Jesus People Soup Kitchen, 4707 N. Malden, 1986

Currently on eBay. Original caption reads: Robert Burke enjoys a slice of pizza yesterday as a mobile pizza parlor, Love Kitchen, from Michigan visited the Jesus People USA soup kitchen in Uptown. / More than 500 needy people made their way to the lot in front of an Uptown neighborhood soup kitchen yesterday for an unusual meal. Lots of free, piping hot pepperoni pizza and cheese pizza was being served by the Love Kitchen, a 45-foot mobile pizza parlor that rolled into town from Michigan to dispense pizza to the poor. The mobile restaurant, owned by Little Caesar's, a pizza chain with headquarters near Detroit, set up shop in front of the Jesus People, USA kitchen at 4707 N. Malden.

Original photo available at time of writing from eBay

History of the Chelsea Hotel

Thanks to Jon Trott for the head's up on the first of a planned three-part history, Chelsea Hotel Before the Jesus People. Great stuff!

An Intentional Community in Uptown

Editor's Note: From the Friendly Towers of Jesus People USA (formerly the Chelsea Hotel) to Keystone Ecological Urban Center, Uptown has seen its share of Intentional Communities. Wikipedia defines an intentional community as "a planned residential community designed to have a much higher degree of teamwork than other communities. The members of an intentional community typically hold a common social, political or spiritual vision and are often part of the alternative society. They also share responsibilities and resources. Intentional communities include cohousing, residential land trusts, ecovillages, communes, kibbutzim, ashrams, moshavs, and housing cooperatives. Typically, new members of an intentional community are selected by the community's existing membership, rather than by real-estate agents or land owners (if the land is not owned by the community). Though intentional communities do not claim to be utopias in the sense of perfect places, many do attempt to live a different and better sort of society, and as such many draw on historical utopian experiments or ideas in utopian fiction."

AP writer Martha Irvine explores this concept with an interview of a woman at Keystone. For complete article and photos, go here, here or here (each version of the article has different pictures).

Living simply provides economic shelter
By MARTHA IRVINE AP National Writer

CHICAGO - Keri Rainsberger isn't rich. She works in the nonprofit world for a relatively low-profit salary. Yet, as many Americans are scrimping for every penny, she hardly feels the pinch. She still tithes 10 percent of her income to her church, even as other members have cut back. She rarely worries about rising gas and food prices. And she never bothers to balance her checkbook, because she doesn't come close to spending what she has. "I live so far below my means that it doesn't really register," says Rainsberger, a 31-year-old Chicagoan with a wiry frame and unusually sunny outlook. "I don't have to think about money." How is this possible?

To find out how, go to: Living Simply