When The Real World Came to Wicker ParkChicago Magazineon July 20, 2021 at 8:59 pm

I.
“What’s next, the Gap?”

Until 2001, 2002, we were kicking hookers off our doorstep literally every Saturday morning, and we had people freebasing under our fire escape in the back of the building. So it wasn’t all warm and fuzzy.

You know how artists are always telling you neighborhoods are over when they’re really fun? Everyone’s like, “Wicker Park’s over.” But I was like, “OK, guys, but we’re always in Wicker Park, for the record.”

III.
“I had to build something in two months that should have taken six”

The build-out is pretty extensive. You have an architect come on. We customize the entire interior. Our goal is to make it unique and different from the previous houses, but also on brand with MTV — what young people would want, kind of a dream house.

Suhail was an incredibly talented artist and designed an incredibly unusual space, filled with incredible artwork. The elevator that came up through the bathroom let you see through the aquarium. He had walls that not only curved but were slanted and translucent, so when the builders came, they were confounded.

I ended up getting the job because I could build everything, source everything. I was local and down the street and had all these resources available. I wasn’t interested in designing an interior space, I was interested in designing for a television show, elevating the theater of what this could be. When I designed the bathrooms, the producers said, “Can you get two showerheads in there?” “Well, yeah, why?” You knew they were planning on these kids showing up in this new place, seeing a shower with two showerheads and there’s going to be sexual activity.

The night before we started filming, Suhail had been up for like two nights straight working, and he was about to kill us. The chairs at the counter were a little too high, you couldn’t fit your leg underneath, so he had to reweld like 10 chairs. I felt horrible for him.

I had to build something in two months that should have taken six months. The project was two floors, 2,000 square feet each — 5,000 square feet total if you count the control room. I had to have furniture, lighting, artwork. And they had no money. They just kept saying, “You’re going to be a big shot.” Wallpaper, furniture, art — I tapped everybody I knew who was edgy and looking to do something cool. I told people there’s no budget, but there’s an opportunity to be associated with Real World.

We had that elevator we had to get a temporary permit for. We had a hot tub on the third floor that we had a temporary permit for. We had to get a blanket permit for filming, which was unusual. But the city conformed to our request.

In terms of a reality show shooting its entire season in Chicago, that was new for us. What we learned in a hurry was that any production, regardless of size, with cast and crew all living under one roof for an extended stay, raises issues that other productions don’t. Zoning codes, building permit concerns, and, what was particularly true in this case, what the community thinks of their new neighbors.

As the set was being built, producers started approaching local businesses to let them know they would be filming in the neighborhood and to ask for permission to shoot in their shops.

We’d go down and knock on the doors and explain what we’re doing with a big smile and a “Welcome to our world, we’re coming into yours.” We had a love-hate relationship for a while because people were cautious and wary of us.

We said a little bit about what we were filming. We didn’t directly say “Real World,” but we weren’t entirely secretive, so they could probably put the pieces together. We got one or two noes, but for the most part people were pretty open to having the film crew in their business.

Our bosses at Daily Grind came to us and said, “Hey, you perhaps have noticed that they’re setting up. We are one of the few Wicker Park–Bucktown neighborhood businesses that have given them permission to film in our shop. So if you want a job here, here’s a piece of paper saying, yes, you agree to have your likeness presented on MTV.” And I was like, “Sure, why not?”

Before we bring the cast in the house, before the clock starts running, we do a rehearsal the night before. We do it with a stand-in cast. We work out the bugs, and we walk them through as if they’re being introduced to this location for the first time. After the dress rehearsal was completed, there was a murder in the neighborhood, and the bodies were dumped in front of the building. So that night, we couldn’t go out the front door, and it was all cordoned off. It was a crime scene for a day and a half or something.

The incident happened just after midnight on July 10. Two men were shot in a car outside that Burger King, which was three blocks from the Real World house. A third passenger drove them to the police officers who were blocking traffic for exterior filming. The two men later died.

