There were no pretty bits, no elegant lines that would be jarring in contrast to the overarching fuggo. It was impressively socialist in its design. There were no free riders here, no collective action problem. The pieces all came together as one to create a truly unified, democratic and nasty whole.

But it was also on fire, and the rooftop was very cold.

Physically, the object was an outdoor heater, with a V of gas jets spewing the least-efficient form of warmth to the hotel bar revelers at the opening night party. You could tell the planners had expected better weather — the menu included snow cones — but when the temperatures unexpectedly dipped, they quite impressively stuck to their guns, having the open-air rooftop party along Michigan Avenue as planned.

As waiters served cool, summery floral cocktails to shivering men without coats and goosebumped women in flimsy sundresses, the hideous heater gathered a following for the gas jets if not the design.

The heater was about four feet tall and maybe six across. The V of jets was surrounded by a thicket of metal rods crudely soldered together to create the effect of fire around the fire. The rods were arranged in a massive vertical triangle — starting from ground level on the sides then coming up to a massive point in the middle, an attempt to evoke thoughts of campfires.

They didn’t pull it off. It looked like an Erector Set skyscraper had collapsed two seconds before. It looked like the back of the Game of Thrones sword-chair. And the designer hadn’t considered the practical matters of putting metal around gas jets. The rods near the flames were blackened with soot like a wet pan on a stovetop.

The rooftop party was in part for media, and a Chicago Tribune arts critic and I spent way too long talking about the space heater.

Or sculpture.

We couldn’t decide.

Was it a designer adding art to function or an artist adding function to design? And how did it fail both to impress visually and to keep people beyond a small radius warm?

The arts critic and I were surrounded by beauty on the Michigan Avenue hotel rooftop. We had the sweep and sway of the street below, peers and peeks of the lake. We were eye level with the Allerton Hotel sign, could see the blue tip of the old Playboy building. We could see Trib Tower, rooftop grass above the Burberry — buildings I never expected to see in the same vista but there we were amid Chicago’s gorgeous finery, entranced by the unbelievably ugly and forgettable.

In fairness to us and the dwindling crowd, it was pretty cold on the roof.

He was right on Western Avenue, talking to a man and a woman I recognized as either living in the building or working at the barbershop on the ground floor. I had seen them milling about before, that’s what I can say.

The machete had a metal blade the length of a forearm and a long blue handle. The couple didn’t flinch or move when he pulled the machete. The woman took a suck from a cigarette and put her free hand in her hoodie pocket when the man pulled the blade from the cart.

He wasn’t being violent with it or with them. He was just showing off his machete.

“Very detailed,” I could swear the woman said as the man re-secreted his weapon.

…

A few months ago, amid baubles and holiday cheer, I saw an attractive young woman carrying a Klingon bat’leth down Michigan Avenue. It’s a long fantasy weapon from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Remember the awkward-looking curvy thing the guy with the messed-up forehead would swing around on TNG? Bat’leth.

I didn’t stop her to ask. I had Christmas shopping to do.

…

Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a post about every time I saw someone walking down the streets of Chicago with a freaky-big mystery weapon. I don’t have a third story for the trilogy and I already worried my poor mother enough with the first one.

I guess my observation wasn’t that they were blades — one for a man forced by economics onto the street to defend himself, the other presumably for fending off Romulans (they have no honor).

My observation is that the city was blase about the oddity.

They could have been blades, or a funny shirt. I could have written this story about every time I’ve seen someone running down the street skipping and singing. But the result would be the same. People would walk by, maybe give a look, maybe not and move on.

I don’t know if this makes me happy or sad, if it’s funny or just a bland annoyance. We live in a world of machetes and fantasy weapons hidden in plain sight.

We live in a world so delightfully weird it became commonplace, just a brief glance at the strange and dangerous while going about your day.

More on noticing the world

A woman who coordinates her bicycle and prosthetic leg

A goose of just win

The people took to the streets, strode down Michigan Avenue, yelled that this was not normal, that the loser by 2.9 million votes should not be the winner of the nation, that the clown should not be allowed to fail up.

It was super-fun.

So what do we do, like, now?

