Performance
In this section we will focus on 1) signs and communications (the signage on the storefronts and in the interior spaces), 2) layout and procession (or how we move through a store), 3) sensory order (smells and sounds), and 4) business type (kind of merchandise sold in stores).
Signs and communications Before you enter a store examine layers of signs and banners advertising and communicating with a variety of immigrant and ethnic customers. The steel beams, studs, stanchions and frames are all part of an elaborate mass-produced material culture that serves as infrastructure for signage. You will find five kinds of signs. Tall pylon signs are freestanding signs (Site 8). The pylon sign for the original Hyderabad House is a remainder from the past. From a fast moving automobile the large prints on the pylon signs and those painted on the wall advertise “Hyderabad House Restaurant” and “Dankha Auto-Repairs.” Projecting signs, pylon and monument signs are most permanent indicating a business that has been there for a long time or a more permanent kind of enterprise. The elaborate stanchions, some perpendicular to the building façade support signage. Many of them predated the new immigrants and were constructed as part of the buildings (Site 9; Site 13). The fourth kind are backlit signage or neon signs (Site 10; Site 14). The fifth kind—most prolific, are temporary signs that inform the customers of sales, events, merchandise and hours of operation They include posters taped on to the windows, fabric and plastic banners bolted into the concrete or brick-faced walls (Site 5; Site 18). These signs are accessible to pedestrians and change with rhythmic rapidity. Layout and procession
In multicultural societies, social worlds are interconnected across distances and the worlds of different social networks intertwine and overlap. Historian of religion, Thomas Tweed uses the spatial metaphors of “crossing and dwelling” to argue that movement across social and spatial boundaries is a central mode of experience in contemporary society. This description is true for Devon Avenue. If you look carefully you will find that South Asian Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi stores are interspersed amidst preexisting or recent Jewish businesses and spaces catering to ethnic groups such as South and Central American, Assyrian, Croatian, and Russian. This creates a checkered multicultural street fabric and a confluence of cross-cultural currents. According to Tweed, individuals “dwell” by maintaining boundaries between in-group and out-group. Crossing boundaries is central to the way individuals demarcate places, locate spatial experiences, and maintain (multiple) identities, allegiances, and subjectivities (p. 54). Boundaries, real and imagined, may be ambiguous to an outsider but are easily recognized by an insider. Tweed calls these acts of crossing (real or cognitive) boundaries “terrestrial crossings” (p. 59). i This spatial metaphor rings true for many stores marked on this tour (Sites 3, 5, 13, 14, 26) .The best examples of crossing boundaries may be experienced in the Sikh Gurdwara, Gareeb Nawaaz and Tahoora where spaces are demarcated for prayers in very subtle ways. Outsiders may have no idea that there exist prayer spaces within these locations, but those who know recognize the signs and symbols. The experience of traversing elongated processional spaces in order to access the prayer space engages the entire body of the user. |
View Tour 2: Performance in a full screen map |
Sensory orders
The boundaries along Devon Avenue that separate the multiple intertwined worlds are often experiential in nature. The smells, sounds, and textures of the ethnic stores produce perceptual boundaries. These sensory cues create staged behavior that accommodates insiders and differentiates outsiders, produce front zones and back zones, and visible worlds and invisible worlds. This reminds us of Erving Goffman’s work on restaurants and institutions. The separation between front zones and back zones may not be walls and doors, but instead, be marked by smells, interior layouts, and signage that induce affective responses from those who engage with it. Frequent users may respond to these boundaries as “products of habits and bodily practices that produce a combination of cognitive and habit-memory.”iii Their behavior becomes so habitual and taken-for-granted that the powerful impact of these spaces on behavior, thoughts, and actions may not be easily evident. An outsider may not even realize that such boundaries exist. A particular smell of incense in a grocery store may seem odd because it is something that seems out of place. But its affective and symbolic values remain inscrutable. The best examples in this tour where you may experience these sensory qualities are in restaurants and grocery stores (especially sites 8, 18, 25, 26, 27).
Business types
Try out and compare one of the following typical ethnic businesses along Devon Avenue—stores selling dress, jewelry, baggage, electronics, phones, food (grocery and restaurants) and beauty or hair products. Examine the storefronts of the stores and you will find that there are multiple versions of each stores. The more upscale stores are newer, with better storefront design sporting lintels, bulkhead and transoms made of new plating and marble facia. Better storefront mannequin displays and merchandise layouts mark stores catering to a more upscale clientele. Compare this to the cluttered storefronts that market to customers of lesser means. Then walk in and compare prices and you will observe a great difference. Walk into Sahil (2605 W Devon Ave), an upscale clothing store in the Patel Complex (Site 27). Check out the expensive wedding apparel and the plush interior space. Then enter Sari Sapne Inc. (2623 W Devon Ave) the more cluttered and lower-end dress store a few doors away.
