third hub. After downtown, a lot of local chains and shops will open up in West Loop, Lincoln Park and Wicker next. Which makes it a very convenient place to live and hang out with the cooler locals (tourist have figured out about West Loop and Lincoln Park, but generally don’t venture this far out), but also makes it a bit of a scene on Friday nights.

The neighborhood is anchored around the Blue Line and Milwaukee Ave?. The streets are filled with shops and restaurants and bookstores and bars open late into the night. During the summers, the streets are often closed for festivals and events. The intersecting streets are also lined with restaurants you’ll see all over Instagram, making it a great place to wander around on a nice day (we know they’re hard to come by in Chicago).

And when all is said and done and you really just want to retreat to be among the true hipsters, you can always hop on over to Logan Square.