CHICAGO SCENE REPORT

everything that happened to me Feb 14-21

After five months away at an artist residency, I return to the City of Broad Shoulders with wide eyes and an open heart. It is C’s birthday, and I plan to live it up before I return to the puritan Adam’s apple of the country where I couldn’t splurge on a nice meal if I wanted to. This is what I saw.

Feb 14—Arrival, Lincoln Karaoke

I arrive in Chicago on the 2:30 United flight out of Boston. The guy next to me smells like yogurt and watches sexy anime the whole time. I listen to James Blake on the Blue Line. Disembarking at Logan Square, I’m greeted by a pair of 23 year old lesbians in full camouflage. I’m back, baby. On Diversey, a woman in a full face of makeup under mircro bangs, a micro skirt, and a pair of frilly pink stockings reminds me that it’s Valentine’s Day. Suddenly, I notice lots of shlubby men getting into and out of cars carrying bodega flowers. I always feel that my clothing, which seem fine in Massachusetts, is too colorful in Chicago. My yellow duffel doesn’t help. I arrive in Lakeview, where there are people, people everywhere. I find C in his apartment. We go to the falafel place on the corner. Its business seems to have migrated exclusively to DoorDash, despite the large dining area with white tablecloths.

C is throwing a Valentine’s-themed birthday party. We play a game where everyone submits pictures of two people they’ve kissed for an anonymous powerpoint (we guess who kissed who). This is a big hit. Mary and Drew, my architect friends, arrive dressed head to toe in black. We head to Lincoln Karaoke. In the Uber, C’s old Equinox coworkers seem intent on saying the grossest, loudest remark for the sake of getting a rise out of the driver. I am mortified. After an eternity of this, we pile into the karaoke room and drink staggering amounts of soju. We make friends with a guy named Korea, who agrees to buy us two soju bottles if we buy him two soju bottles. I wait until I’m drunk enough and then I sing the Smith’s. I fall asleep in the vinyl booth sometime around 3AM.

Feb 15—Pilsen

I wake up tired and hung over on Eastern time. C and I eat cold pizza and watch Drag Race. There is something wrong with C’s coffee maker. It is inexplicably beautiful outside for February, and I decide we should go to Pilsen. We take the Brown Line to the Pink Line. For the previous six weeks, I haven’t left Provincetown, and jetting around the city on trains feels like magic.

The last time I was in Pilsen, a man followed me on the sidewalk, shouted ‘get out of Pilsen,’ and shoved me (dropping his phone, which I confusingly caught and tossed back to him like a hot potato). I admit to being a little on guard as I walk down 18th street, weary of being seen as a gentrifier while tentatively checking the Zillow listings.

At Pilsen Community Books, everyone is smugly queer. The clerk finds the foreign novel I ask for without needing to look it up. She seems more impressed with C’s purchase—the author lives down the street. We go to one of the nearby taco places I have flagged on Google. I’m obliged to order in Spanish, though I struggle against the French that is far fresher on my tongue. I’m not entirely successful. In a panic, I get way more food than I intended. When it arrives—chicken wings in mole, stuffed poblano peppers, a sort of goat-asada—it is immaculate. I grow furious at the thought of the bland, insipid New England cuisine that has been my constant burden for the last five months. At the antiquarian shop, I find some things—old photos of strangers, a blue matchbook, a magazine for owners of exotic fish—that I need for a project. I also buy a book in French about a man who can walk through walls.

On the Halsted bus, a woman is trying to sell dresses. She describes the colors of each in terms of food (sage green, strawberry pink, chocolate) so it sounds like she’s selling ice cream. She has, sadly, no takers. The previous night is catching up to me, and I almost fall asleep in public for the second time.

After a rest, C and I go to a Tik Tok restaurant for his birthday. At the table next to us, two men recap in meticulous detail the last episode of Traitors. When they stop talking, I realize that all the nearby conversations are about reality T.V. Soon, C and I are talking about it, too. The food is demurely overpriced. This restaurant is known for its stereo system and music selection. During a particularly ecstatic moment on a Pharaoh Sanders record, I’m overcome by a self-evident optimism at the strangeness and rude desire of art and music specifically. AI could never. Of all disciplines, music clearly is king. We order dessert and regret it. When C goes to the bathroom, I open Instagram and am immediately punished with an image of my ex with her new lover. That both her and I find ourselves with partners of inverted genders says something about modernity, but it’s not very interesting.

