Long Walk
Fullerton, a street every DePaul student knows however how many students take the time to walk down this street for miles. So I decided for my walk that I would take the trek from the Fullerton stop right on campus to my friend, Evan’s apartment in Logan Square roughly 3 miles west on Fullerton. Now I’ve done this trek before whether in an Uber or on the bus but I never watched my surroundings I instead would simply stare at my phone like every other millennial. The first thing you notice while walking any street is, of course, the sidewalk. Is it clean or dirty, is it taken care of or are there holes everywhere, these were the first questions that came to my mind when I went on my walk. Of course, the people you see are always going to be part of the communities that you’re walking through. I took my walk late at night because I feel that night walks are where you see the community the most. Is it full of people walking their dogs once more before heading to bed or is it full of kids going to bars and partying? I started my walk just after 9 p.m. when the sun was setting and people were out. The first thing that I noticed was the cars passing by as I walked from my dorm to the Fullerton station. After arriving at the station at 9:09 I turned back around and began my walk heading straight west.
The beginning of my walk was quite busy as I was still on campus and students and teachers were walking home or going out. From 9:10 to around 9:30 we are walking through DePaul and Lincoln Park which was by far the busiest place for walkers. Around 9:20ish I met up with my friends, Alex and Luke, who I had asked to join me on this walk. I picked them up outside of the Burger King on Southport and Fullerton. Now having another two people with me made me feel much safer about this walk especially because of how late it was. Both Alex and Luke helped me record things that we saw and heard such as Luke hearing three different car horns between 9:22 and 9:26 or Alex seeing a total of 17 Uber cars hanging out around the street. The next most notable thing to happen was when we passed by Domino’s Pizza a place that we had just been the night before for some midnight pizza. I think that they have some incredibly greasy food which makes it a perfect midnight food. However, because we were already occupied with this walk we had to leave it behind. After that we passed by a sort of strip mall type of thing I guess but it had a Marshalls, GameStop, Chuck E. Cheese's I mean what else would you need. We continued past the stores and kept going until we hit the river. This river marked the first mile being complete we were one-third of the way.
The farther west I traveled the fewer people I saw and the people that I did see changed as well. Being on campus most of the people I saw were college students but after leaving campus the average age jumped up. Pretty quickly you realize that Fullerton’s street side is almost all stores however after the river the first two blocks are fairly empty with a lot taking up most of the first black and warehouses covering the rest and the second block being dominated by a massive athletic center. This area was also very much scarce with walkers. The walk at that point is I guess somewhat depressing especially the north side of the street. Most of the buildings were just solid walls with little personality. An entire block just filled with a solid brick and concrete wall with no windows and solid black metal doors. Even the south side of the street was somewhat depressing with a lot of mute and neutral colors and buildings that had little personality of their own. This was my least favorite part of the walk. Just after those two blocks past the river, we have the highway one of the loudest points of this walk for a good reason. Chicago’s immense population calls for the need for a massive transportation system and highways are just part of that. We passed the highway around 9:40 and I can tell you that it was loud cars and people alike just filled the space. This was probably the dirtiest part of the entire walk just because of the amount of homeless under the bridge.
After the highway however you see a lot more houses and apartments peeking from behind the storefronts that continue to line Fullerton. About an hour into my walk you pass a soccer field just before California Ave. There Luke and I stopped for a minute to kind of take in the area. Alex, however, used the break to simply grab some food from El Nandu an Argentinean restaurant right across the street. According to him, it was some of the best Argentinean food he’s had and it was also his first time having it. At this point we were near the end of the trip the next block was Milwaukee and that was the main street for Logan Square. At that point, we decided to walk down to the main square, Logan Square Park, where we met up with Evan a fellow DePaul student living with his brother and friend in Logan Square, and from there we simply walked around aimlessly exploring the area. We walked past a few of the residential streets as well as the main square. Even though it was late there were people everywhere. The main streets had partygoers everywhere and the residential had people going for walks with their dogs or simply to get some fresh air. Logan Square isn’t really that far from Lincoln Park but it is certainly a different area and the walk to it shows us the difference between the two.
