Stalking Chicago
I decided to follow a stranger through the Lincoln Park campus. This decision stemmed from my distaste for SoundCloud. So after eating a cheeseburger on Saturday, I went back to my dorm, grabbed my darkest hoodie, my hat, and my sunglasses, and proceeded to do my best Micheal Myers impression.
It was an extremely nice day on Saturday, you could barely tell that fall had just started. While Psycho Killer by The Talking Heads echoed through my ears and the moral weight of my actions weighed over me, I saw my stranger. Usually, walking clears my head but my anxiety was getting the best of me so I immediately lost who I was trying to follow and just decided to pick someone randomly while going on a walk. So later that day I found a group of people and just followed them.
We started our walk on West Belden Avenue and while the section by the student center was busy the road seemed very empty. Under train tracks and past residential buildings, we flew as they were walking incredibly fast. It was clear none of them were taking this course because they clearly did not understand that walking was more than just transportation. I made the unforgivable mistake of wearing a hoodie because when I stopped to take it off, they were gone. I immediately panicked because I did not know that I had chosen prospective Olympians to follow.
I eventually caught up with them on North Lincoln Avenue. We turned left and down past Halligan Bar. At about this time I thought my cover was blown. I heard one of them say something about some “tall kid” behind them, so in true Micheal Myers fashion, I threw myself into a nearby alleyway. Not my proudest moment but I’ll be dead and buried before I get caught by someone wearing a Nirvana shirt. The gaggle of fast walkers entered Insomnia cookies and I exited the safety of my alley. They proceeded to pass me on their way back to what I can only assume is their dorms and for my successful stalking efforts (which is a sentence I never thought I would type but hey, here we are) I treated myself to a cookie.
A cookie in hand, I was reinvigorated and I caught up with the group as they were passing the School of Music on West Fullerton. We proceeded down West Fullerton for about 10 minutes before I decided that a snickerdoodle cookie was not a proper lunch and I left them as they were passing the Ion Apartment complex. As I was returning to the student center for what hobbits would call “afternoon tea” one thought stuck with me throughout, that group wasn’t paying attention to their surroundings. They were doing everything we learned not to do in this class and that made me wonder how walking changes when we are a part of a group and I think the main difference is that you pay more attention to the people than the buildings, you pay attention to yourself and your group because god forbid you have to talk to anyone you don’t already know.
I have lost myself many times in the city. I have mentioned in my previous pieces for this class that I go on solo walks constantly because it helps clear my head. I consider those walks as me getting lost because during those walks all my silly little problems like grades and girls disappear as I just focus on putting one foot in front of the other. So, to me, losing one’s self in a city is allowing the city to guide you and to truly let yourself live because so many of us just spend our lives surviving, doing what we have to do to get by, but by truly losing yourself in a city you are acknowledging how little control we actually have in our lives and accepting that is not a bad thing.
(All pictures where taken after the stalking)
