There's a joke William Matos makes with his friends whenever the Chicago Park District groundskeeping crew rolls through the patch of grass where he's pitched his tent.
"We've got maids and our own personal gardener," said Matos.
Matos, 37, his stepson Shadoe Garner, 25, and his friend John Ryder, 57, have been staying in tents along a stretch of Lake Shore Drive in Uptown for about a month and a half, ever since they got sick of sleeping under bridges. They are three of an estimated 138,575 homeless people in Chicago, according to numbers from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.
Matos, Garner and Ryder are not the first in Chicago's homeless community to set up tents along a stretch of Lincoln Park in the Uptown neighborhood this summer. But they try to be more cautious after word circulated through the homeless community that police were enforcing the park's 11 p.m. closing time. It is illegal to loiter in parks past that time.
But Matos and his crew are not worried about the police. They stay small, and make sure their area is clean.
"They know we're trying," he said. "Lately, they haven't been bothering us."
During the day, they sit on milk crates and smoke and meet with their social workers. The three of them watch the cars go by and yell "Slug bug!" when they see a Volkswagen Beetle.
At night, they say they cooperate with police as much as they can; when they are told to take down their tents, they pull up stakes. But they say the cops know them now. When they are asked for identification, they just point to the tent, and police go on their way. Even with cold weather encroaching, they plan to stay in the tent for as long as they can.
"We live here," Ryder said. "Where are we going to go? We ain't going nowhere."
Finding the right place to pitch the tent is an art form. If the area is too sunny, the tent will get too hot and uncomfortable for sleeping. If it's too close to bike or foot traffic, it will attract too much attention. The closer to Lake Shore Drive, the less likely police will hassle them.
Their spot between Wilson and Lawrence avenues had served them pretty well for about a week, they said early Tuesday morning, but they planned to pick up and move farther south soon, to a more secluded spot. Their tent was plainly visible to drivers on Lake Shore Drive.
Ald. James Cappleman (46th), whose Uptown ward encompasses the part of the park where the tent was set up, could not be reached for comment.
Matos, who grew up in Humboldt Park, said he used to have a three-bedroom apartment before he ran out of money. Now his back is so bad he can't work, and he was kicked out of a North Side shelter earlier this summer for getting into a fight. Garner said he was kicked out, too, for accompanying his stepfather to the hospital afterward.
They spent some time under the Wilson Avenue overpass before, in Matos's words, "we got together and said, 'f--- this bridge, let's put tents up.'"
One tent has since broken and is now used like a tarp to cover a shopping cart full of the men's belongings. They'll let one woman pitch her tent next to them occasionally, but if anyone else tries to join, they will pick up and move. If the group gets too big, they say, they'll attract too much attention.
And they want to stay outdoors as long as they can, rather than going to a shelter, which they spurn because of the crowds and the rules.
"In shelters, we've got personalities, attitude problems, conflict, issues," Matos said. "We eat better here."
In the meantime, they scavenge old charcoal briquettes and sticks from the park to use in a grill they found. They cook food that local nonprofits drop off, and grill everything they can: vegetables, canned goods, and one time, a whole chicken wrapped in foil.
"It came out like a rotisserie chicken," Matos said. "Every day's a barbecue, pretty much."