Travelogue Chicago

Five Days and a near-silent birthday in my favorite city.

Several months ago I realized that something kept kicking me in the gut and head, and in a daze of thinking, I realized it might be DC itself. I’ve lived in DC for three years now. The first year was hard, new town, new job, no real idea of how to make friends. The second year was great! I had a lot of friends, I socialized a lot, and my job felt rewarding. This third year has been… I don’t know how to put words to it without sounding overdramatic. It’s been a hard year. So, I decided to get out of town and recharge, try and reset myself a little. I’ve been missing Chicago a lot lately, and I’ve given serious thought to moving back (I even applied to a few jobs at one point), though I don’t actually see myself leaving DC anytime soon. I’ve still got some delusions, I guess.

Anyway, long before the Shutdown happened, I booked a hotel and airfare. For a while I considered cancelling the trip — why would I want to be broke in Chicago when I can be broke in my own apartment and have my cat there as a bonus? But the hotel and plane were nonrefundable. So, Friday morning I got out of bed and rolled into the airport at a mindboggling 5:30, and before 8AM I was stepping onto the Blue Line.

Friday

Chicago is a nostalgic place for me. I’ve lived here twice, separated by not-quite ten years. The first time I’d just graduated high school, and practically walked off the graduation stage and into my dorm at UIC. The second time for grad school. I love the city. I wonder a little if I’d like New York City even more, because at my core I’m a city person and even if I’m more withdrawn, I thrive on the energy in a busy city. I love weird little stores, cramped grocers, bookstore with piles stacked to the ceiling, and sprawling parks and trails to walk miles in. I think DC is a fine city, but I haven’t enjoyed living there very much, especially over the past year. I miss Chicago, a lot.

I got to my hotel hours early, so dropped my bag off and immediately went to see the thing I miss most, Lake Front Trail. I stayed in Lake View East, so it was a quick walk over and then I headed South with my camera.

In grad school, especially in the months as it wound down, and I started to mourn the impending loss of friends and familiarity, I would go on long walks, usually between 6 and 12 miles, up from Promontory Point and North for hours. Friday, I walked a mere 2, maybe 2.5 miles south, to around North Avenue Beach. I crossed LSD here and walked back up through the zoo.

I’ve only been to the zoo once, and because of that is is both soaked in nostalgia but also completely unfamiliar. From December 28th to January 3rd (2013/14) or thereabouts, a guy I went to high school with came and stayed with me in my dorm over the winter break. I was head over heels for this straight guy, and he knew it (I’d told him, and in a bit of a dramatic manner, dummy that I was). On New Years Eve, we went to Zoo Lights. It was late, and the zoo was snowladen and full of Christmas music. It’s a weird feeling to be in obviously romantic situations with someone that you can’t be romantic with (especially when you desperately want to be). We ended up at Navy Pier at the turn of midnight. I thought about that night for a long time. It’s probably why I avoided ever going back, to the zoo or to Navy Pier. I am overly sentimental, and I have a perfect memory for moments like these, and it hurts me to be in spaces like that over again. But, sometime in the proceeding decade, those feelings faded and Chicago remained.

There was no snow or music around the zoo on Friday, but, since it was Halloween, there were plenty of kids in costumes. Strangely, my favorite animals in zoos often end up being the cows. The late Queen Elizabeth and I apparently have in common an excitement for seeing them and their cud-chewing faces. I grew up across the street from a farm that had cows, maybe that’s why. (My second favorite animal in a zoo is the Elephant, but, alas, there were no elephants.)

The Zoo

I stopped in the Zoo café to buy a bottle of water and some Frito-Lay Classics, which cost a ridiculous $6. The three people in front of me spent nearly $120 in snacks, though, and that’d have busted my bank account.

I stopped to change film near the penguin enclosure, and to my surprise an older man crossed the way, making a beeline for me. He came up and told me that some of the penguins had red stuff on their faces, did I know what that was? I looked over and couldn’t see anything, but was mostly baffled that for all the people in his immediate vicinity, he sought me out to ask this. For context, I was a vision in beige, khakis, shirt/jacket thing, Frog & Toad hat, and a YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN shirt. All I could manage was, “Huh… wonder why,” in the most interested tone I could produce. I was so thrown off by this that I texted a friend back in DC to see if she thought I looked approachable.

