On (not) leaving Chicago

I grew up in the suburbs and it was nice. I made lifelong friends, went to good schools, got to roam unsupervised around the neighborhood. On summer nights, I rode my bike across town for no reason. I ran across the street to my best friend's house to borrow her sisters' clothes. I got my first job at a fabric store in a strip mall. I was utterly pampered by my mom's home cooked meals and a beautiful spacious house and I was often bored. I wanted to live in the city. It started when I saw little, gazing out the backseat windows as we drove through downtown.*  My friends and I drove into Chicago whenever we could to see concerts. We waited in the bitter cold to see the Neo Futurists do all-ages comedy shows. We went shopping at Belmont and Clark and got lost on the way home and nearly ended up in Indiana.

We just wanted to be somewhere else. Now, I realize that boredom often has very little to do with location.

In a few weeks, I am moving back to the suburbs. It's suburbs-light, I tell my friends. Oak Park is barely even the suburbs. It's off the El. A handful of friends are thrilled (we'll be neighbors!) others are mourning the exodus from the city. Exodus might be a little strong. Six people do not make an exodus. 

Still, I have lived in Chicago for nearly 10 years. Wrigleyville, Boystown, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, Noble Square. Five very different apartments that aren't that far apart geographically but span entirely different parts of my 20s and early 30s and taught me different things about life and the city. So, I'm going to write about these places before I move. Or after, if I get lazy.

#1: Clark Street

My first Chicago apartment was in the heart of the tangle of Clark, Diversey and Broadway. I wanted loud and busy and this apartment was perfectly that. My little room was cheap and my roommates had known each other through college and had already been living in the city for a couple years. I found them on Craigslist and met them on a Sunday morning in their kitchen. They were hungover in their PJs and I immediately liked them. I think my dad helped me move.  

I fell into their routines easily. We ordered Kung Pao chicken and watched Arrested Development. I got fall-down drunk in Wrigleyville and they'd wipe mustard off my face at Clark Dog or take me home to eat pizza and watch more Arrested Development. I learned how to take the El and some of the buses and realized that a crowded city could be so, so lonely. Only a few months before, I'd walk across my college campus and said hello to a dozen people I knew. On the El platform, people didn't feel like chatting with me while waiting for the Purple Line.

At 22, I struggled to learn to budget my tiny paycheck. Once, I wandered around the Loop with 35 cents in my pocket, unable to get catch a train because my CTA card had run out. I walked the four miles home. I had my first job, at a fraternity in Evanston. That is, of course, its own story. But it was my first 9 to 5 and that winter sliding back and forth to the El was a lesson in endurance. I bought the hideous, shit-kicking snow boots that I still have today. I found an affordable hair stylist who alternately gave me cute bobs or botched the cut and I ended up with a tail of hair clinging to my neck. 

The most magical part of that neighborhood is the stretch of Broadway between Diversey and Addison. The street is narrow and the shop windows were always foggy, geraniums at the dry cleaners clinging to the glass. Red light coming from the video store, the smells of coffee or soup or noodles every five feet. Thumbing through CDs at Reckless. Learning to only buy as many groceries as I could carry. Drinking the fancy latte art at Intelligentsia and ogling the baristas. Just roaming, people watching. Writing in spurts, across unorganized notebooks, much like I do now. Imagining stories about the people on the street who wouldn't talk to me. Trying to find people who would. 

Next up: Hawthorne. Living in luxury, ruining the stove!

*If you live in the suburbs, any part of Chicago is "downtown." If you live in the city, the Loop is downtown.