Summer in the City

#1 This is probably the greatest summer of my life.

#2 This is probably the greatest city in the world.

#3 I think I saw Studs Terkel carrying groceries on the El this afternoon. Or maybe it was just some other white-haired dude with a red checked shirt.

#4 To that boy who hit on me on the train: Seriously, if I wasn't otherwise occupied, that might have worked. Confidence is a good thing. And that was a very nice hat.

#5 Dear god I love the Scotland Yard Gospel Choir. However, I do wish that girl would do a couple shots of espresso before their set. She's a great musician, she just always seems half dazed.

Hooray for being done with the old job

Now on to being nervous about the new one.

Bunch of savages in this town

I just realized that someone stole my Smokey Joe. It was out on my back porch, and someone just swiped it. They didn't take the charcoal or lighter fluid that was next to it. And they didn't break down the door or even cut through the screen windows, which were wide open, and behind which are a TV, DVD player, laptop and digital camera. They just took my Smokey Joe.

How am I supposed to get through the rest of the summer with no Smokey Joe?

Belmont and Broadway

Crazy man #1: "I used to work in a beauty shop a long time ago, but back then, they didn't have things like waxing. What's waxing?"

Me: "You know, to take the hair off."

"Take the hair off?"

"Yeah, like waxing your legs."

"Oh, take the hair off your legs."

Crazy man #2: "I'm an old hippie. I like hairy women."

The Uptown Report

The Ringleader appears to have been arrested. He hasn't been around in a couple weeks now. The one who should be known as Salty Pete has taken over as Interim Ringleader. He's raised the tone a bit. Today they were playing chess in the evening and were polite to the cops who were trolling by. No one makes crude remarks to me anymore. I'm a supporter of the new Ringleader.

Smells From Downstairs

In order of detection in the past twenty minutes:

1) pot
2) patchouli

My prediction for the next smell: pizza.

I am such a dork

I stayed up last night until almost midnight finishing Harry Potter. Hey, it was a good book. Very gripping. Everybody warned me that it was dark, but I don't think I realized to what extent this series has "grown up" from the first book (which was kind of fun but pretty fluffy, if I recall correctly). This is some seriously disturbing stuff she's dealing with now. Although probably no more so than any old fairy tales or the creepy stuff that Roald Dahl was into. Or C.S. Lewis, even if he was a Christian. Some of that shit was Weird.

If only I had any idea what was going on.

Ohmygoditssofuckinghot

How hot is it? THAT HOT.

Things I have done today to keep cool (as I do not have air conditioning in my apartment):

1) Wore a skirt.
2) Went to a restaurant and ate a very long slow breakfast.
3) Rode the El.
4) Milled around at Dominicks considering what kind of cereal to buy.
5) Took a cold bath.
6) Drank a gallon of water.
7) Sat at Border's reading travel books.
8) Looked through every aisle of Hollywood Video (but didn't rent anything).
9) Took another bath.
10) Had a root beer float.

Sandwiches

I don't know why I just remembered this, but:

When the first Gulf War started (I mean the beginning of the bombings) I was 10. I was sitting at the kitchen table with my sister and my mom, and we were making dinner because my dad was going to get home from work soon. We were having sandwiches and chili, and the sandwiches we had finished pretty well, but my mom couldn't remember exactly how the chili recipe went (she wasn't really the cook of the family) so she called my dad at work to ask. He told her to turn on the news. We turned on CNN (we couldn't have had cable for that long at this point, or a color TV even, so this was fairly exciting) and I remember the green streaks across the screen. And not really understanding what I was looking at or what was happening. I don't remember being scared at that point. It didn't look like war. It looked like a computer game.

When the planes hit the World Trade Center, I was 20. I had just returned from a second stint of living in New York, and I was working back at this coffee shop in the town where I was going to college. I was in the kitchen, making sandwiches, when my boss's brother came in and said to turn on the radio, that there had been some horrible accident in New York. When we turned it on, just then, the second plane hit. And we knew it wasn't an accident, but we didn't know what was happening. Everybody got real quiet. And I didn't know if my friends were dead or trapped or smashed or broken or perfectly fine in Brooklyn somewhere. I went outside and cried for a while and wiped my face on my apron and went back to work. It wasn't until hours later that I saw the first pictures of it on TV, through the window of a bank I passed on my way to the El. That looked real. That looked like war.

Honest

I just spoke with someone named Dick Rambo.

Two Things

Two things that made me really happy this morning on the train:

1) Ugly people in love.
2) A middle-aged man excitedly turning the pages of Harry Potter.

Get On the Hipster Train

This weekend was the Intonation Music Festival here in beautiful sweaty drought-ridden Chicago. The full review will be up in a day or so, but before that, I have to explain about the journey there.

