Becoming A Part of the Flood: A Walk Around Magnificent Mile and Steeterville
It is 2:12 pm and I am at the intersection of North State Street and the middle of West and East Chicago Avenue. I begin to walk slowly down N State Street, enabling all of my senses, and practicing the art of noticing.
Though it was 70°F and sunny, it was pretty chilly outside because of the wind and motion of the city. As I was walking it smelled as if something was burning but I couldn’t locate the smell. It lingered as I continued down the street.
At 2:21 pm, I turned left onto E Superior Street, where I noticed many people walking in groups. I also encountered friends chatting or going on a smoke break outside of restaurants. The people were walking at a slow to moderate pace, enjoying their free time. All I could hear for almost 2 minutes was the piercing noise of engines revving as a group of about 6 or 7 motorcyclists passed me. I walked past Saks 5th Avenue, remembering the times my mom would bring me there with her when I was little. She would never buy anything but loved trying on the clothes there while I played with my Barbies in the waiting area of the dressing room.
At 2:32 pm, I was attracted by the crowd on N Michigan Avenue so I turned right onto it. As I was walking in the flood of people, I heard many different languages spoken by foreigners. In total, I walked past 3 groups of foreigners asking locals for directions and I appreciated the locals’ efforts to help them. The tourism of this street didn’t surprise me because N Michigan Avenue, formally known as Pine Street, has been one of the most prestigious areas in the city commercially since its construction during the economic boom of the 1920s (Magnificent Mile, Stamper). The street is full of high-end stores, like one big outdoor mall surrounded by tall buildings. Hence, I saw a lot of people with shopping bags in their hands. As I stopped before crossing the streets, I noticed that even at red lights, the cars didn’t really stop. They stayed in motion even if they were only going 1–2 mph. Watching their impatience to cross the intersections left me oddly unsettled yet wondering whether every person driving needed to get to their destination quickly or if this is just how the nature of driving in the city is, which they’ve adapted over time.
As I continued down N Michigan Ave, a lady approached me after approaching different groups of people walking in front of me. She held out 3 wristbands, asking me to pick the one she should use to promote her brand. I told her to use the one that said “Don’t Worry Be Snappy” because I liked the play on words from the Lion King line: “Don’t Worry Be Happy.” I thought it was business savvy yet funny how she asked strangers for advertising advice. I kept walking and at the next street I crossed, I passed a monk. I think he was the second monk I’d seen in my entire life, so he caught my eye pretty easily. I also noticed that the streets I crossed as I was walking were named after the 5 Great Lakes, which I’m surprised I never noticed before based on the many times I’ve been in this area of Chicago.
Rebecca Solnit’s The Solitary Stroller in the City, brought about a picture in my head as I walked through the flood of people on N Michigan Ave. She said that “as more and more buildings arose, they became a continent, the remaining open space no longer like the sea but like rivers, canals, and streams running between the land masses. People no longer moved anyhow in the open sea of rural space but traveled up and down the streets, and just as narrowing a waterway increases flow and speed, so turning open space into the spillways of streets directs and intensifies the flood of walkers” (Pg. 186). The only open ‘space’ in the city were the streets and intersections between the massive buildings surrounding them. While my home in the suburbs is surrounded by forest, an ocean of space, these narrow streets I walked across felt like rivers, somehow becoming narrower the longer I walked, and the crosswalks symbolizing bridges. Like Solnit, I describe the crowd of people as a ‘flood’ because the limited amount of space for walking in the city forces them to travel as one, creating a concentration higher than when walking in a more rural area. I captured a gif of my stroll on N Michigan Ave, including the flood of people I was a part of.
At 2:43 pm, I turned left onto E Ohio Street. The first thing I saw that caught my eye was a family taking a picture and no one stopping to let them take the photo, they just kept walking between the cameraman and the family. I knew people in the city were impatient, but I at least expected some of them to try and walk around the scene of the photo. The ambiance on E Ohio Street was more peaceful in comparison to N Michigan Ave because there were no crowds. I walked past an Armenian restaurant, which caught my eye because I’d never encountered an Armenian-owned business in Chicago until now, only in California because of the large Armenian population in Los Angeles. As I was walking, these two little boys were riding their scooters back and forth on the block, passing me about 2–3 times. Their mother was leaning against the brick wall of a building on the block, yelling at them to stay on the block multiple times. I told her that her sons were cute and she thanked me then proceeded to sigh. She must’ve been anxious about keeping an eye on them. I went down E Ohio for a while, noticing a part of the street where the sunlight looked almost golden compared to the other sunlight spots, which were more white. I looked up to see the sun reflected off of a building and onto the street, changing the light’s color. The reflection also hit an intersection but this time it appeared as many circles of light, which was very pretty to look at.
