1,001 Chicago Afternoons

“Your first deadline’s tomorrow. I want to see eight thousand words. Printable words. I still remember that essay you wrote when the Beast got elected. I do not want to see the word ‘fuck’ typed eight thousand times again.” – Royce, issue #1, Transmetropolitan

It was our first time making risotto, and my first experience frying up a skillet of chicagos. It’s ramp season in the Midwest, when the little onion-garlic goodies known as the ramp (Allium tricoccum) spring up for a few short weeks in forest preserves, gourmet restaurants and my girlfriend’s mom’s backyard. It’s also the plant [...]

The band was 20 acoustic guitars, a percussionist and a little girl in a dinosaur shirt dancing around in sneakers that lit up whenever her heel bopped. My girlfriend called her “The Dancing Kid.”

We slid up from the south, pop songs blazing and engine putt-putt-putting happily along the highway path. The sun had burst through the clouds behind us, gray skies ahead from cumuli not yet scattered. We were in the light and dark at once. Through the distance, so far ahead that it looked a shade of [...]

For the last month or two, he said, it has been fashionable to cut out the knees of pants. “I made these myself,” he said in his Aussie/Kiwi/Whatever accent, nodding toward his tightroll-ankle, cutout-knee blue jeans.

“Why do you call him Uncle Go Paul? He’s Uncle Paul because his name is Paul and he’s our uncle,” the older said to the younger. “He’s Uncle Go Paul because we go places with him,” the younger replied. I was touched. But not enough to get let them get a second thing of candy [...]

The girlfriend has metal allergies, that’s important to know. It’s important to know because some cheap silver and zircon knickknackery like the bit I had in my pocket could cause her to break out in an itchy rash. The skin turns green, she has to scratch, the whole caboodle. But she wanted a particular bit [...]

It’s story #250, just under a quarter through my quest to tell 1,001 tales of Chicago, but my mind couldn’t be further from the place. It’s in Rockford, Illinois, where my parents are cleaning the wreckage of a big family Thanksgiving. It’s in the Quad Cities, where my aunt is returning to her routine of [...]

I’m thankful that I’m almost at story 250. I’m thankful my girlfriend helped with the pie and I’m going to get to show my cousin the record store with the old arcade games in the back. It’s Thanksgiving, that day of rest spent complaining the world doesn’t give you time to be thankful.

“Mind if I take a picture of you for a Polish newspaper? You have the most amazing mustache. The Germans don’t have handlebar mustaches and they should. You would think they would have handlebar mustaches, but they don’t. You have the most amazing mustache and I would love to take a picture of it for [...]