The Big Caveat

Here’s the bad part: Nothing that comes next will be as fun as the Women’s March.

There’s a lot of snarky chatter online (The Internet: Home of the Snarky Backbite) about how it was just a show of force, about how it was just about people feeling proud of themselves for not being racist/sexist/anything-ist, that it in the long run by itself did nothing.

Well, yeah. It was a rally. Like a pep rally. Like that thing high schools do to pump themselves up for the big game.

So here’s the big game:

Open Your Wallets

It’s not about making change. It’s about fighting the forces that want to take back the advances that we have made. Open your wallets to bolster the defense.

So fund the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, local and national queer rights, environmental, journalistic, anti-corruption or free speech groups. There’s no shortage of issues this administration is going to mess up. Throw a dart.

If you don’t have money, raise money. Hold fundraisers for these groups. Any idiot can do it.

Volunteer

Don’t have money, but have time? Do that.

My only caveat here is that you should do what they want you to do, not what you want to do. The work these groups need might involve standing in the cold and wet to escort women seeking health care past screaming protestors. It might involve handing out fliers at fairs, or just sitting in a room organizing donor information into spreadsheets and oh my god I just bored myself writing that clause.

You do it because it’s wrong not to do it. The fight’s not there to keep you entertained.

[EDIT: Since I wrote this, I learned of the Chicago Volunteer Expo, a perfect — and upcoming — chance to figure out how you can help different local groups.]

Get Involved in the System

Think the system is corrupt? Guess what. It is and it will be whether or not you’re involved. All you staying out of the fray means is that you get a little halo while the world gets worse.

Vote, contact your representatives, campaign for and donate to candidates you think are less worse than the other guy and otherwise get your hands dirty. Hell, maybe even go full scumbag and run for office.

Politics runs the country. Any plan for change that doesn’t involve active political involvement (as opposed to just hoping politicians see what you’re doing and decide to change their minds like when the Grinch hears all the Whos singing) is, by definition, going to fail.

You’re going to have to talk to politicians to change politics. Sorry.

Conclusion / The Whiny Wine Man

At the big rally on Saturday, I had the misfortune to walk next to a whiny guy with a beard and a water bottle full of red wine. He kept talking about how discouraged and sad he was and how much he was questioning the meaning of it all.

To you sir, I ask this: Why did you think this would be fun?

You do it because it’s wrong not to, not because you feel some satisfying pull toward truth. Being a relevant citizen takes hard, boring work every single day of your life.

I couldn’t be more excited to start.

“You’re cute,” she said. “I want your phone number.”

At the Nordstrom-flagged shopping mall on Michigan Avenue, where luxurious, high-end chocolatiers and salons mingle with tawdry mall fodder Panda Expresses and phone case hawkers, I had wandered past a cosmetics kiosk staffed only by the beautiful.

A dark-haired woman in a form-fitting and low-cut black dress almost straddled a middle-aged white guy in a grey suit in a chair. She leaned over him and touched him and laughed at things he said.

It was a corner-of-the-eye notice for me; I didn’t break my slow, exploratory stride until a woman with mid-length blonde hair, a shy yet beckoning smile and eyes the color of the northern sea on a foggy dawn slid up to me in her own form-fitting low-cut.

She held out a free sample of some beautification chemical, but flicked it away when I reached for it.

“I can tell the redness bother you,” she said in a fetching Russian or otherwise E. European accent and tracing a finger along her own cheekbones. “Come, I want to do something for you.”

A few seconds later, I was the one in the chair getting slathered and swabbed with little ice cream sample spoonsful of exfoliants, lotions, aftershaves and doesn’t that smell nice, sweetie? See this? That is all dead skin, you can see difference already.

A lean, a touch, a smile, eye contact, reaching for something behind me for the purpose of leaning admittedly masterful cleavage in my face.

Teasing, goading, complimenting, insulting. She can tell I do something to get my great skin. She can tell I need to do more for my wide pores and redness. Enough flirting to make me feel handsome and wealthy (I can get this product); enough prodding to make me feel ugly and poor (I need this product).

