Fear and Loathing in Chicago

Location: Chicago, IL

Date: 2008

Question: What’s the easiest way to start a riot in Chicago?

Answer: Throw a cheeseburger into the crowd.

It’s funny because it’s true.  Chi-town (and the Midwest in general) has enough fat people to make anyone but a Houstonite (Houstonian? Hous-ass-bitch?) blush.  Occasionally this blubber comes in handy. For example, as a built-in ass cushion while navigating the wet and frozen streets that are de rigeur six months out of the year. The world was treated to a rather emphatic demonstration of this eventuality when RobertCheyuriot slipped on the frozen finish line en route to (barely) winning Chicago Marathon.  While the ultra-skinny Cheyuriot was, pardon the pun, out cold, the average Chicagoan would have escaped with nothing more than a wet patch on their amply proportioned derriere.

 

Back to the point:  This story is about food.  And shame.  And what Chicagoans are willing to go through to wrap their gums around some mediocre grub.

The Taste of Chicago is the apotheosis of human gluttony.  Each day, upwards of one million fatties converge on Grant Park over the fourth of July weekend to - as the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live put it - consume  mass quantities.  As a neophyte to the city, I’d heard the legends but refused to believe them, preferring to witness the spectacle myself before rendering judgment. 

Wary of the greasy mosh pits and uninvited demonstrations of gastrointestinal fortitude described to me by longtime residents, I paid my visit to the fair at 11 AM on a Tuesday.  There were crowds, but it wasn’t that bad.  The following year I got cocky.  My girlfriend and I paid our visit on July third, traditionally the busiest day at the festival.  I suggested we time our visit to occur just before the evening’s fireworks display began.  This was enough to make my girlfriend, a jaded Chicago native, raise an eyebrow.  “If that’s what you want,” she said.

That’s what I wanted.  We arrived around 3 PM, just as the festival was reaching critical mass.  People were packed in so tightly that you could touch at least ten of your fellow city dwellers at any given moment.  Locomotion was challenging; in spots where the crowds were thin one could waddle along at something resembling the languid strut of a pimp. In the thickest parts of the crowd you were lucky to move ten yards in a minute, humanity pressing in on you from all directions.  At this incredible density, it was very easy to resent obese people, whose added bulk provided just that much more surface area with which to convey their sweaty, greasy embrace to those misfortunate enough to run alongside.

Very quickly, it became apparent that cuisine dictated foot traffic.  The worse the junk food (nutritionally speaking), the worse the crowd and the beefier the folks.  The fried chicken tent was awash with XXL Southsiders.  The deep dish pizza pavilion was mobbed by flushed and sunburned suburbanites.  And the absolute epicenter of this flesh storm was the funnel cake booth, the twain where both groups met.  A hundred yards in any direction from the tent, bodies were packed so tightly that air seemed a precious commodity and what oxygen one could draw was tainted with the oily stink of overfed humanity.

This did not deter us.  I needed a funnel cake something fierce. Unfortunately, after five or six minutes of trying to work our way towards the Mecca of fried dough, it became clear that we would get there a lot faster if only one of us went.  We split up, Susan continuing towards the food stand while I turned my attentions to staking out a spot where we could safely feed.  Serendipitously, this decision would lead me to witness, not one, but two defining images of these modern times.

It began mundanely enough with one of the herd migrating away from the funnel cake tent.  Even by Taste standards, this woman was gigantic.  I estimated her weight at 350, give or take a polish sausage.  Despite her size, she had persevered in getting a funnel cake with the works, and was (presumably) in the act of returning to her lair with her prize.  Because of the crowding, there was simply no room to hold food at your side, as people normally do.  To adapt, this woman, along with many others, had resorted to holding their funnel cakes aloft, overhead where it was safe from the plebian masses.  It was an amusing-but-effective technique; from my vantage point, it looked as though she was making a doughy offering to the gods.

The deities apparently declined. I watched the woman with the fascination all of us reserve for those living at the physical extremes as the fat woman began to wear down from the exertion of carrying her desert aloft. Fatigue began to set in and her arms began to quiver. The paper plate she held tilted forward, slowly at first, then more dramatically.  Atop the unbalanced funnel cake, a scoop of vanilla ice cream began to roll, slowly at first and then faster as it picked up momentum. 

