What is their recruitment field? Where will Grand Ave field teenagers/20 something Italian kids? I don't see it happening. Elmwood Park, maybe, but Grand Ave will go the way of Taylor St. & Rush St. It'll take a while, but there's no future in that territory. The Patch becomes more 1st world yuppie with each passing year.
If you follow/know the city at all, you realize that traditional white ethnic enclaves are promoted as such by the media and nostalgic public long after they are functionally dead. Andersonville is still a "Swiss area," Lincoln Square a "German neighborhood," Ukrainian Village still the "Ukrainian heart of Chicago," West Town still Polish.
Of course while all those neighborhoods still have vestiages of those communities to varying degrees and some even a lingering amount of, generally, extremely elderly citizenry, the statements as a whole can be categorized with two words: patently false.
The map I posted in another thread will show you that the area is mostly Hispanic and you can bet your bottom dollar that the lingering 5-10 percent of Italians who still live there are all old.
In short the number of Italian teenagers growing up around Grand Avenue, at least in the city, is probably close to nonexistent.