You can’t afford this? You use a little amount, will last you 24 months. How much is that? Two years! You can’t afford for two years? No? No? OK, I like you, sweetie. I’ll tell you what I will do, sweetie. For Christmas I sell this at lower price. You get this [puts down cube-shaped box] and for same price I give you this [puts down more rectangular box] as well. I do this because I like you, sweetie. You don’t tell anyone, OK? You just when people ask about your skin send them my way, OK? OK, sweetie?

During this all, I volleyed back. No, I can’t afford this. Yes, $160 seems expensive for a jar of hand cream. Yes, $59 also seems expensive, even with the more rectangular box thrown in. No, I can’t afford this. No, I can’t afford this. Yes, it does smell nice. No, I can’t afford this.

Then suddenly, it landed. She took a step back, dropped the gentle leaning, touching, big wide eyes, the smiling, the flirting about cuteness and phone numbers. She withdrew from a transaction that was clearly a non-starter.

“OK, just have a great day,” she said, instantly grim and bored.

“You too,” I chirped, hopping from my chair to wander on, chuckling about what I had just seen.

What made me chuckle wasn’t the woman. I’ll never fault anyone for using what they’ve got. Morally it’s no different than when I flash the big puppy eyes and the smile that says “Trust me.”

The word that springs to mind when she does her act might be one letter shorter than “Trust,” but life’s too hard to get judgmental on how others make their way.

What made me chuckle happened during the “You can’t afford this?” slather-swab-sweetie barrage, which in real life was about five times as long and included many more touches, several additional “sweeties” and a hand-holding pinkie swear promise I would tell no one of the great deal she was offering only me because she liked me so much.

While I was in the chair being poked, prodded, straddled, flirted, touched, complimented and forcibly cleavaged, the suit-wearing man I had seen getting the same treatment from the other woman wandered past.

He carried three things. The first was a look of hatred directed solely at me.

The other two were bags of $160 hand cream.

No, sweetie. No.

Read the Ben Hecht story that inspired the title

Read about a different fashionista getting sales tips from a pro

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Take my Chicago Corruption Walking Tour

With a turn of his fingers, he slid and slipped a white plastic bit into the thick rubber band. As natural as snapping fingers, he pulled the band back and shot the little twisty, twirly, bendy bit with the light-up end into the sky.

It shot 50, 60 feet into the dark air, its blue light flickering down through by the white terra cotta of the downtown Wrigley Building, a plastic helicopter seed available for tourist purchase.

He picked it up off the ground and shot it into the sky again.

“Where do you get those?” I asked.

“I sell them,” he said, mistaking my request as a potential sales pitch rather than a question of provenance. “Five dollars.”

I corrected him on my intent. I work here, I said. Just across the street, I said, just south of the Trib Tower plaza where for night after night, week after week, month after month, I had seen him stand for hours, slingshotting his little copters into the night sky so tourist kids could beg their parents to pay the five bucks for the swirling lightstick descending from above.

I wanted to know where one obtains big satchels of light-up copters.

“A friend of mine in L.A. makes them,” he said.

He was one of the first round of pedicab drivers in NYC back in the day, he said. Now the industry has become clogged and clotted, he said. Too many people cutting corners, giving bad service, getting a well-earned bad rap for a once-nice gig, he said.

He travels in winter, he said. Travels to places warm and beachy when the Michigan Avenue plazas just north of the river get too cold and lost to fling light-up helicopters into the sky for five bucks a pop.

He could never work in an office, he said.

Just stand outside one, I mentally added for him. I felt bad about that.

We talked a long while, while I was waiting for my ride. He asked about me, about my job giving tours on the Chicago River. He asked how much it paid and he answered my questions about how much the light-up copters bring in. Two downtown tourist hustlers comparing notes.

One of his helicopters came down almost on a woman’s head. He apologized

“That’s the first time that’s happened,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “You must shoot them, like, a hundred times a night.”

He didn’t say anything. Another wanderer came by and he wanted to be sure a copter was flickering in the sky for them.

I felt bad that I made a snarky mental note when he talked about offices. I felt bad about this man at work, working a harder, more demanding and honest job than anything the desk jockey he hawks to must negotiate.