We take Divvys home. In the cold air, I finally wake up. I realize it’s only the third Valentine’s in my life where I’ve had a proper date. I find I can remember the previous two in surprising detail (both times Italian restaurants). Although today is not Valentine’s Day, and we are celebrating something else, so I’m not sure it counts.

Feb 16—King Spa:

We take the Damen bus to Mary and Drew’s to borrow their car. Last night, C correctly guessed our surprise destination for the day. We drive to Niles, where the Korean spa is surprisingly bumping for a Monday morning.

You begin the King Spa experience nude in the wet sauna. I am always somewhat hypnotized by public nudity, the variations on the human form. I love Cezanne’s bathers for this reason. There is something solemn or stoic in the air this morning, the penises wagging under broad red bellies. It’s helpful that C is here; having a familiar face nearby is its own kind of clothing. The steam room is lush; the cold pool satisfyingly shocking.

Bathers (recto) - P. Cezanne

The main area has a gratifying diversity (though notably few Koreans—maybe they know a better place to go). Everyone wears the same baggy shorts and t shirt and ambles about shoeless. It gives the overall impression of group mental deficiency. King Spa boasts nine chambers with distinct healing technologies (some of them: red light, charcoal, salt, etc.). I spend several of the first few rooms deciding if I feel any difference between them. I rather drowsily think about Pharaoh Sanders while not-quite sweating. I observe a disturbing phenomenon wherein people bring their phones and headphones into the rooms to scroll Instagram reels.

There is a food stall but it is not very good and expensive. The cooks are also barefoot. I return to the wet room a few more times, finding the greatest variety of sensations there. Each trip has a more pointed vibe, until C and I observe men more or less openly cruising.

We return the car to Mary. While waiting for the Damen bus at Six Corners, I observe two street photographers indiscriminately taking pictures of everyone who walks by. This seems lazy, or uninspired, or just obnoxious to me. At any rate, they miss when a DoorDash biker is spectacularly struck by a car, right behind them, and neon beverages spray the air.

At home, we take books and beers to the roof and watch the sunset. When dusk falls, the city looks tipsy and solicitous. We finish watching Princess Mononoke while eating leftovers.

Feb 17—Running, Koby, The Charleston:

I sleep poorly and wake up at 6:45 with C’s alarm. It’s his birthday, but he has to go past 95th street to get to work today. I make coffee and give him a gift I’m particularly proud of—an Afghan war rug. When he’s gone, I feel stupidly tired. I know I won’t be able to go back to sleep, so I steel myself to go for a run instead.

The quality of a run should be evident within the first minute. Today, I know right away I’m in for a barn-burner. I ease out to the lake and put on Julian Casablancas. The city opens up in the morning half-light. Much has been said about supposed heights of sentiment only felt in New York. It seems to me that Chicago has not received its due. There is, in fact, a Chicago feeling, and while it’s not in any single aspect of the city alone, you could do worse than to look for it at the lake. Coming from a seaside town, I was struck today for the first time by the tidelessness of the lake, its turquoise constancy and huge flat emptiness against the changing city. I fly toward North Avenue Beach and feel a very Chicago feeling, the Hancock building rising in a column of yellow light. I return on Lincoln Avenue, lofted the whole way by the floral effluvium of the endless Boutique, the doors just now opening for the day.

I do my duedilligence at Trader Joe’s while listening to True Anon. I’m feeling kind of Logan-y, so I text Koby and grab a Divvy and make my way to Cafe Mustache. I get there first and read Libra. Though the coffeeshop is full, there’s a sort of stunned silence hanging about, punctured at times by the english horn voice of the trans man behind the register. I watch Koby pace outside, taking a phone call. At last, he enters carrying his work laptop, which he sets up and proceeds to ignore for an hour. Koby Theobald is a distinguished neo-Arendtist and the writer of the underground political Substack, Nine Lives. We keep our voices down because it’s embarrassing to talk about Heidegger and Marx in a quiet coffeeshop, no matter the number of Reed College stickers on the laptops.