Eventually, I made it back to my hotel to check in, and I made a trip to the Jewel-Osco (my first time ever stepping foot in one of these) to get a few microwavable things to eat, given I couldn’t afford to be dining out anywhere. By this point it was getting a bit late, so I stayed in the hotel and joined a horror movie marathon that one of my film pals was hosting on Discord. I fell asleep with an airpod still in somewhere around 1AM, in the middle of a very odd (and not for me, sorry, anna) 1964 film called OLGA’S HOUSE OF SHAME. I was much happier with preceding film, 1982’s PIECES, a schlocky Spanish film (in the sense that it is a Spanish production, it was in English) that seemed mainly to exist to demonstrate gore effects and breasts. I was exceedingly pleased to find a penis in the bunch, such a neglected appendage in film (no production company has responded to my advocacy that the bare breast to bare penis ratio be at least 1:1, but I’m going to keep up the cause).

Saturday

I slept in a bit on Saturday, something that’s gotten easier on furlough. I’ve reverted to my default programming, routinely up until 3 or 4am and asleep until 9 or 10am. If the government ever reopens, it’s going to be a wretched few weeks readjusting. I partook in the CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST in what could generously be called a nook in the hotel lobby. I got a bowl of Cheerios (unfortunately, not Honey Nut) and then pilfered some stuff for the evening.

Later, I walked over to Bombastic Café and read outside for a while. Bombastic felt like the sort of café I miss in DC. Cramped on the inside, cool stuff all over the place, reasonable price, open past 3pm, and the people inside looked to be certified Theatre Nerds and you could tell a lot of them had been scene kids about 15 years ago, and now graduated to wearing corduroy pants and either denim or the slightly LL Beanier look of waxed cotton (both of which are effective on me). I’d be surprised if a Trump voter had ever stepped in the place.

After a bit, a friend from a movie group joined me, and we caught up for a while before walking across the street to the insane Music Box Theatre. I’m prepared to call this the most beautiful theater I’ve ever seen. We queued outside for Yorgos Lanthimos’ new film BUGONIA. On entry to the theatre, I was tickled to see an actual red waterfall curtain, and even an organ! (The background on the organ is lovely, and I encourage you to read the little notes here.)

We walked down the street to D’Agostino’s Pizza to discuss the film. My friend liked it a bit more than me, but that’s pretty easy since I really disliked it. At the time, I felt mostly baffled and hadn’t solidified my thoughts yet. Later that night, I’d set down to dedicate just shy of a thousand words on why I disliked it so much. I’m in the minority there, basically everyone else I know thinks it’s incredible and a film of the year. Meanwhile, the more I think about it the more I hate it. Nowhere has Yorgos’ contempt for humanity been more total. You can read my thoughts here.

Sunday

I woke up around the same time and wanted to see the trail again, so I walked over. I also planned to run a few little experiments with the camera, switching between red and yellow filters and also shooting at a much lower ISO. These days, I typically shoot Kentmere 100 film pushed to 400. I’ve been missing the look of FP4+, though, and since in bulkloading my cartridges for this trip I exhausted my hundred foot roll of KM100 (I think that’s the third of fourth hundred foot roll of film I’ve shot, which seems impossible), wanted to mess around a little bit to see if I’d eventually buy another spool of KM100, or go back to the slightly-more-expensive FP4+.

When I got to the trail, I called my mom. She and I talk each Sunday, usually for around 2 hours. By the time that call wrapped up, I’d walked from Lake View East down to Grant Park (about 5 miles). I walked over to my favorite cafe in the city, Cafecito. There are, I think, three or four of these dotted around the city, and they’re the place I recommend anytime I know someone going to Chicago. I stopped in to the one on Congress (my favorite is, inexplicably, the one on Wells, but I also sometimes rode my bike up to the Lincoln Park location from my Hyde Park apartment, and that one is probably the loveliest of those that I’ve been in). My only problem is that I can never remember if I prefer the cafe con leche or the straight cafecito. I had an iced cafe con leche and sat for a bit.

