Sense of the City--Pitchfork

Coffee Cake, 13, died by euthanasia Friday July 17th at 11:56 a.m.

The first thing my journalism classes taught me was to write an obituary, so when I watched my cat get put down that was my first thought. This is my coping method, to see everything through the long lens of "The Story." Indeed it was a very sad to watch. She had been my cat for the last 6 months and the first thing I have taken care of which I watched die. But she lived a long life, one that I hope was comfortable, and she died peacefully.

Anyway, we must not dwell on sadness. It's summer. It's the season for festivals.

The Taste of Chicago was a month ago. It was quite successfully in the commercial sense. It brought a lot of people to the Loop. Unfortunately, if the tourists took the Taste at its word they left with the idea that Chicago is hot and crowded, with little else to offer.

But every weekend throughout the rest of the summer months, people will gather to celebrate the warmer weather and longer days. Every corner of the city has its own neighborhood festivals with local food and music which mirrors the culture of its people. The Uptown Unity Summer Fest was on August 1st with free immunizations, fun for all the kids.

It's the same as in Monticello. Festivals and farmers markets are times for neighbors to enjoy each others company. People forget any bad blood and laugh with each other. Plus it's just fun to walk down the middle of the street without fear of getting hit by a car.

I went to Pitchfork Festival on the 17th, 18th and 19th at Union Park. Pitchfork is a collection of the coolest bands no one has ever heard of. I only knew of one or two people playing, and really only wanted to see the masked rapper, Doom. I could go because I got in for free by volunteering with CHIRP. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

Pitchfork is the yearly meeting of Midwest hipsters. There were a lot of tattoos, fake 80's clothing and ironic mustaches. I make fun only because I enjoyed myself so much. Music filled out the park. It was loud and melodic with all different types playing everywhere. The food looked good, and the beer was local.

Probably the most memorable thing was the group dancing with hula-hoops. It's hard to describe what they were doing, because it was like nothing I had ever seen before. They were very practiced and it was hypnotizing to watch. They took a children's toy very seriously and made an art form out of it. An art form I had never thought of before. I was fascinated and watched them for a while in between good bands.

Inside Union park was fun. The sense of community was enough to take my mind off the bit of sadness in my life. Being around people, like-minded or not, is just a good time. But when the weekend was over I was left tired and in a lot of pain. It's amazing how much it can hurt to just stand all day.

Sense of the City: History

(My bu-weekly column and Urban Coaster Article. Enjoy.)

History is liquid. It's always changing and, like air, tires to fill up the space surrounding it. On July 4th, I went to the Edgewater Historical society. Edgewater is the neighborhood north of Uptown, where I live. I love history. It's my minor in school. I think it's that adaptability that draws me in. You can look at the change over time, sure, but History itself also changes. I was taught in grade school that Christopher Columbus discovered America only to find out later that's not entirely true. He might have found it for Spain, but many other cultures knew about it long before, including the people who have been calling it home for thousands of years.

When it comes down to it everything is liquid. Given enough time, everything ebbs and flows like the lunar tide. Solid things we normally think of as unmovable change too. The earth moves. Land evolves, sometimes slowly sometimes very quick and violently. Erosion made the Grand Canyon, Volcanoes made the Hawaiian islands and If I stood outside my apartment before the 60's Lake Michigan would be about waist high.

That last example was man made. The north end of Lake Shore Drive was built up out of the Lake. Lake fill made the beaches and the foundations for the Sheridan Ave. condos. Before that houses were built right up on the beach. The beach made their backyard.

That all changed because the city wanted to continue the ideas started by the famous urban planer, Daniel Burnham. He is a bit of a hero in Chicago and we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the publication of his Plan of Chicago on July 4th. (A lot of history on that day.) He wanted the entire lake front to be free and open to the public. Burnham has been named in many a debate over the years and his goal is still not fully realized. There are about 4 miles of lake front that still is not public land and a group of people are trying to change that. A noble plan but probably not the best economically sound idea right now. (But that's just my middle of the road opinion.)

