Division Street on the boundary between Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park is one of the most historically resonant streets in Chicago's working-class immigrant history. Nelson Algren, who lived here for decades, wrote Chicago: City on the Shoulders of the World as a love letter to Division Street and its Polish-immigrant tavern culture. The street is no longer Polish, but the bars — cheaper and less fashionable than those on nearby Milwaukee and Damen — retain a character that echoes Algren's descriptions.
The Rainbo Club, at 1150 N Damen, has been a bar on this block since the Prohibition era and is one of the few surviving venues with direct continuity to the neighbourhood that Algren documented. Writers and artists still drink here in deliberate reference to the literary history.