If I may, let me let you in on one of the best-kept secrets in Chicago. The best beach is Ardmore Beach. What makes it so good is that there is no parking, and there is no beach house, and it’s hard to park on the surrounding streets. And all this is on purpose. You see, it keeps the riffraff out.
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A short while back, when the Park District was building new beach houses at North Avenue Beach and at Foster Avenue Beach, they asked the Edgewater community if we would like one at Ardmore. We declined the offer. We like that this beach is ours. Sure, the lakefront is supposed to belong to all the citizens of Chicago, indeed to everyone wherever they may be from. It’s not like Wilmette, Evanston, or New Jersey, where they make you buy a token to use the beach. So Ardmore is effectively ours because it’s too much hassle for anyone else to use.
So he is not moved by the fact that greater goods for more people are served by marinas and park space and moving traffic off neighborhood streets and into a sunken, two-lanes-each-way park drive.