Rents are going up, now The Real World is here. I remember there was a lot of discussion in the air about them filming here, because it was right down the street from [the Lumpen office]. MTV was still relevant. With this program amplifying the neighborhood, you created a moment of possible oversaturation. The Real World was pretty much the cherry on top of how shitty the neighborhood was becoming, when the entire place is commodified. And it’s when people were fed up. A few of us who were pissed off about it, we started the Free the Real World 7 committee. We’d hang out in a coffee shop, Earwax, Myopic, or Quimby’s, talk about what we were doing, write these ridiculous texts, hang fliers, and print full-page advertorials in the magazine.

Mancow, the radio guy, he mobilized some of his fans to come down and protest MTV and our being there. They had attached a white-noise box to a parking meter right in front of the building. And the building was cordoned off after this murder scene investigation was going on, and we couldn’t get rid of the white-noise box because they wouldn’t let us in the area. It was an obnoxious little thing to deal with. You could beat it up as much as you wanted, that thing wouldn’t stop. We had it there for two nights, and then we cut the thing and threw it in the trash.

Stores were boycotting. They wouldn’t allow the Real World or Viacom [MTV’s parent company] team to come in and shoot. They’d say “No MTV” in windows on shops up and down Milwaukee.

It was the mark of coolness whether you said yes or no to filming. Of course we [at Quimby’s] said no.

MTV sent me some Real World swag, mugs and T-shirts and that kind of thing. I remember throwing them out on air.

The Department of Space and Land Reclamation [a weekend of anticapitalism protest stunts in Chicago that April] had been this poetic and political project. We were two years past the anti-WTO protests in Seattle. And that moment, called the alter-globalization movement, was very much where we were coming out of — that protest culture.

In France, a group of these activists influenced by anarchism and Marxism and art theory occupied a TV station during a reality TV show and became part of the show and used it as a platform to try and dismantle the imagery being projected. There was also a group from the UK trying to free the cast of Big Brother.

Making a protest a spectacle in its own right was part of the vibe at the time. There was lots of creativity, like the Tute Bianche in Italy, who would dress up in inflatable outfits and bounce off the police.

I remember at a DSLR meeting that someone came in and said their friend was DJ’ing an opening party for the show. And within a week, we rushed out a flier that said “Real World opening party July 14. We want you to be there.” It was printed on a color copier, which at the time looked slick and not homemade, even though it totally was. We added on that 10 people will get chosen to be extras on the show. The goal was to bring out as many people as possible, directly in front of the shooting location of the show, and create an embodied spectacle that would be far more compelling than what was being prepared for TV.

It wasn’t like, “We’re protesting The Real World this week.” It was like, “Holy shit, we saw a flier, that’s hilarious.” Dozens of people walked up to the rear door of the Real World house with fliers asking to get in.

The first protest we staged [on July 14], we took over the entire block, and the police just left us alone. Maybe a couple people got arrested. People lit fireworks, these militant anarcho-punks from Pilsen came up, it was a bricolage of all these communities coming together. It was a beautiful chaos.

There’s a video of me on the first weekend issuing forth political demands: “Take the Blue Line home. Leave your equipment for us so we can make something real with it. We want to take over the means of production.”

The biggest thing, man, was them throwing paint on the door. I was just like, “Why did you throw paint?” I would have got it if you tagged it or something. But it was just a random splatter of paint on the door.

I threw the paint on the door. The police had penned us in, as sort of a safety valve to let off steam, and a couple of us thought we should up the ante to see what would happen. Someone had brought this cabinet and put it in the middle of the street, and inside of it were a few gallons of paint. So I rushed to the house and threw it at the door. And then the bouncers — MTV security — started beating me up, and then 20 people jumped on them and pulled me out and dragged me away. I was pretty bruised up.

There were a lot of people who came just for a party. Summer’s the time these things happen, you know what I mean? People are out of school. It’s like, “What are we going to do tonight? That Real World thing seems to be fun.” The first night was just a kind of experiment, and it worked. People enjoyed it. Everyone came away the first night feeling really like a victory had happened.