The show was out at the Ashland stop on the Green Line. This is a place well off the standard hipster map. But there was a caravan of boys in double-cuffed jeans and girls in fluffy skirts marching from the Red Line up to the Green Line to be carried off to the West Side for the day's adventure. As I rode the escalator up on Sunday afternoon, a guy behind me commented, "I bet everyone on this escalator is going to Intonation." He was right. We moved in a swarm. We took up every seat on the El. Everyone looked from one to another to be sure they were headed in the right direction. Get on this train? Get off at this stop? Go this way? It was a surreal moment, and one I wish I'd taken a picture of.

Today my boss said that he hoped I didn't go out there alone, the neighborhood being so dangerous. No, I said. I wasn't alone. I was on the Hipster Train.

The Lanky Drunk of the Bel Air

The Bel Air is a very classy, and by classy I mean divey, bar on the first floor of a monthly hotel on Diversey. It's famous (in my mind, at least) for two things: 1) a pretty fantastic kiss which I won't go into here, and 2) the Lanky Drunk.

The Lanky Drunk is approximately 6'6" and 120 pounds. I'm not sure how much of his personality is drunk and how much is naturally mentally unstable. I'd put him at 50, but with his kind, you can't be too sure. He roams the bar all night, cartoon smile painted across his sunken face, and throws quarter after quarter into the juke box to play all of the 60s r&b they've got, plus a few old country or blues tunes to mix things up. And he dances to every single one. Well, I guess it's dancing. A good amount of jerking, hand-clapping, and nearly toppling over is involved. He's clearly a pet of sorts among the regulars, of which I'm threatening to become one if I keep this up. I'm not really sure why the bartender keeps serving him when he's clearly plastered, but I imagine that he lives upstairs, so he's not driving, and he never bothers anyone. He's not mean crazy, just pure happy crazy. I think he knows his days are numbered at this point so he may as well have another beer and throw his last quarter in the slot and dance.

Chicago Oddity #7823

Walking through the Pedway to work yesterday, a shall-we-say-stocky young-30s-ish man in your standard office-worker uniform was walking hurriedly in the opposite direction, carrying a plastic gallon of skim milk from which it appeared one or two healthy swigs had been taken.

Spy

I'm not a big reality-show watcher, but this new one on PBS has got me hooked, although I may be watching through my fingers. It's like if they did Survivor: Gitmo, at least based on the first episode. Psychological torture and physical discomfort. Sign me up! Why do people agree to these things? Especially the British. I mean, Americans will do anything to win some cash or at least a little notoriety, but the British? Aren't they supposed to be more refined than us?

Still, I'm watching.

Me and the Ringleader

There are sketchy people (drug dealers, prostitutes, theives, run-of-the-mill street urchins) who hang out on the corner of my street day and night. They're the same group, mostly, with a few additions and subtractions as people go in and out of jail. But there is one omnipresent character, and he is the Ringleader. Think football player sized, probably 30ish, constantly clad in sportswear and a skully. He and I were OK with each other up until recently. He'd make some normal comment, ("Hello." "How you doin?" "I like your hair, that's pretty sharp.") and I would make some similar noises back to him. We were fine. We were neighbors.

Then (this was probably two weeks ago) came the showdown. And now we can never be friends.

It was one of those summer days when the pheremones are in the air and all the guys decide that they're going to shout at girls on the street. I had just walked up to the grocery store and been verbally assaulted four or five times (once from some vaguely threatening guys who drove their car slow alongside me for a block or so). Now I was coming back, hands full of grocery bags, hot, tired, and sick of being bothered. I turned onto my street and, as always, the Ringleader was there, overseeing a dice game. I walked onto the grass so as not to disturb the game, and as I came around the other side, I heard very clearly from behind me, the Ringleader's voice asserting, "Baby, you got a hot ass."

(I'll be honest, I don't remember the exact dialogue here, but it's close enough for you to get the picture.)

I'd had enough. I turned around, stared him straight in his (fairly ugly) face, and asked him, "Why can't you just be nice?"

"I am bein nice," he said. "You're hot. I'm just saying you're hot."

"You're not being nice. You're being rude." And with that, I got my keys out, went into my building, and forever left behind the notion that I could be civil with these hooligan neighbors of mine.

Goddamn Ringleader. You and me? We're through.

By the Way

I've been offered a new job. No more private detectiving for me. Off to the respectable world of publishing. More details as they become apparent.

What a View

My office window looks out on the picturesque wall of a condo building, complete with "balconies", i.e. things slightly bigger than fire escapes. Just now, a shirtless pot-bellied man in cutoff shorts and white sneakers walked out on his balcony, laptop in hand, apparently trying to find a wireless connection to steal. No such luck. He went back inside.

