Safety in the City (Sense of the City column)

The snow melted overnight. One day the temperature was just above freezing, the next it was warm enough to not wear my coat anymore. The humidity hovers somewhere around 100%. The sky is hazy with a mixture of pollution and fog which switches to rain in a second. I have never been a fan of wetness, but it is nice to walk around in a comfortable temperature.

I should be writing this at home. I started my spring break last night and was on my way to White Heath. But through a series of unfortunate events I missed the bus. At the time I was angry, but thinking back on it the story is actually pretty good. (It involves late night road construction and a midnight run through Union Station where I lost my sandwich.) I probably would have written this column on it if a much more interesting story didn't happen to me on the way home.

Needles to say, I am not the only one out enjoying the warmer weather. Crime goes up in the spring and summer months. It's just a fact of life, more people means more potential to steal. And no one, not even criminals, wants to be out in sub-zero temperatures.

I got on the train to go home. I sat down next to a well dressed man. He wore a button down shirt and black leather shoes with gold buckles. I didn't notice at the time, but something was wrong. Some chemical in his brain was off, whether through drugs or insanity I'm not sure. But he ranted at the top of his lungs. His unidentifiable grumbling boomed through the train car. Every once in a while this primitive language was peppered with the most foul and X-rated bits of clarity. I was almost home so I tried to ignore it. I stared down at the floor.

This is where I wanted to leave this story, but some 20-something fohawk didn't. He tried to engage the man as some stupid joke, some story he could tell his buddies back at the bar. Soon the conversation devolved into threats on the young guy's life, but he didn't understand what was going on and still tried to push through.

Some how the ranting man thought the other guy said he was part of the Black P Stone gang, which is a smallish multiracial gang in Chicago. They actually control a pretty large chunk near my apartment. It took me a second to realize what the man was saying. But when I did, I turned to the younger guy and told him to shut up. "You don't know what you just did," I said.

Nothing happened, but I had never been so afraid in the city. Clearly the man was dangerous and on top of that he was not in his right mind. There is no way to know what he could have done. But luckily nothing happened. He left the train.

What this says about the safety of the city is interesting. I've been here almost four years. I've seen some crazy things on the train and on the street. I've had some crazy things happen to me. I could tell some stories. But this is the first time I've felt so uncomfortable. Most of the time, the city runs just fine. The population goes on with their day without thinking of safety. No one should take this story to mean that the city is so intensely dangerous that they don't visit. It is just a warning to watch out. Be careful of your surroundings. Basically . . . be safe.

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.