Helplessly, I watched the accident unfold. The ball of ice cream was now sliding towards the edge of the plate at an alarming rate, picking up more powdered sugar, toffee and chocolate syrup with each passing moment. Coated with the three messiest substances known to man, the frozen ball of cream avalanched across her plate, hung for a precious second… and plummeted over the side, directly onto the top of the fat woman’s head.

Though she had undoubtedly registered the impact, the lady did not immediately react.  Slowly, her face adopted the grim countenance of someone whose head has been shat upon by a bird.  Then her eyes widened as she realized that bird shit is neither as large or cold as the semisolid object topping her head.  Best of all (for me, at least), the copious heat of the day had conspired to destabilize the ice cream/chocolate/sugar mixture, which had now begun to slide down her face.

You must understand the woman’s position to appreciate the true direness of her plight.  Normally, removing the offending confection would be a simple matter.  In this situation, however, Funnel cake Woman lacked both a free hand and room to maneuver.  Any attempt to pluck the ice cream away would undoubtedly unbalance her funnel cake completely, sending it crashing down and further soiling her (I shall ignore for the moment the possibility that the woman was simply unwilling to abandon her dessert.  She’s suffered enough already.).  Nor could she set her plate down, or even bring it below head level.  In short, she was screwed.

Or was she?  I saw a gleam of possibility in her piggy eye.  And then I saw the tasty solution she had devised.  The ball of ice cream was sliding down her temple.  The woman angled her head so that the ball would run by the corner of her mouth.  There it was: If she could somehow eat the entire ball of ice cream in one massive bite, all would not be lost.

It was a heroic attempt.  Funnel Cake Woman’s tongue sprang from her mouth like a spring-loaded predator on a national geographic video, lassoing around its prey and corralling it towards her gaping maw.  She was in her element, acting on instinct and at ease with every part of the act. As the ice cream made contact with her searching lips, I was certain this was going to work.  Then someone jostled her and the ice cream popped free.  The largely-intact glob landed on one of her slab breasts, where it lay, melting into her pre-shrunk cotton she-tent. 

This woman must have really been attached to her shirt. She did a little shimmy, trying to dislodge it, but there was nowhere to go. Panic set in. Funnel Cake Woman began emitting frantic little yelps that failed to articulate her situation but succeeded in drawing the attention of the five or so people who were pressed into direct physical contact with her.  Immediately, each of them began to panic as well, worried about being soiled by the ice cream leaking off of this behemoth (who, incidentally, still held her funnel cake high and proud).  Those in the immediate vicinity began yelling, imploring Funnel Cake Woman to back away from them.  This added pressure backfired badly.  The obviously-rattled Funnel Cake Woman totally freaked out, and began to do a little spinning dance that succeeded only in wiping ice cream against every trapped person around her.  In turn, most of those she tagged then did their own little evasive maneuvers, spreading melted dairy product into a second rank of unsuspecting folks.  It was the absolute worst-case scenario for a single ball of spilt ice cream.  As an observer outside the danger zone, I was laughing so hard I was worried about blowing a blood vessel and stroking out.

But that’s not all. Before beginning part two of this story, let me caution you: This will not top part one.  Stop reading if you’d like to go out on a giggly high provided by a good ice cream panic.  Otherwise, read on:

The second sordid chapter began only moments after the conclusion of the opening act.  Cries of dismay still rang in my ears as I, still chuckling, poked away from the scene of the mess.  I had gone no further that ten yards (albeit taking several minutes in doing so) when I witnessed a fight at extreme crowd density.  A woman (who we’ll call “Ghetto Lady #1”) was coming through the crowd, child in tow.  Being packed in so tightly, personal space was nonexistent and tempers were running high.  Ghetto Lady #1 was no exception.  “Stay back!  Stay back!” she brayed.  This was akin to asking a person with the world’s most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control their shitting - it just wasn’t going to happen.  As the crowd surged back and forth, she changed tactics.  “Don’t press on my child!” she admonished no one in particular, “Ima whup yo’ ass ifya press on my child!” 

A woman of similarly fair breeding (whom I will refer to as “Ghetto Lady #2”) took it upon herself to correct the ill manners of Ghetto Lady #1.

“Shut up and handle it, bitch!” said Ghetto Lady #2.   

From there, it was on.  Trying to represent ebonics in typeset hurts my fingers, so I won’t cover the back and forth of the argument that precipitated the battle. Near as I could tell, Ghetto Lady #1 (who was putting on an admirable job as a role model for her kid, I should add) triggered the actual physical altercation by threatening to slap Ghetto Lady #2 “back into the cooch she came out of.”

