Courtesy Scott Kenemore What passes for fun in the Midwest.We have 7-Eleven stores here in Chicago, thank you very much.
I was supposed to come to New York this month to give a reading from my new novel about a zombie attack on the Windy City. I bought myself a plane ticket (not that expensive on JetBlue, but still) and was all but eagerly clutching it in anticipation. (If you’re not from the Midwest, you might not have a sense of how excited I was: a reading in the East Village, in a cool bar, and as part of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series was something to look forward to.)
But then the venue — Bar on A — was closed, reportedly to make way for a new 7-Eleven. This development was was harder to swallow than a KZ3™ Battle Fuel Slurpee.
When you’re a writer living in Chicago, you think of New York City as “headquarters.” It’s where your agent and publisher are, where important stuff happens, and where you occasionally get to go for meetings or readings or whatever. It’s fun and cool and inspiring, and filled with interesting things. It’s awesome for writers in ways the metropolis of the Midwest is often not.
Being a writer in Chicago can feel like trying to meet women at a party thrown by a church. I am not the first person to have observed this. In “Chicago: City on the Make,” Nelson Algren bemoans “a city whose pleasures are so chaste” and laments the “hipless biddies entitling themselves ‘Friends of Literature’” who stand ever-ready to throw a stuffy daytime function where the punch is non-alcoholic and the conversation is polite.
Writers don’t want this.
Writers want to go to places like the East Village and womanize and get drunk and meet interesting, daring, wonderful, terrible people. Read more…
Presenting Neighborhood Appeal, in which Villagers share their go-to spots and we appeal to readers to add their own. Today, Chicago transplant Katie Olson tells us where she likes to take her out-of-town visitors. We’re adding her recommendations to Foursquare, because – that’s right! – The Local is now on Foursquare. Just click the “Follow” button on our shiny new page and every time you “check in” at spots like the ones below, you’ll get tips from notable locals like Rachel Dratch and Christina Tosi; and from our savvy and sundry commenters and contributors, like restaurant guru James Traub. After you’ve pondered Katie’s list below, make your own additions in the comments and we’ll add those to our Foursquare page, too.
I moved to the East Village from Chicago last spring and as soon as summer came around, so did the visitors. Before I knew it, I had the tour down: walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; have a picnic in Central Park; walk through SoHo, the West Village and Little Italy, etc. I still love exploring the city, but my favorite part of having friends visit is showing them the neighborhood that I now call home. The East Village has a lot to offer, of course, and I always make a point of trying new things with out-of-towners; but I do have a few staples I take most of them to. As you’ll soon notice, my friends never go hungry. Read more…
In the bars and restaurants of the East Village, immigrant workers, many undocumented, toil behind the scenes cooking food, waiting tables, and doing whatever else they can to keep the nightlife abuzz. Felipe Baeza is one of them. He serves food and drinks in a hopping East Village restaurant. For Mr. Baeza, 24, the job was to be a mere stepping stone into an exciting art career, which was to begin three years ago when he graduated with a degree in art from The Cooper Union.
But Mr. Baeza, who as a young boy left Mexico for the United States, doesn’t have a work visa or Social Security number, so he cannot legally work in the U.S. Under current federal law, the jobs he studied to perform are not available to him because of his status.
As Mr. Baeza looks from beyond a bar lined with moist beer bottles and cocktail glasses, he sees his classmates finding success in the art world, at home and abroad. In a word, he is frustrated.
“My options are very limited,” he said. “I couldn’t work in a print shop. I couldn’t even assist an artist.”
Read more…
Where Should You Take Those Out-of-Towners?
