Riding the Red Line

Come along for a day spent on the El, experiencing the differences between the city’s North and South sides

By Jeremy Schnitker

It connects two bi-polar sections of this almost embarrassingly segregated city, taking you from the affluent, academic north side neighborhood of Loyola, through the serene flats, brownstones and tree-lined streets of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, underneath the concrete jungle of downtown, then thrusting you out into the gritty, working class streets of the South Side.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I decided to make a cultural study of the city by hopping on the Red Line from its northernmost stop and riding it to its southernmost and recording what I saw.

The first stop on the Red Line is at Howard Street in the Loyola neighborhood of the north side. The area has the quiet, peaceful feel of a typical college town. The streets are lined with quaint coffee shops and restaurants. There’s as much foot traffic as there is car traffic.

Off in the distance, to the north, I notice empty train cars sitting on a sea of unused tracks. They look lonely.

4:28 p.m.: I depart from Howard. Just as the train gets moving, a man who looks to be homeless or, at least pretty close to being so, is setting some sort of pamphlet on empty seats and handing them to fellow riders. The overall mood of the car: boredom.

4:33: A young, tall black man with a large comb in his afro gets on my car, then opens the door to walk to the car behind us.

4:34: I make note of how pleasant the voice of the man who announces the stops are. (When I got home later, I did some research on him. Turns out he’s a voice-over professional from Milwaukee).

4:37: There’s an Asian couple sitting across the aisle and up the car from me cuddling.

4:38: High rises are beginning to pop up to my left. I’m wondering who it is that actually lives in those massive, ugly buildings. They all look like victims of ill-advised 1970s architecture.

At the Bryn Mawr stop, the landscape takes on more of an urban feel. Aside from the gaudy high rises, the architecture up here is very Old World classic, even more so than in some parts of Lincoln Park and the Near North Side.

4:40: A man with two Papa John’s pizzas gets off at this stop, but I can’t smell the pizzas, though, and this is mildly disappointing.

4:42: Lawrence stop. I finally discover where the Aragon Ballroom is, as it stands dignified to the left of me. All the seats in the car are now taken.

4:44: The young black man with the comb in his afro has moved back to my car and is now rapping out loud the lyrics to the song that’s playing on his headphones. It’s quite annoying.

4:45: A guy sits down right next to me. I’m waiting for him to look over at my laptop to see what I’m writing, but he doesn’t.

4:46: Just before the Sheridan stop, we pass an apartment that has a MySpace URL on a banner on its back porch, and I wonder if it belongs to the person who lives there.

4:49: Wrigley Field just passed me on the right, but there’s no game, and in it I see nothing but rows of empty of seats.

I’m noticing lots of new condos and single-family homes amongst the vintage buildings. Bars and restaurants litter the landscape.

I wonder if the apartments and condos stacked right next to the El are reduced at all in cost. It seems like it’d be impossible to sleep with these cars roaring past your bedroom.

4:52: Belmont. The guy next to me gets off at this stop with his wife. He never bothered to look over at my computer screen.

A lady catty corner to me is reading a book about Chicago’s Southeast side. I wonder what’s so compelling about Chicago’s Southeast side that one would want to read an entire book about it.

The young black man has stopped rapping, thankfully.

4:56: Fullerton, which is my usual stop, and only two new riders enter the car. There’s some sort of soccer competition going on at the DePaul fields to my left.

4:58: There’s a tall white guy standing next to the car door across from me wearing standard Lincoln Park garb: baggy jeans, a long-sleeved collared shirt and black boots. He’s holding a bottle of wine in his right hand, peering out of the window just as we head underground. He catches me observing him. We both look away quickly.

4:59: The train heads underground. I can see nothing outside of the windows expect rapidly passing orange lights.

5:00: The North and Clybourn stop. An older, blind homeless-looking black man walks up from the car behind us. He’s using his tattered, thin metal pole to guide him down the aisle. He’s shaking a plastic cup in his left hand and mumbling in a monotone voice. I can barely hear what he’s saying, but I assume it has something to do with us giving him spare change. Everybody in the car is ignoring him. The train is shaking violently, and it looks like he could fall over at any minute, but he walks slowly and somehow manages to keep his balance.

5:02: The homeless man continues to walk back and forth in the car asking for money. His empty, wandering eyes are bulging. He looks like a zombie.

5:05: At Grand, instead of saying “This is Grand,” like it used to, the CTA voice says “This is Grand and State.” I’m saddened by the fact that this stop lacks the poignancy it used to contain. A small Asian girls sits down next to me with her back turned to me.