Later, I make Japanese curry. C and I eat cake. We are due at the Charleston at 7pm, where we snag the big corner table. It is an accident that we are celebrating C’s birthday with my friends, by he doesn’t seem to mind. My friends are great, at any rate. Sally is fresh in from Lundi Gras and she hasn’t slept in 72 hours. I am very jealous of her because she saw the YouTuber Ben Mora on acid and seemingly hung out with him all evening. She is hobbling because of a punk grocery cart racing accident. When I see her a few days later, she will extract a rock from her knee. The videos are incriminating. Joey is fresh off playing viola on the run of Salome at the Lyric Opera. He tells me despairingly that he’s been reading Lenin. Kimberly is starting a new job at the History Museum and has already made enemies. (Spencer and Dave are reading this so I must mention them too, even if the list of personnel is growing long and their professions not as picturesque). Everyone wants to know about my fellowship and I find I have very little to say. We stay too late with Josh (Bathing Ape sweat suit, custom embroidered Carhartt, an honest Romanian face, which is different from an honest face), who is always the last to leave a party. I have to drag him and C away from the bar to stop them from ordering me more Mallört shots.

Feb 18—Recovery:

C and I walk to Dark Matter in t shirts. Chicago winter haters are seething. We go to a book store that really wants me to buy either the Heated Rivalry boxset or one of a selection of disabled-BIPOC romances. I do neither. There are concerningly few lesbians in this store. We go to the Calzone restaurant across the way that seems genuinely shocked to have a customer. I’m surprised that the food here is also good. I think New England has ruined my frame of reference; I’ve been having PTSD flashbacks to the one ‘Mexican’ restaurant in Hanover that sold a tofu and broccoli burrito.

I meet up with Fisher at the climbing gym. He’s finishing med school, and I make him do a quick physical exam just to get my money’s worth. He can’t figure out what’s wrong with my elbow, so one wonders if it was all worth it. I do some of my worst climbing to date. We sauna and retreat to the Red Line. The mundane efficiency of urban trains is something I don’t think I’ll ever get over.

At home, C and I eat pasta and watch Tàr. Even though I’m exhausted, again I can’t sleep. I want to write a play but don’t know how. I obsess about it while the cats run around the room.

Feb 19—Apartment Showings, Bachelor Pad:

I succeed in sleeping in and manage to get myself outside in running shoes during the day’s brief sunny interval. The ducks in the harbor rest on a very thin strip of ice above the water. Later, I take the Ashland bus to my storage locker. When I open it, I’m surprised to be confronted by all my shit. I guess I expected someone else’s for some reason.

I spend some time in Myopic Books, where I can’t find any book I can think to look for. I still purchase James Joyce’s only play, Exiles. I walk to an apartment showing, where a man named Kirby distractedly guides me and a straight couple through a unit different from the one pictured online. The couple is moving from Bed-Stuy and profess to knowing nothing about Chicago. They’ve heard that Wicker Park is artsy. I berate myself for being in competition with them. Kirby brags about the private Bucktown security force. I cringe. I’d forgotten about that. I consider telling the couple that I was almost mugged a block from here. I consider telling them that this is rather small and rather overpriced for a Chicago apartment. Ultimately, I decide they’ll do better here than I would, and I leave them to it.

I walk on the 606 to the next showing, tantalizingly above a coffee shop. C joins me, and we wait with a mob of other couples to see the place. When I enter, a slovenly man in his late 50s crosses my name off a post-it. There is also a woman with a huge camera who seems to be part of the operation somehow. I reflect idly on the fact that I don’t know who these people are or what arcane role they play in providing me with shelter. This apartment is also too small. We say good-bye to the man and woman, who both seem dimly unpleasant in that way particular to the attendants of real estate.

