Walking Chicago 2: Electric Boogaloo
Moving from Middle Of Nowhere, Alabama to Chicago has perhaps been the biggest change I have ever made in my entire life (except for that one week I gave up coffee). The biggest change was not the weather, the scenery, or even the food, it was the means of transportation. Coming from somewhere that mostly everyone had cars, the CTA was incredibly impressive. However, despite the CTA’s impressiveness, I found myself walking everywhere just because I could. I found that walking in the city was freeing and exhilarating. Now, I go on walks almost every day and document my walks for this class which has provided me with new insights and ways of walking. As this quarter winds down, I lace up my sneakers and blast The White Stripes for one final documented walk for Walking Chicago, analyzing how the lack of control in your walk is what makes the walk worth walking.
I will start this essay where I start most of my walks, the Lincoln Park. I started my walk at about 3:45 on Wednesday after I finished writing my four-page paper on the ideology Citizen Kane. I walked down to North Seminary and flipped a coin to see if I would go up or down the street. I started doing this on walks because I have been walking Lincoln Park since I moved here in August but after the readings, one quote from Rebecca Solnit stuck with me. “But to lose oneself in a city- as one loses oneself in a forest- that calls for quite a different schooling” (Solnit). This quote encapsulated the part of walking in Lincoln Park for me. I constantly felt like I had been everywhere in Lincoln Park when that was far from true. Solnit is encouraging you to get lost in a city which is usually something someone actively tries to avoid, but Solnit is suggesting that if you give up control while walking in the city, you will gain a much richer and gratifying experience, and I whole heartily agree. I found that I had a much more gratifying experience when I had absolutely no clue where I was going and I certainly enjoyed it more than when I knew where I was going. When I use to take walks, I would walk around the campus buildings, wearily straying from the safety of the quad, but now I constantly just pick a direction and just go.
As I continued my walk down North Seminary, I turned left on West Dickens and ended up in Oz Park. While I walking, I noticed a person who was crying in a Powerpuff girls costume (I believe she was Buttercup) in front of me who was walking in the same direction away from the . She was being comforted by her friends who were wearing matching Bubbles and Blossom, respectively, but they confirmed a theory that no two people can have the same walk because walking is not about the physical act but rather the experience of walking itself. I was having an extremely peaceful walking experience, listening to The White Stripes, and having a great time while this person was having a full-fledged mental breakdown. As I slowly sauntered past, they did even acknowledge me, which reminded me of a quote from John Turnbull. “They disregard me” (Turnbull). To them, I was just a passerby, a stranger, an extra in their story, and they were the same to me. It was an interesting experience that completely validated my theory that the chaos of walking makes it worth doing. I had absolutely no way of knowing I was going to run into the Powerpuff girls crying on my way to a Wizard Of Oz-themed park. That lack of control is what attracts people to walk. Those random experiences make walking worth walking .
As I walked around Oz park, I realized that cities are also about experience. In the spirit of the project where we had to follow the stranger around, I ease dropped on the people in Oz park. They where all sorts of people at Oz, I saw tourist talking about the things the “absolutely have to go see”, locals loudly talking about where they where going to go eat and how they where disappointed in the cubs, and vendors selling knock off squid game merchandise while fighting with each other. This stroll lead me down an interesting thought path. I knew that walking was all about individual experience but then I started yo ponder the question of cities being completely individual experiences because these locals where talking about a place that I lived and I did not recognize what they where talking about, but tourist where talking about that places and activities I knew about (that I also knew only existed to illicit that response), and then the vendors who where fighting over space to attempt to sell more products. All of these people are experiencing and living in a different, more personal verison of Chicago. I experience Chicago very much from the perspective of a college student. I know where all the businesses have discounts and where everything is on campus but I have no clue where anything would be in Wrigleyville, but a Cubs or Socks fan would know every nook and cranny of Wrigley but would (hopefully) know nothing about where my ten am film class would be. This shows that while my Chicago is similar to other people Chicago is uniquely my own and anyone that walks in Chicago may be experiencing something similar to someone else, they are experiencing something entirely unique to themselves.
Walking in Chicago is always a memorable experience. When I first moved here in August within a week, I experienced a shirtless man walking down the middle of the road with an eyepatch on over his glasses that I think about at least once a day, a fire hydrant that was loose and flooding the entire block, and a massive mural of Cheshire Cat from Alice and Wonderland and I never could have planned to see any of those things when I planned my move to Chicago. I go on daily walks now because of that experience because when I said I wanted to go to Depaul and experience all Chicago has to offer. I meant it. I wanted to experience everything. I believe the best way to experience everything is to walk. If had neglected to take this class I would have had to use google maps to get everywhere and I would not have been able to properly experience the walk and Chicago itself. If I had never taken this class, I would never have learned about the gentrification of certain neighborhoods and what makes a street walkable. I would never have learned about what it truly means to walk in Chicago.
As I made my way back to my dorm going up West Webster at about 4:45, I was trying to think of an ending to this essay and I concluded that the best way to end this essay would be a quote from Rebecca Solnit, as it had felt like I had read almost every word she had written by the end of the quarter, and since she perfectly encapsulated everything I said in twelve hundred and fifty-one words in twenty-one words. “But to lose oneself in a city- as one loses oneself in a forest- that calls for quite a different schooling” (Solnit)
