So there was a big protest outside "MTV's The Real World" the other day. After ten years, MTV decided to host the show in Chicago, and I think they got more than they bargained for.

They wanted the house to be in the hippest neighborhood in town. However, due to the 14-24 target demographic, they chose that age group's idea of "hip". This means they moved all those fools into Wicker Park, the punk rock neighborhood du decade.

Wicker Park's an odd neighborhood. Well, not so odd if you understand the residents. It's not the place where all the tattoo parlors and head shops are- that's Belmont. Each city has an established alterna-neighborhood like that. Instead, Wicker Park is a place to live if you're the young, white child of a rich suburban family and you attempt to unburden yourself of white guilt by being activist, socialist, and wholly idealist. One of the things that makes the neighborhood odd is that it's a really shitty part of town. All these punks and earthtones wanna live near some ethnic types so they can convince themselves of their down-with-the-peopleness, but the more white coffee-slurpin', poetry-readin', record-store-clerks-who-think-they-themselves-are-rockstars types move there, the fewer ethnic types there are for them to be near.

It's a "transitional" neighborhood, but not in the traditional sense. Traditionally, some big developer will buy up a bunch of cheap property in the ghetto, build condos, and the resulting high rents will drive all the undesirables out. With Wicker Park, you got a bunch of honkeys moving in to chill with the poor, and then they immediately start protesting all the other whiteys who move there for the same reason. It's similiar to the saying: "What's the difference between a developer and an environmentalist? A developer wants to build a house in the woods, an environmentalist already has a house in the woods." Wicker Park whiteys complain about the problem they are a part of. Not that the developers aren't building there. Tons of yupsters want to be just like John Cusak in "High Fidelity" and live there, regardless of how many decades ago the movie took place.

Adding to the fun, it's a pretty crime-ridden neighborhood. It's not gang controlled but the areas to the west and south are. So it's probably the only neighborhood in town (with perhaps the exception of the Gold Coast) where you pay really high rents because of the trendiness of the neighborhood, yet still get all of the murders and muggings of the ghetto. Sounds like a steal!

On move-in day, MTV's The Real World hired off-duty cops to work security, though at that time the location was secret. But this wasn't no damn New York City townhouse, it wasn't a fancy antebellum home in the French Quarter, and it sure as hell wasn't no happy-go-hippy San Francisco dwelling. At a nearby Taco Bell, a drug deal went bad and two men were shot in the head. The surviving woman in the car drove it around frantically looking for help, and saw the MTV's The Real World cops. So, as the residents/wannabe stars are trying to subtly move in without giving away the location of the house, a woman pulls into the driveway with a dead body and another one dying from a gunshot wound to the head. Welcome to Chicago!

One of the press agents for the show tried to threaten the Sun-Times reporter who covered the crime scene. "If you reveal the location of the house, we'll ban you from all press contact with the show." "Oh, really, ban me from giving you free press?" the reporter wrote in his column, "The house is at 1934 W. North Avenue." Welcome to Chicago.

Ever since then the neighborhood won't leave the house alone. The local used-bookstore has banned all camera crews. The local coffeeshop is advertising that if you go there you might get on the show. People are putting up signs everywhere pointing to the place, and one person scrawled eMpTV on the door. Then some "pranksters", as they called themselves, decided to stage a "protest".

Now, I'm all for causing trouble for the megacorps. I heartily endorse it. I'm just telling this story because I myself was once an angsty malcontent who believed in ideals with disregard for the way the real world operates.

The perpetrators distributed flyers in bars that said, "Be on The Real World, need extras for a party scene, free beer!" Then, when hundreds of folks showed up at the noted time, they started yelling through megaphones at the house and throwing paint bombs and such. However, their recruitment tactic for the protest ensured that only pro-real-world types would show up! So, of course, when the cops showed up the crowd dispersed and the pranksters got arrested. Anybody who yelled anything was arrested, even though they were on the sidewalk. Welcome to Chicago!

Now, we all agree that The Real World sucks. It's a shameful exploitation of human beings, who are humiliating themselves for fame. It's a disgusting show, especially now that they've got some innnocent 18-year-old on with the nation waiting for her to lose her virginity. I hope she keeps it. The show sucks donkey shlong, nobody's arguing that point. Is it worth getting arrested over? Wellll....

The protesters' main gripe seemed to be against Viacom and corporate media in general. I am just as frightened as everyone else should be about the consolidation of control over most forms of media. But is The Real World the aspect of Viacom that we should be protesting? What about the fact that they bought the Telecomunications Act of 1996 and proceeded to buy as many radio stations as they could get their hands on? Compared to the Orwellian possibilites resulting from media hegemony, some shitty show about losers bitching seems pretty minor.

The protesters also didn't like the fact that other trendy whiteys had followed them into the neighborhood. "The Real World is an advertisement for gentrification, and it's an insult to all those people they kicked out to put in those trendy restaurants." said one. The organizers demanded that the house be converted to affordable housing. One of the local coffeeshop owners compared it to Reality Bites: "This neighborhood is Ethan Hawke. It's the poetry writing, trying to get his band off the ground. MTV is Ben Stiller."

Good analogy. In that movie, Ben Stiller's character was trying to be cool but just couldn't get it. He was too sucked up in the corporate world. However, he was a nice guy, and he attempted several times to make friends with Ethan Hawke's character. Hawke, however, played an asshole. He was certainly cooler-than-thou. He was a complete and utter jerk, mistreating anyone who ever tried to be nice to him. He lived in a world of ideals that had no relation to the real world, thus the title of the movie. And he was only nice to Winona Ryder's character when he was trying to get laid.

So here's the punchline: These protesters, these pouty, angsty protesters, are angry because they found out Wicker Park was cool a couple of years before MTV did. They're the environmentalist in the woods angry that someone else is building a cabin there. They're out there pitching beer bottles at the Real World house, a bitter and haughty Ethan Hawke who you couldn't possibly understand because you don't have the ennui. They got asked by Rolling Stone Magazine for some pictures of their protest.

Their response: "We have the pictures you desire but it has been of considerable concern to us that your magazine is quite implicated in the corporate tragedy we aim to destroy. That being the case, we have come to the inevitable conclusion that we are willing to cast our values aside to drain some money from your villanous corporate coffers. As you probably suspect, we are starving cultural producers that cannot compete with the parasites that you are. Ummmm... listen... we want $500 per image. It will help us in our campaign to run you out of business."

Rolling Stone's reply: "Integrity's running pretty cheap these days, huh? Only $500 bucks. If you had said $1000, I would have bought them."