3 posts tagged “chicago”
While I was out of town at the beginning of June, I left my dead car (which has since been resusitated) parked on the street outside my building for a little over two weeks straight. I took a gamble that while I was traveling, Streets and Sanitation would not be by to sweep our turf. Gamble lost. Not that I really had an option.
As much as I'm willing to ask my only neighbor who knows how to drive stick to keep an eye peeled and "repark as needed" while I'm traveling...it's a bit more than an imposition to ask them to:
1) get a group of stout folks together to, 2) throw it in neutral and push it into a spot that, 3) may or may not be directly available on the other side of the street.
And depending on which side you're originally on and which side they sweep first...4) to do it twice, 5) in two days.
I'm as cheap a bastard as they come, but even I'd rather pay a $50 fine than ask that of a neighbor.
I've been living in the city proper since 1994. My employment has always ended up in the burbs or on the very outskirts of the city where public trans is a less than appealing option (ahem - although at $4.35 a gallon, once the play is up and out of rehearsals, I'll be carpooling most of the week with my co-worker who lives about 4 blocks from me.) So, I'm one of those folks who pretty much drives 90% of the time. Which means Parking. Which means, knowing how to read the ever changing signs and meters and learn where the best spots to park are in most neighborhoods.
Even adhering to the signs, sooner or later, you'll miss a sign, fudge a spot a bit, or create one that really doesn't exist - the odds and Lincoln Towing are just set against you. I live by the policy to expect that I'll get no more than one ticket per year. In my mind, I'm not paying some fine, but participating in the much beloved Chicago pastime of graft. I doubt my $50 is going to fix a pothole or repave a sidewalk...in fact, I enjoy the thought that some fat cat crony is buying his mistress a nice sammich before she gives him a handy in his city owned vehicle. I'm doing my part to keep the city gears grinding, as it were.
Surprisingly though, paying my ticket online was rather a positive experience in that it also gave me a history of my past parking mishaps going back several years.
March 2001 - Block Access/Alley/Driveway/Firelane...PAID
October 2001 - Expired Meter...PAID
February 2005 - Expired Meter...PAID
December 2005 - Expired Meter...DISMISSED
October 2006 - Expired Meter...PAID
June 2008 - Street Cleaning...PAID
Hmmm. Averaging six (five if you count the dismissal) tickets in seven years. Not bad. While I did get 2 tickets in 2001, it was 4 years until I got my next one, so I think that more than evens out. And, yes, it is possible to get a ticket dismissed. The meter was faulty - it would accept quarters, but not register the time as paid - and I had folks with me willing to attest. Since it's been almost 2 years since my last ticket, I really don't feel so bad about the fact that my DOA car was stuck during sweeps week.
The only bitter pill to swallow is that I got a ticket in June. June sucks. June is when folks in the city have to get their vehicle stickers ($75 a crack) and I live on a block that requires permit parking (an additional $25.) Oh. And my six month car insurance premium was due. And I had to get the junker fixed. In all, I shelled out over $700 on my heap this month (not counting the ticket.) Fingers crossed, I shouldn't have to shell out anything except gas and an oil change for many a month. That's the one good thing about a heaper...it's paid off!
I do dream about the day when I can afford to get a new vehicle. Some thing hybrid or electric with power everything that shoots daisies out its tailpipe and surrounds me in a bubble of sunshine that makes the folks I pass by break into song.
Saturday night we celebrated the birthdays of three excellent ladies, by embracing our estrogen and heading out to see the Windy City Rollers - Chicago's premiere all-female flat track roller derby. Pete put together this short clip - and while it's great...if hardly scratches the surface of the energy this event puts out. This isn't WWF. Sure, they have skater names like BETH AMPHETAMINE, EVA DEAD and MALICE IN CHAINS. But, these ladies are the real deal. At least 2 ladies had to leave the game (to go get x-rays and or stiches), many got bruised up and a bit bloodied.
I only wish Pete had caught the moment when VARLA VENDETTA - a freaking dynamo jammer - got taken out and spun/sprawled onto the floor only to turn around and give her opponent a completely, in-the-moment hand gesture. It's kinda why I ponied up the $15 in the first place.
If you're not sure what you just saw, this vid describes the rules of the game better than I ever could.
If you want a closer look, check this out.
I took Austin to see these women roll back in 2004/2005...we walked in not knowing any more about roller derby than what I saw as a kid, watching Raquel Welsh in Kansas City Bomber. By the time we left, we had been screaming our heads off for our now selected favorite teams! If you have a flat track association near you - they are scattered across the country - I highly reccommend checking them out. I can't believe it took me so long to go back.
And for the record, Maggie had the best Roller Derby Name. MAG NUMB. I'm still working on mine.
I've got lots on my plate today...wish I could crawl back in bed. I consumed something very, very wrong on Thursday night and spent most of yesterday getting to know my bathroom tile in a whole new way. As John Astin once said, "But, I'm feeling much better now."
I slept a bit in the afternoon, so I was wide awake at midnight and made the mistake of throwing in a DVD which kept me up until 3am. Into the Wild got into my head and under my skin. It seems like some alternative version of It's a Wonderful Life. IAWL is about realising the impact the individual (you) makes upon the people around you and that, without you, their lives would be less loving and full. Where the focus is on the idea that, You are the fulcrum.
While there are shades of this theme in ITW - every person Chris/Alex Supertramp comes across seems truly impacted by his quiet, kind and intelligent nature, this movie is about the journey Chris/Alex takes to realise that it's the connection with other people that make our lives worth living. That interacting and sharing happiness with others is really what it's all about. The focus is less about the fulcrum (we are all still the protagontists of our lives), but that it's how the outward affects the inward. That it's not about you, it's about everyone around you. (Which a wise, but crazy old man would burn into our brains before he died.)
Based on true events, it's both sad and beautiful. It's another film (which also reminded me of Boys Don't Cry) where you want to take the protaganist and just shake them until they do the senseable thing. The thing that won't lead to the wrong choice - the wrong path that sets the dominos falling. But you can't. What's left is the mirror of how we might be closing ourselves off to others - and the reminder to shake some sense into ourselves before we take the wrong path and end up alone and remote.
Okay. Now I need something stupid to laugh at.
Thank you, WGN. I can always count on you.
