Mugged {Along the divide}
November 10, 2008
A few weeks ago I got mugged. Most upsetting was that it occurred right outside my front door.
I got a new job recently and with it a new phone. I’ve never had a fancy phone like this before - and so while waiting for a cab I was checking email and texts and using my time for work before I’d even gotten there. A man came up to me and I presumed he was going into my building, but instead he came right up inside my space and grabbed my IPhone out of my hands with both his hands. I was so shocked I just let go and my first impulse after I realized what had happened was to run after him! Luckily the lovely janitor of my building came outside immediately to see what had happened. He frightened the guy into taking off running with no more than the phone. He ran towards the projects that are on the block next to me.
Even though I was not physically hurt, I felt totally violated. I was shaking all over and really upset when my neighbor and former teaching colleague drove up with her husband. L was a wonderful comfort and voice of reason. She helped me to call the police and waited with me while they came. We called to cancel the phone service and it felt so great to have her support right when I needed it.
The police car pulled up and I reported the crime through his passenger window. As I was describing the assailant I realized that I had seen him before. He had given me a nod and a kind of weird check-out while passing by my entrance about a week before. I had mistaken him for someone who was about to enter the building, but instead he was walking by and seemed surprised by my acknowledgment. It was shocking and disappointing to verify the assumptions made by most that the man was black. It makes me so mad to report that yes - this person was a black male - and further perpetuate that negative stereotype in this already divided city.
I have so many mixed feelings about this now. I have always felt so safe here under the viaducts, in our building. Straddling the borders between neighborhoods comes with its own risks, and I had let down my guard for a moment. Since that day I’ve been feeling traumatized about going outside by myself. Not a good thing when you live alone! I’ve started taking cabs home more in the evenings and I try to coordinate my comings and goings with the maximum amount of people doing the same. I ride the bus during rush hour in the morning now. I’m trying to find a way to live with this and hopefully I’ll start feeling safe again soon.
Protected: Immersed in Dublin
October 25, 2008
Labor Day Swim…floating through the City
September 3, 2008
It was the perfect day in Chicago - sunny and clear. I wanted to mark the end of summer by continuing my practice of floating meditation. Read the rest of this entry »
Street Surgery
August 22, 2008
I travelled up to the North-side of the city a while ago and came across an open wound in the street. The neighborhood around the Montrose Brown Line Station is a good blend of commercial storefronts surrounded by two and three-flats - typical Chicago residential buildings. There’s been a lot of change lately as the CTA works to upgrade all the Brown Line stops to include elevators. The newly accessible stations are an improvement for people with heavy bikes or babies in strollers, in addition to those in wheelchairs or on crutches; but the material legacy of decades of use has been erased.
When I first moved to Chicago I worked in Ravenswood and most every day I ate in Beans and Bagels, a locally owned coffee-shop with a great group of art and film students serving up good coffee and sandwiches. A few years ago I had heard that this storefront business was to be razed to make way for the CTA expansion…so I was surprised to see that it has survived the cut and is still there. The entrance to the station, along with brand new elevator, is now situated across the street, on the South side of Montrose.
I was returning home from a meeting, travelling by Brown Line when I was struck by a scene of street construction outside Montrose Station. It made me aware of how vulnerable the exposed street was; shored up like a patient undergoing heart surgery - all raw and open. The construction worker on duty supervised the surgery with great authority, ordering the large earth-mover to dig according to his instructions.
In relative terms, Chicago is only a recently developed city. Not too long ago this area was a series of pastoral fields, where local farmers defended their landed homesteads from the original inhabitants: the Ottawa, Chippewa and Pottawattamie Indians. Seeing the wound opened like that reminded me of the earth underneath the asphalt surface, covering other layers of formerly planked roads.
Visualizing a Textual Inventory
August 17, 2008
Street Food
August 11, 2008
I’ve been hearing the sounds of a street festival drifting up to my apartment on the 11th floor - through the thermopane windows - for the past couple of nights; so yesterday evening Bo and I went down to see what was going on at street level. We found Mexico in Chicago, right on Allport St, outside St. Procopius Catholic church who were having a block party to benefit their school. Read the rest of this entry »
Wheels: are four really better than two?
August 6, 2008
Thinking a lot about wheels lately. Yesterday I needed to go to Hyde Park and when I looked at the Public Transit directions on Google Maps, the estimated time to take two buses was 1.25 hours. I thought about taking the Pink Line to the Green Line, so at least I could go through the Rem Koolhaus tunnel at IIT…so I rode my two wheels over to the station at 18th Street. It was steamy outside. Read the rest of this entry »
Blues Sister
August 5, 2008
Rolling, rolling, rolling; the theme from Rawhide keeps going through my head…maybe because I just watched the Blues Brothers in Grant Park. What an experience to see John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd as Jake and Ellwood Blues running around the same city we were sitting in. Read the rest of this entry »
Movie (K)night
August 3, 2008
Copyright Warner Bros. Pictures
Saw the Dark Knight last night. Gotham City is now unabashedly Chicago; and whereas during the last film, Christopher Nolan tried to make us believe the city location was New York…in this new version the site of our city is really celebrated. Read the rest of this entry »
Manky Space
July 31, 2008
Everyday I walk under a viaduct. In the winter it was bad - a glacial landscape, frozen and treacherous, water frozen into icicles resembling giant stalactites. Now that it’s summer the wet-dog smell of Chicago in the heat permeates. Mysterious fluids ooze from corroding concrete. Infrastructural breakdown is all around.
