The Happiest Place in Chicago

Yesterday I found the happiest place in Chicago. It was unexpected, during rush hour, in the least likely of spots, and finding it changed my day.

Annoyed at having waited until five o'clock to finish writing and head home, I pounded down the stairs to the blue line stop at Washington and Dearborn. As I battled the crowd of corporate clones, the most pleasant sound echoed back to me. It was the sound of a lazy afternoon, of a light-hearted crush, of la vie en rose. It was the sound of Dixieland jazz.

There, in the middle of the platform were two musicians, swaying and bopping, rambling along without a care in the world. One young man with thinning blond hair played a tuba and a skinny man wearing a black hat played the trombone. He wore tambourine symbols around his ankles that he clicked together when the song grew especially chipper.

Dixieland jazz transformed the dingy corridor into a lively music hall. Commuters shyly turned towards the sound as they watched for an approaching train, distracted from their newspapers and novels. A few tapped their feet, a few nodded, and it was clear they envied these musicians. I surely did, for it was apparent by their energy and conviction that there was nothing else they wanted in all their lives but to play the syncopated rhythms of this lovely music.

As I find myself in the middle of an existential crisis, I felt inspired to see artists so content with life. And instead of worrying about my own predicament – to chase a dream or settle for money – I merely listened to the music and let myself drift to the sunny afternoon of which it spoke.

Even the trains seemed to belong to another time, chugging into the station as though from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, as though the people riding them weren’t distressed about bills and loans and unemployment.

I rode the train home, cheerful all the way, hardly bothered by the crowds and the unexpected stops. For a few moments, life felt A-Okay, and I basked in it as long as I could.

India Town Afternoon

With an uncertain future and an empty wallet, it seems now, more than ever, I ache to be a foreigner again. Few experiences are more enlivening than being a foreigner, navigating the narrow streets of a metropolis amidst its unusual patterns, colors, and smells. At once I feel the need to find the one taste or smell to forever imprint the experience in my memory, while at the same time not understanding much of anything, and accepting that I never really will.

So when my restlessness and nostalgia are particularly strong, I celebrate one great appeal of a cosmopolitan city: its vibrant, ethnic neighborhoods where, if I get off at the right El stop, I can be uncomfortably immersed into a busy crowd. One of my favorite places to do this is in India Town (Devon Avenue to Chicagoans), where I often hear languages I don’t understand, see no one I recognize, and Chicago’s skyscrapers are seemingly thousands of miles away.

Just four or five congested blocks comprise India Town at the northwestern edge of Chicago. The first thing I do after the long journey there is go to the Nikhar Beauty Salon for the best brow thread in Chicago. Nikhar in itself is unremarkable with its grey walls, faded posters, soft Indian pop music, and a neon sign in the window. But when it comes to price and service, it more than delivers.

As soon as I walk in, a friendly woman ushers me to an empty chair, without having made a reservation. I lay back as the woman begins. She runs the thread back and forth, back and forth, quickly and methodically, and speaks to the other women in their native language. I have no idea if she’s gossiping about the arch of my brow or India’s newest pop star. Every now and then she instructs me to hold something, her accent thick and the rhythm of her English unfamiliar. When she’s done my brows look prefect, as if I’d gone to a five-star salon downtown, instead of this little gem that charged me pennies in comparison.

After the brow thread, if I’m with friends, I head to one of the many Indian buffets on Devon, where I eat more food than necessary for a Sunday afternoon. I default to the Indian Garden, its décor straight out of a 1993 wedding banquet, its buffet predictable but reliable with curries, lamb, chicken, rice, vegetables, and my favorite, green beans with coconut. The staff is friendly, my water glass never empty, and the naan plentiful. After a feast of a meal, I have spent less than $15 and will be content for hours, even days, to come.

