After nearly six months in our new hometown, here’s what I’ve learned:
- Boston drivers are bad; Chicago drivers are dangerous. You may as well be wearing a bullseye on your back when trying to use a crosswalk in this town.
- Many people now believe it is socially acceptable to wear a wireless cell phone head set all day (even while eating dinner at a restaurant). I saw these ridiculous flashing earpieces maybe twice a month in Boston; I see them several times a day in Chicago. Ugh.
- The irony of running a recycling program by requiring Chicagoans to put their recyclables in disposable blue bags is, apparently, lost on the city.
- When trying to catch the Damen bus, don’t bother using the schedule. It’s worthless.
- Brown and green line trains run counter-clockwise in the loop; purple and orange line trains run clockwise.
- Don’t take a scooter onto Lake Shore Drive. You might die.
- The Children’s Museum kicks a–.
- Starbucks is Chicago’s Dunkin’ Donuts; you can’t go two blocks without seeing one.
- No one has heard of our neighborhood (North Center).
- You will never have a bad meal at Kitsch’n. (You might, however, have a seizure while looking at their website.)
- Enacting a smoking ban in Boston was a picnic compared to the pseudo-ban that barely got passed here in December. I’ve never seen so much hand-wringing in my life. Entire countries are now smoke-free, but apparently Chicago’s economy will tank if all taverns ban smoking.
- The Tribune’s John Kass is sort of Chicago’s Brian McGrory.
- BYOB also kicks a–.
- Free museum day at the Aquarium is kind of a bust.
- The only two books to read while riding the El are A Million Little Pieces and Devil in the White City.
- Living on the Brown Line for the next four years might just suck.
- Goose Island is not just a beer, it is an actual island formed by a split in the Chicago River.
- It is a routine occurrence for ice to fall from the tops of skyscrapers on Michigan Avenue during the winter, so you might as well just suck it up and hope for the best (or look like an idiot running to work while covering your head).