I love this city.

Photographic Triumph!

Here's some photos from the aforementioned dangerous camping trip to Indiana. I'd like to mention that the fire in that last photo was set by a future police officer, which makes it even a little stranger. You should also note the beer bottles present in the second photo. A small fraction of the total number, I assure you. Also, all of these fireworks were purchased legally, even if they were exploded completely illegally.

An Oddity

I stopped into a local fast-food place (Pizzeria Aroma, for you Edgewater/Uptown-ites) to grab some dinner this evening and was faced with something that I haven't seen in this country ever. They serve poutine. If you don't know what poutine is, I suggest you look it up, because I can't be trusted to objectively report on what I consider the most perplexing food ever concocted by human beings, at least on this continent. But let me tell you, it's not the sort of thing you expect to see at a pizza-and-burger joint in Chicago. It's the sort of thing typically served to yetis. It's... well, just look here.

A Disturbing Missive

I have these relatives (an uncle, aunt, and smallish cousin, specifically) who live on a gigantic piece of property outside Ithaca, NY. They are filthy rich priviledged white people who grow their own produce and vacation in the jungles of Costa Rica. They are, basically, good people, or so I thought, until they sent out a 10-page letter to all their friends and family (world-wide!)detailing all of their personal (and I mean personal) trials and tribulations over the past few years.

Why they did this, none of us knows.

I felt vaguely icky reading it, like I was peeking in someone's bathroom window. Then I felt uncomfortable, like when the person next to you on the bus is crying and you're not sure whether you should say anything or just stare harder out the window. Then I just felt pissed off that my relatives are not nearly as smart as they should be.

Leaving aside all the truly disturbing and unfortunately intricate explanations of health problems, the worst part of the letter was that they kept reiterating how upset they were with the world, how bad the government was, the schools, all those uncaring people out there who wouldn't protect the environment or tolerate other cultures.

Their solution to this problem is to shut themselves off from the outside world with miles of wilderness between them and anyone else, to disconnect entirely from modern culture and the society around them, to isolate themselves completely and, most importantly, to isolate their daughter as well.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of pop culture myself. I think Disney should have less control over kids' upbringing than it does. I don't think anyone should ever eat at McDonald's for any reason. But more than that, I think kids should be raised to be able to think for themselves. And that's what these two (probably well-intentioned) adults have cut their daughter off from. My cousin, having grown up in a world full only of vegetarians and peaceniks and people who think NPR is a little too commercial, has no idea how to fend for herself in reality. Her parents, being too afraid that she would choose to play with Barbie or eat a cheeseburger, have done her worse harm than either of those things ever could. They've left her with no choice. She knows no other way.

It makes me sad, because she could have grown up to be a cool person. And she's little yet, so there's still hope. She's an outspoken kid, so maybe she'll just demand a say in things. But for people who claim that "Question Authority" is their big motto, they've made themselves a nice little fascist state out in the woods.

OK, rant complete. Now I need to go burn that letter.

An Actual Phrase I Used Today

"Man, I've found three dead people already and it's only 10am."

A Dangerous Combination

This weekend involved a lot of fire and alcohol. I managed to survive unsinged, but that was by sheer luck. I've been trying to upload some photo evidence to Blogger, but this new image option isn't working too well. Just take my word for it: two city kids in the middle of the Indiana woods with lots of beer and fireworks... well, it's an interesting way to pass an evening, if certainly illegal. Also, three city kids trying to start a fire with old charcoal and too much lighter fluid just leads to people walking around with no eyebrows or arm hair. The lesson? Don't drink when setting fires, and don't let city kids use fire, period.

Social Conscience

Normally, I'm pretty cynical when it comes to anything political. I'm not too hopeful on the "change the world" front. But this seems pretty simple to me: the quality of life gap between, say, our president and an African orphan should be remedied. Hell, the gap between me and an African orphan should be remedied. I'm not a commie or anything, I just have a conscience. Check out www.one.org.

I'm actually much more in favor of charity beginning at home, especially when I see the homeless people on my street every night, but once in a while, you should think big.

Chicago Tidbit

People who've never been here would never know about this, but downtown Chicago smells like chocolate. We've got this chocolate factory on the outskirts of the Loop, kind of like Willy Wonka's but, as far as I know, without the funny-colored enslaved creatures, and the smell from it is much stronger than you'd expect. It's comforting in the winter, when it reminds you of fresh-baked cookies and hot cocoa, but on mornings like this one, it made me think more of a candy bar that had been left in a backpack on the front seat of a car on a hot July day, melting into a sticky mess.

It also kinda made me hungry.