Movin’ Right Along
Walking is something I thoroughly enjoy. I have mentioned in every piece I’ve written for this class that I constantly go on solo walks to clear my head. However, this walk was a pain in my butt. I usually like to disconnect on my walks and lose myself in the city. So walking around taking a bunch of pictures and filming myself walking while getting stared at by strangers was not exactly ideal. However, my want for good grades outweighs my general anxiety so I laced up my sneakers and was off.
I did not use any apps to assist me on my walk. I am usually pretty good at just wandering and finding something I have never explored fully before. My problem with apps might stem from my want to disconnect on my walks and truly experience the city. I did however use Apple Maps at one point because I did get turned around and could not get find my way back.
3 pm- I started my walk where I start all of my walks, outside of U Hall. I crossed the street to take this picture because even though I see this view every morning it still amazes me how far I have come and how the surreal experience of moving across the country is now a reality. I continued my walk down West Fullerton and reached the three-way massive intersection of West Fullerton, North Halstead, and North Lincoln at around 3:13 and while I was there I caught myself paying attention to the crowd of people waiting at each of the stops, there was a family with a child, the child was crying about something (I don’t know what, it was speaking gibberish) and refusing to move while the mother and father looked exhausted as if this wasn’t the first time that this has happened today, there were a couple of stoners smoking something that smelled like what can only be described as a skunk that hadn’t showered in a month that had just been sprayed by another skunk, and basketball players were talking about Oregon/Stanford game that happened this weekend. I guess I was still in the “follow others through Chicago” mindset.
For the next thirty minutes, I roamed up North Lincoln Avenue, taking my time to take in everything around me. My nostrils were assaulted by the delicious smells of the various restaurants (reminding me that I hadn’t eaten lunch), with a taco place named Cilantro tempting me the most because of their student discount. Hungrily, I continued my walk up North Lincoln, finding it hilarious that most of the bars had at least one customer in them at 3:30 on a Wednesday afternoon and then I thought about what compelled these people to drink so early and why I thought that was funny. While wrestling with my own morality, I ended up at another intersection by Oz Park where I found myself watching people again. Most everyone I looked at made eye contact with me and you can tell a lot about a person from their eyes and I could tell from these people’s eyes that they were busy and exhausted, even the children looked like they needed a strong cup of coffee.
3:45 pm- The Tin Man was always my favorite character in The Wizard of Oz. For starters, his opening scene is hilarious and you can’t help but root for him. He represents the heart of the story, both literally and figuratively. However, in this insistence, the Tin Man didn’t fill me with hope, but rather confusion. I was still confused as to why there was a Wizard of Oz-themed park in Lincoln Park, and while I know we covered it in class, I, for the life of me, could not remember why. I knew the simple solution was to just google it and move on but I decided to tap into my inner detective and let the city guide me to my answers. So I proceeded to lower my ball cap, light my imaginary cigarette, and do my best Nancy Drew impression. Through a thorough investigation, I was able to piece together the mystery of Oz Park (I read the signs on the bottom of the character statues). The signs informed me that the reason Oz Park existed was that the writer of The Wizard of Oz, Lyman Frank Baum, had settled down in Chicago. That is when I decided, I was going to go visit his house. When I finally got service again I realized that I didn’t want to walk all the way to Humboldt Park, so walking the entirely of Oz Park was just going to have to do.
I started my walk around Oz at about 4:12 pm and didn’t finish until about 5:15 pm. I have spent a fair amount of time in Oz but most of that time was spent with friends so I was more paying attention to the people around me rather than the park itself. During my walk, I watched families come together over games of catch and disk golf and dogs run around as they had never been outside before. There was one dog that, no matter how many times its persistent owner threw its ball, would not go chase it. However, I also saw so much litter. Oz Park is beautiful but the amount of trash is astounding. One might ask themselves why such a cool place like Oz wouldn’t be cherished by its people.
I was left with a lot of thoughts after this walk. My refusal to use apps and really connect to the city left me with questions like why were those people at the bar so early? Why was that child crying? and why did its parents seem to not care? The only conclusion I could come to is that all of these people were doing what I was doing before I tried to connect to the city. They’re walking around in their own little worlds refusing to connect to the city, refusing to let it guide them through their struggles, refusing to let go.
