Posted by chicagomedia.org on September 01, 2008 at 09:03:49:
Publisher of gay mag blogs on Rogers Park
Craig Gernhardt is a behind-the-scenes kind of guy.
He's the straight co-publisher at Gay Chicago, a job he took over after his father, the magazine's founder, died in 2007.
Gernhardt, 47, also blogs about Rogers Park -- taking aim at crime (and sometimes police) and Ald. Joe Moore (49th) for not doing more to stem crime and expand business in the Far North Side neighborhood, a community blessed with the beauty of Lake Michigan and touched by the ugliness of crime and poverty.
Rogers Park ranked 24th -- out of 77 communities -- with 149 reported crimes in the last 90 days, according to Chicago Police. Austin is No. 1 one, for the same time frame, with 602 reported crimes, according to police statistics.
A lot of it is laid bare -- very often in real time -- on Gernhardt's The Broken Heart of Rogers Park blog. A scanner crackles in his Morse Avenue condo as he gleans information from a 911 operator recounting to police a report of "shots fired" at Jonquil Terrace and Bosworth and a flasher at Pottawattomie Park, 7340 N. Rogers.
"It's got a great stretch of lakefront. You've got blocks with big, beautiful homes. But [the neighborhood has] got its problems in the commercial development area. It's not a shopper-friendly neighborhood," he says, noting that he'd like to see the gang business curbed.
While some of the content can be mean-spirited -- and he says he's been accused of being inaccurate -- Gernhardt says, "I feel it's my duty to let the neighbors know what's going on. I'm just trying to give the community information that the public officials aren't."
(Sun-Times)