A few delicious samples: Guy #1: Hey man, do you want these chips?
Urchin boy: No.
Guy #2: I guess beggars can be choosers.
--23rd & 6th
Guy #1: You know if you went back in time and saw yourself the world would explode and collapse.
Guy #2: No way, man. Didn't you ever see Back to the Future?
Guy #1: What? That's not real!
--27th & 7th
Girl: I am dating two different guys with kids and no one will take me to see Harry Potter. Now that's fucked up.
--Eatery, 9th Avenue
Although I will always love New York—and will be there in four days to love it up some more, yippee!—I am also really enjoying getting to know Chicago a little. Earlier this week we were there for three days and it was really pleasant. It's like New York in some good ways, but mellower.
The new apartment is just a couple blocks south from primo shopping on Armitage. I went a little nuts on Monday, spending like two hours in Art Effect (got Loopy a crazy sparkly pink wreath - see right - since I haven't yet found the perfect aluminum tabletop tree - yes, that's right, we're moving away from the mess & fuss of an all-natural tree, toward the delicious hideousness of the white trash christmas). I also hit
, which for those unfamiliar, is one of those trendy new chocolate places with weird flavors—like truffles flavored with red stripe beer or wasabi or curry or whatever. What can I say, I love that shit. And of course I went by
and picked up some bath ballistics for the apartment. But it's not just the shopping. It's not even the eating—tho we did have some good food, at a great sushi place and a pub-ish sort of place, and this awesome place called Chicago Bagel Authority, where they steam your bagel sandwich and it is so good (check out the incredibly extensive menu here).
All those things are great, but more than that, it's just nice to be back in a city.
I was talking with some friends the other day, trying to pin down what excatly is it that is so annoying/frustrating/infuriating about Madison (not a city).
We decided that it's not just that it is so overwhelmingly white...it's that among the white people in Madison there is this incredible cultural homogeneity. It's like, not only are they all the same, but they don't really get that there are actually other ways of looking at the world. City people can be intolerant, but they at least know that there are other perspectives that they are refusing to tolerate.
In Madison it's like, people's heads explode if they discover that you don't see everything exactly the way they do. They can't even conceive of a different worldview. I mean, they can imagine that you might be pro-Bush or anti-Bush, pro-war or anti-war, but they assume you basically see the world the same way, you just have different opinions about it.
I also love being able to walk everywhere (even though Loopy accidentally sent me on a route right through Cabrini-Green on my way to State St.)(It was totally fine—as I learned a long time ago, just because a place has a reputation for being "dangerous" doesn't mean there are guns blazing continuously, and anyway it was too friggin' cold (8°F) for anybody to be out looking for trouble—but it still makes a good story). It seems really liberating to be able to walk to things, which is funny considering that cars are generally thought of as liberating.
On the other hand...
It is also really nice to be here, surrounded by quiet, snowy woods, with sweet-smelling air and a little flock of dark-eyed juncos in the bare lilac branches, fluffed up adorably against the cold. It's snowing again today, all day—dull skies and white world. I think briefly of Sylvia singing "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" to the tune of Greensleeves as I watch the white flakes swirling amid the dark tree branches. I have a feeling I'm going to love the ridiculously extravagant lifestyle of actually having a place in the city but still living in the country. This goes against everything I believe in—I'll be using up petroleum & producing greenhouse gasses traveling back & forth, not to mention using more than my fair share of housing when so many people are homeless. What the hell kind of socialist am I?
*sigh*
In other news, today I rewrote the Wikipedia article about Cabrini-Green, removing the ridiculously breathless sensationalism with its undertones of racism, deleting the ridiculously outdated pseudo-sociological assertions ("poverty passes from one generation to the next"), distinguishing between reputation and reality, and inserting paragraphs about residents' activism and demands during the demolition process. So that's what kind of socialist I am today... a deleter, distinguisher, and inserter.
And enjoyer of little flocks of dark-eyed juncos in the bare lilac branches.
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Tonight I looked at a friends' photos on Flickr - she's living in NYC right now - and I felt so nostalgic, listening to club music, thinking about how I should be so lucky to be in such a city, out on the town partying. Then I realized, hey, I could be out partying here. I had plenty of options. I just like staying in sometimes.
Signed another
cm/cm
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