i can't believe that i've been up here for more than a month. time has passed really quickly especially since brian moved up. now i've got someone else who's curious about the city to go on trips with, so we spend many more evenings out than i used to take alone. and that means significantly less time to blog.
work has been really good... projects are coming in and out, and i'm starting to pick up speed a little. speed is always a concern of mine, but since most of the work so far has been rearranging pre-existing elements or doing a lot of typesetting, it's been ok. it's generating new ideas that i get self-conscious about. no one's ever said anything to me about being slow, but it's always a self-awareness thing that i have to deal with. a couple of things (a wrap for a shipping truck, banners for SAIC, and a Faustly wrapping paper project) have gone to print, and i've just sent an email to sally to see if it's ok to put any of them up here. i'm trying to respect faust's policies, despite being extremely excited about sharing my work. if and when i get the ok, it will be up here.
hm, what else? well, upon going back through the cameraphone images i've taken in the past week or so, i was reminded of one particular event:
yes... paul vs. physics... physics wins. previously listed as Paul vs. Wrought-Iron Fence. what can i say? sometimes you make mistakes. every once in awhile, one of those mistakes is t-boning a giant fence, bursting your front tire, and slamming your knee and shoulder into iron bars. we've all been there. i was just riding up onto the sidewalk after a couple of blocks riding with no hands, and apparently didn't really want to correct my angle OR hit my brakes. something in my head didn't want to react, so i just rolled straight into a fence. at least i have a sweet bruise to show off now, but even that's healing up now. yes, i was wearing my helmet...
beyond this catastrophe, brian and i have been enjoying some cool stuff around town. we were turned on to a cool place called Earwax, a fun little restaurant in wicker park that not only serves some bitchin french toast, but also an incredible spinach and feta turkey burger. yummmm... we also caught a cool acoustic show at a place called Uncommon Ground, which is a restaurant/bar/venue and we just happened to get seats in the small venue room. i enjoyed a really really good belgian ale on tap, called Tripel Karmelier. i'm only recently working my way into the beer realm from cider world and wine land, but this thing was tasty. i took a camera phone image of the beer glass (a giant snifter kind of thing) because i really liked the typography on it, but the photo is pretty shitty. anyway, the music that was going on was pretty hilarious at first. it was some big-headed dude with chin hair and a bowling shirt, and his alt-country-slash-Nickelback-emo band. eesh. the best part of his set was a song called "Thunder", which he wrote--get this--while sitting in his living room during a thunderstorm, watching the rain flood underneath his front door. the song began with the guy on the pedal steel kind of warming things up, and then from the singer, just a single utterance of...
"Thund-errr."
man, that shit was so amazing, brian and i were bending over into the table to hide our laughter. what a fucking joke! the lyrics were replete with mentions of lightning and blue eyes and all kinds of amazingly obvious metaphors. after these guys were all finished, the next act was a lot better. there was this cute singer girl from minneapolis and her band, which luckily had a really good guitarist. her voice was pretty rockin. it reminded me of a young gwen stefani, from old No Doubt days. it was a good time, some serendipitous free music and good wholesome food.
lately, i've been trying to read again. mercedes let me borrow her copy of "What is the What", which i believe is the only dave eggers book to have escaped my corneas. no longer. this beast is underway, and it feels good to read again. also, i'm getting back into good habits with exercise, including weights with the Faust Fit Club, running on occasion, and my new righteous bike commute... roscoe village to riverside, about 14 miles each way, or about an hour. it's serious. amazingly, i found a route that doesn't hit too much sketchy shit while traveling through the west side of chicago. there's a strip of rough neighborhoods that pretty much line the west side, and some parts of this strip are thicker than others. yesterday, i decided to try a new route on my third time doing the commute, and cut across chicago ave. instead of north avenue. holy shit, what a mistake. not only was my tire going flat for some unknown reason, but i went through countless blocks of sketch, skeez, and uncomfortable looks, not to mention extraordinarily unkempt roads...
all i could think about was "dude if this tire goes all the way flat and i have to stop and walk it, i'm fucked." nothing says "hey, take my bike" more than a guy in lycra, bike shoes, helmet, and glasses walking through the ghetto. feelings of vulnerability, moreso than fear, became really prevalent for the latter half of the ride. interestingly enough, though, i was trying to be really conscious of my thinking the whole time... was i scared because i was a white guy engulfed in miles of all-black neighborhood? or was i scared because i saw rough shit going on, like a drug deal across the intersection from me? i think it was mostly the latter, but honestly i think a tinge of it has to come from fear of the unknown. and clearly, black urban culture is outside my realm of experience. a lot of that ride was spent trying to look at what was going on around me and accept it for what it was... and i think i made some progress in enlarging my scope a little bit.
the hardest thing to distinguish around here is what is sketchy, and what is only less-affluent, different, and unkempt. when my safety is involved, i have to make the judgment quickly. there's no second-guessing when it comes to looking down two streets and riding down the cleaner, safer-looking one. however, i am always struck with the need to think about this after the fact. i think it's part of becoming part of the greater sense of urban culture that takes place here. things are strangely segregated into neighborhoods in chicago. sure, there are lots of cultures that occupy this space... puerto ricans, poles, romanians, ukrainians, blacks, whites, countless others... yet all of these seem to group together in certain ways. it's enough for a hundred sociology papers, and i'm sure they've all been written. for now, i'm left to try and absorb it as reality before i even begin to try and make sense of it. anyway, enough of that heavy stuff.
on a significantly lighter note, the end of may brings two wonderful things.
1) suzie comes to visit chicago! i'm extremely excited... this is the first time we'll be hanging out since we decided to give this whole 'making it work' concept a shot in january. it's been a long four months, but only a few weeks to go. it will fly by.
2) brian and i move into our new apartment. yes, we found a place, and we are in the middle of signing things and writing checks. this is the place that i first looked at right after i discovered it across the street from dave's place. as i told eric that week, "it makes me a little nervous that such a badass place fell right into my lap on the first try, but then again, that's aligned with everything else about this experience, up to this point." brian and i had done our due diligence and looked at a few other places, but at the end of it all, we took another look at this one on West Huron. brian had seen camera phone shots of this place before, but upon seeing it in 3D, he was giving me faces of exasperation and excitement right off the bat. we talked to eric about it, got our applications in, and now we're just ready to finalize the deal with a little cash exchange. we're super excited, and should be moving around the 24th or so. i'm really excited to get out of the frat house situation we're in now. the other night, dan brought home THREE GIRLS at FIVE IN THE MORNING and they were fucking around and being really loud, to the point that i had to get out of bed to tell them to shut up. and then, after all of that, they were up again at 9:30am, being loud as hell again. i can't take it much longer...
must. get. to. quiet. stable. home.
better things are on the horizon, though! i suppose they always are...
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