At this point in my walk, I was shocked by how many things I noticed just by keeping my head up and paying attention to my surroundings. I usually look down at my phone or am too focused on getting to my destination when I walk in the city, but walking with no direction allows me to be present, only focusing on my surroundings. In It Is Not Waste All This, Not Placed Here in Disgust, Street after Street, by Kathleen Rooney, I enjoyed her take on the power of noticing: “The strangers swarming. The ice floes on the river like an invitation to a crazed and likely fatal game of hopscotch. None of these would you be able to truly see were you not drifting on foot with open eyes.” All the things I had noticed in just an hour of my walk were things I would’ve never paid attention to had I kept my eyes on my phone or my mind occupied by a lingering thought. My head was clear most of the time, only thinking about the random objects or people my eyes shifted towards. I became an active noticer.
At 3:18 pm, I reached the end of E Ohio Street and decided to turn left onto N Lakeshore Drive. Around this time, my legs started to feel heavy from all of the walking, but I kept my head up and continued. My brain became foggy from the noise of the traffic on DuSable Lake Shore Drive mixed with the wind gusting from Lake Michigan. It almost sounded like white noise, making me quite tired. Every other noise that had passed by me would fade back into the white noise, the kind of sound transition I’d hear in a dream. There was a moment when I passed a parked car with a man listening to jazz music, shaking his head back and forth in enjoyment. As I continued walking, his music faded into white noise, which can be heard in this audio clip.
After walking through only buildings for an hour, the sky looked huge on N Lakeshore Drive. The cars and the lake looked so small in comparison to the sky, somehow making me feel taller. I found such a view to be very beautiful so I captured a video clip of it. I also saw an old woman learning how to ride a bike on the sidewalk by overhearing a YouTube video she was watching with instructions. What looked like her grandson was helping her too, which I thought was wholesome.
At 3:37 pm, I turned left onto E Chestnut Street where I mostly saw residential buildings. I heard cars turning out of parking garages, their wheels squishing over large puddles of water between the street and the sidewalk from the rain showers earlier that day. As I crossed the streets, I felt the ridges in the road on the soles of my feet, causing me to turn my head and notice that the manholes were elevated from the ground. I had never seen that before and wondered if it was because the rain caused the roads surrounding the manholes to somehow deteriorate.
I saw a man eating a bao on E Chestnut Street and started to get hungry so I asked him where he got it and he pointed to the Water Tower Place at the end of the block. So at 3:49 pm, I turned left onto Michigan Ave to get myself a bao. The American Girl Doll Store was attached to the Water Tower Place, reminding me of all the birthdays I had spent at that store because I was obsessed with my American Girl Doll for years and always wanted to buy more clothes and accessories for it. I noticed a couple walking in front of the store, the guy trying to find a doll on display that looked like his girlfriend. I smiled because I thought it was a cute moment and then proceeded into the Water Tower Place where I got two spicy Mongolian beef baos. I walked to the old building next to Water Tower place, where I sat and ate the baos. I had high hopes for them, but they weren’t that good, leaving me disappointed because it was my first time trying a bao. When I got up, I walked past a small water fountain that splashed some water on me. My body shriveled up because I was already cold from the wind and the water heightened my discomfort.
At 4:07 pm, I turned right onto E Chicago Avenue, heading towards the red line that would take me back home. At this point in my walk, I was sleepy from all the white noise the constant traffic made. Then all of a sudden, I heard the sirens of an ambulance screaming into my ear and all of the cars on the street stopped, removing the white noise that had been playing in my head for almost an hour. It felt like the chemical balance of my brain had changed, waking me up. All I could hear was the sound of people’s feet shuffling before and after the blasting sirens had passed me. When the cars started to move again, It felt as if I had an out-of-body experience. I thought it was interesting how I’d heard the sound of traffic stopping for an ambulance before, but since I had a deep focus on my surroundings for almost 2 hours, the sensation was something I had never felt before.
I concluded my walk at 4:16 pm when I got on the red line back home. For some reason, the rest of my day felt different from most days. I don’t think I have ever been so focused on my surroundings for such a long period of time until this walk. My professor gave me one task on this walk: to notice the hell out of things. In return, I gained an out-of-the-ordinary adventure for myself full of new experiences and sensations. In Rebecca Solnit’s Paris, or Botanizing on the Asphalt, she uses Baudelaire’s ideology to describe the theme of wilderness in a city: “the prostitute, the beggar, the criminal, the beautiful stranger — but he does not speak to them, and the content of their lives remains speculative to him. Window-shopping and people-watching have become indistinguishable activities; one may attempt to buy but not to know them” (Pg. 263). I saw all kinds of people on my walk and though I did not speak to most of them, I watched them and remained in a constant state of wonder about their lives and their destinations as they walked because I had no destination for myself. All I could do as a wanderer was watch and wonder. I didn’t attempt to know them because there were so many of them; a city full of different people where I was on the outside looking in while still being outside, blending in with the crowd, part of the flood.
