Victoria Davis is a soul food entrepreneur who parks her giant barrel grill on the street three miles west of the United Center, on the street outside 4231 W. Madison.
But alas, Tuesday afternoon, none of the DNC hoopla had made the trip down Madison to her stand. No delegates — or candidates — are taking advantage of the turkey tips, smothered cabbage and other dishes she cookes fresh at home and keeps warm inside the grill.
“I guess I’m too far down,” she says, but issues an invitation anyway: “Kamala Harris, come look for your girl, Vicki Victoria Davis!”
Cooking for four years now, Davis streams her process on TikTok as @shortyruff3 — but aspires to have her own restaurant instead of this pop-up outfit.
But, she says amid her kids and grandkids who’ve joined her, “I need some funds.”
Organizers of the DNC promised that the West Side would benefit from hosting the convention that’s already drawn tens of thousands of conventioneers, protesters and dignitaries to Chicago.
That’s not been Davis’ experience. Her work days have lengthened these last few years as people seem to have less money for takeout. She doubts she’ll catch any of the speech Tuesday night by Chicago-born former first lady Michelle Obama.
“I’m out here to make a living,” she says. “I’ll catch up on the rest later.”
Madison, historically a Black Main Street, still bustles with Chicagoans earning their way.
Even at an underpass in the 4600 block where signs advise that IT IS UNLAWFUL TO SOLICIT FOR PROSTITUTION IN ANY PUBLIC PLACE.
Here, artist Blake Lenoir sprays the foliage on a mural of roses commissioned as a love letter to the area.
The flowers he’s painting around snippets of beautiful faces are meant to remind men to respect women and for women to respect themselves, he says. And for the area’s history of selling and buying sex to be documented, especially as gentrification inches westward from the Loop, past the United Center in a move many say started ahead of the 1996 DNC, when then-Mayor Richard M. Daley cleared out Skid Row.
For Lenoir, 33, a father and new homeowner in Beverly, the upcoming election to vote in a Black woman as the country’s first woman commander-in-chief should bode well for peace — particularly he points to Gaza and Kenya — better than 250 years of male leaders have done. And as a muralist around the West Side, he says, his livelihood flourishes under folks who value the arts and issue grants for public works. None of that is included in the radically conservative Republican platform known as Project 2025.
“This election is about ‘out with the old,’ literally,” Lenoir says. “We have to get a sound mind in office.”
Not that any of the politicians are listening, says Macy Robinson Jr., a 79-year-old seller of watermelons whose roadside business in Austin includes responding to drive-by hollers: “ARKANSAS OR MISSISSIPPI?”
The answer is Midnight, Mississippi, the Delta hometown of Robinson until, as a teenager, he migrated north like so many other West Siders to Chicago. DNC or no DNC, the prices are still $12 a watermelon, $3 a cantaloupe.
He and his partner don’t see anything for themselves in the convention four miles away.
Politicians never tell the truth, Robinson says, especially not to “poor folks” like him. He’ll vote for the Democrat anyway.
“They do what they want to do,” the businessman says. “Lying before we got here, lying after we leave.”
“I’ve been here for 60 years. I’ve still got to hustle.”
MacArthur’s Restaurant, 5412 W. Madison, or 15 minutes west of the United Center as the cab rides, bulked up the cooking staff this week in anticipation that lunch lines might snake past all the framed politician photos and run out the door.
No official DNC catering had been ordered. “We had some volunteers from the DNC eating here but we’d like to see those speaking for us show up too,” says manager and area pastor, Maurice Gaiter
Catering slips were stacking up for watch parties Tuesday night for the Obamas and Thursday for Kamala Harris, and staff dished out chicken and turkey legs, with generous sides and desserts to a steady stream of customers.
With so much at stake this election, Harris’ nomination has been a boon for Democrats, among Black voters and women.
“I think the enthusiasm we have for the party is going to propel us to the White House.”
But, as he stresses on the big show’s second day on the West Side, “let’s not forget those outside the walls of the DNC.”