The Chicago blogger

Viewing the city through someone else’s eyes

By Jeremy Schnitker

The new place
Well, we moved. After seven intense hours of lifting heavy shit up three flights of stairs, we have a larger, brighter apartment in a much more interesting part of the city.

The first moment we could, Ry and I sprawled out on our furniture in exhaustion. However, we couldn’t fully relax, as there were sirens blaring from seemingly every direction for what had to be a good 20 minutes.

“Welcome to their neighborhood,” it seemed they were saying.

And so it goes with living in a trendier part of town. Being on the cutting edge means you’re that much closer to the shitty edge. Due east, west and south of us things can get a bit sketchy. Nothing too alarming, just a lot more humanity. Walk down Chicago Ave. (which is just south of us) for 10 minutes, and you’ll see plenty of homeless people: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Ukrainians, yuppies, hipsters, really old women with walkers. Just about any form of human being you can imagine.

The thing about this neighborhood that’s really strange is that you frequently find patches of rundown tenement housing scattered amidst brand-new, high-end condo developments. You’ll see people who paid $500K for their home living next to Section 8ers with weight benches in their yards and beat-up Caprices parked in front.

Just today, on the way home from work, I saw an undercover cop arresting a handful of young Latino males. It all went down right outside what looked like the only rental property on the block (some of its windows were broken out, there was trash strewn about the front yard, etc.). As all the 9-to-5ers were coming home from work in their SUVs, they were slowing down, peeking their heads out of their windows to look at what was going down (probably hoping the cops will take the kids away the whole time).

As I walked through it all with my black leather computer bag and pink dress shirt (i.e., the young professional look), I felt, for the first time in a while, that I didn’t look just like everybody else in my neighborhood. Kind of refreshing.

The Daley machine
It’s surreal when you first see it: The tiny bungalow that housed one of the most powerful city politicians ever for over two decades. It sits there inconspicuously amongst a row of similarly dull structures, most of which have kids playing in their front yards. Its interior may be the best kept on the block, but from the outside, nothing about the home says a legend lived there. The only thing that sets it apart from the rest of the block is the lone street light that looms out front, right where the front gate opens to the sidewalk. Right where the limo used pick up former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley in the morning.

It, perhaps more than any structure, sums up the political weirdness that is Chicago. Here was this man, extremely influential on a national scale, and sometimes equally as corrupt, who lived and raised his family in a home smaller than the ones the majority of middle-class America lives in. It’s surely a self-aware testament to his blue-collar Irish upbringing. A symbol that, despite his rise to power and fame, shows he’s still a man of the people, a man who never forgot where he came from.

To me, it was perplexing. This man could influence the outcome of presidential elections (see John F. Kennedy), get some of the biggest skyscrapers in the world built, get away with allowing his police to pummel innocent protesters while the whole world watched on TV. Yet all the while, he was living in that tiny home in Bridgeport that, when all seven kids were over for Sunday dinner, had to be a tight fit.

As I stood there looking at the place, I wondered what the point of having power was if you don’t enjoy the wealth that goes with it. I’m sure he had wealth somewhere. While he never got caught taking so much as a nickel, there had to be healthy chunks of money made running that “machine.”

Then again, maybe there wasn’t. Maybe he never did take a nickel. Maybe the influence was enough for him. And maybe, despite the racial inequities, the cronyism, the narrow mindedness — he represented a dying breed of American politicians that existed in a time when you didn’t have to be wealthy to be powerful.

For better or for worse.

 

The show
It can be tough for a concert to live up the level of excitement you’ve expected from it with the one band you’ve likely listened to the most over the past two years, like I have with Kings of Leon. You’ve heard the music so many times that you’ve already created a fantasy for what it’s supposed to sound like live and how the crowd is going to respond to it. You have it set in your mind exactly what you want and expect to see, making it virtually impossible for the band to live up to your expectations.

This didn’t pose as a problem for these Tennessee boys.