While we wait for the Western bus, another guy who’d been at the showing strikes up a conversation with us. “Too small,” he concurs. He says he’s seeing a place in North Center, pronouncing it like it’s an especially mystifying suburb. I shrug and we part ways. I reflect briefly on the quiet sadness that I will probably never see this man again, and how all city interactions contain a premonition of death. Then I remember I could very well see this man again, Chicago being, after all, a place where you run into almost everyone twice, and I decide that there is also a premonition of rebirth.

In the evening, I visit Carson. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a real bachelor pad, and I’m impressed by the complete lack of wall art. In the bathroom, he’s left a crumpled washcloth as a hand towel. We sit on his futon, which promptly collapses. When I was last in town, he had only a stationary bike in front of his T.V., so this is an improvement. We get Chef’s Special delivered. Carson pays because he just got a raise. He puts on a Geese concert on the T.V. and we have a conversation about movies that so perfectly conforms to certain stereotypes of a certain type of guy that I hesitate to reproduce it here. We stroke our mustaches and drink our Half Acre Pilsners.

Feb 20—Andersonville Hajj:

I take the Brown Line to Addison to meet Sally and Sendra at Cafe Loba. It’s Sally’s birthday. We walk up Lincoln to the button store. I learn that Sendra is an avid button collector. She’d had to restrain the habit for obvious financial reasons, but in the store she find a certain variety of calico china that scratches an undefinable itch. When she calls it by the proper name to the proprietor, the other woman lights up like she’s met a long lost niece.

Our destination is Hopleaf in Andersonville, and we decide to walk the two miles up Damen despite the blustery day. We make extravagant summer plans. I’m dead on my feet by the time we make it to Foster. I have two beers to be festive. Zander joins us and introduces himself to me, even though I remember a distinctly edifying conversation I had with him last year at the Innertown Pub about oral sex. After lunch, we go to the paper store, where the employees all smell a bit damp. We all buy things we don’t need before hitching a ride back in Zander’s truck.

Sendra goes to a job interview at a fuckass boutique while Sally makes a French press at home. C joins us and does his comedy routine for Sally. It’s a big hit. Sendra returns, flushed from the cold. We head to Map Room, where we continue drinking imported beer while flipping through old nature publications. We find a crossword in an old National Geographic and I go non-verbal. Once I’ve finished, I do a doodle of Sendra, and soon we are all drawing each other. The girls both are SAIC grads, so there is a slight skill discrepancy.

Me a la Sendra

C and I leave to make our dinner reservations in Lakeview, swearing on various holy books that we will make it back to the Charleston at 11 for the real birthday party. After sushi and a pot of hot saki, things are looking grim, and we still have two hours to kill. We decide to watch Drag Race at home, and soon C is asleep. Despite Sally’s protestations, soon I am too.

Feb 21—Mouse Arts and Letters in Bridgeport:

I am alerted at 10:30am for an apartment showing at 11:40. It seems like this will be enough time, and yet when the Armitage bus is 15 minutes behind and must detour on North Ave, suddenly I’m catastrophically late. The agent tells C he will only wait 10 minutes for me. When I try to text him, I’m shunted to an AI chatbot. In a moment of panic, I jump off several stops early because I see a Lime scooter. It’s dead, of course, and I run the remaining half mile to the apartment. The guy is, of course, not there, so I knock on the door of the neighboring unit. A man opens in a bathrobe and a vacant smile. He seems mystified by such concept as ‘listing agent’ and ‘landlord’ and ‘neighbor.’

In defeat, I hop on the Damen bus and go the direction I came from. I am 15 minutes early to meet Carmen, who is 20 minutes late, for coffee. I catch up writing yesterday’s diary entry and read the Joyce play. I struggle to imagine the characters speaking in Irish accents. Carmen arrives wearing her customary grin. She is late because she got out of her car to help a man who dropped his cane. She seems exasperated if not surprised that the other passersby didn’t help him. Once again, kindness falls to her. But Carmen treats the hand she’s dealt with zen-like equanimity and humor. Her cat recently died. She’s going on a date with a girl (“It’s not a date!”) she met at the Renaissance Fair. In fact, they are going skiing in Wisconsin that very afternoon. It seems a little late in the day for skiing to me, but I admire the nerve. She complains about the various indignities she’s suffered recently in the two orchestras we both are members of. I find myself missing it, the carnival grind. If you are reading this, Carmen, I hope your date went well.

