My Hometown

“I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.” - Rudyard Kipling

 Recently, at a backyard BBQ, I was introduced this way:
"This is Enna, she's from the south side of Chicago, like, she actually grew up there."

AND THEN PEOPLE GASPED.

I wasn't sure why, seeing as this wasn't a particularly shocking fact to me. But apparently, to the people I was talking to, I was the only person they had ever met who grew up in the city limits. Ever. Four million people just thirty miles east and I was the only one they had ever met.

This was completely bizzare to me.

Another instance of this happened at Sunday school. A little girl asked me where I grew up. This was a pretty big deal to me, since the rest of my class of middle schoolers are a bunch of self-absorbed little pricks (don't hate me: all middle schoolers are.) So I told her, and she looked at me questioningly and said "But you're not black?"

Yes, captain obvious, I am not. I wanted to be a prick back to her and say "WHO DO YOU THINK LIVES IN CHINATOWN?" (Answer: Chinese people! And some Italian and Polish immigrants.) But apparently harrassing your students and ridiculing them is not something that is the curriculum for Sunday school teachers. (Side note: I wanted to hand out pins on the last day that said 'Jesus may love you but I think you're a prick.' But I am pretty sure in the great shoots and ladders of life, that would land me right on the shoot to hell.)

I guess what I am trying to say is that Chicago isn't the giant whirling cesspool of povery and crack that apparently everyone I know thinks it is. I think it's neat that you can look at a shoe store and see that it is in a building that used to be a Hewbrew Temple, or a firehouse that is in a theater that went out of business in 1920. It just keeps building up, this city.

So, without further ado, here are some pictures of my fabulous city, and my old stomping grounds:

The South Side Irish Parade

(Found here)

County Fair, where everyone's grandma gets her groceries.

(Found here.)

Post WWII housing

(Found here.)

The 95th Street CTA Bus.

(Found here.)

News stand on the south side

(Found here.)

HOTDOGS!

(Found here.)

The Chicago Stockyards Entrance

(Found here.)

Chinatown

(Found here.)

Steak 'n' Egger's - we in Chicago appreciate a good greasy spoon

(Found here.)

LOL. So many butchers.

(Found here.)

My old high school.

(Found here.)

Midway Airport. Chicago has two airports: Midway and O'hare. Midway is easier for the traveler to get through, O'hare is easier for the person PICKING YOU UP from the airport to get in and out of.

(Found here.)

Lindy's and Gertie's Ice Cream in Ford City Mall.

(Found here.)

The Art Institute of Chicago

(Found here.)

Inside the Old Marshall Fields on State, at Christmas, before it became a Macy's.

(Found here.)

Comisky! Now it's US Cellular, but back in the day, it was Comisky.

(Found here.)

I have eaten here, and it is greasy, and therefore good.

(Found here.)

Light snowstorm over a Chicago neighborhood.

(Found here.)

Ah but Summer, it's totally worth it! (Lincoln Park Beach)

(Found here.)