In some ways I have a sick addiction to Chicago. Many times the city sucks me in, even when I think I'm long gone outta there. I'll change my cellphone number away from the 312 area code, thinking it won't call me home. But as Sinatra says "whenever I leave its tugging at my sleeve....where ever I roam its calling me home." It's true, I don't know why, but it is, I have felt it many times.
I can be camping on a snowy mountain side, nestled in a warm tent sound asleep, in middle of a the most pleasant dreams, one where I'm a care bear and I get to bounce around all the fluffy clouds. When I will be abruptly woken up by what feels to be like someone roughly shaking my shoulder...."pssssttttt Yo it's Chicago, just wanted to see whats up, you weren't having that care bear dream again were you?"
I have been lounging on a warm Costa Rican beaches in the middle of a Jan, only to long for the city. Enough so, to get up off the beautiful beach, to make a very expensive long distance call to my hair dresser, asking her how to keep my hair from sun damage and to make an appointment for the day I return, then oddly asking her how the cities doing.
The addiction goes even deeper one rainy afternoon four years ago. I was suppose to be flying from San Diego to Ohio, heading home to see the family and have my wisdom teeth pulled. It was February and ever one knows that if you have a choice in choosing where you want your layover flight out of....Dallas Airport or O'Hare, the choice is a no brainer. If you can avoid Chicago airports in the winter its best to do so, most likely you will run into the most craptourous weather, delaying or canceling your flight all together.
Well when I booked the ticket, I had the choice and I still chose to layover in Chitown. Well guess what we had crappy weather, almost all the outgoing flights were canceled, secretly I think I was happy it means I could stay in the city for that night. But to my dismay, my flight was the only one not canceled. Ugh how could that be, how could every other flight be canceled and not mine....well I took that as a bad sign....there was no way I was getting on the only flight leaving the airport. And I didn't. I left the airport took the blue line back into the city got off downtown around Clark and Lake street. Walked the city for half the night, realizing that as soon as I could I would leave CA and move back. The city just made sense, even in the freezing cold.
The buildings in the above picture were the first place we chose to live, when we came to the city.
We have lived in 7 different apartments in the city. Central downtown, west loop, south loop, river north, gold coast, near north, old town.
The pinkish building to the right on the below picture was the fourth place I lived.
There were two obsessions I had one year; the city streets and biking.....so i combined them and became a bike messenger. My calves became huge, I witnessed some of the most beautiful views; inside buildings I would never normally be allowed into, I saw interior architecture to die for, I rode a antique elevator that almost made me throw up several times, I would dream and think constantly about addresses; when I would walk down the street I could say the exact address of most buildings, I actually understood how Wacker drive worked; the street became my nemesis and best friend.
My first time to the city I was with my Gpa and Gma, they brought me up on the sears tower. I was just a little kid and I couldn't understand how the cars on the street were now the size of matchbox cars. I was baffled and amazed. My second time to the city I was older and with my mom she brought me to Chicago and I pointed to one building and said someday I'm going to work there and than pointed to another building and said I'm going live there. One of those things came true so far.
I returned to Chicago when I was in college, I was looking to transfer schools, I was having a day like the guy Alexander from my favorite childhood book; it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The city was sooo cold and windy, I only had a tank top on, come on it was June how was I to know winter was still going on here. I said to Mike who was with me, this school had better have a great program or I don't know if I want to live here. Luckily it did and I transferred. When I started school in the city that fall, I got to see how the real world worked and not the fake university campus life that I had just left. I got to see how people were interested in all kinds of things and school was just one aspect of what was going on, my "campus" became the whole city.
My cousin told me a couple years ago that the city does weird things to you. It has a definite yin and yang to it, making you leave and come back. I can't argue with her, makes complete sense to me. I guess sometimes things work out and there is a flow to the city and if you get to be part of it, it truly is magically, its like all the lights are green and your at the front of the pack. Other times your on the side of the street on a rainy day, a bus drives by and before it farts exhaust on you, it splashes a huge puddle in your face and you want nothing more than to leave this place. You can run as far as Timbuktu and all is good until your feel something tugging at your sleeve and you know its time, its your turn again and you will drop anything you were doing, beg and borrow money, because your going get another hit and its worth it, that is addiction.
"We have a plan, sure its tedious and unpleasant but it will work."-Hank Hill
"Make minor adjustments to our daily regimen that over time can make a quantifiable difference."- Hank Hill
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