Yesterday I got my first real tastes of the city, complete with eight story malls, the magnificent mile, and stores so fancy and expensive I swear the store attendants thought I was some low life teenager who was going to steal their 500 dollar purses because I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and chewing bubble gum; I didn't dare touch anything.
But what was the most interesting was something that Nancy told me we even have in Portland but that I have never seen. There were people on the street and they would paint themselves in a solid color and then wear clothes of the exact same color and pretend to be statues. I would have thought they were statues had there not been a bucket of money in front of them. What was the most interesting though was when someone would try to touch them to see if they were real they would come to life and move roboticly, even their eye movements seemed robotic.
Anyway this brings me to why Chicago is the city of thieves. While watching one of these people a man came up and stole the bucket of money and started running, spilling the money all over the street and people started diving for the money. Now keep in mind at one intersection you can find hundreds of people trying to cross the street so you can imagine the chaos that this brought about.
After that, as we were walking, I took notice of everyone around me and realized that every woman had her purse not only slung over her shoulder but a firm grasp on it as well and that no one simply strolled or stopped; everyone is in constant motion and even when crossing the street the masses don't stop causing traffic jams where cars are stuck in the middle of intersection blocking all the traffic in the downtown area. It's definitely not the cars you have to worry about running you over, it's the people.
I'd say the high point of the day was finding a McDonald's that was so fancy it had high back upholstered chairs like the kind you find in someone's expensive living room or personal library and the people in there were dressed like the were going to a formal ball or something.
Chicago is intense.
4 comments:
Yeah, I've heard about it. Be careful going through those revolving doors. But man, I love Chicago (Nancy's right about the statue people though). Half of the reason I wanted to go to Northwestern more than Notre Dame was the proximity to it. Probably not the best reason, in hindsight. I never thought it was that dangerous, but I was a dude even at 13. I bumped into this big black guy on the sidewalk and he thought I picked his pocket.
They have the statue guys in portland, two, they are at Pioneer Court House Square, near the bus mall. And they are everywhere in vegas, inside the ALADIN and the VENITIAN. YEs they are very cool, I would have to scratch all the time, I don't know how they do it! Sorry about the stealing though, all you can do is hold on tight, and carry a stick with rusty nails in it.
um...scratch?
Oh yourself I get it; Ben explained.
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