Home Again

I'm really trying to avoid sitting down and doing some serious writing this morning. One more music review. . . .

One of the most important things I love about Chicago is the people. I live in a lakefront neighborhood that, like most lakefront neighborhoods in this city, is pretty diverse. I'm in Andersonville, on the borders of Uptown. Andersonville is pretty upscale, heavily gay, the old Swedish neighborhood with heavy infusions of Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino. I'm a couple of blocks from Little Saigon, where you can walk down the street and see chicken feet in the butcher shop windows. Just south of that is Uptown, which is wildly insane, not very nice, and extraordinarily vivid.

Just few examples of what I mean:

The man at the Persian grocery a couple blocks away, where I stop in sometimes to buy cigarettes. One of the nicest guys I've ever met, friendly, funny, sweet-natured, who does crossword puzzles in Farsi, which fascinates me completely -- I had no idea the writing system was alphabetic, although if I'd stopped to think about it . . . . And he customarily wishes me "Inshallah" when I leave, although that didn't preclude a cheerful "Merry Christmas" over the holidays.

The language lessons in my local coffee shop, a volunteer teaching two Vietnamese women to speak English. The staff at the coffee shop themselves are great -- genuinely friendly people, with great senses of humor.

The staff at the local Latino grocery, where they have great produce cheap. One of the cashiers is an absolutely gorgeous young woman, that incredible mix of European and Native that transcends ethnicity -- she could be Spanish, she could be Japanese, she could be something I can't quite put my finger on. A little shy, but friendly.

My old neighborhood, Lakeview, was even more diverse. I used to call it "south suburban Boys' Town" -- I lived just south of The Strip, the part of Halsted Street where all the gay bars and businesses were for years (and still are, pretty much, but it's no longer even close to "all"). I was within fifteen minutes' walk of just about any type of restaurant I wanted to visit, including Ethiopian and Jamaican. My favorite was a little hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant with a good buffet where I would periodically treat myself to dinner and then waddle home and fall asleep; I love Indian food. The owner was a very quiet man, and invariably courteous, as opposed to being merely polite. Tthe goth kids hang out around Belmont Avenue and up Clark, the guy at my little corner store was Filipino and very funny, and the energy on the streets was incredible.

I'm sure people in other cities can come up with similar things, but I don't live there. (So maybe you should leave some comments.)

Later. . . .