"Horses" in Chicago
Celebrating my favorite album in one of my favorite places.
Hey! Guess what? 6 Days Travels is a real business! I’m still learning, and will be for a while, but if you have a trip you’re ready to plan—or even if you’re still in the daydreaming phase and want to brainstorm, drop me a note here, through the website’s contact form, or email 6daystravels@gmail.com. Also, I’m sussing out how to balance my travel advising work with my travel writing. I absolutely don’t want to spam readers, so this will likely be the only call-to-action I make. That said, I do plan on writing about trips I’m planning, but that’s also going to take some practice.
We’ve covered how I often feel like a flake because I rarely consider anything set in stone and will cancel an outing or a trip with little hesitation. That wasn’t the case when I decided to trim down my trip to Chicago two weeks ago. Originally, I had booked four days and three nights so I could go to the monthly poetry slam at The Green Mill on Sunday, the Patti Smith show at the Chicago Theater on Monday, and then some time to just be in Chicago after being away for a year and a half.
But the California trip was so much bigger than I anticipated, which is saying a lot. When I got home and took a look at how I felt (and how my bank account looked), I realized I’d be much happier just driving up on Monday, going to the concert, and coming home on Tuesday. Especially since I have another, slightly longer Chicago visit scheduled for December.
The perfect lazy person’s night in Chicago? On it!
Driving to Chicago from my home in Belleville is just about as close to autopilot as it gets for me. For all of the incredible drives I took in California, St. Louis to Chicago is both quick (4.5 hours) and mindless (entirely on I-55 with most signs of life appearing in Springfield and Bloomington-Normal before hitting the far west suburbs). I can usually make it in two shifts, stopping once at Wally’s for gas, a pee, caffeine, and snacks (their hand-cut chips are better than the ones at Buc-ee’s).
My favorite Chicago Airbnb requires a 2-night stay, but has a generous cancellation policy. I hated to cancel close to the date, but I’ll be there in December.
For a single night, I returned to Hotel Versey, my favorite Chicago hotel. It’s not fancy, but it’s fun. Located in Lincoln Park, it’s convenient to lots of local goodies. Parking prices are vastly less inflated than downtown. It’s a great way to drop yourself into the heart of Chicago.
Since this was a no-nonsense trip, I ordered dinner delivery from a rotisserie chicken joint, then fluffed myself up for the show.
My friend Bea did a stellar job in choosing our tickets—box seats a bit towards stage right. Much better than the balcony that almost killed me last time I was there. Sadly, Bea was returning to Chicago from some family-related travel, and one of her flights was delayed to the point of making it all but impossible to catch any of the concert. While we know that I’m fine with flying solo, I was looking forward to Bea’s company.
I’ve seen Patti Smith a bunch of times in the last dozen years, knowing full well that nothing will ever top the first time I saw her. She was at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis in May of 2013, in a big open area with a small stage they use for artist lectures. Maybe 300 seats were closely arranged in the space. Patti was doing a tour that mixed festival appearances with smaller events where she played acoustic and read passages from her book “Just Kids”. (A nod from me to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe in light of yesterday’s World AIDS Day)
When Patti came out, the crew had trouble turning down the houselights. To which she requested that they be left on because being able to see faces was a nice change of pace.
When the show finished, after the passage she wrote about Mapplethorpe’s death, there was no gathering yourself before the houselights came up. All the seats had been gradually scooted towards the stage, everyone elbow to elbow, looking at the tear-streaked faces of their neighbors. Most of us exited in silence with a few muffled sounds of weeping. It was as if we were at Mapplethorpe’s funeral, so visceral was her reading of his loss and what it meant.
Yeah … no one can top that perfect combination of planned and unplanned colliding to create a moment of rare mass emotional vulnerability.
But even without creating a once-in-a-lifetime moment every show, Patti’s still a must-see for me. She hasn’t played St. Louis since that show, so I’ve made a lot of trips to Chicago, New Mexico, and Los Angeles for her. In fact, it was one of her shows that finally got me to look past my preconceived notions about Los Angeles and make my first trip to the city that’s now my favorite.
Thanks, Patti!
This tour was all about celebrating the 50th anniversary of Patti’s debut album, Horses. Patti hadn’t set out to be a musician who created one of the prototypes for punk rock. She was a poet who made friends with musicians, and a student of the Beat era poets who set their words to improvised music on stages they shared with their musician friends. As a lyric-loving writer, that alone would suck me in. But the absolute soul-rattling power of the music made the album into a piece of art of a new caliber. To this day, it’s still fresh and relevant, especially on stage.
In more recent shows, I got the feeling Patti might be slowing down. After all, she’ll turn 79 at the end of December. There were absolutely no signs of that in Chicago, where she jumped and bounced in her black lace-up boots, spat, raged, and mesmerized.
After the show, which moved me to both tears and screams multiple times, I got stuck standing outside the theater in the frigid night, playing Lyft Roulette. I don’t know the trick for getting a post-concert ride. Doesn’t matter what city or venue. I am damn near always one of the first people out the door with my ride already ordered, and still one of the last people outside, damn near begging anyone for a ride.
I miss taxi cabs outside of shows.
Someday, I’ll tell you about realizing I was in an illegal Lyft/Uber/cab after the last Patti Smith show in Chicago (Actually, that’s pretty much the story. I was fine, aside from later being aghast at my lack of savvy.)
But something happened while I stood outside, watching one ride after another cancel, go to the wrong place, disappear into Lake Michigan, etc. Other aging punk women kept telling me I was beautiful. My favorite was the woman who stopped on the opposite side of the sidewalk and, through all of the post-show foot traffic, caught my eye. While holding eye contact, she motioned from her own head to toe, pointed at me, and yelled, “Beautiful!” through the crowd.
So punk, women boosting other women while we grappled with how to return to the cold city streets after being taken to heaven by our rock n’ roll godmother. In the city of her birth, on yet another cold Chicago night. Chilled and far from home, but with my people. They’re everywhere I look.
Love the ending of this piece! Patti’s shows (and Patti’s fans) are the best