I walked another few miles down and over to the UIC campus. I never visited when I lived here during grad school, so it’d been a long time. I made the pilgrimage because I was getting hungry, and there’s a little place I used to eat at a lot when I lived in the JST dorm at UIC.

I wonder how many nights around 1 or 2 AM I walked out of JST, crossed the street, and ordered fries and a coke from Jim’s Original. In 2013/14, I think this cost about $2.80. On Sunday, I walked up and took a picture, and the moment I crossed into view of the window a guy yelled at me to get my order and I didn’t even think about it. It all felt right. My only growth in the past 12 years is to get a bottle of water instead of that can of coke. $3.83, heroes still live. I leaned on the wall next to the stand-and-eat shelf and ate my fries and watched folks park and order and leave, a constant churn. It was the same way at 2AM in 2013. I can’t describe how glad I am that COVID didn’t kill the place.

On those nights, I used to cross the street and stand on the corner by JST, staring up at the Sears Tower, illuminated. It felt so good to be in Chicago, even if I did find it a lonely town when I was in college. I did not have any idea who I was. I spent more time in the Stacks reading about LGBTQ+ Youth and suicide than I did in my graphic design or communications classes. I think I only showed up to one of my Psychology 101 classes, in one of those arcing classrooms that held one or two hundred people, and never thought about it again until it was too late to Withdraw, and still didn’t think about it (I think my grades at UIC could be considered Not Great).

Around the corner from JST is a building that used to be the UIC Forum. I stood in that building the night of November 20th, 2013, when Governor Quinn signed the gay marriage bill. I was still, mostly, closeted. I came out on January 3rd, 2014. I was sitting in Union Station with that guy I mentioned earlier, and I’d talked to him about it. I’m pretty sure I posted it to Facebook about 5 minutes after I asked him if he thought I should come out, which I’d been debating (“do you think I should?”). Boy, oh boy. The things we do.

The UIC Forum is now called something else, I suspect because some folks threw a wad of cash at it.

Monday

“CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF GOD DAMN MEATBALLS!”

Such did the Weatherman forecast, shouting it across the Lake red line station over and over again. I stood there in the packed car reading ‘Salem’s Lot and didn’t bother to look over. A chatty lady on the car yelled out that he should shut up in so many words. I’d gotten on the train early to head down to Hyde Park and visit another area I used to live.

Hyde Park is a strange neighborhood. I remember the first time I visited, sometime in 2013, for a political TV film festival. I’d taken the red line down to the same station I got off at today, Garfield, but took the 55 West instead of East and got a little dose of Chicago’s incredible segregation. If you take 55 East, you end up not far from Camelot. That’s what I thought in 2013, and it’s what I think now. Many of UChicago’s buildings look a bit more like castle keeps and towers than the squat little boxes that dot UIC’s campus (ignoring some of the weirder buildings there, like BSB, where I used to have grapes and coffee for lunch every day). Then you have buildings like the Law School and Edith Abbot Hall that look out of a different world.

I walked down Woodlawn past the Robie House and the Chapel where I last visited wearing a cap and gown and hood. The lack of nostalgia I felt for the Chapel surprised me, maybe because my single visit had been a little moody and now it’s covered in scaffolding.

Heading west a bit on the Plaisance you’ll find my old school. I thought about taking my student ID out and seeing if I could get in, but what would I do inside? SSA is a big glass box and while I enjoyed my time there, it is not a building with any amenities at all. Instead, I followed the trail I used to ride my bike on to and from classes, back up towards my apartment. That path now takes you adjacent to the new Obama Foundation Campus, which is going up a bit like an alien craft that’s latched onto the Earth. The area is under construction and I didn’t attempt to get any closer than the nearest street corner. I’ve heard a lot of complaining about the building, but to me it looked like any other of the new-age buildings on the campus, and probably not the weirdest one. My thought when they announced it, back when I lived a 10 minute walk from the site, was that it’d probably jack the rent up all around the area.

