My first time on the North Side of Chicago was during a trip
to a reggae club. I was 11 years old.
Let me explain.
In my childhood, I had never traveled north of the Loop in
Chicago. Any expeditions outside of the
south side involved the Eisenhower, the Dan Ryan, the Bishop Ford…highways
designed to take me outside of and around the city without having to actually
suffer the stress of having to drive through it. Of course it wasn’t me doing the driving, but
rather my mother, but let’s not get into semantics.
Any trip involving driving through downtown Chicago was like
an Alice in Wonderland moment for me.
The cars were different, the people were more diverse, the lights were
brighter. I remember riding along
Michigan Avenue with my unfortunate step-mother and her pointing out a Porsche
being driven by Scottie Pippen. That red
car is still tattooed on my brain. We
didn’t get too many celebrities driving flashy cars on the far south side of
Chicago. So it was a momentous event.
As a pre-teen girl becoming increasingly into alternative
culture (or, as my peers and friends would dub it, “white people stuff”)
Chicago’s North Side held a special mythical place in my heart. The North Side was where one could watch
movies that weren’t readily available at my local Cinemark on 87th
and the Dan Ryan. The North Side was
where my favorite alternative bands were playing shows that I couldn’t
attend. The North Side was where people
with funky hair and tattoos and cool jobs in bookstores and coffee shops
lived. The North Side represented
everything I saw on MTV and wanted to be a part of. Very few (read: none) of my friends shared my
love of alternative culture. My school
friends watched The Real World and Road Rules because it was always on whenever
they spent the night at my house. My
neighborhood friends quoted Alanis Morissette lyrics because I was always
listening to her on my Discman. Yet, I
always felt surrounded by people who didn’t really “get” me. My one ambition, other than becoming the
girlfriend of a baseball player, was to live on the North Side with my
alternative brethren and write about it for Chicago Magazine.
At the same time, the North Side frightened me. What if they didn’t accept a black girl from
the far south side? Wouldn’t I stand
out, with my Wal-Mart clothes and my Pippi Longstocking pigtails and my young
age? While I felt that the North Side
was where I inevitably belonged, I also knew that I wouldn’t fit in.
And so it remained a fantasy of mine- a daydream I would
play out in my head day after day: my favorite band (most likely R.E.M. at the
time), coming into town to play a gig at (insert North Side venue here). Me, in the crowd, singing along with my
alternative friends. Us, being asked to
hang out backstage. Rock star events
taking place thereafter.
Without anyone to confirm or deny the actual existence of
the North Side for me, I was able to keep this Xanadu image in my head.
And then, my mother took me there. To probably the biggest identifier on the
North Side. No, not the reggae bar. But, the reggae bar just happened to be less
than a block away from Wrigley Field.
No, my mother wasn’t one of those irresponsible types- far
from it, actually. At the time, I was a
straight-A student at my parochial school and well-liked by most everyone I encountered. My mother worked hard to keep me in private
school and would often go without just so my sister and I could have.
As it happened, my mother’s childhood friend had a sister
who owned said reggae bar and, during a visit to her friend’s house one
evening, the friend remarked that she needed to visit her sister at work. Why? I
don’t remember. All I remember is that
we were going for a ride, on a school night, and that was good enough for
me. Any opportunity to get out of the
neighborhood was welcomed.
And so we drove onto the Dan Ryan Expressway, passing all of
the familiar landmarks: Comiskey Park, the Sears Tower, that fucked up entrance
from the Dan Ryan to 290 (the Eisenhower), the Morton Salt factory with its
familiar “when it rains, it pours” slogan glowing onto the highway. I remember the rush of thinking, Wow, I
wonder where we’re going! I’d never seen
that part of the expressway at night and since I knew we weren’t going out of
town (as we usually do when that road is involved) I was doubly intrigued.
We exited, a whirl of businesses and cars and apartments and
houses and I knew nothing of my surroundings.
Finally we park on a random street and enter through the alley a dark,
sort of depressing building with loudly blaring reggae music. Obviously, being underaged, I can’t stay, so
my mother ushers me quickly through the club to the front door. Once outside, she points north and says, “there’s
Wrigley Field.” Oh so nonchalantly.
I look and I see it.
The giant marquee. That iconic
stadium. Well, I see part of it. My mother lets me walk to the end of the block,
the corner of Addison and Clark, so I can have a better view. Wrigley Field. Although I grew up on the South Side, I was
semi-raised by my great-uncle, who was a hardcore Cubs fan. But my father was an American League
follower, so my heart was torn between two loyalties. But to see Wrigley Field. To have confirmation that I was finally on
North Side soil. My first kiss, my first
“A”, my first roller coaster ride- nothing would ever compare to the rush I
felt to finally be in the place I’d felt I belonged all along. There was nothing special going on- no Cubs
game, no concerts, no alternative people just hanging out. It just felt different. It felt right. I felt happy.
My happiness lasted all of ten minutes as, much like Chicago’s south
side, there were shady characters out and about and my mother needed to protect
her curious and happy child.
A few minutes later we were back in the car and heading back
to our south side home. And I spent the
entire ride back smiling. It would be
years before I would make it back north (try seven years) but my curiosity had
been satisfied (in my mind) and I knew that, if I wanted to go, the North Side
was easily and readily available. It
really existed; I was there. And it felt
right.
Of course, when 18-yr-old me made it back, I had a rougher,
less magical time…
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