So it's official: We're moving from the north side of Chicago to the south side.
In my eight years on the north side I haven't been especially "kind" to southsiders. I've called them uncultured. I've called them grubinskis. I've called them Sox fans. And now I will be one of them.
The area we're moving isn't the nicest place. Well, the block we're moving to is nice. One block east is the lake (which is nice). But two blocks west is the ghetto.
But this is Chicago, people! All it takes is a few real estate developers and five years and an area can go from slum to Yuppiehood!
For your edification, A Beginners Guide to Gentrification in Chicago:
Step 1: Put in a Starbucks. Step 2: Open a restaurant backed by a chef who came from a big name place (a downtown hotel or New York will do) and wants to open his own place. Make sure the restaurant gets good write-ups in the Tribune and Sun-Times, as well as a few small blurbs in Gourmet and Bon Appetit. Step 3: Sprinkle around a few 200K+ condos. Entice the 20-somethings who want to buy a place in an up-and-coming neighborhood. Step 4: Put in a Borders. A big one. In an old building. You know, to show that you care about not tearing down to rebuild. Step 5: Frozen yogurt shops! Whole Foods! The sky's the limit!
Walking through the grocery store today I saw a little girl sitting in one of those red and yellow plastic kid cars that are attached to the front of shopping carts for kids to ride in as their parents shop.
While going down the aisle the girl did not seem to want to stay in the small plastic vehicle.
"Stay in the car," the mother said sternly as her daughter stepped out of the plastic car attached to the front of the shopping cart. "Melony, stay in the car!"
As I watched I couldn't help but think that someday Melony would make the excellent comic sidekick in a cop buddy drama.
Sgt. Magillicutty: I think Salazar is in that abandon warehouse.
Melony: Let's let's go check it out!
Sgt. Magillicutty: Not so fast, Melony. You stay in the car.
Melony: Aww, sarge!
One of the regulars at the coffee shop I frequent is an older lady. She has sunken in eyes and uses a cane, but she's full of life. She regularly goes up to young punks on their laptops and says "Now this is a joke, so don't get scared: Can I use your computer to check my email?"
Most of the time the kids just stare back at her, not sure what to say. After a few seconds of silence she just shakes her head and laughs to herself, telling them never mind. I think it's hilarious.
This morning I went out to do a little Saturday morning work and saw her sitting at a table by the door. I walked over to her before getting my tea and said, "Now this is a joke: Would you like to use my laptop to check your email?"
Her eyes lit up and she said, "Yes I would! Could I also use your phone to make a call to Guam?"
"But of course!" I said to her, both of us starting to laugh.
Man, I can't wait to get old and share my off-kilter jokes with unresponsive youths.
Tonight Byron is competing in a competition for the title of Bud Boy. I'm not really sure what this involves other than being the face of Budweiser in Boystown. There's a Q&A section and swimsuit section - basically it's Mr. America, only on a smaller, more inebriated scale.
But right now we're just sitting in a coffee shop, doing work. And Byron has hunger pains.
He's asked me about going to eat but I ate earlier. I'm fine. Byron, however, is getting fidgety.
Finally he gets up and heads to the counter, then comes back a minute later with a big blueberry scone with lots of sugar on top. "Are you sure you should be eating that?" I ask. He looks at me, midway through taking a bite.
"I mean, it's one thing if you want to eat something with that many carbs and sugar any other day, but in a few hours you're going to be standing in front of a crowd with a swimsuit on." Byron sets the scone down on his plate, eying it longingly. He looks up at me and reluctantly asks, "Do you want it?" Without hesitating I take the plate and start eating.
"Wha' ca' I say," I mumble to Byron through a mouth full of scone, "I'm a goo' frien'."
This morning I'm doing a little blog cleaning. Getting rid of old templates, organizing links, deleting old files. And that's how I came across this little bit of awesome:
After going to the dentist and getting Novocained up I head to my local coffee shop to do a bit of work.
"Med'um icthed 'ea," I say to the woman behind the counter. "What?" she asks, squinting at me. "MED'UM ICTHED 'EA," I try to enunciate, but really it just comes out louder. She smiles at me and I tell her I just came from the dentist.
"I didn't want to ask," she says. "I thought maybe you were just trying a new thing."
"Yup," I say, taking my tea, "I wan'ed to reinven' mythelf ath a lithper. Ev'eyone lovth a lithper!"
The wife called me this morning. "I was checking my blog stats this morning," she said, "and I had a reader that my stats said came from the Executive Office of the President - United States of America."
"Barack is totally reading your blog!" I said like a giddy school girl. "It's not Barack," she sighed.
"Maybe he Googled himself, found my blog where I kept talking about all my dreams about him, and then ended up over at your blog," I imagine. "I'm sure," the wife replies.
"And maybe he also wants to win a purse in my giveaway," she adds. "Well, sure, to give it Michelle," I say.
- Put on the red light
- Sell her body to the night
- Wear that dress tonight
- Care if it's wrong or if it's right
- Worry about picking up something for dinner
This summer a lot of people are on tour. No Doubt, Phish, Coldplay. And, as it turns out, Pop Culture Librarian.
Last week she was in Wisconsin, and I believe she was seen by @AnnieRauh, @metaleah and Life of a Lovechild, among others. And now she's here in Chicago.
Today for lunch we're planning on meeting up at Huey's. Which, by the way, I looked up on online and found this photo:
Can anyone tell me what their logo is? Because based on this photo I honestly have no idea. Rion says it's a monkey punching himself. I say it's a uncooked chicken with a giant erection. Can anyone set us straight?
