Giving the North Shore a Bad Name

Blasts from the past are fun, especially when they remind you why you don't really miss the past all that much. I just came across the Facebook groups for my old high school and for the area in which it resided, the North Shore. First, I just have to thank my lucky stars that Facebook was not around in high school. Not only would it have eaten up more of my time, but it would have probably disenchanted me greatly. Case in point: the group dedicated to the North Shore. The description of the group embodies everything that people critcize about the area. It exhibits a vaguely ironic self-awareness--vaguely. The student(s) who wrote the description are clearly aware of the uglier perceptions about the North Shore but only seek to perpetuate them, which is unfortunate, especially as they come off sounding disgustingly entitled.

The first part of the description is fine, if not a little too boastful. Having movies filmed in the area is cool, but it's hard to get that excited about Risky Business being one of the most noted. The only North Shore-located movie I can be proud of among the otherwise forgettable string of John Hughes flicks set there is Robert Redford's Ordinary People. I digress. Most objectionable in the North Shore Facebook group is the way the area's perceived affluence and exclusivity is trumpeted: "As one of the most affluent areas in the nation, we have just about everything you could ever want -- and probably more." Even worse, the location is listed as "(The Good Parts of) Evanston to Lake Forest, IL." Personally, I'd rather be associated with some of the "bad" parts of Evanston than some of the toniest parts of Lake Forest.

(It's also somewhat mendacious for these girls to say that the North Shore is 20 minutes away from Chicago. The southernmost point in Wilmette is 20 minutes from the northernmost point of Chicago if you're driving late at night or early in the morning. Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Lake Forest are all at least 45-minutes away).

The ironic thing is that these folks champion their New Trier educations but appear to have absored nothing from them. People who effectively take credit for living in an appealing locale or attending an outstanding school are incredibly dense, unless they built the Greenbay bike trail or teach at New Trier, or maintain the beaches on Lake Michigan, or something. Usually, people who harbor these inflated views of their lot tend to have difficulty transitioning into jobs and sometimes even college, because they are so used to the entitlement of their first 18-years. Too bad this government increasingly rewards unearned wealth.

A hodgepodge

Lately, I have been wanting in subjects to blog about for various reasons, and because I cannot think of anything coherent to discuss but am smarting about a few things, I'll just jump around.

I finally finished Adam Langer's The Washington Story. It has nothing to do with Washington State or Washington, D.C., (I get enough of D.C. from living here and have little desire to read a novel set here at the moment). Rather, it is set during the time that Harold Washington was mayor of Chicago, from 1982 until 1987. I went back and forth on my opinion of this book throughout it. It is definitely one of the more personal books I've read, considering that the main character worked on her high school newspaper, is a young liberal-minded person, is reform Jewish, and lives in Rogers Park, a neighborhood in Chicago. While I never lived in Rogers Park, it is the nearest Chicago neighborhood to where I did grow up, and I know it fairly well. Other parts of Chicago play a role in the book too, particularly the near South side, which was apparently just beginning to become the fashionable neighborhood it is today in the late 80s.

The Washington Story became a little too zany at times, working off the impulse that many writers seem to have of linking all of a story's characters and their fates with one another. (Maybe such a tendency should be called the Crash syndrome, after the gimmicky Oscar-winner of last year, not to say The Washington Story was inspired by that glib movie). Nonetheless, I found the writing genuine and the sense of transience that Langer conveys about human desires and dreams to ring very true. Now that I'm through with it though, I need a new novel and hopefully one that is at least as compelling. Any suggestions?

In other news, my co-worker's blog has been put on the map by none other than the Food Network's Hungry Detective, a cop named Chris Cognac who sniffs around American cities for hearty meals. The Gourmet Piggy rips into the Food Network and in the process becomes the target of Cognac. Cognac's comments are unintentionally some of the most hilarious things ever ("I have a hot cuban wife and 2 kids that love me, so there..."). I love how the web connects people so easily--could this hilarity ever have ensued without the glorious "series of tubes" we (er..Ted Stevens) call the Internet?

D.C. Metro vs. Chicago El

Today's Washington Post includes a comparison between D.C.'s Metro and Chicago's El. Surprisingly, writer John Kelly warms to the El, though maybe that's because he realizes how great Chicago is in general:

Last month the entire Kelly family -- our dog, Charlie, included -- piled into the minivan so we could drive 12 1/2 hours and spend Christmas in Evanston, Ill., a gem of a town on the banks of one of the finer Great Lakes and home to My Overachieving Sister-in-Law.