He doesn’t work to monetize brand, making substandard services and companies seem sine qua non. He doesn’t middleman people’s finances, try to slice off a hunk for himself whenever people want to buy a house, car or mocha frappuccino. No one gets wounded, jailed or broke in his racket.

He just shoots off helicopters and asks if anybody wants one.

And somehow he’s the hustler.

He’s the one who got chased from his usual turf south of Trib Tower by a big corporate display. He’s the one pedestrians won’t look at, the one people walk by without making eye contact with. He’s the one who has to handle a palm-out “No thank you” hand as response from people who won’t break stride when he asks them if they want to own something cheap and fun.

He’s the one who says “Five dollars” quietly so the cops don’t roust him.

No fine print. No brand. No hard sell. Just a little street hustler working the night, asking five bucks for a cheap, fun thing. If you don’t want it, no worries. The next one might.

Another honest transaction

More Michigan Avenue

A unicycle salesman

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Uncle Fun

So what should I write this milestone story about?

I decided to toss that question to the folks who made up the first 499, asking the people who got me this far how I should kick off the second half.

My first call was to honorary nephew Roland, age 10, who appeared in #362: Uncle Go Paul and #237: On Dining with Children Where I Used to Get Shitfaced and who was the subject of #365: Why Write? A Letter to my Nephew.

He wanted to talk history, surprisingly focused on the 1893 Columbian Exhibition for someone who still makes up stories about robots.

“I thought you were talking about writing a fiction story, but I like, um, I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s the Ferris wheel. Because it involves the Fair,” he said.

“And if I were writing a fiction story?” I asked.

“The Cubs winning the World Series.”

“Did your dad tell you to say that?”

“Yes.”

His brother Milo, 7, suggested I write about boats.

“They would go boating!” Milo said.

The unnamed narrator of The Nut Hut Trilogy (#193, #196 and #199) is an old friend of mine who sat down for tripe soup and a chat about how she used to be the bait in a phony prostitution scam (read the stories — it’ll make sense).

“In keeping with my theme,” she said, she’s digging up the name of a church group she’s heard of that goes out to “minister to prostitutes, porn stars, strippers and other sex workers.”

Another longtime friend, fellow hipster striver Steven Gilpin, who made his musical debut at Schuba’s last month, was profiled in #140: Evil Twins back in 2013. He suggested I talk to the Chicago tamale guys, those saviors of hungry nights out who circle local bars with coolers full of hot, homemade tamales.

Puppeteer Stephanie Díaz, whose handmade constructions told the tales of Mariposa Nocturna: A Puppet Triptych in #424: Paper, Wood and Wire, suggested I profile the famous Chicago Puppet Bike.

However, this is the only of the ideas I already had myself, profiling the mobile puppet show in #66: The Kitties Dance to Country.

Geologist and paleobiologist Asa Kaplan of #484: The Man in the Dinosaur Hat sent this as a response, which I’ve decided to run verbatim because I’m pretty sure he’s messing with me.

“Hmm something about lightning bugs? Midsummer, I mean. Something in the middle of something.”

Joann Martyn, who each year celebrates the day she didn’t die in #444: Didn’t Kick the Bucket Day, took a different approach.

“You’ve profiled a lot of people and told us their stories, but what I want to know — how have those stories impacted you? How has your life changed because of these stories you craft and share with the rest of the world?”

The answer, of course, is that when I started this project, I was 6 foot 5 and so muscled I looked like an over-inflated Stretch Armstrong.

Martha Bayne was first featured in late 2013 in #251: Karen’s Stone Soup, which was about a fundraiser Bayne and her friends held for Swim Café owner Karen Gerod’s medical bills. Gerod passed away the next summer, much missed by the Noble Square community.

Although she didn’t appear by name, Bayne next showed on the site through artist collective Theater Oobleck, the focus of #344: The Most Sarcastic Child in Chicago Watches a Clown Show.

So it’s only appropriate that a two-timer give two suggestions, “one self serving and one a wild card.”

One’s on the Veggie Bingo event she holds at The Hideout (itself the setting of #473: Autophagy, or Why Progressives Lose). The event looks as insane as the name implies, and you can bet your kale and golden beets I’ll be writing about that soon.

