Best Hidden Neighborhood

It's not hidden if you live there, of course, but for plenty of us who've arrived at thinking-about-home-buying age in the last few years, it's all about -- in words lifted from the housewarming invitation of one recent arrival -- "East side, baby!" East side means different things to different people, and the rising Heights-like affluence of close-in neighborhoods like Eastwood is way too well established to qualify as hidden, but as usual, drive a little farther out (though still inside the Loop, natch), and you can pretty much have your pick of hideaways still largely absent -- though not likely for long -- from the real estate pages. Our current favorite is Forest Hill, a nugget roughly bound by Brays Bayou, 75th Street, the bucolic Forest Park cemetery and Lawndale. What you've got is homes primarily from the 1930s through '50s, some fixer-uppers and some showpieces, set on quiet streets, shaded with canopied hardwoods and planted on anachronistically deep lots. What you get is easy access to I-45, the Gus Wortham golf course (hey, as a landscape neighbor, it beats the hell out of a mall), big parks, that pretty cemetery and a stable population that, according to local realtors, doesn't move much. What you can get it for, if you're willing to wait for the opportunity, is often in the exceedingly un-Heights-like range of 70 to 80K. What's not to like?