Digression

I mostly mean for this to be a blog related to my job and to my interest in bookbinding, but I guess it’s okay if I occasionally blather on about some other stuff, right? The only things I’m really opposed to are 1. discussing the inane details of my personal life and 2. blatant trash-talking about anyone I’m personally acquainted with.

So, with those two ground rules intact I would like to share a little bit about my experience living in Chicago for the last three years. I should preface this by openly admitting that I am probably not a city person. I really like trees and wide, umm, open spaces (Oh fine, I like the Dixie Chicks. Leave me alone!) and animals and privacy. I don’t like lots of buildings, crowds of people, or loud noises (duh, that’s why I’m a librarian). So, I’ll spare you my complaints about those things that are perfectly normal in a city but give me a perfectly awful case of anxiety and depression.

Let me begin with Things I won’t miss about Chicago when I’m gone…

The CTA- public transportation was a huge reason why I wanted to move to a city in the first place. Unfortunately, the CTA gave me more panic attacks than it’s worth. Over-crowded, unreliable, and inconvenient. And did I mention dirty? I once had to claw my way to the nearest exit on a bus so that I could throw up after discovering that the newspaper beneath my feet was providing refuge for about 15 cockroaches. Yeeesh, I feel queasy all over again.

(Do I even have to say it?) The Weather- notoriously awful. Temperatures with wind chill well below zero. Daily highs in the single digits. For weeks! And you can still have freezing cold days in May. It is nice to live in a place with some adequate snowfall but no one has the foresight to shovel their sidewalks, so it only takes an inch of snow for the entire city to become a gigantic sheet of ice that makes activities like walking to the corner-store a death-defying experience. Summer isn’t much better. June and July can have some pretty lovely days but then the daily high lingers somewhere between 90 and 100 for the rest of the season. People die in this city due to extreme temperatures, but I will no longer suffer through this unreasonable hardship.

Ice Cream trucks- I know, I know… I’m the Grinch. I don’t like ice cream trucks. But for god’s sake, they play that awful music and I once had one PARK outside my apartment for hours while I was trying to write a final paper for library school. He never turned the music off… and I can never forgive that. Plus, it just seems like there are hundreds of them in this city during the summer. That’s too many. Ever heard of the obesity epidemic? Plus it seems like a bad idea to encourage children to go running into the street. Or to take ice cream from strangers. Whatever.

Parking Tickets- FIFTY DOLLARS. Each. Forgot to feed the meter? Fifty dollars. Parked in a loading zone for 16 minutes? Fifty dollars. Didn’t see the sign about street cleaning? Fifty dollars. I have single handedly contributed hundreds and hundreds of dollars to the city of Chicago and I have no idea where that money goes. When I think about it, having a car at all is a huge drag here. Parking anywhere downtown is gonna cost you at least twelve dollars. The freeways are all ludicrously congested; you would make better time walking. Potholes range in size from 2 ft. to entire city blocks. And last but not least, you have to buy a stupid sticker every damn year just to have a car in the city and that costs seventy bucks, too! I’ve already mentioned that the CTA is lousy. A lot of my friends use bikes as their primary mode of transportation and I think that’s wonderful. Good for the environment, good exercise, cheap, and fast. Unfortunately, I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to ride a bike in this city, and with good reason as two people have been killed in the last month.

People shooting each other- seriously. It’s out of control.

And now, for some desperately needed positivity:

Things I will miss about Chicago, when I’m gone…

My friends and hanging out in unusual/inhospitable locations like rooftops, Polish dive bars, playgrounds, and alleys. One of the best days I ever had in Chicago was a month or so after I moved here. It was a nice afternoon in May and I was living with Tatjana and Jeremy. A bunch of people came over and we had a barbeque in the alley behind our house cause we were too scared to ask our Ukrainian landlords if we could use their yard. We set up this 10 dollar grill and we had a pretty decent spread but we had to keep packing it up and moving out of the way every time a car went through. Eventually the landlords found us and insisted in broken English that we use their yard (probably the only friendly exchange we ever had with them). I think that was the day that I met Dee and Bill Tanner and Angie J. I remember laying on a blanket in the yard well into the evening and staring up at the sky and watching planes traverse in and out of Midway and O’Hare and just feeling really, really happy.

The Food- There is definitely some outstanding food to be had here in the Windy City. I never really got to experience any of the high-class cuisine cause I’m just not that kind of girl, but damn is there some good cheap food to be had! Indian on Devon, falafel from Sultan’s, burritos the size of my head, breakfast at Sunrise, rotisserie chicken at Feed… I could go on and on.

Cool people doing cool stuff- I can’t stand useless hipsters, so please don’t confuse the point that I’m trying to make here, but I’m genuinely impressed by the number of people that get awesome ideas and then really bust their ass to make it happen. Want to start your own punk-rock choir? Do it! Wanna start a music festival? Do it! Wanna start your own business? Do it! Sure, some of these ideas fizzle out or get too popular and start to suck but that’s just the way it goes. Beats the hell out of some stagnant, creativity-crushing vortex city, right?

The smoking-ban- Finally, I can go to bars and clubs and breathe. I no longer come home smelling like an ashtray. I really hope that more and more cities will adopt this policy. Please!

There’s probably other stuff worth mentioning but I can’t think of it now. And I’ll probably be dumb-struck with all the stuff that I’ll miss as the moving day approaches. Drinking beer at the dog park, the peanut butter chocolate milkshakes at Choppers, bowling at Timber Lanes… but most of that stuff is really about the good people and good memories that I can take with me.  So… it’s not sad.

Well. Okay.  It’s a little sad.

Dang

I’m a bad blogger!  I’ve been too busy counting the minutes until my last day of work (may 14th!) to bother publishing any funny titles or odd cataloging practices.  Sorry.  I even had a request yesterday for an article that linked mental retardation to urinary tract infections…  and I didn’t post it?!  I’m terrible.  Just really self-centered.  And I apologize.

I’ll be starting a new Interlibrary loan job at an awesome school after Memorial Day and maybe I’ll feel so energized by the fact that I no longer work in the most soul-sucking, sexist, windowless hellhole ever that I’ll actually start posting on a regular basis again! yay!