Bayne’s other idea, which I might do as early as next week, is to “go to the corner of 500 N/500 W and then 500 S/500 E and report on the street life.”

Absolutely perfect. I think it’ll still work even if it’s not story #500 on the nose.

Sculptor, graphic recorder and one of Chicago Magazine’s Most Eligible Singles in 2014 Dusty Folwarczny also worked with the number notion.

“I think you should write about something that has to do with the number 500 and Chicago. Maybe it’s the address of where you interview, or how many bottles of beer are produced in an hour, or how many oysters are consumed at Shaw’s happy hour,” she said.

Dusty’s company Ink Factory appeared in #162: The Graphic Recorders and she guided me through the why of modern sculpture in #197: The Hypothetical Zulu Test.

Rachel Hyman, my co-organizer co-host in the Welcome to the Neighborhood reading series, suggested I do something lighthearted and fun, “Since you already took the meta angle with the last story.”

Yeah… wouldn’t want to get too… meta.

Hm.

I don’t think I’ll be writing about the Cubs winning the series, and technically every story I write is “something in the middle of something.” But I want to take this chance to thank all the people who have shared their stories with me over these last three years. And I’m looking forward to the people I’ll meet in the next three.

Now come back Friday for the completely original idea I came up with myself about boats that go boating.

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Do you know former South Side steelworkers? I’m writing a book on the mills and want to hear their stories. Email me.

I get the question a lot, or have in the three years I’ve been teaching journalism. Sometimes it’s asked as a gotcha challenge, sometimes it’s just blurted out as if I had mentioned I strangle puppies for a living.

And sometimes it’s asked in a quiet tone before class by a scared junior wondering if her choice of major has been a terrible mistake.

Do I feel bad about teaching journalism?

The student who asked is funny and nice. She’s a front row kid, whereas I was strictly back bench until I realized the front was better for arguing with TAs.

Do I feel bad about teaching journalism?

One friend I told immediately declared the student would go far, that she’s the type of fearless inquisitor the field needs. A few others have just gotten quiet, then asked, “Well, do you?”

I tell them all I hate teaching freshmen.

There’s nothing wrong with freshmen per se. They can be as nice and likable and scared and funny as any of the other students I’ve had the privilege to work with over the last three years, but I get a morally squicky feeling influencing them on their choice of majors.

Once someone is already sold, once someone is already obsessed and no other practice will do in life, then I’m perfectly fine giving them some skills that will help. I’ll yell at them about attribution and what a margin of error really means. I’ll quote Strunk and White on needless words and Mark Twain on killing adjectives. I’ll talk about TIFs, packing, cracking and The Mirage, teach them how to FOIA, teach them how to read a budget, spreadsheet, 10-K, D-2, TSR, FRIS, AG990-IL, EIN, PIN, LLC Certificate of Good Standing and set them loose on the world with a knowledge of tax bills, school report cards, campaign finance reports, SEC filings and a vague hope that somehow knowing this will matter.

But I’ll also show them a slideshow of every journalist I know who has been laid off. I’ll tell their stories. This one had worked there 39 years. This one was about to buy a car. They laid this one off the day after an election. This one needed heart surgery. This one was just a really nice lady.

And I’ll tell them numbers, too. 5,000 new full-time, digital-only jobs compared with the 18,400 jobs lost from 2003-13 in the newspaper industry alone.

I’ll get them excited with “Snow Fall” and “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt” and then tear them down with media stenography, innumeracy and why oh why we grab a climate change denier for balance when we don’t feel the need to lavalier mic a flat earther every time NASA releases photos from space.

Journalism has become like art, music, philosophy — nice for society, but a shitty major to have to explain to your parents.

So I want to deal with the obsessed.

Give me the students who get angry over verbs, the ones whose tongues starts wagging when they see something unfair. Give me the students who find citing sources a terribly attractive commodity and I’ll work my ass off to get them ready for day one.

Because that’s the kicker. Their real education hasn’t begun, won’t begin until they create it for themselves, day by day, at the job a godless man prays they get.

There are some really good young journalists coming at you, world. Can you be as good to them as they’ll be to you?

