It’s shaky, but safe,” Medill senior Seth Porges tells me as I nervously ascend a homemade wooden ladder leading to the roof of his Wicker Park apartment. The view is worth it: a postcard-worthy downtown skyline and the “six corner” intersection of North, Damen, and Milwaukee avenues known as Wicker Park’s “ground zero.”

Porges lives on Damen Avenue, parties with the young Wicker Park crowd, DJs at one of a growing number of local clubs, writes for local publications like “CityLink,” and, somehow, still makes it all the way up to Northwestern for class.

To get to Wicker Park on the El, transfer from the red line to the blue and get off at Damen. Porges, however, recommends taking the Metra from Davis to Clybourn, which he says takes him only 16 minutes.

After hanging out in Wicker Park for years, Porges decided to make the move in January after returning from his Teaching Magazine internship in New York City.

“Most people who live here are begrudgingly living in Chicago, wishing they were in New York,” Porges says as we walk down Damen Avenue toward the “six corners.” “This is their island of sanity within the city.”

As we walk down Damen, Porges points out an incongruent string of boutiques and restaurants. We pass Helen Yi and p.45 — two chic, high-end boutiques only affordable to Lincoln Park and Gold Coast migrants — and a Bar Louie.

We take a left onto North Avenue and make our way past the former Real World Chicago house, now a Cheetah Gym, 1934 W. North Ave., to the quirky Quimby’s bookstore, 1854 W. North Ave. The small shop is stocked with books on politics, poetry and pop culture, racks of underground-ish magazines and independent publications created by young neighborhood residents.

The next stop is Milwaukee Avenue where we pass the huge triangular Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., — an artist colony/gallery space. Filter, 1585 N. Milwaukee, the smoker-friendly caf