I recently went home to the farm to visit family. Things are changing there, too. Family came in from out of town and I showed them around Monticello. I was surprised to see so many different stores around the square. Even in small towns, which always feel slower, change. The slight changes aren't obvious until you are absent for a while.

People have always been afraid of change. It's something that has been passed down through the generations from our prehistoric mothers and fathers. Anything new for them was a gamble. A new fruit could be delicious or it could be poison, so it's best not to mess with it. Now it's much less dangerous and going against chance has brought us so many good things. It's time we brushed off the fear and nostalgia that is at the heart of our inability to change.

Sense of the City

(This is a little late. I have been home with my family. It was a lot of fun. I took a lot of pictures, you will probably be able to see them on my Picasa page. Also here is my latest article in The Urban Coaster.)

There is an unspoken rule with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) that most everyone follows. With few exceptions, everyone is deadly quite. No one talks to each other and everyone finds something to keep themselves busy. Some read. Some listen to music. Some stare out the window.

I usually go the rout of looking out the window, unless I have class and need to read a long assignment. You see a lot of the city from the CTA. The bus runs down on the streets in the muck of the dirt and depravity. And the train runs high up in a pulled out view that shows a whole new set of problems.

The el train runs pretty high up. It’s high enough to look down on top of the smaller buildings. Two and three flat apartments that look beautiful from street level look a little silly from above. Their plain tar roofs are in stark contrast to the decorative walls and windows. That tar contributes to the heat of the summer. Asphalt and concrete surfaces absorb the suns energy and releases it as heat, as opposed to the grass and trees of the country that use the energy to grow. The farm of my childhood was cooler than the city I currently call home.

Even if everyone turned their tar roofs silver to reflect the sun, which some already have, I still don't think I would feel comfortable. It's still a lot of wasted space. On the farm we never really left an area with no purpose. Every place we wouldn't normally walk turned into a garden, or a flower circle, or left to it's own devices to grow wild plants and trees. These roofs are flat usable surfaces that are going to waste.

I'm not pretending that a few roof top gardens are going to save the world or even cool down the city, but it would sure be pretty to look at. I wish I had my own roof to plant fruits and vegetables on. It seems like it would be fun, and it would bring a bit of my old home to my new one.

These are just a few ideas that run through my head on the el. The train is the opposite of a sensory deprivation chamber, so much information comes at me that my brain turns in on itself and I get lost in my own thoughts. It gets even more true when the Red Line goes underground. The Click-Clack of the wheels echo off the tunnel walls and turn into a roar loud enough to drown out the children yelling behind me. The outside is so dark the windows turn into an almost perfect mirror, reflecting the reflections from the other side of the train.

I don't ride the train much any more. The bus has been able to take me where I want to go. But if absence makes the heart grow fonder, it also makes curiosity grow stronger. Little things I take for granted become much more interesting when I don't see them for a while.

Sense of the City

(I guess I've been getting around with newspapers as of late. Here is my latest Sense of the City. And I've also got a new article in the Urban Coaster.)

Spring seems to have come a little late this year, meaning Summer will be late as well. The last few weeks have been pretty cold. Not cold in the sense of freezing weather, but cold for May and June. Spring has announced itself with bits of white snowing down on us. Not normal snow, flakes of frozen water, but white fluff from some tree. Cottonwood maybe, I don't know I'm no Arborist.

The tree fluff floats around my neighborhood. It sticks in the air, flying in the currents purposeless. They will find a place to land in soft soil and grow into another tree to release its own fluff. Or not, such is life. I'm sure people with allergies must hate the fluff, but I think it looks pretty floating in the air.

Spring attacks all the senses. People break out of their normal routine and spend time outside. The beaches are full of dog walkers and barbecuers and sunbathers. Even people being passive feel a little more active. I usually will sit and watch people go by.

The smell of the food and the feeling of the sun and wind make me walk a little more aimlessly. I don't have much of a normal routine, school has been out for a few weeks and my day-to-day tasks have become limited. I have been walking about my neighborhood a little more, to see what I can see.