That’s my question for you.

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Read the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2014

A few favorite acts of journalism:

“Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek,” New York Times

“Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt,” NPR

“The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates,” Chicago Magazine

“Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Esquire

“The Mirage,” Chicago Sun-Times

“Broken Bonds,” Chicago Tribune

“Harper High School,” WBEZ’s This American Life

With that, the woman slouched over the table began to rouse. Sleepy but not sleeping, and resentful for being denied the chance, she lifted her earbud-dangled head, cocked it and blinked angrily at the security guard.

“She’s awake,” the security guard said into her walkie talkie, wheeling around to walk the other way. “She’s not sleeping.”

Along Michigan Avenue, where the rich don’t shop (because who does that in person nowadays, darling?) there is a fancy pants mall with a fancy pants escalator that goes up four fancy flights, some of which sell pants, to a fancy pants food court mostly inhabited by lunching young women who work at the stores.

And past the common area, where tables lay scattered amid downward escalators and Coast Burgers mingle with Panda Expresses and Jimmys John, there’s a darkened offshoot.

The room to the side looks like it should be for a restaurant, but isn’t. It’s more common area, filled with tables for people who took the extra second to look before grabbing a jostling spot by the Habanero Fresh Mexican Grill or Potbelly.

It’s quieter there. An old man reads a newspaper. Two young women chatter. Art on the walls portrays Chicago scenes, but it’s a darker, lonelier place where a woman with earbuds can almost take a nap and I can steal free WiFi for many, many hours.

It’s a place for the wealthy where no one’s rich. It’s a backwater eddy on this river of commerce where people can sit in a food court, hiding the fact they bought no food. It’s a place to sneak away, to slip between the cracks and get resentful when your hiding becomes so obvious security is called.

The sleeping-not-sleeping woman was mid-40s, either Latina or white and very, very tired. We had been sitting facing each other, me on my laptop and she listening to an iPod as her tired head kept bobbing, bobbing, bobbing down.

She glared angrily at the retreating guard, then wryly at me. It was a simple look, the “what the hell was that did you see that what the hell was that” we’ve all shot a stranger at one point in our lives.

The moment lasted too long. She stared me in the eyes. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Waiting for validation. Validation from a man who had no more connection than also wanting to hide for free.

She had been caught sneaking away from the world and she wanted a stranger to tell her it was OK.

I smiled and shrugged to break the standoff. She smiled back and rested her head in her hands. Her head bobbed, bobbed, bobbed down.

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Another simple moment with a stranger

Part of that is literal, as the Tribune Tower is dappled on the sides with rocks pulled from the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, Hagia Sophia, Angkor Wat, even the Berlin Wall and the World Trade Center.

But the gray Gothic building of gargoyles and buttresses seems itself a massive stone, inset in a bustling, modern, mall-swathed downtown of glass and steel and TRUMP, there to remind a city of its past.

And I peed there.

A friend who, for reasons confusing to me, has asked for anonymity in this story of hope and urine, works at the Chicago Tribune, a staid, conservative rag that remains Chicago’s largest daily newspaper. After a morning event and before a lunch of eggs and pancakes, she asked if I wanted to see the newsroom.

The tour wandered past desks and computers, mini-studios for webcasts and offices lined with old cameras and the plates of historic front pages on the plights of everyone from Churchill to Bin Laden.

Journalists can be cluttery types, with desk decorations ranging from piles of vintage toys to a few family photos to stacks and stacks of old newspapers, government reports, notebooks, magazines and other research materials that, sure, someday they’ll get around to using or throwing out.

We passed the offices of the RedEye, the overpriced free pop culture handout left by the thousands on trains and buses throughout the city each day. Their walls are red and lined with past pun-loaded front pages. A massive, Andre the Giant-sized printout of a page featuring Kanye West looms over the scene.

The RedEye people can bring in beer on Fridays, my friend grumbled.

Finally, the Chicago Tribune editorial boardroom.

The stateliest room in the stately building, the boardroom is as much a classy anachronism in the Trib’s piles of desks and Kanye as the building itself is along Michigan Avenue shopping and hotels.