I passed my apartment. It’s the only place I’ve lived that has its own Wikipedia page, though it’s lacking a “Notable Past Residents” section. It’s prettier on the outside, which is saying something. I’m sure the owner would say “because of” but I will say “in spite of” its appearance on the National Register of Historic Places, the outside looks the same as it has for probably four decades. The “For Rent” sign out front has not moved at all since I rented my apartment four years ago. Inside, the place is dusty but well enough. The front door’s intercom system never worked, the door sometimes didn’t shut, and the four washer/dryer machines were always in use or broken. The sliding gate elevator rarely if ever stopped level to the destination floor (my mom once tripped and fell getting into it).

The little apartment I lived in didn’t take into consideration the hundreds or thousands of paint layers in the square footage calculation. My kitchen was smaller than my childhood diningroom table, and I rarely if ever cooked as I’ve had shoeboxes bigger than the oven. I once smacked a doorjamb with a hammer to break the paint lines, then took it off the wall and stripped all the paint away to allow the door to actually close and latch. One time, working at my desk in the living room, I heard a bizarre sound. I started to walk around and stand and listen. When I stepped into my dark bedroom, I turned the lights on and a caustic pattern flowed all over the walls. Looking up, I found the square glass light globe full of water and leaking a steady stream just next to my brand new mattress and bedclothes. My super’s only advice was not to turn the lights on for a few days. That all aside, it was $1000/month and it was only for a year, so hey, why not?

I walked on up the street to the coffee shop I most frequented. Every few months they change e-mail newsletter agents and I have to unsubscribe all over again, most recently about two weeks ago. Little inside changed, and I sat at the same table I often sat at with one of my closest friends. She and I got coffee a lot, went to the beach, sat on the Point. The closing of the year, then, was a confusing and stressful time. She told me once that I was already mourning the end of it months in advance, and that was true.

One time, towards the end, she told me she’d written me a letter, about how she saw me as a friend and a person. A week after graduation, when she’d moved, she asked my address and said she’d mail it. Months later, all of my possessions in the back of a Hertz Chevy Expedition and my cat in the front seat, I checked my mail one last time, then I left the keys on the counter and started my long drive to DC. The letter never came, and we never spoke again. I think about that sometimes. I think telling someone about a letter like that, and then not sending it, is maybe not a nice thing to do to a person.

I sat at the table for a while and read. There’s a relatively good chance I was in the exact same chair exactly four years ago. Before getting on the train, my mom had sent me a happy birthday message. I also heard from my high school accounting teacher (we have the same birthday), my sister, and two coworkers. I usually don’t tell people when my birthday is, and probably because I tell myself that if no one knows when it is, you’re not allowed to be sad when you don’t hear from folks. Right? I didn’t hear from extended family or other folks I know. I was glad to get a lot of birthday wishes from my movie friends.

Promontory Point hasn’t changed at all, and I took a few pictures looking South and then looking North. I’m not sure visibility was ever so clear when I lived here, and I used to visit almost every day. I guess the city(ies?) I was seeing across the way would be either New Buffalo or St. Joseph. I sat on a bench for a bit and people watched and soaked in the place. The leaves throughout Hyde Park are what might be called “peak bloom” and were lovely. I almost regretted only shooting black and white film. A few people walking by on the path said it was a perfect day for photography. Yup. I’m pretty sure those exchanges, and the coffee shop guy, were the only times I spoke that day.

Walking north on Lake Front Trail for a bit, I thought about the months where I walked up and down this trail almost every day. I started out walking only as far as the pedestrian bridge crossing over LSD into Harold Washington Park. Then I started walking as far as the 49th Street Beach, then the Oakwood Beach. By the end I was walking up and around the Shedd Aquarium, and then back home. How many hours and hours of Malcom Gladwell and how many NPR podcasts did I listen to on those long 12 mile walks? I loved walking the LFT at night. One time, a Dodge Charger with its headlights out sped down the trail at probably 40 or so miles per hour, it must have been about 10:30pm. What a city!

Heading back towards Lake View, I crossed into Downtown proper for the only time this trip, just to transfer from the 6 to the 146. I took a few photos of the Wrigley Building but felt no real need to walk around.