They took the stage with quiet confidence and executed their contemporary Southern rock to perfection. If you’re somebody who has spent the last two years listening to “Aha Shake Heartbreak” incessantly and have had numerous daydreams about what the album and the band would sound like live, well, this was it. At times fierce, at times loose, at times catchy … and on spot throughout.

Lead singer Caleb Followill didn’t say much to excite the crowd. Throughout the entire night I bet he uttered under five sentences, and what he did say was so hushed you could barely hear him. Everything they had to say on this night they said through their music.

Once the dense bass line and deep guitar chords kicked in, everybody knew the opener was “Charmer,” and the crowd chimed in immediately. It was impressive to see a crowd for this band singing along, which it did throughout most of the evening. Normally that type of activity is reserved for guys like Tom Petty, Bono and Mic Jagger. Equally impressive was that the crowd had already memorized the chorus of the second song off the band’s new album that came out roughly a month ago. Hell, “Charmer” isn’t even the album’s pre-released single.

To give a little perspective here, the Kings are huge in Europe. Recent release “Because of the Times” opened at No. 1 on the British charts, yet only topped out at No. 25 in the States. Normally standard fare for a band you don’t hear on the radio or see on MTV, but strange when taking into account new albums by fellow “indies” Modest Mouse, The Shins and Bright Eyes all spent their opening weeks in the top five. Judging by the enthusiasm of the sold-out crowd at the Riviera, you’d think this band was one of the most popular in the country. It’s a shame and a mystery they’re not, but that’s a whole other essay.

... While the songs were performed live just about the way you’d hope for them to be (which is to say they sounded like they did on record), what really separated this show from the others I’ve seen lately was how much the crowd was into it. Let’s be honest, sometimes the enthusiasm of a crowd can dictate how much fun a show is as much as the band on the stage. Lily Allen played her heart out when I saw her at the Metro a couple months ago, but since nobody bothered to do anything but stand and stare at her (which can, admittedly, be easy to do), the show was largely boring. The crowd at the Black Keys show I saw this winter acted like they were there because somebody told them to be, which is never a good thing.

Sure, a lot of the guys were wearing backward hats, had their polo shirt collars popped and were fist pumping and spilling each other’s beers like obnoxious college buddies. At 28, I’m beginning to find such shows of youthful debauchery a little tiresome, but on this night, it made me smile. For once, I was standing with people who were letting their inhibitions go and actually enjoying themselves at a concert instead of just standing there with their arms crossed. I enjoyed it so much that I got into the fist-pumping, beer-spilling action myself. It was a f---ing rock concert.

The broken skyline
Today didn’t start off great. Had a woman call me pissed off about a story I’d written about her for my day-job site. She said I should be ashamed of myself for what I do, said that if she ever gets assaulted by somebody outside of her home, she’s going to publicly blame it all on me, called me a few names and hung up on me.

Later that night, while trying to decorate my room, I broke a piece of glass art my girlfriend made me a couple months back. It was a tiny, fused-glass rendition of the Chicago skyline, and it’s one of the nicest and cutest things anybody has ever made for me. I stupidly put it up on the wall only partially fastened, took my hand off it for a second to grab another tack and CRASH, it shattered all over the floor.

Pissed, I grabbed my coat, my iPod and headed for a walk.

My apartment now is much closer to downtown than the last one, so if I walk a few blocks to the east, I feel like I’m walking straight into downtown. When viewing the skyline from this distance (far enough back to get a panoramic view, but too close to see its base), the skyline looks like an elevated mass, as though the buildings were on land at a higher elevation than where you’re standing. You feel like you’re looking at a mountain with big buildings on it instead of a cluster of supertall buildings built from the same elevation you’re at.

As I approached the great gash in the city that is the Dan Ryan Expressway from Milwaukee Avenue, the skyline exposes itself to me like the breasts of a well-endowed woman unstrapping a front-hook bra. I couldn’t help but smile.

Seeing the beauty of this majestic urban horizon in real life made me forget about the glass version of it I’d just foolishly broken.

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