Byron has an interview later this week to write for a certain gentleman's magazine. The editor he's meeting with has advised him to pick up a copy of the magazine to get a sense of their style and voice.
"I don't want to buy a copy," he whines, sliding into his chair. "Why not?" I ask. Byron scrunches up his face. "I'm afraid I'll see stuff."
"It's not full on porn," I tell him. "It's not like you can see," I gesture towards my pants, "y'know."
"Even so," he says.
"But it's just boobs," I tell him. He scrunches up his face again and shakes his head. "You don't want to see boobs?" I ask. Again, vehement head shaking.
Why the magazine is interested in hiring a gay man is beyond me.
As usual, the wife (who wouldn't allow me to share), AM and Butchered Paper gave their take on yesterday's prompts. Todays?
Write a story about friendship with a high school student as the main character and a fountain as the key object. Set your story in a flower shop.
The flower shop on the east side of New Ashford had been the go-to hang out for Lindsay Schuller since she was a little girl. It seemed that while other girls had gone to the playground and, later in life, the mall, Linday Schuller had always gone to the flower shop on Hudson avenue.
The shop had first opened in 1961 under Vivian DuSable, and while Vivian could arrange a bouquet of peonies like no one else in town she wasn't the most creative woman; she named the flower shop Vivian's. The flower shop was a gem in the tiny Massachusetts town of New Ashford. Ivy crawled along the inside walls and clung to the tin ceiling. The small attached green house in the back kept the inside consistently humid and warm, a slight dew coating the counters and windows year-long. And in the center of the shop stood an elegant four foot ceramic fountain, installed in 1944 when the building was still the office and showroom for the green house and not yet just a flower shop. The fountain ran every day and worked without fail until one late summer day in 1974 when, for no particular reason, it stopped working. In a strange turn of events Richard Nixon was impeached from office just one day before the fountain let out it's last drop of water. The day after the fountain stopped working Lindsay Schuller was born.
In 1978 Vivian sold the shop to Janet Schuller, one of her longtime employees, and moved to Florida to be with a man named Arnold who lived in Boca Raton. Janet Schuller, long known as Vivian's right hand gal, could create a gift basket like no one else in town and she believed (erroneously) that this also meant she was creative in other ways. After taking over Vivian's she renamed the flower shop The Big Bloom.
Janet's Schuller's niece, Lindsay, had first come into her aunt's shop when she was four, and in one way or another had never left. At age six she found the spot near the shop's front windows an ideal place for tea parties with her best friend Alicia and her stuffed animals. At age 12 she was coming after school to help fulfill orders, water plants and make deliveries. When Lindsay started her junior year in high school most of the other girls in her class were doing their best to master eyeliner and were listening to Madonna (or if they were particularly tortured sixteen year olds, Sinead O'Connor), but Lindsay Schuller spent every free moment she had at The Big Bloom.
"You need to do more things with girls your own age," Janet Schuller told her niece one fall afternoon, half of her attention occupied with filling out an order form. "But I'm just starting a new project," Lindsay said, rearranging several pots along the east wall of the shop. Janet looked up at her. "Project?" Lindsay nodded, tucking her hair behind her ears, walking a few steps over to the fountain and kicking it.
Janet Schuller rolled her eyes. "You're not going to fix that fountain," she said, looking back down at her order form and walking off into the back room. In Janet's defense, many in the past had tried to fix the fountain and many had failed. But Janet didn't know her niece's plan, and that it involved a boy who went to school with Lindsay by the name of Jonathan Bright.
Jonathan Bright kept to himself almost as much as Lindsay did, but everyone in town knew his predisposition towards plumbing, if not because he had tagged along with his father on his house calls, because of his science fair project entitled "Pipes!" that had won him a 2nd place ribbon. Lindsay Schuller knew that if anyone could fix The Big Bloom's fountain, it would be Jonathan Bright.
Responses to yesterday prompt include a story the wife sent based on the Edith/Caleb prompt (which again, I'm not allowed to share), and both Switching Over to AM and Butchered Paper posted their own story based on the prompt (more of you may have done this too, please let me know if you did). So why not, let's keep this prompt party going. Today's?
Write about a heart that wouldn't quit.
The heart transplant that transpired at St. Augustine's on October 3rd at 8:13am was, for all intents and purposes, normal. But as the Igloo cooler containing the heart was whisked down the hall of the third floor the truly observant would have noticed that heart rates around the third floor speed up slightly, that patients could be overheard commenting on the lime Jello's unusually sweeter taste, and that empty bedpans around the ward sparkled more than usual.
The heart being transported in the Igloo cooler had previously belonged to Derick Mulroon, a professional snowboarder who had competed in the X-Games seven times from 1998 to 2005 (missing 2003 because he had gotten more intoxicated than usual and had somehow woken up the next morning in the neighboring state of Utah, behind a 7-11). Derick had lived his life on the edge, to the extreme and without limits. Needless to say, when Derick Mulroon danced, he danced like no one was watching. Unfortunately, Derick Mulroon's life ended much the same way it began: struggling, screaming, and inside a woman. He was 34 and two days after he died ESPN2 aired a retrospective on his life.
The recipient of Derick Mulroon's heart was Tobin Tobler Jr., a sales executive at Blumner & Broderick Ball Bearings Inc. Tobin Tobler Jr. did not live his life on the edge. Nor did he live his life to the extreme. And it goes without saying that when Tobin Tobler Jr. danced he assumed that everyone was watching.
And so, on the evening of October 3rd, as Tobin Tobler Jr.'s blood was finally getting used to beating through Derick Mulroon's heart, Tobin Tobler Jr. was struck with a curious sensation that he had never felt before: He had the urge to go snowboarding.
