You don’t have to go far to find a Chicago lifer who bemoans the loss of their favorite neighborhood to gentrification. And while there’s much truth in these allegations, in a city where the unique cultural and ethnic personality of neighborhoods is steamrolled for Jamba Juices and high-end clothing boutiques, that old Chicago can still be found. That Chicago exists south of the Dan Ryan, which remains as a huge symbol of the senior Mayor Daley’s segregationist practices, and draws a clear deliniation between the city’s predominantly white North Side and black and Hispanic South Side.

In recent years, however, gentrification has crept south of the Dan Ryan. Pilsen is the only the most recent battleground between the city’s move to gentrification and its ethnic and cultural heritage. Yet with a strong, vocal community, the encroaching high-class sprawl emerging from the University of Chicago’s shopping district has yet to overtake the neighborhood’s core cultural identity. There is perhaps no more immediate reminder of the cultural vitality of Pilsen’s Mexican community than its yearly Day of the Dead celebration. I attended the 29th annual celebration the night of Tuesday, November 3rd, and recorded an on-the-spot account of the revelries, and to observe how a community preserves its soul amid the encroachment of high-priced boutiques and yupster chains.

4:15pm. The events kick off at Dvorak Park. Kids run wild as they and their parents wait to have their faces painted with the customary Dia De Los Muertos skulls. People pay their respects at a Day of the Dead altar in the park’s assembly hall, but the mood is rarely somber–—instead, this is clearly a jubilant celebration of the cycle of life and death.

5:05pm. As more families and individuals filter in, break dancing kicks off in Dvorak Park’s west assembly hall. Amid paper mache skeletons and skulls and faux gravestones, everyone in attendance gathers to watch Breakers Calaca bring the Day of the Dead revelries into a contemporary setting.

5:30pm. It’s a refreshingly diverse turnout for the celebration. A huge swath of the community has turned out—–Mexican families, older white lefties whose bottle cap John Lennon glasses are offset by Day of the Dead face paint and regalia, even a handful of cuffed-jean youths gentrifiers. The only thing as adorable as the preteen kids from Pilsen’s Kidz Circus—who are performing feats of amazement, juggling and hula-hooping on a rolling wheel—are the surly Hispanic teenage punk rockers, scowling under Misfits-esque makeup in their Casualties shirts. This is the sort of old-school community get-together you just don’t find in contemporary suburban America.

6:10pm. Everyone streams out of the assembly halls to begin the parade around the neighborhood. Already running ten minutes late, event organizers are clearly stressing, begging through megaphones over the din of death whistles for marchers to line up behind the police pace car for the parade. After ten minutes of jubilant anarchy, the array of marchers, with giant skulls and Kidz Circus tricksters in tow, leave the park’s confines for the streets of Pilsen.

6:25pm. Marching up S. Morgan St., the parade is getting louder and larger, as pedestrians stop standing agape and join in. Onlookers blow their own death whistles out of windows and holler at marching friends and acquaintances, with the exception of an elderly Eastern European woman features, who looks on disapprovingly. Some people just hate fun.

6:35pm. Now we’re on W. 18th St, Pilsen’s equivalent to Main Street, and the energy is reaching a fever pitch. Under the wing of a circus mime, members of the Kidz Circus jump on the rolling wheel while their fellow would-be-carnies take on the city artery by unicycle. Disaster is narrowly averted when a clearly confused drunken old man fails to move for the oncoming circus wheel, but he’s quickly moved out of the way by event organizers, leaving a clear thoroughfare for the talented kids, who are clearly loving being center of the show.

6:50pm. The parade may have run late, but people quickly and orderly pile into Casa Aztlan, a community center on S. Racine, for Pan de Muerto (Bread of the Dead) and a performance of Panchita y La Muerte, a traditional Mexican folktale. It’s hard to get the energized crowd to quiet down—thankfully the megaphones aren’t resorted to this time, but in time the assembled mass mellows out. That is, except for the mohawked teen in his Casualties shirt, who is sitting in the back, and won’t be told to be silent, thank you very much. Still, enjoying some semblance of attention, the actors begin their performance, a bilingual presentation in which a woman attempts to fool her visitor, Death. Hijinks ensue, as you might expect, as the story humorously documents a concern as universal as the crowd that has assembled to watch the show. Old Chicago and New Chicago are both in attendance here, and there’s a sense of hope that one does not necessarily need to eclipse the other.