Warming Up in Chicago
Planning for peace in a chaotic time
Writing about travel fun isn’t the easiest thing after the last few weeks we’ve had. Everything is on fire, and the water’s been replaced with kerosene. But amidst the chaos and fear, I’m planning. Planning trips makes me happy and gives me hope that we’ll all be here when it’s time for the plans to come to fruition.
Last week, I relived a chilly Chicago trip. As my Big Spenders know (those are my paid subscribers, the Big Spenders), I got the pleasant surprise last week of an announced Golden Smog show in Chicago in December. I immediately bought a ticket and booked two nights at my favorite Chicago Airbnb.
A word about Airbnb: I don’t like doing business with them, but I do so with my own guidelines. I won’t stay in a place owned by a host who has more than one or two properties on the app. I don’t give my business to the corporations that use it to rent large numbers of spaces they’ve purchased through predatory means. I have Airbnbs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Tulsa that are parts of the property where the owners live. Like, my Chicago spot is a garden apartment with the owners living upstairs. I’ve been staying with them for over three years. My LA and Tulsa spots are guesthouses that used to be garages. In all three cases, I’ve gotten to know my hosts, and they’re all lovely working people who are making some money on the side. We all make concessions under capitalism, and this is one of mine.
Anyway, Chicago … I’m going to be there for three nights in November to see my beloved Patti Smith at the Chicago Theater with my friend Bea. But two days before the show, I’ll be at The Green Mill, jockeying for a position on stage during their monthly poetry slam, hosted by the guy who invented the whole poetry slam idea in the 1980s.
There’s also a good chance I’ll visit my tattoo artist friend Angela at Oleander Tattoo. She’s been tattooing me for six years, only doing the most painful spots. It’s taken me a year and a half to forgive her for the pain she inflicted in doing my beautiful knee tattoos (seriously, don’t get your knees tattooed), but I think I’m ready to return. I have a sleeve of flowers, and we’re going to add little bugs in the blank spots.
In December, I’m returning to my favorite garden apartment to spend an evening with Golden Smog. The show is the same week Andrew Bird does his cozy winter residency in an old church. I’ll be there the night before the Smog.
On Saturday, I was getting skin and hair removed from my legs and face (a waxing and dermaplaning double appointment), and Lauren the esthetician and I talked about Chicago, and how we both love it in the winter. Some of us are just winter people, and Chicago is magic for us.
My early Chicago visits were in winter by accident. The first was to catch one of the closing days of a Van Gogh exhibit at the Art Institute in 2001. Just a quick drive, the museum, sleep, then home.
Almost two years later, after spending Thanksgiving in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I insisted we come home by way of Chicago. It was my reward for keeping it together after being caught in a compromising position with my spouse by his mother, then having to face her at the holiday dinner table half an hour later. I deserved something good for surviving that without commentary.
We didn’t have much time. Just a couple of hours, which we spent in Little India on Devon. My friend Lisa met us for a delightful Indian dinner, then we walked the neighborhood in the snowy twilight, stopping at sari shops and grocery stores. Not only did it have that first snow magic, but I also went home with cheap yet beautiful silk remnants and a couple of cases of pomegranates for next to nothing. I squeezed them into juice, splattering my pale yellow kitchen walls so badly that it looked like we were doing reenactments for “Dateline.” Everyone got that jelly for Christmas.
In December 2019, I spent the better part of a week in Chicago for a series of Wilco shows. I met Angela during that trip. My Airbnb was above the studio where she was working, so I made an appointment to get my Big Dumb Wilco Tattoo.
The tattoo: since all of my tattoos at the time were flowers, I based this one on their 1996 song, “Forget the Flowers”:
You're trying my patience Try pink carnations, red roses, and yellow daffodils Don't forget the flowers someday I know you will.
This one covered “the ditch” on my left arm. That’s the delicate fold on the inside of the elbow. The bracing winds made it hurt even more, a new kind of stinging I’d never experienced with a tattoo. That’s what playing in the ditch gets you.
I nearly died at the Chicago Theater the first night of the shows, before I got the tattoo. I was wearing a short skirt with black tights and black boots. During the show, I was getting a little claustrophobic in my balcony seat, so I decided to visit the lobby. Except there are no lights on the stairs, which have a dark carpet that made my black-clad legs invisible.
I missed a step, dragged my body across the heads of three people with aisle seats, spun around a short pole at the bottom of the stairs like a hipster stripper, and went about my way, not fully convinced that I hadn’t broken that little bone at the bottom of my sternum that kills people when it punctures the heart.
Since the show was well over halfway finished and I had a ticket for another one that week if I didn’t die in my sleep, I called it a night. Had some Lou Malnati’s deep dish for my potential final meal, and cozied up in the plush dressings of my apartment, where I was continually startled by a fuzzy pillow that looked like a dog from the corner of my eye in bed.
Before the bruise and tattoo and faux dog, though, I had a perfect Chicago winter day: a trip to a Wilco popup shop, the Art Institute for a Warhol special exhibit, a snowy walk at rush hour to a quiet coffeehouse to pass the time before bourbon cocktails with my friend Allison at the Chicago Athletic Association, then on to the Chicago Theater for my acrobatics act.
But first thing that day, on my way to the museum, I hit Small Cheval in Wicker Park for a quick lunch. It was one of the last times I sat at a communal table before Covid. Next to me, a young mother shared a burger and fries with a toddler named Magnus. She looked exhausted, and I let her be. Having been in that situation a decade before, I assumed she probably wanted quiet.
“Do you want to split a shake with my son?” she asked. “A whole one’s too big for him. I usually share one with him, but I had to get one with a shot of whiskey for myself today.”
I thanked her, said yes, and got an empty cup so we could pour the shake between Magnus and me.
Mama was having A DAY, turns out. I listened as she talked about her in-laws causing holiday chaos, how magical and difficult Christmas is with little ones, and how bone-weary simply loving a child can leave you sometimes. I was happy to listen, sipping cold shakes on a cold day, trying to be a part of the village I needed 14 years before when I was in her shoes.
I never did get her name, but I thanked her for the shake, which was thick and creamy, perfectly complimenting the French fries dunked in garlicky aioli on a frigid day.
In the canyons of the city, dim and overcast at the height of December days, Chicago offers the warmth of darkened rooms, hot coffee, and whiskey-warmed cups cradled in the hands of people who will talk to you, slowing down and pausing when life is too much instead of plowing through. There are golden moments among strangers and friends in Chicago. Let the winter bring you close enough to whisper your secrets. We’re all setting suns, sharing our warmth.
Chicago’s cold but has great coffee. Wanna buy me a cup?
This post makes me feel nostalgic for Chicago in the winter, and I've never been to Chicago in the winter! (The Jesus, Etc. banners! Oof! Perfection.)
Just flew home Via Chicago and started bawling at the sight of the skyline at night. That city is instant nostalgia. I lived there from age 25 to 29 (met my husband there) and yet it lives and loves forever within me.