“You ain’t doin’ shit - yo’ pimp hand be trapped!” replied Ghetto Lady #2.  In addition to being hilarious, this comment was factually accurate.  We were still in the thickest part of the crowd, and hands were by-and-large relegated to one’s side. 

Still, it was too much.  The gauntlet had been laid down and, were it possible to do so, picked up again.  It was setting up to be the lamest fight ever; There was no way to swing, kick, elbow, pull hair, or any of the nastier moves that we’ve all claimed to use in our street fighting days.

Both women, probably realizing this, decided to go at it by shocking each other by going “BWLAAAAHHH!” really loudly, each letting their tongue hang out like one of the “Wassup” guys from the beer commercials.  They also widened their eyes threateningly for emphasis.  This went on for a minute as they decide how to escalate.  Finally, Ghetto Lady #2 says “Ooh, bitch.  You gonna get it now,” and headbutts her nemesis.

There is a proper way to do damage with a headbutt.  It generally involves rearing back and loading the spine before delivering the blow.  With no room for that, the ladies exchanged harmless, neck-only headbutts.  This ineffective display went on for an embarrassingly long time, to the delight of the crowd.  Several bets were placed by drunken rednecks on who would win.

The fight ended when the ladies (through their lame headbutting) tangled their braids to such an extreme degree that their heads were literally stuck together.  No, seriously.  Both of them had to ask for help from someone in the crowd to separate them.  Historically, being helplessly attached to your opponent is a great way to end a fight.  If Churchill had superglued his hand to Hitler’s, we could have saved a lot of lives.  In the present, there were a few more desultory insults regarding the quality (or lack thereof) of each participant’s weave, but things cooled rapidly.

As order was restored, my girlfriend reappeared next to me.  “Want some funnel cake?” she asked.  I bit a piece directly off the plate.  It was pretty good.  “Did I miss anything?” my girlfriend asked.  I shrugged.  The last thing I heard was Ghetto Lady #1 yelling at the crowd “Where my child?!?! Anyone seen my little boy?!?”

Mother of the Year #1.

Tour de Midget

From the surreal files:

The place to ride a bike in Chicago has to be the lakefront path.  Winding 18 miles along the city’s uneasy border with Lake Michigan, the path is overcrowded in the summer, deserted during the frigid winter, and home to just about every sight you could hope to see.  One Sunday, I spotted a man pushing a wheelchair occupied by a mannequin whose arm was position to hold an old-fashioned VHS video camera.  The day after Halloween, I spotted a double dong dildo by Roosevelt Ave. 

However, these events pale compared to the events of one chilly May morning.  Trying to get a little exercise in, I’d decided to ride my bike uptown, and was heading north on the path when I came across a pack of children riding their bikes.  This in and of itself was nothing new; Packs of rugrats often scuttled up the path, particularly by Southside neighborhoods where parental supervision was… shall we say a but more lax. This group of kids was out in the middle of nowhere, and nary an adult was to be seen accompanying these kids.  Even though the group was fairly well-behaved – very little of the classic weaving associated with children on bikes – the absence of an adult enforcer had me worried. 

As I passed them, I realized that the children were actually midgets.  A pack of cycling midgets.  All of them were pedaling tiny road bikes and wearing tiny spandex shorts.  Most of them were wearing pink and purple helmets that were obviously made for children.

They were moving slowly.  I fell in behind them and waited for them to get off the path.  There are three kinds of people you just don’t blow by: cops, (real) people in wheelchairs, and midgets. 

The midgets showed no signs of deviating from the path.  After about five minutes, I noticed one of the really tiny midgets was riding one of those kid bike trailers attached to another, slightly larger midget's bike. A minute later, he turned back to me and said, "Nice day for a ride, eh?" in a squeaky little voice.

This freaked me out. I nodded solemnly, said “screw this” to myself, turned for home and ate a gigantic breakfast.

Noah Averts Political Strife

Nestled in the inner city of south Chicago, the Hyde Park neighborhood is a bastion of liberalism.  The neighborhood was not only home to the ultra-liberal University of Chicago, but is also home to current president Barack Obama (note to self: edit article in one to five years), whose former office was now a bike shop around the corner. 

