CHICAGO CARLESS

(Photo: Opposing nightly: 1,300 screaming concert-goes and 1,500 sleeping condo-dwellers.)

Kneeling in front of the toilet bowl shortly after I moved into my Marina City high-rise home, I realized there are some things newbie tower dwellers have to learn for themselves. No matter how long you stare at the water line, you’re not going to see evidence of the building swaying. That was an early lesson in skyscraper living for me.

Sure, in the midst of a powerful winter storm (or tornado warning, for that matter) you may hear the disembodied grandmother who lives in the walls ominously rocking her chair back and forth, perfectly in time with each blast of wind. You may even see the Target pendant lamp that you sticky-taped to the concrete ceiling for want of a percussion drill to properly mount it sway slowly from side to side. But it takes more than Mother Nature to make your toilet water take notice of structural displacement.

No matter how much you take note of it, yourself. The first time I weathered a blizzard on the 38th floor, I spent a lot of the time sitting on my couch with my feet tucked under me. Seated thusly, it was harder to feel the heart-stopping, gong-like vibration that passed from outside balcony to inside floorplate with each passing wind gust.

More unsettling are the ghostlike sounds. Harder to notice during the activity of the day, it’s when you’re just falling off to sleep that the clicks and groans are most apparent and you realize what a living, breathing, occasionally annoying thing a high-rise really is. As the building responds to the heat of the day, tiny expansions and contractions race up and down outer walls and windows.

Attentive residents can tell the direction of movement. Four quick cracks and a half-groan in a two-second span forming an auditory pattern marching from the floor beneath my bed, across the window wall, and through the AC housing above the balcony door means an upward expansion. If I’ve awakened with a start at 2:00 a.m., it also means I need to turn my air purifier higher or I’ll never sleep soundly through the night’s concrete cacophony.

If it’s that late and I’m still not asleep, chances are my alertness is in response to an entirely different set of noises. Mostly hoots, hollers, chants, whistles, car horns, car stereos, firecrackers, gunshots, and an occasional blood-curdling scream. As I’ve learned in the past three years, no amount of white noise on the planet suffices to soften the din of an exiting crowd from the House of Blues, exactly 38 floors directly beneath my balcony.

For newcomer Marina Citizens, one unquestionable law of simple physics is perhaps the nastiest lesson of all: sound travels up. Longtime corncob dwellers will be familiar with this law’s corollary: the later the sound emanates from the House of Blues, the louder the sleeping condo dweller perceives it.

Couple this with the Old Style Significant Error, a well-known local statistic that measures the ability of a Chicagoan to become increasingly inebriated in an exponential manner relative to the lateness of the hour, and you’ll understand why many a high-rise resident here has House of Blues management on speed dial.

Not that a 15-person fistfight after a Korn concert can be mitigated by a voicemail after the fact. Or by an entire House of Blues security team frequently seen huddling off to the side and shrugging, for that matter. I don’t blame them, some of those nu metal fans look pretty rough from up here. Wide wake as we are anyway, many of us take to our balconies during these melees and place bets on the biggest guy to win.

If it weren’t for the Chicago Fire Department’s potent post-9/11 sirens, designed to keep drivers within a half-mile radius out of the way by forcing them to pull over to wipe the blood from their ears, we might actually call the paramedics to scrape the losers up off the pavement.

Hard luck to them. High-rise early risers have to sleep sometime.

Share & Subscribe...

More »

Looks like you're new around here. If you enjoyed this post, you can receive updates from CHICAGO CARLESS by subscribing to my RSS feed or signing up for email alerts. Thanks for stopping by!

(Photo: Algerian crepes at Foster and Clark foster a spirit of sharing for Yours Truly.)

Last weekend, foodie partner-in-crime Jamie and I headed to Andersonville’s Icosium Kafe crepe joint to flee the downtown Air & Water Show crowds. These aren’t your French (or Québécois) grandfather’s crepes. Think Algerian veggie-heavy goodness. But as Jamie learned the hard way, don’t mimic my order in an eatery that I’m writing about–or how am I going to eat off of your plate? Head over to Gapers Block today to read my review of Icosium Kafe. And if you see me coming, be prepared to share.

