Living in Wicker Park, Chicago

Damen's Blue Line stop opens directly onto Wicker Park's commercial core, where vintage shops, record stores, and gallery space fill storefronts along Milwaukee Avenue. The park itself, a formal green space with a fountain and shaded paths, gives the neighborhood its name and offers a break from the retail strip a block over. Live-music venues, including the long-running Subterranean, keep the area lively well into the evening, and the Flat Iron Arts Building houses studio space for working artists above the street-level shops at the neighborhood's central crossroads. Restaurants along Division Street add another layer to the mix, spilling outdoor seating onto the sidewalk once the weather turns warm.

Bar and venue sound carries along Milwaukee and Damen once the sun goes down, and the sidewalks stay crowded until well past midnight during peak hours — the noisy underside of all that nightlife. Anyone who values quiet after 10 p.m. will want a side street rather than a block on the main strip.

Boutiques selling resale clothing and handmade jewelry line the blocks near the park, and the mix of galleries, music venues, and restaurants gives Wicker Park a creative, unpolished energy that's distinct from its quieter neighbors to the north.