A Trip to the City

My wife and I try to get to Chicago once a month to be with our kids and our new Granddaughter June.  We’re doing that by booking Air B&B’s in neighborhoods close to them.  We used to find deals on hotel rooms downtown but somehow the pandemic has changed that vibe. 

We drive to Joliet, take the Metra to LaSalle Street station, then an Uber to where we are staying.  We’ve decided it’s not the accommodations but the location that matters, the neighborhood around us.  Last week, we ended up in an old brick two-flat in the 2000 block of West Wabansia.  It felt like we were living in the city instead of staying as tourists.

We were in Wicker Park close to where Milwaukee, Damen, and North Avenue intersect.  There’s a Blue Line station close.  If we learn just a little more, we can figure out how to navigate from there to anywhere in the city.  But for this stay, we were anxious to walk outside.  It had been a long winter and the weather promised to be warm. 

We had Tuesday all to ourselves and would stay the next two days with June.  I started Tuesday early by making coffee and walking a half block to Sylvia’s Market on the corner to buy a Tribune.  My wife shopped there the day we arrived, buying some basics.  I looked for a snack to put in my bag for later.

Finding no candy bars, I spotted a small package labeled CASHEW FIG CARROT.  It was described as Plant Based Paleo containing dates, figs, cashews, carrots, vanilla extract, nutmeg, and Himalayan pink salt.  $4.95 for less than two ounces.  I bought it.  That along with a Trib for $3.00 and tax meant I got a buck and some change back from a ten.  What are you gonna do?

My wife plans these trips.  She figured we were close to something called the 606 or the Bloomingdale Trail.  Our kids talk about it as a raised walkway/bike path.  Turns out it was two blocks north of Sylvia’s Market.  We went there straight away after breakfast.  The sun was out, and it was warming up quickly.

The Bloomingdale trail was a rail line built in the 1800s, elevated 16 feet above street level in 1914, and finally abandoned in 1969.  In 2015, Chicago opened it as a linear park, a ribbon of cycling, jogging, walking trails along with other areas for gathering and relaxing.  It runs for 2.7 miles through Bucktown, Logan Square, Wicker Park, and Humboldt Park.  It’s often connected to park areas below.  The 606 has also become a magnet for newly created apartments and condos which have raised rents and increased property values, likely pricing others out.  That’s gentrification for you.

The 606 is lovely.  You are in the city but looking down on it as well, removed from the cars and busses and bustle of the street.  They built a soft path for walkers and joggers running both ways that is easy on your feet.  Occasional ramps bring you up and take you down to the street at various locations.  It was just what my wife was looking for.  I don’t walk as far as her, so I found a bench in the sun overlooking a dog park at the corner of Bloomingdale and Winchester.  My wife continued walking east determined to make it to the end of the trail.  I worked on the Trib crossword puzzle.  The 606 was getting busier.  So was the dog park.

Whereas humans on the trail engage in sitting, walking, jogging, biking, rollerblading, skateboarding, and riding scooters separately; the dogs in the park had a whole communal thing going on.  They were sniffing, panting, running, jumping (some more than others), barking surprisingly little, growling almost not at all, but doing it all as a group.  They were a big active pack.

I didn’t count them, but there were a lot of dogs within that fenced area representing many breeds.  Most all looked to be purebred: a Weimaraner, a Flat-Coated Retriever, all the Labradors-yellow, black, chocolate.  A Bernese Mountain Dog came trotting in through the gate, a double gate like a salle port you find in prisons where one door locks behind you before the one in front of you is opened.  All the other dogs came up to sniff him, which he seemed to patiently endure before moving away slowly, looking shy and overweight.  If I were to name him, I’d call him Wally.  Just a big nice guy.

There were not one but two big Standard Poodles.  You could easily tell them apart because one had the whole deal, tricked out, frou-frou haircut.  Big ball of fluffy hair on the end of his tail and on his forehead.  Shaggy patches of hair on his hindquarters and front feet and shaved down everywhere else.  I feel sort of sorry for such dogs.  They must feel silly looking like that.  The more casually trimmed Standard Poodle appeared to be much more chill. 

I was looking for an Irish Setter.  I knew one named Casey in the ’70s that was a beauty and hoped to see another.  Maybe next time.  There was a skinny and sad-looking Whippet or Italian Greyhound walking around slowly.  Dogs like that make me want to feed them. 

There was a Bedlington Terrier in there.  They always look out of place to me, more like a lamb than a dog.  But he (or she) was frisky and having a good time.  A very happy-looking Golden Retriever was always in the middle of things.  A dark-colored French Bulldog was one of the smaller but more active dogs. 

Mixed in were dogs I didn’t know.  A couple of short stocky dogs had kinky tails curled up over their backs.  They must have been the same breed, but I have no idea what it was.  Completing the group was a few obvious crossbreeds.  They carried themselves well among the purebreds.  Perhaps only on the corner of Bloomingdale and Winchester could mutts exude such an air of privilege.   

The canine activity dominating the park was sniffing, both the ground and each other.   And the human-directed sport that rose above all others was ball fetching.  Lots and lots of sniffing and dogs fetching balls tossed by humans.  I was surprised there was not more competition over the balls.  By watching the fetching, I could quickly match owners with dogs.  Balls thrown by owners were nearly always retrieved and returned by their own dog.  I think it was the scent.  One sniff and the dogs knew if the ball belonged to them. 

It was constant canine motion, a mob of interacting dogs, whereas the humans accompanying their dogs in the park were fairly stationary and aloof from each other.  The ball throwers stood, and the others mainly sat on benches.  Some watched their dogs intently while others were lost in the screens on their phones. 