Share & Subscribe...

More »

(Photo: Would you attempt to take food away from this man? Yours Truly experiencing his first Beijing Duck at Sun Wah. Credit: Jamie Williamson.)

American Apparel must feel vindicated right now. Last year, after the depression diet that followed my breakup with Devyn, I was happy to discover two things: St. Johns Wort is like God’s Zoloft without the sexual side-effects; and I was trim enough to shop at the official clothing retailer of America’s heroin chic. Under 200 pounds for the first time since my twenties, it was a thrill to step out of changing rooms wearing clothing marked “medium” and not look like a stuffed grape.

The thrill’s worn off. When I downloaded a weight-tracker application to my iPhone earlier this summer, I was sure I’d see a similar downward spiral. I guess I didn’t take this year’s breakup as tough as last year’s. Damned emotional growth. Imagine my surprise shortly after each morning’s step onto my bathroom scale as I began to track a creeping trend in an upward direction.

Wasn’t I doing the same things this year that I did after last summer’s fated ending? Walking miles across town like a lunatic? Check. Working out every other night? Check. Watching my diet? Well…I didn’t watch it last year. I didn’t need to. It took months to get my appetite back and by then I was too happily wrapped in brightly colored, non-sweatshop produced threads to notice.

What I wouldn’t give for a harrowing parting right now. I wore my pink American Apparel polo on my evening walk through downtown tonight. Trundling through the post-Air & Water Show families on Michigan Avenue, I half expected a small child to take me for a Thanksgiving Parade Pink Panther balloon, tie a string around my waist, and attempt to float me home over his head.

At the very least, my maximizing midriff is proof that this summer has been happier than the last one. And that I have a rotten medium-term memory. I recalled that last summer I did my best Kirstie Alley: eating whatever I wanted and still managing to lose weight. I forgot that, at the time, I just didn’t eat much of anything.

By contrast, the past three months have seen me reveling in happier times. Sure, I’m single again, but I also like myself and my life a lot more now. Now that I actually have a life to speak of, that is. A new consultancy, new bylines, new friends, and a newfound ability to let things go and touch the joy of everyday life have made this a far more lighthearted time for me.

Unfortunately of all the many places I look for joy in everyday life, the business end of a fork, flauta, or falafel tends to be where I start. Gapers Block, you awful enablers, how dare you give such a woefully misguided soul a food beat. Don’t you know how much money I spent on small-running hipster threads last year?

Age could be an easy mark for ascribing blame, too. Recently turning 38, or more than halfway to death as I have taken to thinking about it, my body has developed all sorts of old-man pains in the past few weeks. My right hip, alone, practically squeaks every time I get up out of a chair. And it’s getting harder to claim in online chat rooms that I have black hair when my head shot shows a rather grayer pate.

But I really think it’s my body’s reaction to global warming. It’s not my fault at all; my body just refuses to let go of the weight. It’s wise preparation, I think. Someday, when all those pesky glaciers melt into the sea and the Midwestern farm belt is washed away by floodwaters, as I cling to the side of Marina City, pondering how rather more accurate it’s name will have become, sitting as it will in the middle of new Lake Chicago, I’ll be glad to have a generous layer of fat around my midriff. I’m sure I’ll be thrilled to have something to live off of while I wait for the fields to dry out and food production to resume.

And maybe then I’ll be the one who feels vindicated.

The Life and Times of a Former New Yorker Living in Downtown Chicago

SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW

Recently on Carless

Recent Commenters

THE WAYBACK MACHINE

Categories

Archives

The Joys of High-Rise Living

August 19th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Don’t Have What I’m Having at Icosium Kafe

August 19th, 2008 · No Comments

Battle of the Blogger Bulge

August 18th, 2008 · 6 Comments