A middle-aged man with a young kid sits on the seat across from me. The kid’s asking the dad foolish, nonsensical questions, which the dad answers without the slightest hint of annoyance.

The girl next to me turns and faces forward, but she still has not copped a glance at my laptop. She’s signing to the other Asian couple across the aisle. The male of the group has a map. They look like stereotypical tourists.

5:09: The blind guy has left for the car ahead of us.
At the Jackson stop, the aforementioned kid screams “Daddy, I want to go to Chinatown!” The dad laughs. So do I. Nobody else does.

5:10: The Asian girls switches to the seat across the aisle, and as she does, a middle-aged black guy who looks like he works some manual labor job sits next to me. His shoulders are hunched forward, so he can’t see my screen. He smells like bananas.

5:14: We come out from underground and arrive at Chinatown.

Sometime shortly after this, the guy next to me looks over and notices what I’m doing. I bend the screen of my laptop down so he can’t see that I just wrote he smelled like bananas. He asks what it is I’m writing, and I tell him I’m writing a story about riding the Red Line in its entirety. He seems quite interested. He tells me he takes this train every day and asks if he can be the main character of my story. I told him there is no main character in it, but he starts writing his name and number on a piece of paper to give me anyway.

We engage in light conversation. He declares that a movie about the Red Line should be made, and that he should be the star of it as well. We both laugh heartily (though mine’s a little forced).

5:18: Sox/35th. I ask T if there was a game there today.

“Yeah, at one (o’clock) I think,” he says. There’s a couple straggler fans that get on the bus wearing Sox hats and shirts.

Looking at the area around U.S. Cellular Field, it becomes obvious to me why the Sox, fresh off a World Series championship, struggle to match the attendance numbers of the Cubs, who are in the midst of one of their most dismal seasons in recent history: There appears to be nothing to do here except go to a baseball game. There’s not a single bar or restaurant from my vantage point.

5:19: I realize that I am now the only white guy in the train car.

The train is flanked by interstate.

T gives me the piece of paper with his name and phone number, and I put it in my pocket, though I highly doubt I’m going to call this guy.
“I want to see what you thought about it,” he says of taking the train in its entirety. “Just be careful taking this thing at night. The darker it get, the colder it get.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

I’m not quite sure what any of this means, but I nod my head in agreement.

5:22: The landscape down here reminds me of the small working-class town in southwest Iowa I grew up in: It’s drab, dull, stagnant and mostly poor. I can see nothing but gas stations, fast food signs and lifeless two-story homes.

T warns me to be careful with my laptop as we go further south.

5:26: Garfield. T tells me he’ll leave me alone to write my story, but he reminds me that he still wants to be its main character.

A stocky man with glasses gets on the train handing out pieces of paper. Apparently, he’s selling cupcakes and Reece’s Pieces for some charity.

5:28: I become mildly uncomfortable being the only person of my race on the train, but realize I would likely be more so if it wasn’t for my buddy T next to me giving me some street cred.
Even with T next to me, though, I’m overcome with the paranoid sensation that everybody is looking at me funny. And I’m disappointed in myself that I’ve let this fear creep into my mind. Now I know what it feels like, I suppose, to be on the opposite side of the fence — to be the minority. But this knowledge doesn’t make me any less tense, and I decide maybe it’s time to put my $2,000 laptop away.

5:36: I hurriedly take the laptop back out because there’s been a flurry of activity. Just a minute ago, a strung-out middle-aged lady walks in the car begging for change or anything we can offer her. She’s telling everybody her sob story, but that ultimately we shouldn’t worry about her because God’s on her side. The all-black car ignores her just the same as the racially mixed car did to the blind fellow up north.

At the second-to-last stop, T, who had just moved to a seat behind me, gets up to get off. Just before he does, we make eye contact. I flash him a peace sign. He nods his head and goes on his way. Another younger white guy gets on the bus, and he looks like he’s been through this routine before.

The overall mood of the car: defeat.

5:37: We hit 95th. The end of the line. I stuff my computer back in my bag and foolishly scurry off the car.

After standing awkwardly by the tracks across the stop (with no other train coming and the one I was just on idling with its doors open), I ask an old lady with a mouthful of missing teeth if the train I was just on goes back north again.
“What?” she retorts loudly.

“Does this go back north?” I ask again.
“Yeah.”
I hurry back on it.

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