Southbound once more, to find Mary and Drew. We drive to Bridgeport to see Josh Lipnik (the account “Midwest Modern” on Twitter) give a talk on the architecture of Western Michigan. We are also there to investigate Mouse Arts and Letters, a magazine and community space that recently opened. On the drive over, we mock the language of the website (“Those who are pursuing the arts may be straightened and stifled for lack of money and patronage…Mouse Arts and Letters may be their only hope and redemption”). Still, we are basically jealous, for founding an arts community is something we’ve all entertained but haven’t had the nerve to actually do. We make the mistake of sitting in the front. The owner is carrying around a huge book and a burrito. I spend a lot of time trying to discern what book but I never figure it out.

The room quickly fills up. I try to decipher the bricks of text on a display dedicated in some general way to socialism, but I quickly give up. I recall the Trotsky museum, which has a room with a paragraph of text for each year of the 20th century. There is a distinct communist urge to write too much.

Lipnik wears a blue button-down tucked into chinos. The part in his hair looks like it was rendered with a t-square. He opens his presentation deck, which has a forbidding 237 slides. I suspect I’ve made a mistake as he launches into descriptions of various articles of furniture. The following two hours is a directionless ramble through various notable people, places, and things. It is roughly the experience of having the entire archive of an architecture Twitter page read to you. At long last, we reach slide 237, at which points we launch into a Q and A. In a room full of architects, it is soon clear that he is far from the most knowledgeable. At a certain point, the Q and A showing no signs of stopping, Mary and Drew and myself pull the plug and shove our way out. At least one other audience member takes the chance to bail as well.

We go to Maria’s and order $25 cheesesteaks that are unfortunately quite good. C shows up, as do a concerning number of couples in color-coordinated outfits. We watch as a man who looks like Paul Hollywood feels up a woman with an ass like Gloria from Madagascar. Women’s Curling is on the T.V. The Canadian captain has a winner’s mien. We stay too long and then begin the long trek north to Roscoe Village, where Nora is throwing a joint birthday party with her friend, Ivan.

Earlier in the day, I received a text from an old college friend who I hadn’t seen in a decade. He said he saw my name on the Partiful invite. We catch up by the keg. I remember the last party we attended together, where I slapped him as a joke. I consider slapping him again, but I’m not sure he’ll get it. It’s snowing when several people go to smoke on the deck. We disagree on how welcome the snow is. We plan more parties, endless parties, for when I return. We resolve to become better friends, to launch creative projects and do stupid things and stay up too late smoking on the balcony of this apartment or another similar. C says we should finish Tàr at home. I say he’s nuts. I have to pack. My flight is early, and they say a blizzard is moving in fast.

Conclusion (Feb 26):

I hurried back to Provincetown, racing the incoming bomb cyclone. I had to get a $96 Lyft to Sagamore after my Peter Pan bus never showed up at the airport. I bought the last bunch of bananas at Trader Joe’s in Hyannis. The next morning, I woke up to a power outage, and only then I had the thought that it’s stupid to race back to the place where a generational storm is due. Should have stayed in Chicago.

Four days later, and we finally have power back. I am returned to the Lethean rhythm of the artist residency, shuffling between cedar shingled buildings. I reflect on Chicago at a distance.

I have a simple thesis relating to Chicago: the scene is alive and well, and you can still afford to live there as an artist (will this persist? maybe not!). I didn’t see any live music, or cool art shows, and that is really on me, because I could have done both at any juncture during my week. My priority was seeing the people who make the city the beautiful, enchanting place it is in my heart. There will be time for all that Bohemian stuff when I return.

Important things are happening. Literary wannabes are publishing the next great American zine. Fifth year art students are swapping Apple watches with wearable ceramics. DIY post-hardcore shows have pledged to peg the price of PBR to Stablecoins. Organized ICE-out communards have declared the People’s Republic of Pilsen. Watch this space.