Unsurprisingly, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the favored candidate for the area (as well as the state) was completely decided.  Like any area that leaned heavily to the left or right, propaganda often ran unchecked, and soon reached ridiculous proportions, at least to someone who was particularly moderate.  Or reasonably sane. 

One of the most outrageous claims was the “Impeach Bush” movement, ostensibly over accusations that he’d lied about our reasons for invading Iraq.  While I doubt anyone in the Bush administration was on tenterhooks over the notion, the school of thought had spread across the neighborhood like an infectious disease. 

In my awesome opinion, political bloviation is the greatest waste of time and effort in the modern age, one step removed from trailer trash baby mommas yelling at each other on Jerry Springer.  That said, when you see someone living in fantasy land, you just can’t resist calling them out.  For several months, I’d been walking past a battered Jetta covered with stickers proclaiming “Clinton/Gore in ’92” and “Republicans for Voldemort.”

Three weeks before the election, the Jetta’s owner added to his or her arsenal by stuffing a cardboard placard in his back window that read “Impeach Bush.” And I called shenanigans.  The next day, I left the following note under his windshield wiper:

Dear motorist,

Hey dude, we get it: You’re a man of the people, an idealist who doesn’t buy into the political-industrial complex, stands up for his beliefs, all that shit. We love your wit, the way you bravely add another layer of bumper stickers to the Jetta to show everyone that you’re a free-thinking intellectual who apparently supports every last platform of a major political party. 

But then you had to ruin the illusion of intelligence with your “Impeach Bush” sign.  You see, there’s a hole in your logic large enough to drive a beer truck through.  I’m not sure how much you know about governmental succession, my Jetta-driving friend, but unless you want Tricky Dick Cheney running the show, I’d take the sign down.

It’s a tough world, mi amigo, but sometimes we’ve got to settle for just keeping the shit in the toilet.

Cheers,

Concerned Independent

The next day, the sign was gone.

That Famous Line

In which Noah discusses best sexual practices with his fiance’s father.

Note: I was forbidden from sharing this story until Susan’s father died. Unfortunately, he passed away a few months ago at the ripe old age of 88. This one’s for you, Jerry.  

In June of 2010, during a trip to San Francisco, I convinced a woman to marry me. As these things tend to go, Susan and I spent the next month basking in the wash of attention that inevitably follows the facebook relationship status change from “in a relationship with…” to “engaged to…” Most of the attention comes from married or engaged girls in their late twenties and early thirties.  These people, I suspected, were not so much happy for Susan and me as they were relieved that someone else also decided to get married, providing herd-mentality validation of their life decisions that they so craved. 

But I digress. Amidst this frenzy of congratulations, it took us about a month to realize that no one had broken the news to Susan’s father. This was understandable. Susan’s dad was ancient. And divorced from Susan’s mother, which meant he was out of the loop, in a non-dementia sort of way.

“Do you want to go by your dad’s tonight and tell him you will soon belong to me?” I asked Susan one evening.

“I guess.  I’ll get my coat- hey, isn’t Dancing With the Stars on tonight?” Susan asked, sinking back into the couch.

Several more apathetic weeks passed before we actually made the trip downtown to tell her dad the news.

Let’s break from the present story for a moment to travel six years back in time, all the way back to a bullshitting session that occurred when I was a not-so-wee graduate student at the University of Florida. On that fateful day, I was part of a routine bullshitting session. The topic on this particular day was marriage. Specifically, one of my friends had just gotten engaged and the rest of us were trying to imagine ways for him to screw his engagement up.

“OK, everyone” I asked, ”Let’s say you want to get out of the relationship. Your plan is to offend the parents so much that they forbid their daughter from ever seeing you again, no matter how much she pleads that you really didn’t mean it.”

‘Rules?” someone inquired.

“Simple. You can say one thing and one thing only, and it’s gotta be bad, so bad that you would never again be allowed to enter these people’s home again. They would attack you on sight, just because you said whatever it is you said. So what is it? What can you say that would be that massively offensive?”

“I got it” my roommate said, “Just eyeball the mother and then say ‘I see where your daughter gets her slutty looks’ to the father.”

“Good one,” I said. “Anyone else?”

And so it went. The clear winner was by girl named Lindsay, whose prize is being mentioned by name in this story. Here was her entry: “Look the dad in the eyes and say ‘Sir, of course we’re engaged in premarital sex now, but I want you to know that we’re saving the butt for marriage.’”