We only organized the first protest. Many of the other ones were self-organized. People just wanted to hang out.

I was there frequently with megaphones talking shit.

They were writing graffiti on our door: “EMPTV,” like it’s a soulless corporate thing messing with our neighborhood.

After that brick came through the window, we put chicken wire on the other windows on the ground floor, where the offices and film crew worked, because someone could have gotten hit pretty bad.

They would just shout shit for, like, forever. We’d be in the Jacuzzi. And then you’d just hear it. When are you guys going to stop? Don’t you have anything else to do? Anything?

A lot of people would bum-rush the cameras. They would scream at the actors, who were really pissy about it, really angry at the people making fun of them. They’d say we were just jealous, envious we weren’t on the show. It was pretty funny. It’s a shame we didn’t have social media at the time.

We didn’t choose to be in this place. We agreed to be on the show, but we didn’t ask for all of these other things that came with it. We had jobs, but they didn’t pay us a lot. I wish [the protesters] would’ve known. We were also kind of struggling.

We had a CPD officer with every crew that left the house. That was new. We didn’t have to do that in any other city before. It was a little more tense, but we couldn’t stop either.

I actually never felt like any of the people out there really wanted to harm us, I really didn’t. Maybe that was me being naive, 19 years old, and just excited to be in a new city, but I never felt scared.

It didn’t alter my ability to get to know the neighborhood. I went out on my own all the time. I went across the street to the Local Grind every day. I went to Subterranean. I went to Red Dog. That’s where I met Veronica [her girlfriend during the season].

As a punk rock kid, I got the ethos of where they’re coming from. Like, “Hey, you’re messing up our neighborhood.” But wait, there’s a Starbucks a block from us. We can’t really be gentrifying a place with a Starbucks in 2001.

They seemed like a lot of college-educated people playing anarchist in the city. I think they just wanted what the people on MTV wanted: They wanted attention for themselves. It was almost like one faction of young gentrifiers accusing another faction of young gentrifiers of being more responsible.

We started getting some news coverage in July, and that really encouraged a kind of energy. I think it became a flash point for people, seeing this as an entertaining but also on-camera way to demonstrate their irritation with what was happening in the neighborhood.

I remember protesters had somehow blocked off traffic. It almost had the same spirit of Critical Mass, the bike ride thing that would happen on Fridays.

I was writing with chalk on the ground, “What is real?” Simultaneously, the cast was just losing their minds constantly, occasionally opening the door and yelling something frantic. They kept feeding the beast, and everyone was laughing. But it was kind of going from fun to intense. There were plenty of people there when the cops showed up who were not backing down.

I remember someone in the building, they must have been a cast member, standing at the window, clearly trying to shout something back. Of course, nobody could hear him. The window was closed, and who’s going to listen? Someone on the street — I thought this was hilarious — someone goes, “We’re going to be here every night!” Of course, they weren’t there every night. The hilarity of it was just, “Really? You’re going to keep this going?”

We didn’t anticipate the cast having so little personality. They really played into it wonderfully. They were so confused and baffled and hurt, which made it all the more fun. Edmar was screaming, “We are here to deprogram you from your unreality! We have a safe house we will take you to” — or something to that effect.

At one point, we tried to “levitate” the building, like the Pentagon in ’67. We clasped hands and encircled the building. There were hundreds of people there.

They made a human chain around the house. I think they got tired of doing it.

I went down there with my bicycle. I’m not going to protest, I didn’t give a shit, but to check it out. The DJs with the speakers, the fist shakers, were all on North Avenue. I took the alley, parallel to North, and there’s nobody. The cast and crew that [the demonstrators] think they’re blockading in the building are going out the back doors. My instinct was, This was a display, not strategically thought out.

I think the cops got the call to just shut it down. And then they leave it to this gang tactical unit. So they grabbed anybody doing anything interesting and arrested them. I was one of the first ones. I was just in shock. They had military-like dudes there. And that’s what kind of freaked me out. I got put in jail, which was fine. It was eight of us. And we were called the Real World 8. It was only overnight. But nothing like a night in jail with some friends to feel like you’re real radicals, you know?