There's no better way to experience a neighborhood than to be in possession of a dog. Forced to walk Charlie at least twice a day to empty him, My Lovely Wife and I drooled at the handsome houses on Orrington Avenue and across from Centennial Park.

Yes, Evanston, which neighbored my hometown and was itself my hometown for four odd years, is a "gem." Even though where I currently live in NoVa kind of reminds me of Evanston, Evanston's Victorian-style homes, eminent stone churches, concentrated downtown, and its perch on the lake makes for much more of a community feeling than the dispersed, ahistoric areas of Arlington County with extemporaneous names like "Courthouse" and "Ballston." I'm not surprised that a Washingtonian is allured by it.

Even I can't romanticize the El, though. Kelly, however, manages to do so:

In fact, when all the assorted out-of-towners took a trip en masse, one of our party was stuck, helpless, at the Transit Card machine as the train approached. He contemplated jumping the turnstile -- he's from New York -- when an amazing thing happened: The driver of the train, who could see him fumbling with his money, waited.

No subway trains are as plush as Metro's -- those carpets, that upholstery -- but I did notice that the L trains I rode were cleaner than Washington's in one way: There weren't as many newspapers. Is it possible that Chicagoans, when they carry a newspaper onto a train, actually carry it off, too? What a concept!

Does it sound like I prefer the L to Metro? Not necessarily. Those elevated platforms are cold. On the other hand, you always know where the stations are. They're perched up in the sky, not buried underground, their location marked with subtle brown monoliths.

The names of the stations are refreshingly direct, too, usually reflecting the streets they're on: Randolph, Madison, State. There's none of this New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet University-XM Radio-Bald Guy With a Hotdog Stand stuff.

Then again, the Windy City has two Chicago stations and two Washington stations. Woe to the person who says, "Meet you at the Chicago Station."

Red Line or Brown?

Just like our Metro, L trains echo with recorded announcements outlining prohibited behavior: No eating, no drinking, no gambling.

Did he say gambling? Whatever for?

I called the CTA to find out. Was this a particular problem? A spokeswoman would only tell me that there is an ordinance "to eliminate predatory types of behavior, such as shell games or sleight-of-hand or other games intended to cheat, defraud, or otherwise obtain money or other items."

You know, that's one thing I haven't seen on Washington's subway, even if it does sometimes seem as if the simple act of taking Metro is a gamble.

Okay, he has a good point about the absurdly cobbled-together names of D.C. Metro Stations. And actually, the double occurring names of El stations aren't as much trouble as Kelly supposes, as long as you're in your part of the city. For instance, if you live in Wicker Park, you'll naturally refer to the Damen Station on the Blue line, whereas if you live in Ravenswood, you consider Damen a stop on the Brown line. Most confusing I suppose are the two Chicago stations that Kelly speaks of, which both sit on Chicago Avenue, about half a mile from each other. Still, most people refer to and frequent the one further East, which is two blocks from Michigan Avenue and one of its gateways of frightening consumption: the American Girl Doll Store-Ralph Lauren Polo Store block. The westernmost Chicago Ave. train station tends to see more office workers than visitors.

D.C.'s Metrorail: Welcome to a Terry Gilliam movie

The El and Metro aren't totally comparable. They actually have somewhat different purposes. Washington, being a much smaller city, and its downtown much more concentrated, needs a fast-moving, state-of-the-art, comprehensive rail system that serves the city as well as the more-populated suburbs. Metro needs to be able to take people from the counties in Maryland and Virginia and dump hordes of them into only a few stations that serve the downtown. The El largely just serves Chicagoans and has a more dispersed downtown to work with--though the Loop is still home to a lot of the office space in the city--with the Metra serving as the regional transit. (True, D.C. has the MARC, but that's geared more for people coming in from the likes of Baltimore). Thus, El--with its frequent slow zones--is kind of a drag to take if you're coming from the suburbs. I'm surprised Kelly, who was going into Chicago from Evanston didn't comment on this, though I guess it must be more noticeable when you're by yourself than when you're with a big group.

The El, whose charm belies its inconvenience

If you want to understand the real downside of the El though, which Kelly doesn't mention at all, read today's Tribune, which illustrates just how out-dated the El really is:

Customers on the CTA Red, Brown and Purple/Evanston Express lines still may feel like they are traveling in one big slow zone until late 2009.

Expect packed trains and even worse delays than those already caused by rickety rails, crumbling viaducts and outmoded train-signaling systems. That's the message CTA president Frank Kruesi sent to riders on the three lines last week.

Commuting times will as much as double beginning in April when the most disruptive phase of the $530 million Brown Line expansion project begins, Kruesi said.

