by Brett Van Emst
AS PUBLISHED IN MIDNIGHT MIND NUMBER FOUR
Note: We are offering this up because I felt it was a slightly stupid editor’s note. It was written quickly, at a time when I thought all lobster fishermen were nice and all dogs like to play “catch the tennis ball”. Oh, how wrong I was.
Chicago is no joke. The Lake that it rests on offers fine entertainment, views, and a Great Lakes attitude that can exude a mid-America snobbery. Chicago is also made up of “my people”. Never more have I gone out to a bar or a reading or signing or the Lake and found people like me. In New York City I am odd, in Chicago, I am everybody.
And, of course, Chicago is the closest big city to where I grew up and my earliest memories of it are bus trips with my parents’ antique car club, my mother stressing to me that the shopping here, on the “miracle mile”, was outstanding and like nothing Kalamazoo could offer. The way she told it, the chocolate here was better, the plastic the toys were made out of was not as breakable as it was at home, the stores to be revered. In all, the Chicago of my youth was one big living room that was off-limits for fear that I would break something.
Then there was college and the trips to Chicago turned frequent. There were New Year’s parties and concerts and marathons. All of these trips were conducted on such a tight budget that running out of gas on the way home was a constant threat and checking menus before ordering or crashing on the floor of a friend’s tight apartment was done out of necessity.
One road trip to Chicago had us sitting three across the front seat of my 1971 Toyota, the top off and us bundled up in fleece jackets and stocking caps to protect ourselves from the elements. The idea had come to us, while in the bar, that the amazing thing about life is that you can go anywhere you want at any moment given the means.
“Like now, for instance,” my friend Steve insisted. “We could just pack up and head for Chicago right now.”
It was past midnight and Chicago was 3 hours away. Yet we felt compelled to test our theory and an hour later found ourselves in my truck which. It started raining and Chicago turned into this dream-like refuge – the goal of all our theories; if we get to Chicago, we will once again believe in life.
And we did make it. The rain let up near Gary, Indiana, and we pulled into downtown Chicago at 4:00 a.m. A cabbie gave us directions to a friend’s place and we woke him up to go to breakfast.
We drove to the cafe and turned the soaking wet Toyota over to the valet saying under our breaths, “Don’t use too much gas.”
We sat there, then, in this cafe and watched Chicago wake up. We saw garbage trucks and businessmen and shoppers and kids. Basically, we watched our first city.
Since then, Chicago has been my gateway back to home from the various places I have been. Flying in and out of O’Hare for the Chicago Marathon or various Midnight Mind events, coming back home from Spain, or flying back in to spend a weekend with my brother and his wife and my parents.
And suddenly, I began to know Chicago. I began to understand the street numbering systems, which the folks in Chicago seem to take for granted. I found my way to a friend’s apartment after a heavy night spent drinking at the bar. And then found my way back to where I was supposed to be the next morning.
Sometime last September, it dawned on me that if we were to do a Chicago issue, I should move to Chicago to edit the issue. So I did move to Chicago this past summer. And summer in Chicago rocks. There is this feeling as if all winter, people have been saving themselves, waiting for the energy and excitement to build up for that first day over 70. And when it happens, sometime in May, the doors explode and the offices are empty at 5:01 and the people come out in droves. The beach fills up; the running paths become a Nike commercial as bikers, runners, rollerbladers join dogs, swimmers, volleyball players in a cacophony of Chicago. Add a steaming fresh hot dog, topped with tomatoes and onions to my hand and I am in heaven.
And it gets hot.
The heat here spreads like the exhaust of a diesel truck. It invades the trees, lingers in the backdoors of restaurants, and makes its home in the temporary Midnight Mind Magazine editing studio. While making this issue, I worked at a metal desk found on the sidewalk near Grand Street and moved via Jeep to our temporary workspace on Hubbard Street. I stuck to this desk. Literally. My computer, giving off normal computer heat, drove me to develop a bottled water habit. I took showers every two hours. I aimed fans, kept the lights so low I couldn’t see the computer keys (perhaps I can blame typos on this), and tried like hell to create some sort of breeze.
And, while I must say I enjoyed Chicago, I leave it with mixed emotions. It represented much in the way of hopes for me personally and professionally. Things, as they have a habit of doing, did not exactly work out for me – my friends moved out as I moved there, suddenly the people around me were very grown-up, and the job market dropped out, leaving Midnight Mind Magazine in a bad spot. And there was more.
But I do have to thank the many people who helped in various ways during the time spent editing this issue: Chris and Kristen Conn, Blake Van Emst and Susie Winders, Jon Mayor and Kira Gordon. Also thanks to Paddington, and Jason and Sarah Mettler. Thanks to the bartender at Sedgewick’s for the many free beers. The above are some of the many people who fed me and let me sleep on their couch with the air conditioner on full blast. And thanks to all the Chicago support that Midnight Mind Magazine has enjoyed: Quimby’s has been extremely helpful with marketing our issues in the past and we thank them. Jeff Felshman at the Chicago Reader was great to talk with.
Also, a major component of this issue is the compact disc that is included. And for their continued help, we thank the bands as they all were great to deal with. We mention them later, but I’ll say it here as well – big thanks to Mark Cunningham and Aware Records. Those guys are hard workers and talented. More or less the combination you see all over Chicago.
– Brett Van Emst August 2nd, 2002 Northport, Michigan
