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?!?”
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