Seriously? When I took the El in from the suburbs to work and see friends, I often got stuck in run-of-the-mill delays. Now systemic delays are certain until 2009 because of this construction, without even factoring in the run-of-the mill delays. This gets to what annoyed me about the CTA and has me appreciating the Metro: The CTA is outdated, and it shouldn't be. Chicago is a world-class city, much more so than D.C., but D.C. is the only one with the world-class public transport. Both cities should have great transport. The El stations may be more charming, as Kelly suggests, than its Metro counterparts, but the frustrations of elevated transit outweigh the benefits of being treated to a constant visual reminder of the dynamic city below.

This weekend, if you travelled on the D.C. Metro, you were treated to exceptional service and information about the closing blue line, which barely, if at all, slowed transportation between Vienna at one end of the line and New Carrollton or Largo at the other, as one might have expected. Maps of the changes in line servicing were everywhere, as were helpful Metro employees. I know that the larger El must need more track work and general updates than D.C., and therefore can't manage such straightforwardness and convenience, but there is no reason why a small city like D.C. should have a monopoly on decent public transportation (it's the federal dollars, I guess).

Tribune's silly obsession with the Obama-Rezko connection could be turned into something more useful

I'm convinced that at least half of the reason that Chicago has the reputation for politics more scandalous than other parts of the country is because scandal is drummed up by the local media. Rags like the Tribune and the Sun-Times use the language of "appearances" of corruption and guilt by association to imply that which is most sinister.

Witness the Tribune's current efforts to hang the sign of a man named Antoin Rezko on Senator Barack Obama. Rezko was involved in some state government scandals, and the Tribune has since decided to impute Obama based on association. Their most recent implication is that Obama's office gave a college student an internship as a favor to Rezko, who appears to be a family friend of this intern. Obama's office is of course cornered into denying that Obama has ever done any favors for Rezko. Honestly, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the intern got her job through Rezko, not because Obama is uniquely bereft of an ethical compass but because that's how internships generally work on the Hill.

Perhaps the Tribune could use its considerable but dwindling resources for reportage to cover the more interesting angle of how internships are ferreted out in Washington. The current thought is that these relatively inconsequential jobs would serve as good reward for loyal (and big) donors to the Congressman. I don't think there is anything wrong with hiring someone loyal to a candidate-- a campaign worker, for instance, is a natural choice to fill a post-election job--but the kin of a big donor is someone who has gotten a job entirely because of blood association to wealth.

This leads to what I see as a larger problem of entitlement by some of the wealthy and well-connected in our society. It is revolting when people get jobs or admissions to college because of their family connections. My revulsion is directed not just at the party who is doing the admitting but also at the donor expecting a quid pro quo. If you donate to a university or candidate, it should be out of belief in the institution or the cause, not to tip the scales in favor of your child. From what I have heard from people who have worked in admissions at colleges, it is general policy to give a big donor's black sheep kin the benefit of the doubt. Such practices reconcile us all to playing the game, "networking," valuing superficial connections over merit and repeating the mantra that this is just how things work. Wouldn't it be nice though if some of these privelged people could lead from the top and not expect special treatment for their children?

Bad Analogy, Chicago Tribune

I think it took living in D.C. for a couple months to solidify for me just how sensational the Chicago Tribune has gotten. It is still no New York Post or Chicago Sun Times, but it is no Washington Post or New York Times, either. It's no wonder too, given that the Tribune's parent company, the Tribune Company's main priorities seem to be in downsizing the staff as opposed to upgrading the news quality. Although the editorial page is not necessarily an indicator of bad journalism--just look at the disparity between the well-reported news in the Wall Street Journal and its more shrill and often mendacious editorial page, as one example--a look at the Tribune's editorial page may put some perspective on how some of its sensational reporting gets past the bosses.

Take today's endorsement of Tony Peraica for Cook County Board President: the Tribune indicts the "sorry" Cook County government for having a budget of 3.1 billion, saying that it is "bigger than those of many states." This comment is extremely misleading considering that Cook County, with a population of 5,303,683, is in fact bigger than many states. The massive County includes not only the city of Chicago but many of Chicago's suburbs (including my hometown and my university's town). There are 31 states (32, including Puerto Rico) with a population less than Cook County's. Granted, I agree with the Tribune that Todd Stroger appears to be relying on alarmist tactics to beat Tony Peraica, but the paper's editorial page negates its own reliability in analyzing Cook County politics if it cannot avoid such a blatantly simplistic and misleading analogy.