The third stop of the afternoon is at one of India Town’s grocery stores. In front, children and elderly gather to watch sugar cane ground through a machine to make sweet drinks on a summer day. Inside, mothers and father stock up on goods from the homeland. At these stores, the produce is fresh and reasonably priced. There are mangoes and star fruit and even a cucumber that looks like a snake. I imagine these exotic fruits and vegetables come from a secluded jungle far from the gleaming concrete jungle of Chicago. Here in the India Town markets are the most interesting packages of noodles and rice and cookies and crackers, clearly made somewhere with different ideas of what’s alluring and appealing, what is idolized and what sells. In India Town, I feel far from the sophisticated marketing schemes of yuppie grocery stores in the city, where I’m convinced to spend $10 on a box of organic rice. In India Town, I’m not lured into buying the more expensive product because of how it will make me look. Here, I merely buy because what I see looks good.

It reminds me of the food stalls crowding Seoul’s narrow streets, pointing to what I want and guessing how much it will cost. Or those afternoons at E-Mart, Korea’s national grocery chain, where the products looked familiar, but didn’t always turn out to be what I wanted. Back then, I never forgot that I was a foreigner and never felt more alive in my own haze of misunderstanding and communicative inadequacies.

I leave the grocery store and wander in and out of a few more before my trek back to Wicker Park. Having made a tiny dent in my wallet, I feel full and satisfied. I still have the urge to hop a plane to another continent, but with the taste of exotic food and unfamiliar sounds still lingering, for now it’s enough to keep me happy in Chicago.

Warning Signs

Big cities are full of warnings. Whether we hear them from friends or in urban legends, we know not to go to certain areas after dark and we learn not to use public transportation on game day. Some warnings are far more serious than others, as the consequences of ignoring them can span from embarrassment to jail to death.

Live in the city long enough and we become experts at which warnings need heeding and which don’t, and we can laugh at those who don’t know the difference.

This happened to me today when I watched a rookie truck driver cause a massive traffic jam on North Avenue, having ignored an obvious warning sign.

Unmovable North Avenue traffic on a weekday afternoon is rare. As soon as I stepped outside, I saw stationary taillights lined up at least a half-mile in front of my apartment. Realizing I could walk faster than traffic moved, I soon caught up with the North Avenue bus at the site of the traffic jam. There, just past the Kennedy Expressway, a semi-truck was stuck under the Metra overpass. The top of the truck grated the iron rafters of the bridge, hopelessly ignorant of that yellow sign warning of a twelve foot, six inch clearance.

It was a mess, as traffic exiting the expressway fed into the bottleneck. A group of CTA workers huddled in the choked lanes, deciding what to do. A young woman walking by shouted at them in a thick accent, “Ever think of lettin’ the fuckin’ air outta the fuckin’ tires?”

“Ever think of watchin’ your fuckin’ mouth?”

I continued walking and noticed that the driver was still seat-belted in the truck. He seemed either unaware of the mess or didn’t want to face it. Such a silly situation, I thought, for the warning sign had been so blatantly clear. What kind of person sees that and moves forward anyway? What must that driver’s thought process have been like? That bridge looks mighty low. There's a good chance I could get stuck, and anger a lot of people. But I will go there anyway because I can’t seem to stop myself.

At some time or another, we are all like that truck driver. We press forth when the warning signs are painfully clear. It might not even be ignorance; it might just be an urge to press our luck. Most of the time though, we already know luck has nothing to do with it, and we go ahead anyway. For the driver, going under that bridge was the fastest way from point A to point B and he was too impatient to take the longer, but ultimately more successful route. For the rest of us, it is likely impatience and unruly curiosity that get us in trouble. The only time we’re lucky is when the incident passes as quickly as it began and we annoy as few people as possible.

In Chicago, there are many warnings and even more chances for us to ignore them. Thankfully, we get wiser. After some time, our mistakes damage fewer and take less time to fix. Only then can we discern which warnings deserve heeding and which don’t. Knowing that is the difference between being stupid and taking a risk that may just pay off in the end. Let’s just hope we recognize the moments when they appear.

Those Who Come and Go From Chicago

A city’s life is visible in the way it changes, and more importantly, who changes it. Gangsters, politicians, hipsters, punks – they’re the ones who corrupted Chicago’s neighborhoods, turned sketchy bars into artsy hangouts, and commissioned some of the city’s most beautiful buildings. No matter their reputation, the mark they left on Chicago is undeniable.

