Saturday night

Saturday night in Chicago and its another lonely one in this beast
of a city.

I walked through the side streets of Lincoln Park.  The leaves are out
and the tree-lined streets feel more closed in, yet warmer even if the
temperature isn't.  The cold, leafless nights of February are gone.

The buildings in the neighbourhood are an assortment of styles.  
Most are  brick and stone with big blocks, warrened entrance ways,
and high staircases leading to large front doors.   Clean brick lined
alleyways snake between the crowded buildings.  It feels European,
but still distinctly American.   Solid feeling and looking.  The influence
of the waves of immigrants that settled this city.  

I emerge back on to one of the main streets, Lincoln Avenue.  The
quiet of the back streets gives way to buzz and hustle of Saturday
night in a big American city.  People walk purposefully as they tend
to do down here.

I walk under the trestles of the El as it slashes diagonally across
Lincoln.  Everywhere you walk has the feeling of a movie set.  You
hear the tracks begin to rumble, then roar as the train thunders
overhead, like the sky is about to fall on you.  Blue light from the
train flickers on the grey wall of a building for an instant, like
lightening.  Then all you're left with is the rumble of the tracks
again.

My night so far is at a bar called Lilly's, listening to mediocre
live music. The walls are painted a deadly forest green, obviously
meant to spark depression and encourage drinking.  They advertise
all-you-can drink PBR for $35.  Classy.  

The bar's been carved out of an old house.  It's layout is schizoprenic.
There are almost no good sightlines for the stage where the band
plays.  The best place, where I'm at, is the bar itself, with it's faux
gargoyles and christmas lights in the shape of reindeer.  It's a lousy
spot for a live band, but then again most people think the band is
simply additional decor for the bar.  Arched doorways divide the
bar up into bite-size pieces.  You can catch glimpses of faces and
other parts of the bar.  It's the drunkard's equivalent to Eco's
library from "Name of the Rose."  The balcony is simply a hole in
the ceiling to what was the second floor.   A radiator sits on a ledge
out of reach to anyone.  

The crowd here are that college-age crew the occupy so much space
in university neighbourhoods.  Neither jock nor artsy, they occupy a
neutral space of non-identity, a space of safety.   I'm the most 
audacius person there with my leather jacket, kangol hat, and
skull ring.  

I'm in Chicago. I can do better than this.  So I head to B.L.U.E.S.,
one of the best Blues bars in the city, not far from Lilly's and on my
way home.  It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, where you would've
expected to hear some  of the greats decades a go when the scene
was in it's heyday.  But its always packed and its aways jumping.  The
band is tearing it up and I'm wedged between tourists and locals.
People of all kinds.  All that matters is the music.