Originally Posted by Hayden
It is possible to drive from Oak Park to Hyde Park reasonably quickly, if you take the Eisenhower to the Dan Ryan, and then drive across the South Side. For a variation, one could drive through the Loop and take Lake Shore Drive down to Hyde Park, but of course one would have to deal with the Loop traffic, then. Oak Park is about 25 minutes from the Loop in rush hour traffic, and I think Hyde Park would be reverse commute. Some don't like driving across the South Side slums, but I find them a beautiful part of Chicago, and the neighborhoods have moved up quite a bit. Transit from Oak Park to Hyde Park is pretty poor--one can take the el and then walk over to the metra line or wait for the bus, but toomanybooks has it right: transit is a trek.
More broadly, a challenge is that Hyde Park is also fairly isolated. A lot of what Chicago has to offer in terms of theater, music, and museums is closer to the Loop or towards the north side. While there is a sort of new neighborhood that has risen out of old industrial land just south of the Loop (I think Mayor Daley may have moved there), a lot of the more Hyde Park-like neighborhoods are north of Congress/the Eisenhower, and could require a commute across the Loop.
I'm not as familiar with what's towards the south. I think there are some great working-class neighborhoods down there, like Beverly or Pullman, but they have a bit more of a feeling of isolation from the rest of the city, or so I've heard.
-Hayden
I pretty much agree with Hayden, but with the Dan Ryan reconstruction project over the next two years commuting that way to HP is going to be excruciating and unpredictable.
HP does have an isolated feel like an island; while it may be only 30 minutes to get to the train and go downtown, many residents end up feeling stuck there. The "activation energy" (as scientists say) seems high, especially in the almost unending winter, when depressed undergrads can be seen trudging around slowly, heads down.
One other thing about HP, and Oak Park to a lesser extent so far as I can tell, is the extreme skewing of the political views of the residents. Gotta be over 90+% leftist in HP, many of them in whackjob cuckoo-land.
As right-of-center people, we found it quite annoying sometimes. HP is "diverse," yes, but it's that fake diversity where people
look different and come from all over, but almost everybody
thinks exactly the same, and incorrectly on a lot of matters IMO.
There is this smug attitude from many white residents in HP that is generally unstated, but definitely there, that they are morally better than folks who live in less "diverse" areas, that they themselves are superior because they live cheek-by-jowl with lots of African-Americans. I actually heard this articulated a few times, which shocked me at first.
Crime is also much higher in HP than in the 'burbs I listed above. My impression is that it's improved, but always will be there. We did feel physically threatened a few times, and had our house and car burglarized several times in 7 years.
Beverly/Pullman, etc. are worth looking at, but check the commuting options. Might be a pain.