At noon it seemed as if the whole dog neighborhood had arrived. One of the last to enter the salle port entrance was a beautiful German Shepherd.  It was a distinguished-looking dog with that little slouch to its hind end that distinguishes the breed.  Its owner was a quiet middle-aged man, wearing a tweed sports coat and a flat wool cap covering gray hair.  

As they do, the dogs all came over to greet and smell the German Shepherd latecomer.  Typically, after an initial smell, the pack goes on about their business of being dogs, and most did, save for the French Bulldog, who was apparently enthralled by something he smelled on the German Shepherd.  Couldn’t get enough of it.  Wherever the German Shepherd went, the French Bulldog followed.    

The well-dressed owner of the German Shepherd fished a tennis ball out of his jacket pocket and began lobbing it in the air not far from his dog. It was immediately obvious that this was a routine often repeated.  As the German Shepherd went for the ball you could see by the way it moved it was old.  When the dog went to grab the ball in its mouth, on the bounce, it gave a feeble jump.  Only its front paws left the ground. After it caught the ball, it continued a few steps to gather itself, stopped, then turned to trot slowly back to its human.

Watching this game between man and dog play out in the present I could imagine their past.  The then young man threw the tennis ball far across the dog park.  The young Shepherd ran towards it furiously, leaped completely off the ground, launching its body recklessly toward the ball before landing softly and spinning around to dash back to his dark-haired owner.  Time had caught up to them both. 

As I sat on the bench above the dog park the procession of bikers, joggers, and walkers flowed both ways behind me, but very quietly.  When things got slow in the dog park, I’d turn my attention to them.  I soon realized the quiet was caused by the earbuds they wore.  Their day wasn’t absent sound or music, but rather personalized and confined to their own ears. Their songs and podcasts couldn’t be heard by others, with one refreshing exception. 

A guy in his forties strolled by with a sound machine of some kind in a backpack blaring “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes from 1963.  Nothing like a little Motown blasting away in the neighborhood to pick up the mood.  He was walking slowly so I heard the whole song before it faded away.  I whistled along with the tune.

Back at the dog park, several things became apparent about both dogs and humans.  Dogs play joyfully without direction.  Ball fetching aside, being in the company of one another is joy enough for dogs.  I also concluded that dogs don’t care about appearances.  Even the frou-frou Standard Poodle and the skinny Italian Greyhound held their heads high.  We apply our own values to animals when they could care less.  It was obvious that small dogs felt equal to big ones, pedigree means nothing at all to dogs, and the French Bulldog was NEVER going to keep his nose out of the German Shepherd’s ass.

That last fact created the only real crisis of the day at the Bloomingdale/Winchester Dog park, and it was not a crisis among the dogs.  The owner of the French Bulldog, a young woman very absorbed in her smartphone, happened to look up at the very moment her bulldog went from sniffing the rear end of the old German Shepherd to locking his front legs around the Shepherd’s back leg and humping it for all he was worth.

The young bulldog owner was immediately off the bench yelling at her dog, who could not have ignored her more completely if he tried.  Never looked once in his owner’s direction, and never missed a beat.  As the German Shepherd moved away, the bulldog danced along with it, dragged in the direction of a just thrown tennis ball, still clutching the larger dog’s leg.

By this time the young woman who owned the French Bulldog, clearly suffering genuine shame and embarrassment (as if it were her fault, or anyone's, or even a problem) had her leash in hand and was walking quickly towards her dog who managed to stay just out of her reach yet still within a nose thrust of the German Shepherd’s rear end.

Oddly enough neither the German Shepherd nor its owner was alarmed by the French Bulldog's behavior.  The bulldog’s owner beseeched the German Shepherd’s owner with words.  I was far enough away that I couldn’t hear them, but her body language screamed apology and a clear plea that her dog (and her) be forgiven, to which the Shepherd’s owner responded with palms out, a shrug, a smile.

Being human rather than canine I can’t read dogs as well I can people, but the German Shepherd didn’t seem phased in the slightest either.  It would occasionally look back as if to see if it was still the little bulldog poking its hindquarters with that cold nose, but not once did it growl or show its teeth.  The Shepherd continued to mosey after the ball slowly and give a little jump when it caught it.

My wife came back about the time the crisis, clearly human, was concluded by the young woman leashing her dog and frantically dragging it through the gates and down the sidewalk.

My wife ignored the dogs.  She was pumped from having made it to the end of the trail and back.  She had stories to tell.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“Mostly I’ve been watching these dogs.”

“Woo Hoo.  Sounds exciting.”

“Actually, it was pretty good.  There’s a lot goes on in a dog park I’ve found.”

“Yeah, well it’s almost 1:00. Did you bring anything to eat?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

I pulled out the $4.95 CASHEW FIG CARROT paleo bar and unwrapped it.

“You want half?”

“Sure.”

When I tore the gooey dark bar in half, my remaining bit looked about the same size as the filling in one, two if you stretched it, fig newtons.  And it tasted about the same, minus the cookie wrapping.  My wife ate her half in two bites.

“Not bad.”

I can buy a whole bag of Fig Newtons at Kroger for about $3.00.  That’s life in the big city, I guess.

That night, old friends from Rogers Park came down.  We had wine and appetizers at the two-flat and walked to an Indian restaurant named Cumin.  Great food.  On the way back we tried to stop for a drink at a bar called Absinthe, but it was closed.  I think it was closed the last time I tried to go there years ago.  No absinthe for us.

As Mr. Rogers would say, it was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, March 15, 2022.   The next two days we spent with June.  And on Friday we went home.  Good trip.