The once-vacant lot off West Lisbon Avenue in Walnut Hill is now home to 20 bright portraits and bird sculptures created by the community’s youngest residents. The refreshed look grew through the efforts of Express Yourself Milwaukee, which helps underserved urban youth through creative outlets.
But the vibrant new artwork is overshadowed by the lot’s gloomy neighbors: empty day cares and abandoned places of worship. A sign on a barred convenience store reads, “No mask, no hoods, no shirt, no service.”
We are one block away from the hood, or so Jon Elam tells me. He has just pulled over his 2014 black Honda Accord to assist a man whose car stalled right before a busy intersection. As if to punctuate his comment, three police squad cars speed by, sirens blaring, and he laughs at the coincidence.
Crime and unemployment are above the national average in Walnut Hill, which cuts a rectangular swath in the middle of Milwaukee’s West Side, bordered by North Avenue and Vliet Street between 30th and 35th streets. According to a study by Statistical Atlas, about 19 percent of neighborhood residents age 24-64 are unemployed. Another study on race and ethnicity reports that 54 percent of the people living here are black and 33 percent are Asian.
Elam, 26, is well aware of these statistics. He grew up four blocks down on 38th Street before his family moved across town. It was safer there.
Elam’s soft smile and eagerness to help are a stark contrast to the dangers he warns me about, such as robberies and prostitution. He is friendly and chatty and dreams of owning a foreign car one day. Some of his favorite times are spent looking through a car lot off Sixth and Capital.
As I move on to explore Walnut Hill, Elam continues assisting the man with the smoky transmission. Five minutes later, as I’m walking on the sidewalk five blocks away, Elam pulls up and flags me down. He wants to show me the better part of the neighborhood. So I follow him to his buddy’s barbershop.
Barber Shawn Dickerson sees something in this neighborhood that his friend didn’t. He sees new restaurants and apartment buildings being built. He sees middle-income construction proposals. He sees regular customers filtering in and out of the shop daily, some coming from as far as Racine just to get their hair trimmed.
He sees hope.
“This used to be the area where people got their start,” Dickerson says. “They bought their first apartment, had their first kid and then moved out. Now, we got people staying more.”
A neighborhood runs deeper than its vacant lots and crime rates, and that’s apparent when you look beyond stats and stereotypes, as Barbara Miner did in the Milwaukee Magazine feature “A Dream Deferred.” And this neighborhood came to life in the smiling faces of strangers at Dickerson’s barbershop, or through Elam’s generous act as impromptu tour guide.
Dickerson says he knows almost everyone in the community who has stuck around as long as he has, and he has no plans to move out of Walnut Hill.