Tuesday

On my last day in Chicago, I rose early and walked again around the Lake View, Wrigleyville, and Boystown neighborhoods. I never lived in this part of town, so most of the area is unfamiliar to me. I wanted to swing back around and take photos of the Music Box Theater, and I think some of these came out pretty well:

(pics)

This is also the closest I’ve been to Wrigley Field, and I didn’t know until Tuesday that there are bleacher seats on the roofs of surrounding buildings. I couldn’t help but think that it’d be a misery to live on the top floor of those buildings if you’re not a baseball fan. After, I meant to head back to my hotel, but I wanted to finish off the last of my five rolls of film, so I spent some more time wandering around.

Through an accident, I ended up misdirected and a bit far south of my hotel. I only noticed after I’d cleared the last frame and opened my phone to see where I was, which was about a 20 minute walk back North. I turned around and went back up Broadway. After a bit, I started feeling familiar and couldn’t figure out why. I passed a restaurant (Eggsperience) and had a strong impression that I’d had breakfast there at some point, but when would I have ever been up here? Then Stan’s Donuts & Coffee came into view and I remembered everything. I’d come up here on my graduation weekend to try and see someone a final time, and I’d waited in Stan’s and had coffee. Eventually, I’d had a solitary breakfast and spent the rest of the day wandering my way back towards Hyde Park. I’d completely forgotten until I saw the neon sign on Stan’s. My hotel was about a 5 minute walk from Stan’s.

I checked out and walked across the way to Ann Sather, to meet a friend from my Undergrad years. I got there a bit early so I could read and have some coffee, and I’d had about 4 or 5 cups by the time she got there. I’d never been to Ann Sather before, but I found the eggs to be fine and the potatoes to be very good and the cinnamon roll(s, they’re a side and you get two!) to be a lot and I could only manage one. My friend and I caught up and talked about the State of the World and were generally feeling cynical and a little scared about what the immediate future looks like, and as to if there is a way out of all this.

She very kindly offered to drive me out to O’Hare, and on the way there I realized that you have to drive under taxiing planes, something I don’t think I’ve seen before. There was not a single person in the security line, and yet the TSA person still managed to seem like I was destroying his world by walking up. I also thought that the wayfinding on O’Hare’s security operation was pretty bad without people flowing all over. The TSA person who hand checked my film, however, was very nice.

We boarded the plane on time and I was delighted to have an empty seat next to me in my exit row. I read for a while, and then the Captain came on and said maintenance had to look at a ‘mechanical issue.’ This is perhaps a phrase that people do not want to hear while sitting on the tarmac. Though, I am also someone that listens to podcasts about airplane crashes on the plane and also tend to listen in to Air Traffic Control if there are delays, so I just went back to reading ‘Salem’s Lot. Twenty minutes past, and the pilot came back to say he “didn’t have bad news” and then delivered bad news: there was some sort of bulge under a panel and they needed to address that, and they were going to deplane everyone. He added that there was an Arrival Pause at National anyway, so… I had never heard of an Arrival Pause so I googled National Airport and found that there was a bomb threat on a plane there. Okay.

We all piled off the plane and were told to stick close, it’d be about an hour. I had some fries from McDonalds and not long after reboarded. The flight itself was quick, and when I checked the news on the ground in DC, found that a plane in Kentucky had exploded in a gigantic fireball. Odd day for air travel.

Home

I love Chicago. Even with basically no money, it’s a great city to be in, and I think I might try to visit a lot more. I think it’s good for me to get out of DC a bit.

I finally got home around 9:30, and my cat seemed glad to see me, though maybe not as glad as I was to see her. I didn’t bother unpacking anything, but I did have a snack and then lay on the couch to pet her for a bit. I ended up falling to sleep as Ripley let out big purrs.

Thomas

The Photos

All photos here (and on the Flickr album) were taken with my Nikon F4, with a Nikkor 85mm lens. The film is Kentmere 100, shot at either 400 or 80 ISO, developed in Ilfosol 3, then scanned and processed with Negative Lab Pro.