But there are also those who stamp Chicago in small ways that go unnoticed by the general public. For me, these people were my personal tour guides and my partners in crime. They were equally curious about Chicago’s attractions and mysteries. They were special people who helped me love Chicago, but have since left the city for good. Knowing them in the city has significantly changed my life here.

It all started by envying my sister’s life in Chicago while I lived in Wisconsin. Chicago nurtured Stephanie’s admirable independence, where she could live as a true artist. Stephanie painted the streets of Wicker Park, made this city her own, and inspired me to do the same.

In my first city post-college/Korea, it was Heather Lee, a friend from college, who showed me how to keep part of Madison alive here in Chicago. Heather brought me to Badger games at Redmond’s and Will’s on fall Saturdays, and introduced me to countless friends at her beer-themed house parties.

It was at one such “Bring Strange Beer” party that I met Christine and Gisella, twentysomethings with more curiosity about Chicago than anyone I’ve met. For when I was with Christine and Gisella, I discovered Indian food and brow threads on Devon. With these girls, I salsa danced for the first time at Rumba, tried Chicago’s own Argo Tea, ran around downtown on St. Patrick’s Day, and realized that the suburbs aren’t so bad when they have swimming pools. With Christine and Gisella, I ventured to Castaways at North Avenue Beach, and never felt compelled to go again. I discovered the best noraebang in the city where I can taste Korea any time I miss it. These are girls who measure a day’s success by the amount of food they try and the number of people they meet. They broadened my horizons by expanding the places I visit, giving me the travel bug in my own city.

It’s unreasonable for us to expect friends to stay a long time, just as we shouldn’t expect cities to remain unchanged. All we can do is appreciate how these things have impacted us, and in turn, how we might have impacted them. Because of Stephanie, Heather, Christine, Gisella, and all the others who have come and gone from the city, Chicago is forever changed.

The Cost of Living

It seems like everyone these days is weighing the cost of living in Chicago. All we do is wonder how long we can survive before moving home. Just as with the cold, we wonder why we try so hard to make it here when taxes are high, politicians corrupt, and groceries expensive.

Last week, over espresso and paninis at Caffe de Luca, my friend, J.Z., and I talked at length about this dilemma. With so many variables in our lives – the economy, relationships, jobs, families – we wondered if life is supposed to feel like a permanent juggling routine. Are we always waiting for something to drop and our lives to fall apart?

Long ago, my dad warned about the excesses of our culture, of people living beyond their means. We are a consumerist culture and we have come to expect a lot from life. As J.Z. and I continued to talk, we started to realize that while some of our unhappiness couldn’t be helped, a lot of it could. As Americans, we’ve tricked ourselves into believing that retail therapy actually works. Just because we can’t buy and drink and style our way to satisfaction, life seems unbearable.

It may seem that because stock markets are crashing, we are too. But we know better; we know that no matter who we are or how much money we have, loved ones die and couples break, we lose our jobs and our families fight. All that changes – all that has ever changed – is our attitude and whom we choose to bring with us.

That’s how I see it, anyway, for as I returned to Chicago this weekend, unsure of how I was going to make it to Monday, I felt overwhelmed by this bright city. Driving into the city, the skyline a welcome mat, it reminded me of traveling to Chicago as a kid, when my siblings and I competed to spot the Sears Tower first. Compared to quiet Green Bay, Chicago’s city streets showed us the exciting lives we could have.

In Chicago, we could meet people from all over the world, whether it was at a corner grocery store or a Cubs game. We could watch sailboats from the Lincoln Park Zoo. We could run through the lobbies of grand hotels or world-renowned museums. Leaving Chicago depressed me back then, but it gave me something to dream about on dreary school days. Indeed, the only way I made it through middle and high school was in knowing I was destined for the flavorful city life.

So here I am, broke as a joke in an expensive city and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. My house may not look like a catalog and I may not be in the middle of a whirlwind romance, but I am indeed on my way to living the life I always wanted. I’ve met life-long friends in Chicago, had unforgettable days and nights, and my life feels multi-dimensional, no matter how difficult it seems. As I watch the famous skyline rise above the city amidst a wintry sunset, I can see what lies ahead of me. There is more to do and more people to meet and I’ve only just started.

Maybe we should all be more mindful of that.