Deep divisions in class and taste within the immigrant community are visible on the storefronts of this ethnic marketplace. Devon Avenue is an ethnic shopping street that attracts middle and upper class South Asians from the suburbs of Chicago and from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. However this street is merely one node within a territorially dispersed network of ethnic strip malls and retails streets. Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky calls these networked spaces heterolocal geographies where propinquity is not the sole form of territoriality. But there is a lesser-known aspect to Devon Avenue. Devon is the launching pad for new immigrants, many unskilled, poor and lacking resources. If you look at the side streets and search for the doorways leading up to the upper stories of mixed use buildings you will discover another world that hides behind the cacophony of store signs and advertisements. You will find posters and signs showing a plethora of service related businesses that cater mostly to the low income, immigrants who live in this neighborhood. These businesses include tax and immigration services, travel agencies, ladies tailors and seamstress, social services and family health related services. Take a quick detour along the back alleys and look for laundry drying on the back balconies of multistoried units. You will find signs of over-crowded rentals where immigrant working men live in shifts inside cramped quarters. The proverbial ethnic ghetto coexists behind the glimmering front zones of this immigrant marketplace.
i. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 123.
ii. Paul Connerton, “Bodily Practices,” in How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 88.
Text by Arijit Sen
The boundaries along Devon Avenue that separate the multiple intertwined worlds are often experiential in nature. The smells, sounds, and textures of the ethnic stores produce perceptual boundaries. These sensory cues create staged behavior that accommodates insiders and differentiates outsiders, produce front zones and back zones, and visible worlds and invisible worlds. This reminds us of Erving Goffman’s work on restaurants and institutions. The separation between front zones and back zones may not be walls and doors, but instead, be marked by smells, interior layouts, and signage that induce affective responses from those who engage with it. Frequent users may respond to these boundaries as “products of habits and bodily practices that produce a combination of cognitive and habit-memory.”iii Their behavior becomes so habitual and taken-for-granted that the powerful impact of these spaces on behavior, thoughts, and actions may not be easily evident. An outsider may not even realize that such boundaries exist. A particular smell of incense in a grocery store may seem odd because it is something that seems out of place. But its affective and symbolic values remain inscrutable. The best examples in this tour where you may experience these sensory qualities are in restaurants and grocery stores (especially sites 8, 18, 25, 26, 27).
Business types
Try out and compare one of the following typical ethnic businesses along Devon Avenue—stores selling dress, jewelry, baggage, electronics, phones, food (grocery and restaurants) and beauty or hair products. Examine the storefronts of the stores and you will find that there are multiple versions of each stores. The more upscale stores are newer, with better storefront design sporting lintels, bulkhead and transoms made of new plating and marble facia. Better storefront mannequin displays and merchandise layouts mark stores catering to a more upscale clientele. Compare this to the cluttered storefronts that market to customers of lesser means. Then walk in and compare prices and you will observe a great difference. Walk into Sahil (2605 W Devon Ave), an upscale clothing store in the Patel Complex (Site 27). Check out the expensive wedding apparel and the plush interior space. Then enter Sari Sapne Inc. (2623 W Devon Ave) the more cluttered and lower-end dress store a few doors away.
Deep divisions in class and taste within the immigrant community are visible on the storefronts of this ethnic marketplace. Devon Avenue is an ethnic shopping street that attracts middle and upper class South Asians from the suburbs of Chicago and from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. However this street is merely one node within a territorially dispersed network of ethnic strip malls and retails streets. Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky calls these networked spaces heterolocal geographies where propinquity is not the sole form of territoriality. But there is a lesser-known aspect to Devon Avenue. Devon is the launching pad for new immigrants, many unskilled, poor and lacking resources. If you look at the side streets and search for the doorways leading up to the upper stories of mixed use buildings you will discover another world that hides behind the cacophony of store signs and advertisements. You will find posters and signs showing a plethora of service related businesses that cater mostly to the low income, immigrants who live in this neighborhood. These businesses include tax and immigration services, travel agencies, ladies tailors and seamstress, social services and family health related services. Take a quick detour along the back alleys and look for laundry drying on the back balconies of multistoried units. You will find signs of over-crowded rentals where immigrant working men live in shifts inside cramped quarters. The proverbial ethnic ghetto coexists behind the glimmering front zones of this immigrant marketplace.
i. Thomas A. Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 123.
ii. Paul Connerton, “Bodily Practices,” in How Societies Remember (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 88.
Text by Arijit Sen
Signage along 2331-2341 Devon Avenue
Drawing by Travis Olson, Center for Historic Architecture and Design
Drawing by Travis Olson, Center for Historic Architecture and Design