Filed under: General, Photobooth Chronicles on July 10th, 2009 | 9 Comments »

I discovered some important things this past weekend while visiting my brother and his family in Wisconsin. For one thing, if you decide to go fishing at high noon in July on a lake whose maximum depth is six feet, it’s not really called fishing. It’s called taking your worm for a ride.

Another thing I learned is that you should never trust an 11-year old boy’s taste in discount sodapop. Take my word for it when I tell you that Dr. Faygo and Dr. Pepper are not even distant cousins.

But my most illuminating discovery had to do with my 9-year old nephew. With my older nephew, I love spending time with him because he’s already smarter than me and we can spend hours making dioramas representing pivotal moments in the Hopi tribe’s history. But with my younger nephew, ever since he was born, I have had an uncontrollable need to squeeze him to near asphyxiation. It’s a constant struggle for me to keep my hands off his little face. I was never quite sure why, until I spotted him across the room from me wearing his little red hoodie, and suddenly it hit me. He is the spitting image of my all-time favorite doll from my childhood.

The doll my mom bought me at a flea market when I was about two years old. The doll I carried around so much that all the velvet wore off her little body. The doll my mom had to sew up dozens of times when, either from natural causes or from the cruelty of my brothers’ friends, her stuffing would come loose. The doll I named Red Baby.

Behold the indisputable evidence:

Real Red Baby:

Faygo Red Baby:

Real Red Baby:

Faygo Red Baby:

And it’s a good thing he reminds me so much of Red Baby, otherwise I might take offense when he tells me things like, “Cool, Aunt Jenny! I wish I had big fat veins in my hands like you do so I could push them in and watch them pop back up again.”

Filed under: General on July 6th, 2009 | 15 Comments »

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Last week, I was recounting my recent experiences riding the El to some friends over dinner. They’re all hardened city-dwellers and public transportation patrons, so I was surprised to actually get a little sympathy when I shared my disgust at sitting in urine-scented seats.

“Jen, what line do you take?”

“Red Line”

All three of them groaned in unison.

“Oh, god. I’m so sorry to hear that. Really.”

“No kidding. I did my time on the Red. Paid my dues. Thank god I get to take the Brown with all the beautiful people now.”

“But really, you should count your blessings that all you smelled was pee on the Red Line. One time? I got on the Red and it smelled like shit.”

“You think that’s bad? One time I got on the Red Line, and there WAS shit. Big pile of it in the aisle.”

“Oh man, that’s sick. But not as bad as when-“

I had to stop the conversation there, because I could easily imagine the next 20 minutes devolving into a competition to determine who saw/smelled/sat in the most repulsive combination of bodily fluids on the Red Line, and my BLT had just arrived.

And so the public transportation experiment continues, my daily routine alternating between the El and the Metra. Sometimes braving the gritty Red Line all the way to the Loop, other times hopping off at the midway point to change trains to the Brown Line so I can see how the other half lives.

So far, I’m really familiar with the half that pees its pants.

Filed under: General on June 29th, 2009 | 10 Comments »

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Filed under: General, Photobooth Chronicles on June 23rd, 2009 | 12 Comments »

As I sat on my commuter train riding in to work a few weeks ago, an empty seat next to me so I could stretch out with my thoughts, it occurred to me that I might be losing touch with what it means to be a Chicagoan. For probably the past four years, I have avoided taking the El to work because it ends up being faster and cheaper to take the Metra commuter rail.

Each morning, I drive the 1.5 miles to the train station, hop on my regularly scheduled train, ride it for precisely two stops, and fourteen minutes later, I arrive downtown. When I take the El, I walk to the El stop, hop on the train, ride it for six stops, get off, change trains, then ride that train for another eight stops, arriving downtown in about 40 minutes. Now admittedly, with the driving and parking time factored in, I’m not saving all that much time with the Metra, but somehow it feels faster.

But still, the sterility of the commuter rail started to bother me. Have I effectively become a suburbanite? Have I lost all my street cred? Did I have any street cred to begin with?

The questions were eating at me, so I decided to start taking the El to work, just to see if it would help make me feel like more of a city dweller once again. My first ride in to work was pretty pleasant. I got a seat, so things started off on the right foot. As soon as I stepped off the Red Line, the Brown Line train to the Loop was ready and waiting for me with open doors, as though there had been no bad blood between us. It seemed like everyone was more alive on the El. More interesting. They were reading books I wanted to read. Wearing shoes I wanted to wear. I suddenly realized that my fears were right – I had been missing out.

After work that evening, I walked to the El station with a bounce in my stride I hadn’t felt in years. Just as I reached the top of the stairs, the Purple Line train pulled up in time for me to hop on. Again, I got a seat. In the crowded evening rush hour, the aisles became steadily packed with people clinging to whatever pole they could find. I turned up the volume on my iPod to a level that would have gotten me shushed on the Metra, but went unnoticed on the El.

A man wearing plaid pajama bottoms stood next to my seat, holding a loosely covered container of what appeared to be carrot soup that sloshed precariously close to my head with every bump and turn. I became a bit more concerned when he adopted a straddle stance for balance as he held the soup in one hand and texted with the other hand, with a few very close calls as the train came to a halt at the next stop.

Fortunately, it was time for me to change trains. The next train was much more crowded, but I was able to worm my way into the back seat in one car. As soon as I sat down, I was pretty sure I knew why the seat was still available. It was the distinctive smell of subway pee that immediately made me flash fondly to my days in Paris.

So clearly, there are some distinct pros and cons.

• The Metra is cheaper and slightly faster, but it’s filled with white-haired lawyers from Lake in the Hills who play gin the entire time.
• The El allows me much more flexibility in schedules, but sometimes I come home smelling like the day after a frat party.

So it’s really a toss-up. My experiment is not yet over. I still need to make sure that I’m not missing out on some essential part of being a Chicagoan by avoiding the El, but so far, the scales are tipped in Metra’s direction due to the fact that if I step off the Metra smelling like urine, I can take comfort in the knowledge that it is more than likely my own.

Filed under: Chicago, General on June 22nd, 2009 | 12 Comments »

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