Commuters Everywhere

If someone had taken me from one of the Chicago El's Loop stations and then plunked me right down in the D.C. transportation hub, Metro Center, I would have guessed that D.C. was the city with nearly 3 million residents and Chicago the city with 580 thousand--not the other way around. On the website I referenced in an earlier blog, whyihatedc, the blog's authors complain about the brusque nature of D.C. commuters, people who they say are unconcerned about nothing but coming and going as fast as possible. This is definitely true, and I still don't understand why people here rush to catch a train if the next one is coming a mere few minutes later. However, I can understand why people would run into each other quite frequently in the hub Metro stations: because there are a ridiculous amount of us converging and transferring from one train line to another in the big stations like Metro Center, Gallery Place, and so on.

On the left is Metro Center, but one would be hard-pressed to differentiate it from every. other. subway station in this city. Tourists, service workers, and Important People bump into each other here.

In Chicago, people seemed more spread out. Even the El's Loop stations, which serve the metropolitan area's ostensible hub, do not seem terribly crowded at all. In fact, D.C. is an inverse of Chicago: as I walked down the streets today, past huge government buildings that take up whole city blocks, I saw few people. On the other hand, on any given day in the Loop at around 5:30, I would have seen many people on the streets, but not as many in the train station. This seems a weird thing to harp on, but I guess it is another thing I miss about Chicago: there is evidence of human life on the streets, evidence of people talking, laughing, and enjoying (unhealthy) food. Here in D.C., there is evidence of people rushing around from train to train. I'm a little sad that I was subjected to the Midwestern inferiority complex when I was growing up, because, besides its aged public transportation, there is a whole lot to appreciate about Chicago that is lacking in this city of Northern Charm.

D.C., Day Three

My boredom combined with exhaustian and lack of anything better to do has brought me back to this blog. I'm afraid I'm already turning into what used to annoy me about some people from Northwestern. These people, almost always from New York City or California liked to tell you what was better about their hometown compared to Chicago. Whether it was In n' Out Burger or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the weather or the cool places to go out, the native Chicagoan was left feeling a little provincial next to this type.

Being in D.C.; however, has helped me appreciate a lot about Chicago (while still maintaining that it is better than New York--L.A. and San Francisco I'm not at all familiar with). For one thing, though I've always found Chicago almost endless in its length, I miss the amount of cool neighborhoods that its large land mass accomodated. D.C. is surprisingly small for a Nation's Capital.

The size alone isn't the problem, but the size combined with the socio-economic situation makes for a difficult housing market for someone like me. I remember reading an article last year in my Sociology of Crime class about cities and crime rates, and D.C.'s crime rate which is relatively high was explained in part by the bipolar socio-economic make-up of its residents. It seemed that people were either working professionals or part of an underclass employed in very low-paying jobs like food service and custodian work. There isn't much room here, the article said, for a socially mobile class. The housing market--with either luxury condos in sought-after neighborhoods in the Northwest part of the city or older, less-maintained homes in out of the way (and sometimes unsafe) areas of the city reflects this. The thought that one can live in a nice neighborhood of Chicago for 600-700 per month is pretty exciting in comparison.

So as I think about D.C., with its lack of a lake, its unbearable heat (though that is many places in the country right now), its bear of a housing market, and its hyper-yuppie neighborhoods, I have to respect my hometown. I'm afraid I will be a Chicago snob, if there is such thing. I feel like people out East have a hard time believing happiness can be found in the Midwest. It's just as well, it will keep the housing market sane.

Welcome to D.C.

I am just about 24-hours into my at least year-long residence in our nation's capital, and my curiosity about what it will be like to live here has brought be back to a blog I stumbled upon a couple of years ago. This blog has the provocative title, Why I Hate D.C., and it has me wondering about what I will like and dislike about living here.

As someone who knows D.C. somewhat well from having a lot of family here and from visiting a lot of the museums, monuments, and just walking around, I don't feel tremendously frightened--yet. At the same time, the tourist/visiting relative's impression of a city is different from the worker's impression.

One of the guest-bloggers sums up what he doesn't like in D.C. in strong words:

And finally, I just want to say that there are lots of things to hate about this city. They come in all shapes and sizes, all creeds and colors, all philosophies and theologies. But the one thing that unites them all is a soul-crushing lack of respect for other human beings, the elevation of status above all else.

It's an interesting monologue that might be worth reading, though it is also rather depressing. This is definitely different from Chicago where I came from and which I find a generally friendly city (save the driving) where jobs are often thought of as more a burden than a source of bragging rights. We'll see though, it should be an exciting year either way!

Crazy El Ride

No Saturday night would be complete without a crazy El story. I've posted mine on CTA Tattler right here.