Lessons from a Greek Diner
Welcome to Neighborhood Science
The best lessons about neighborhoods I ever learned came from a Greek diner on Chicago's North Side, not the sociology departments where I've spent the last 15 years. KaMar's was my family's restaurant, a swirling universe of coffee refills and interconnected lives served with a greasy spoon.
KaMar’s on Morse Ave. Early 1980s (photographer unknown)
For three decades, my father worked the floor, recycling the same corny jokes to an ever-changing yet somehow constant stream of customers. He was part maitre d', part neighborhood counselor, part amateur sociologist (though he'd likely scoff at that last description since he never really understood what I do for a living). The green vinyl booths hosted first dates and breakups, political deals and philosophical debates. When most of the city shut down on Thanksgiving and Christmas, KaMar's doors stayed open, serving free meals before my parents finally headed home for their own holiday dinner.
What I didn't realize then— but now study professionally—is how places like KaMar's form the invisible infrastructure of neighborhood life. They're the barbershops, church basements, and basketball courts that punctuate city landscapes: spaces where community isn't just a word but a daily practice, where networks form through everyday interactions.
Social scientists might call these "third places" or talk about "social capital formation." My dad just called it Tuesday. He didn't need regression analyses or spreadsheets to understand how neighborhoods work—he saw it in action every day, in the rhythms of regular customers and the stories they brought through the door.
This is what neighborhoods really are: not just lines on a map or data points in a study, but places where lives intersect. Where the quantitative meets the qualitative. Where every data point has a name, every statistic has a story, and every trend line starts with people like my father, keeping the food hot and the connections flowing.
Beyond Nostalgia
This intersection of daily life and deeper patterns isn't just nostalgia. It's at the heart of how neighborhoods actually work. Every dataset I've analyzed in my academic career contains thousands of KaMar's-like moments: places where people connect, where communities form, where life happens in all its messy, magnificent detail. When I study social networks and violence prevention now, I see what my father understood intuitively: a neighborhood is a web of relationships, trust builds over countless small interactions, and community happens in the spaces between official statistics and newspaper headlines.
I created Neighborhood Science because the divide between rigorous research and compelling storytelling is artificial. The more statistical models I run, the more compelled I feel to tell different stories. My research focuses on social networks and gun violence in cities, but complex models and statistical analyses only matter because they help us understand human lives and community dynamics.
The most powerful insights often emerge when we bridge different ways of knowing. When a dataset reveals a pattern in violence, it's the local outreach worker who helps explain why. When community members describe neighborhood change, network analysis can show the hidden connections but not make the change itself.
Field Notes from Neighborhood Science
I'll be using this space to try and make these connections between academic work and the neighborhoods around me. I'll be writing about:
How neighborhoods work, drawing from both research and stories from the ground
New ways of understanding (and preventing) gun violence
How social networks shape our cities
Profiles of people doing vital neighborhood work
What data reveals and conceals about urban life
I'm hoping to start with about two posts each month: one longer piece diving deep into research, policy, or narrative, and another shorter analysis of current issues or new findings. And expect some guest posts as well.
Some pieces will focus tightly on Chicago. Others will explore broader questions about cities, violence prevention, and community life. Throughout, I'll aim to bring the same commitment to both scientific rigor and human understanding.
Think of this Substack as field notes from the frontlines of Neighborhood Science—where research meets reality, where data has an address, and where the science of neighborhood life reveals itself in both numbers and narratives.
The Diner’s Legacy
KaMar's died in 1992 (that's a story for another day). I was 16, watching my neighborhood change in front of me, trying to make sense of my future. Like many of my own students, I found my way to sociology through rich ethnographic studies of cities—depictions of political deals and gang territories, of neighborhood transitions and urban change. The actual building where KaMar's existed tells a story of urban transformation: it became a dollar store, then a pub, and, most recently, a trendy arcade bar. Today, there's a "For Lease" sign out front. All that remains of the original diner are the teal tiles on the façade—what we'd call Chicago Blue these days.
But KaMar's lives on in unexpected ways. When we moved into our current home, I learned that our next-door neighbors used to sneak away to KaMar's from college classes for some of their first dates.
I've spent my career trying to understand what KaMar's tried to teach me: how community forms in small moments and daily rituals and how they hold both persistence and transformation in the same moment. Every dataset I analyze, every network I map, every story I tell carries lessons first learned in that North Side diner.
Suggested Listening: 24 Hours at the Golden Apple
P.S. My family didn't take many pictures of KaMar's, and those we had were lost to a basement flood. Sometimes I get nostalgic, wishing for something tangible from those days—one of the menus, a matchbook, or even one of those green t-shirts we wore while busing tables.
Recently, This American Life re-released a podcast about one of Chicago's iconic 24-hour Greek diners, The Golden Apple. Listening to it transported me back to KaMar's in ways I struggle to describe – like that scene in the Pixar Ratatouille where a single taste carries Remy through time and memory. The proprietor's thick Greek accent, the descriptions of dusty pie cases, the rhythms of the staff's lives, the revolving cast of customers – it's all there. For a glimpse into the world I've been writing about, take a listen (link to episode)
You are a terrific writer, Andy! I am so glad I discovered this substack.
I am very excited for these newsletters. We've gone from that old "street corner society" to Les Back's quiet championing of "conviviality". We don't all need to become best friends, but in our daily neighbourliness - we're building the positives.