This is where candidate endorsement interviews happen. For decades, the political elite, from governors to aldermen have come through these doors to kiss the ring of the newspaper’s editorial board and ask for their blessing.

Or to indifferently ask these business-appointed power brokers to not give too much crap in their fishwrap.

The walls are dark wood in the boardroom. Framed political cartoons crack jokes about Lincoln or Secretary of the Interior James Watt, depending on era. Glass cabinets built into those walls hold decades of writing by Trib journalists, both the seminal (“Boss,” “The Mirage,” “Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy”) and the lesser-known works (“Johnny Deadline, Reporter,” which I looked up later and seems quite good).

And there’s a little washroom to the side.

“C-can I?” I asked my friend.

“Sure,” she said, smiling indulgently as her pancake-craving stomach no doubt rumbling.

As I completed my business, which I will now proceed to describe in as intense detail as I did with the Tribune Tower itself, I thought about history.

The paper’s not what it was. No newspaper is. Revenue, ad sales, readership – all down. Online competition, turnover, resentment from screwed staffers and condescended-to audiences – up.

Even one as history-ripe as the Chicago Tribune can’t coast on history forever. People nod at history, haul their kids to see it as a cultural experience. That’s great for the Art Institute down the way, but a newspaper must be a living, viable entity, not a repository of past triumphs.

It must provide a community what it needs to, wants to or maybe just could know. It must provide a living for its employees, return for its investors, pride for its region.

A newspaper must be perfect, thought a man who runs one blog at a loss.

I don’t know what to do to keep that boardroom from becoming someone’s condo someday. I don’t know how to keep those desks filled or those plates cranking out facts. I don’t know how to run a major daily newspaper as a future-bound business and I don’t know who does.

But I think it’ll be a loss to the city if that newspaper fails. There’s enough history in this town. I think we need that gray Gothic stone set along Michigan Avenue to document it, not become it.

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Go to this spoken word event in Pilsen tonight

More Tales from the Decline of Newspapers:

• Parachuting Lessons
• The Quantum Jew Loses Faith
• The Afterlife

The only clue he was homeless was the salvaged chair cushion he was stuffing into the Michigan Avenue Bridge.

The cushion was light tan and small, a new and beloved find for the man. He had shuffled along the lower level walking path of the bridge clutching it to his chest.

And now he was tucking it into the bridge girder running parallel to the handrail, hiding his find under the thin crisscrossed Xs of metal designed to keep people from doing exactly what he was doing.

It was the point where evening becomes night, purple skies turning black. The man secreted his package while standing in a cone of yellow light from the bridge’s upper level.

He poked and prodded it, made sure it wasn’t in danger of tumbling into the water below or being spotted by a walker, biker, tourist or other street person above.

When he was satisfied, he gave the air a sniff and an almost invisible nod, then kept shuffling south on the bridge walkway.

I crept out of my hiding place.

I had pulled my bike over by the metal stairwell that takes people up down up down to Michigan, Lower Michigan or the river path, depending on how far they want to go. Once I was sure the man was gone, I snuck out of my hole and skittered over to the girder to peer in.

The cushion sat on top of a pile of goods. Two milk crates. Something wrapped in black garbage bag plastic. I took a photo with my cell phone.

“Now the underside of the bridge is icky, so don’t reach up and touch it,” an amplified voice came from behind and beneath.

It was one of the Chicago Architecture Foundation cruises on Mercury, one of their endless stream of boats called Chicago’s Something Lady.

“This type of bridge is called trunnion bascule,” the voice said.

The tour guide talked about what bascule means, about balanced seesaws and uneven arms. He talked about bridge houses and mechanisms, falling weights and rising roadways. His lecture grew dim as the boat slipped beneath and away.

I was alone with the homeless man’s possessions.

You want stats on homelessness in Chicago? Google them. You want stories of their lives and how they got to where they are today? I don’t have that tonight.

You want to know anything about this man who shuffled off into a purple-black night under the bright, chafing yellow of Lower Michigan Avenue?

I don’t have that either.

The story just ends here, another invisible human in the Chicago night.

A man hiding all he owns in trunnion bascule.

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See my photo of the man’s possessions