Aside from child-like curiosity and general love of being out of the office, there were about 37 reasons I was excited to go to Chicago this September. Could be a certain nostalgia with the Midwest (the peaceful remains of an otherwise disastrous phase in my post-college existence), or perhaps a romantic idealization with Prohibition/Organized Crime (I still can’t get my hair to do that 1920s wave thing). Either way, Chicago certainly did not fail to deliver.
Let me just say first that Los Angeles was in the middle of a Holy-Shitballs Heat Wave when I departed on Monday afternoon. 113 degrees of smoggy, skin cancer goodness beat down on me as I awaited my flyaway bus to Union Station (read: do your friends a solid and take them all the way to the damn airport). When I landed, it was 49 degrees in Chicago.
You know how they say lazy people who suddenly over-exercise run the risk of dropping dead of a massive heart attack? I am sure a 60 degree change in temperature, along with humidity, jet lag, and a Xanax hangover isn’t so good on the ol’ bones either.
25 bucks later, my cab driver dropped me off at the Congress Plaza Hotel on Michigan Ave. (I was supposed to stay at The W, but I discovered this place shortly before I left).
The Congress Plaza was built in 1893 and is apparently one of the most haunted places in Chicago. It features the Gatsby-esque “Gold Ball Room,” along with creepy old elevators, huge chandeliers, and a night check in guy/caretaker that I am not entirely certain was alive.
I swam past the pools of blood pouring out of the elevator, got to my floor, side-stepped the creepy twin girls, and entered my room shortly thereafter. It had a fantastic view of Lake Michigan (at which point I would like to comment on the weirdness of seeing a body of water that big without waves).
Most of the next day was spent in the office, doing office-like things.
I did, however, use the long working day as an opportunity to make some interesting and perhaps inappropriate generalizations about Chicago and its people. Huzzah!
1) They get to work friggin’ early. Like 6am early.
2) Every person I passed on the street was either white, or black. Ponder that for a moment.
3) Chicagoians are used to the kind of cold that would keep a wooly mammoth preserved for an entire geologic age. This being said, they dress as though it is about 20 degrees colder than it actually is. 60 degrees ain’t that bad, but everyone around me was in light coats and scarves.
4) New York makes you want to yell in a bad accent. In Los Angeles you wear tight clothes and talk about who you know. DC makes you want to go back to school and get 17 advanced degrees (or at least up the ADD meds). Chicago? Chicago makes you romanticize the early 20th century. Although crammed with newer, and unnecessarily tall buildings, Chicago is full of very old structures that remind you of a time when men carried Tommy-guns and ended sentences with, “see?” A time when rich décor and elaborate architecture was still classy. Most importantly, a time where all women could successfully construct finger waves.
5) People are noticeably more overweight than in other cities I have seen before. This being said, more than a few Chicagoians I spoke to directly expressed their concern with chemicals in food. They fear saccharin, aspartame, corn syrup, soy, fast food meat, and generally anything else with a long list of ingredients. Apparently it's either brain tumors or a fat ass (Too far?...too far).
6) They dye the Chicago river green on St Patty’s day.
7) Freeways are called “expressways.”
8) White women in Chicago (actually, the midwest in general) seem to be really serious about their hair. I see alot of big-fat highlights, A-line cuts, torture-by-flatiron, etc. Even women in shitty clothes had perfectly blow-dryed hair... highlighted within an inch of its life.
Later that evening I went to a neighborhood called Wicker Park to hang out with a friend I met about a year or so back. Kinda looked like Silverlake, Brooklyn, and San Fran all in one. Yet the little things (rust-colored subway track suspended over a section of a three way intersection, horizontal business signs shorting out) gave it its own Chicago twist.
I spent the entire evening at a place called the Violet Hour (http://www.theviolethour.com/). They had a menu of insane cocktails with the weirdest ingredients, but they certainly result in a fun buzz. My friend grew up on the south side of Chicago, but received a Dartmouth education before emerging himself in the wild world of Insurance. You know, philosophizing on politics with those who see eye-to-eye with you is always a fun way to spend an evening. However, hearing things from the point of view of a person with an entirely different background, not to mention a Chicago upbringing, was particularly enlightening and thus worth a mention here.
I woke up in the morning with a sugar-hangover-headache and, I swear to god, a feeling that there was a ghost in my freezing-cold room. I decided then was a good time to pack my shit, fumble with that damn remote-control express checkout TV thing, and get the hell out of there.
I still had one more day to spend in Chicago. Alas, it involved the kind of work that'll induce sleep better than Ambien...or even C-Span.
Oddly enough, the Chicago branch of my company happened to be moving offices during my visit, so I got a taste of the old and a glimpse of the new. Basically, everything looks exactly the same as our Los Angeles office except, you know, its Chicago outside.
After a productive day collaborating with my heavily-accented Midwestern colleagues, I headed to the airport and flew the hell home.
It wasn’t until I settled back into my apartment that I realized how different Chicago really is. Most cities have a certain characteristic, if not pop-culture familiarity, that makes them feasible to get your head around. Chicago is a classy kind of old, a different kind of quirky, and an interesting kind of diverse. The weather and the wind would make it difficult for me to imagine myself living there. Alas, it was certainly one of the more notable wanderings of my year.
That's all.
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