"The useless, helpless nobodies nobody knows: that go as the snow goes, where the wind blows, there and there and there, down any old cat-and-ashcan alley at all … there, there beats Chicago’s heart.”

—Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make

The contemporary vendors of the Maxwell Street Market mostly fit into Algren’s description of who represents the heart of Chicago.

One description that’s apt: the current bunch of vendors is indeed politically weak. This explains why they’ve been kicked around for years, displaced from their historic home and left to stagnate, slapped with higher fees and generally devalued. But they’re neither useless nor helpless.

These men and women have a lot of fight. When the city hired a private contractor utterly incapable of managing the market, they bucked. They pressed their case to the aldermen and demanded respect.

We’d expect nothing less. The vendors at Maxwell Street are authentically Chicago, like old Comiskey Park or Gerri’s Palm Tavern, both long gone, or the Russian-Turkish Bath House in Wicker Park (still open but barely hanging on). They belong to a rusty pre-gentrified city, and it’s fair to wonder whether the city government that sapped the market of its vitality in the first place has the vision to spark its rebirth.

Because of this history we can offer only tentative backing to the Mayor’s Office of Special Events’ ideas, detailed in this week’s Journal, to attract more customers and bring back vendors. Getting rid of the disgraced soon-to-be-gone market managers Jam Productions was the obvious first step. Bringing back music and street performance makes perfect sense.

We caution the department to listen to vendors when they express their fears of a corporate takeover of the market and demand spaces big enough to park both their vehicles and merchandise. Continuing to work on space size issues must be a priority. It should be done through an elected vendor council that organizes complaints and articulates solutions.

We hear a lot of talk these days (see our story on page five) about Chicago’s future as a gleaming world city. Hatching those plans is fine and necessary. But so is looking after the city’s heart.