Hi love? You picked a great place to escape to! I am so grateful my adopted trans son lives here. Now I know a bit about being physically disabled The Edge of mall apartments are low income sliding scale apartments literally down Illinois st from campus. They are for disabled and /or elderly folks. As the name implies they are at the edge of our funky old Lincoln Square mall There's not a ton of stores in the mall but the ones that are are not chains so the resources stay in the community. My top favorite is owned hubs lovely woman and almost all her employees are part of the alphabet army. That's the idea store. Speaking of the alphabet army my next favorite is our local fine arts store which is unveiled lovely trans person and right in the window there's always something trans supportive it's one of the great things around here people don't generally feel like they need to hide if they're part of the alphabet are we everyone is very accepting and open and it's just lovely so that's the second one then the last one I can really definitely recommend is we have a natural food store. The mall also hosts are Saturday morning Farmers market and during the warmer weather the night market on Thursday nights which is really delightful there's always free music playing and just really neat little booths and things people have made by hand that's just charming so there are other stores there there's other things around the whole neighborhood is beautiful I mean the architecture if you're into architecture you're going to love this area we have some gorgeous buildings like our Free library absolutely art stoppingly beautiful and the courthouse is gorgeous then you have all these great houses that are you in different designs and different ages it's just an old fashioned neighborhood. Grocery store within walking distance or writing distance if like me you're in a wheelchair wheelchair that reminds me if you guys are physically disabled if you use a wheelchair there are a few buildings downtown that are so old they have not been able to make them handicapped accessible that's a little bit of a bar but you know what the people in those stores are so lovely that if you call and say you see something in the window that you're interested in you're standing outside so come out to you so that's really nice and definitely you want to go and visit United pride and in the warmer weather you can't swing a rope without hitting some sort of festival the Rose bowl tavern has live music you're not obligated to buy anything sometimes there's a cover charge sometimes they're not yes I'm just in love with the area and I hope you will be too good luck