My friends all thought it was a waste of time. There was real work happening in neighborhoods, and this was a stupid thing to take on. No, it was a wonderfully stupid, brilliant thing to take on. And it became more clear that it was brilliant because the city’s reaction was so insane and overblown that we clearly touched a nerve.

[The demonstrations] definitely died down by the end of summer. It is weird: Who protests a TV show, right?

I had gotten a job as an assistant curator at Mass MoCA [Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art] right after the summer. And I had to fly back for my trial. I’m thinking, I hope they don’t have a problem with me having to go to trial against MTV.

They wanted to fight the case. Similar to a lot, but not all, protest cases, they weren’t going to face serious consequences, and didn’t have any substantial records. I figured the cases would get thrown out. To the extent there was a clever legal maneuver, it was to say we wanted to go to trial. I think the city simply didn’t want to go to trial. We went to court several times pretrial to talk to the city’s attorneys, and they basically were like, “We don’t want publicity here. Let’s get it over with.”

The charges were dismissed on May 29, 2002. Only one defendant, Ian Helmrich, who claimed the police threw him headfirst against a plexiglass display case and a door, saw his case go to trial. He was found not guilty. In July 2003, 10 of those who had been arrested collectively sued the City of Chicago, Viacom, and MTV, as well as producers Dominici and Wilson, claiming they had acted “both individually, jointly, and in conspiracy” to cause “false arrest, pretrial detention, and malicious prosecution.”

During the civil suit, my clients were kind of goofy, nice, easygoing, and they had conferences with this formal federal judge. Some of the defendants spoke from the heart about why they did what they did. Unfortunately, one guy said, “Oh, I didn’t have anything to do, so I just went down there.” But the judge actually thought it was pretty funny. And the truth is, in a weird way, that helped the judge see these are not bad people. He said, “Well, I think you guys should get this amount of money.” The case was settled, giving them $50,000 total to split. I think somehow Viacom and MTV conveyed to the city that they didn’t want to go ahead with the case. They thought it would create bad publicity.

I think everybody at Bunim/Murray was like, “There’s nothing to gain here by continuing with this trial. Fifty thousand dollars to make this go away? No problem.”

The protests were a local issue. If there had been someone in the cast who got caught up in it, then, yes, we would have shown it.

It wasn’t something that we wanted to put forward, honestly. It wasn’t what we were there to show. I think we didn’t want to come off like we were doing anything wrong. When 9/11 happened, we had a whole episode about that because it really affected their lives.

They created a shirt for us all. I still have it in my closet. It’s a picture of our front door with the paint they threw.

The shirt said “We Had a Riot.”

It’s kind of great that it happened in our neighborhood, that we were media-savvy enough to understand what it meant and were against this media colonization, corporatization, and surveillance of our lives.

After 9/11, suddenly it was war on protest culture. It was like the ice age of the Patriot Act came swooping in. A really different mood swept through the country that really put a chill on the activist culture, and the fear of terrorism just ripped through the paradigm around the conversation of gentrification or neoliberalism and everything else.

Ultimately, I don’t think I got anything out of it. The producers asked, “Are you interested in working in Las Vegas? That’s the next season.” “Fuck no, I’m not working with you guys anymore.” Funny enough, the lighting designer for the show was hired by Donald Trump for his new show, The Apprentice. He asked me to come to New York and talk to the producers, but I didn’t get the job, which was probably good in hindsight.

I had friends who lived in Chicago. So I went back to Wicker Park a couple years ago, and, I mean, that area is so different. They just built everything up around there. So all those people who were mad at us then, look at it now.

Whether The Real World did anything to enhance the reputation of Wicker Park, I doubt it. I never felt anything shot in Chicago was out to fully capture Chicago as it truly was. Like they were going to get the real Wicker Park? Man, I don’t even know if Wicker Park knows what the real Wicker Park is.