The sheer political incorrectness of telling a parent something like this intrigued me.  For years after, I prompted my friends to try the line (usually claiming I had thought of it – sorry Lindsay), particularly to a priest in mandatory Catholic premarital counseling.  To my knowledge, no one has had the courage to utter these words under battle conditions. 

If you know about literary foreshadowing, you may know where this is going.

Flash back to present day, as we sit down to dinner with Jerry. Here’s the biopic on the guy: In his late fifties, he married a woman 25 years younger and produced a single child. Susan was not close to her father in the way that most children are. After three years of dating, Susan offhandedly mentioned to me that her father had never once said he loved her, nor had she ever told him she loved him. 

As Jerry aged out, Susan’s mother divorced him and married a truck driver she’d known in grade school. According to the unspoken rules that govern women who divorce their much older spouse, Susan’s mom still took care of her now-decrepit ex-husband, in the process exposing him to the new life she had made for herself with a younger man.  Occasionally, we would have forced family events consisting of Susan and I, Susan’s mother and her new husband, and a very bitter Jerry. These were not pleasant.

When not on forced family outings, Jerry lived alone in a cluttered downtown apartment. Most of his time was spent sitting on the couch, admiring a vaguely creepy photo of himself from twenty years previous. Jerry’s main passion (aside from complaining about Susan’s mom divorcing him) was food. He still made the daily plod to McDonalds, and Susan often bought him Twinkies as birthday or Christmas presents. Jerry may have been waiting to die, but he was going out with a full stomach.

Knowing this, we had decided to take him out to dinner to break bread and share the good news.  “Keep him moving, he eats slow,” Susan instructed, as we knocked on his door.  “No dessert.”

Before we’d even reached the restaurant, Jerry was already getting pissed about his life. “Can you believe your mother left me for a truck driver?” he asked as we sat down.  Whine with cheese; the ultimate for Jerry.  As our appetizers arrived, it was time for Susan to break the news. 

Susan tried valiantly to ease her father into the news with an elegant gesture, first dangling a ring-bearing hand in front of the old man, then asking him whether he noticed anything new about her appearance. Nothing, Jerry reported, tearing a piece of bread apart with an audible grunt.

(Since you’re no doubt wondering: At this point, I had no intention of using the line, which was safely buried in my subconscious, far from my tongue.) 

“Guess what happened on our trip to California, dad?” Susan tried again. 

Jerry didn’t look up, too intent on putting a second packet of butter onto his bread.  “I was stationed near San Francisco during World War Two,” he said, stuffing bread into his mouth.  “I was with the air wing at –“

“Noah and I had a little talk while we were in San Francisco,” Susan pressed on, cutting off the impending story.  “And he gave me something.” Another brandishing of her ring.

(Still wondering? At this point I had no intention of using the line.)

“That’s very good,” Jerry said through a mouthful of bread.  “If your mother would have talked with me-“

The soup had arrived, and Susan was out of patience. “Dad,” Susan interrupted, “we’re engaged.”

“And what is it you’re engaged in?” Jerry asked, completely serious.

The word ‘engaged’ set me off. From the derelict netherworld of my mind, the memory of Lindsay’s line hit me like a bolt of lightning. There was no time to review its appropriateness: The thing about lines is, if you don’t have the right timing, they tend to suck. It was now or never, and I picked now. I figured I had little to lose; Jerry frequently forgot my name. 

“We’re engaged in premarital sex,” I announced.  “But don’t worry; We’re saving the butt for marriage.”

Susan, who was already about to blow up with exasperation, jabbed me in the leg, but the words were already out.  Beneath the table, I moved my hand, partly to shield my groin from additional attacks by Susan, partly to check to see if my balls had grown noticeably. 

Jerry had ordered the tomato broth. He had a spoonful of it inches from his lips when I delivered the line.  Without comment, he downed the liquid. We waited with bated breath for him to finish his old-man swallowing and react.

“This soup… is delicious,” Jerry announced, resuming eating as though nothing had happened.

“I think I broke his brain,” I said out loud to Susan.

“Asshole,” she said tiredly, rubbing her forehead.

“Takes one to marry one,” I replied.

‘What’s that?” Jerry asked, looking up from his now-empty cup.

“We’re getting married!” Susan snapped.

“Oh,” said Jerry.

Eight seconds passed in silence.

“The soup here is wonderful,” Jerry added.