Writer’s block

The endless summer

This summer, I am doing it all in Chicago — even the corny stuff

By Eric Edholm

It was one of those good-news-cum-sobering-realizations that make sublime turn sobering in a damned heartbeat. I arrived at work last month armed with a question for our H.R. woman: Do I, as rumored, get the extra five days of vacation this year for it being my fifth year at the company? I got my answer — and a bitchy column topic.

Good news: Yes, more time off.

Sobering realization: I have been here five years and feel like I haven’t really, fully taken advantage of this city I live in, especially not during the summer. And I feared that an additional five days of time off would be spent not undoing that fact once more.

So here we are, what, April, almost May? I am making a pact, here and now: I will take advantage of my Chicago summer. I want to do it all.

Sure, living in Wrigleyville, I have done the weekday Cubs game. That’s Amateur Hour. Anyone can feign a whooping cough for a day and slug back Old Styles in the bleachers. I have taken the architectural tours (two different ones, in fact) and have gone to one of the 40 different “Tastes” they have all over. That’s fine, but I am talking about doing it all, the whole shebang, in one summer.

Summer festivals. Running/biking/rollerblading by the lake. Beer gardens at least thrice a month, if not more.

Ravinia. Movies in the Park, maybe something black and white I have never seen before. North Avenue Beach, but probably just once, and I am definitely not playing volleyball as perhaps the tallest man (6-foot-5) ever to suck so royally at the game.

Grilling out — though, as the cruelest month annually proves, low 40s and drizzle won’t stop the average Chicagoan from firing up the Weber if they are craving some Polish. Sailing on Lake Michigan in some rich person’s vessel. Heck, I’ll even add fireworks at Navy Pier to the list.

These are the quintessential Chicago events. Maybe you can add Millennium Park now to the list; after all, it brandishes a Brancusi-esque egg. Some would argue the Gay Pride Parade is the single most underrated — and free — source of entertainment the summer offers. Lollapalooza cruises into its third year of existence, and Pearl Jam closes the show. As long as I can pass the occasional girl in a sundress wearing a backpack, I am sure to be satisfied.

We earn our summers here. Summer is the great reward for all those days spent shoveling out a parking spot and holding it with your wicker of undergrad yore. Tell me you haven’t made eye contact with someone on the Red Line, stuck in the throes of winter, thinking: In three months, I’ll be walking down Waveland without my pants. You can think such things on the El and not elicit odd looks.

Winter sucks and we know it, but we feel like we deserve a reward for it. It’s almost a Puritan rite of passage around here — survive a Chicago winter, and you will bank six months of the best American city. I truly believe that.

We get warm in the summer, but not Austin hot. We’re not as backhanded and elitist as Seattleites. I don’t think we’re as expensive as San Francisco (spend a week in a hotel there and then see), and our bars stay open past 1 a.m. The dating scene isn’t plastic like L.A., and it’s not hurried and self-important a la New York.

I have trouble saying this, considering I grew up there, but I might even put Chicago past my beloved Boston in terms of overall summer greatness, even though I miss the side-trip possibilities, such as Maine, Rhode Island or the Cape. Let’s put it this way, though: My high-school friends come visit every summer, just so they can talk to Chicago girls and go to Wrigley. That’s enough of a tiebreaker for me.

Things are just different here during the summer. People are nicer. They walk around happy. You’re more likely to make out with a stranger outside when it’s nice out, so that’s a plus. You get that way when you can walk around with no socks and not get looks.

Heck, some Chicago businesses offer a thing called “summer hours” to their workers. Are you lucky enough to be employed by one of these fair and just places? The concept is brilliant: You work a little longer — less than an hour, though — for nine days and get every second Friday off. Did Casimir Pulaski make that rule after he fought the Russians? Is that why he gets a local holiday named after him?

For me, every day this summer is going to feel like a holiday. I am going to drag the lady to go play golf on a Tuesday at Waveland in exchange for a girlie-type date, whatever she wants. Two requirements: It must be outside, and it must be quintessentially Chicago.

And seriously, whatever it takes — hanging out at the marina, wearing more ascots, parking cars at Charlie Trotter’s — I absolutely will meet someone who owns a boat this summer. My girlfriend became 28-percent sexier when she told me she has friends who sail on the lake. She had me at “We’re going to call them more often this summer.”

I am 31. It’s young enough to sleep in until 2 p.m. after a night of drinking but old enough to feel pretty guilty about it. My crowd, we’re getting older and, let’s face it, more marginal. Our intrinsic unpredictability tends to seep out slowly, then all at once. I am at the stage where I still have some juice left, I’m single, and I am not too old to walk dogless through a dog park.

It might be my last big summer as a single guy, or at least one who cares to do the things the kids are doing. So I am going to cram it all in to one summer. The next time I get more vacation days, I’ll be too old to use them here. I’ll be summering in Branson, Missouri, by then.

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