Uptown, my neighborhood is fast becoming my favorite area in the city. It is full of diverse people in varying stages of life. It has some very beautiful houses with big back yards full of plants and life, but also a lot of closed down storefronts. A lot of people have been hurt by life, their faces are warn and sunken by stress, but a lot of organizations have formed to help them. There are streets I walk down and don't even feel like I'm in the same city. I try to turn corners I have never seen before to find something new.

Perhaps if I spent as much time exploring Uptown as I did the farm as a child I wouldn't be able to find anything new here either. But, and maybe I'm wrong about this, I feel like I could navigate the farm from memory. I have gone over every bit of the land over the 18 years I have lived there and the last few years in visits. It's a different feeling; the excitement of finding something new verses the comfort of the familiar. I think it's a good mix.

The irony is, I am writing this all from memory. The day I decided to sit down and write about the beautiful Spring day, is cloudy and rainy. The wind is blowing hard and the air is chilly. The spring day I am writing about is a blend of the last week. Today is more like a Fall day than Spring time. It seems like it should be a little more disappointing, but without the rain the tree fluff, that brings me joy, can't grow.

Sense of the City (View from the Second City: renamed)

I renamed my column for the Journal Republican to open it up to more story ideas. Also, it will be on a regular schedule, due every other Friday. Pretty excited about that.

I changed the name of this column, from View from the Second City to Sense of the City, specifically for this article. Vision isn't the only way to navigate a city. Chicago can be mapped using all of the conventional senses.

Most think of maps as the visual likeness of a specific area. They are folded up pieces of paper with colored lines and symbols representing roads, parks, "areas of interest." But the map in my head uses more than visual cues. My instinctual understanding of the area around me relies on my other senses, including smell.

I love using my sense of taste and smell. I am a foodie at heart and I am happy with the smell of a great cup of coffee or grilled hamburger or locally brewed craft beer.

Chicago is a wonderful city to navigate by the nose. What a great variety. Chicago is not really known for its chocolate factory, but there is one. Sometimes the smell of cocoa wafts downtown and catches your nose for a second.

The brownie smell is quickly replaced by something else. Sometimes it's a food smell that changes depending on the neighborhood. Sometimes it's the sickly sweet smell of a sewer drain telling us something bad is in the area. We use are noses as a physical test of an area. We are attracted to the cocoa smell and repulsed by the sewer. Some ancient piece of our brain tells us were to go based on a mostly ignored sense.

The farm smells of my childhood behave differently. The city smells seem very binary. They are either there or not. One second you smell something and the next second it is replaced with something completely different.

My White Heath farm has an amalgamation of smells. There is an ever-present smell of flowers or trees with a hint of dirt. Perhaps there is a bit of mold or rust mixed in there. Sometimes manure or diesel or exhaust. They combine to make the unforgettable smell of my childhood.

They say smell is the sense most linked with memory. For me, the smell of freshly baked bread sends me back to my childhood when there would always be fresh bread.

Sometimes my nose plays tricks on me. I often walk by Lake Michigan. Something about the water in the air or the sight of the waves makes me think I smell something that can't be there. Even though I know the lake is freshwater, I still smell almost a hint of salt in the air.

Please Pardon my Absence.

I have been away for a while finishing up my hell-storm of a semester. Several different aspects of my life came together to make things very busy. Not so much complaining about it; I'm pretty much completely free now, and I'm already getting kind of board.

I'm starting an internship soon, maybe now I'm not really sure, at The Urban Coaster. I'm going to be a reporter for them. My beat is Uptown and Edgewater. Kind of crazy, I know, to put some random intern on to two huge beats like that. But that's what I'm going to do.

I am a little worried. My first story, or at least news gathering event is some green thing at Uncommon Ground tonight. So that will be fun.

Forgot to Mention . . .

I got myself a real job. No longer am I just a work/study copy boy. Now I'm a work/study copy boy who also works at a coffee shop in Evanston. (I also go to school and write for the student newspaper and write a column; so I'm pretty damn busy now.) It's called the Brothers K, and it seems like a pretty cool place. I started yesterday and I felt pretty over my head. Haven't felt like that in a long time. I'm going to need to brush up on my coffee knowledge.

Come by sometime and I'll take your order and give it to someone who can make good coffee. (hopefully soon I'll be able to actually make the drink)