Karl Klockars

The Berghoff is now 17 West.  Marshall Field’s is Macy’s.  Carson’s (both the rib joints and the retailer) are shells of their former selves.  No more Comiskey.  Wrigley Field is up for sale.  The Sears Tower is now the Willis Tower.  When I talked with Neil Steinberg a while back, he said to me something that has stuck with me:  “Anything is possible in the worst sense of the word.”  Read also:  Nothing is sacred.

Nothing is safe, nothing will last, everything will change and nothing will survive if there’s a checkbook big enough and a person desperate enough.  So when news broke about the Death of the South Side Irish parade, I was somewhat surprised to hear my little civic heart continue to beat.  Nothing was broken in there, no clouds formed over my mental picture of the city.  Not a drop of bile rose up in my gullet.

Why?  I wish I knew.  Perhaps I’ve reached some sort of level where I’ve come to peace with the death of everything that Chicago has held sacred.  Blow up Wrigley.  Tear down the Chicago Theater.  Implode the Bean.  We can’t reach into the future until we completely kill our past.  Zen stuff like that.

Or maybe the South Side Irish parade was always a joke to begin with, a sideshow, a freak carnival for people who need an excuse to drink at 9am.  Real people, the truly courageous, the strong and proud among us need zero excuse to drink at 9am.  (But working the 3rd shift helps.)

Of the 3oo,ooo people who saw fit to careen down to Beverly and stack the sidewalks with buttons proclaiming ones ancestry, green facepaint, shamrocks and buckets of beer, I wonder how many of them were actually from the South Side?  And I wonder how many of the rest of them were just down there to get shitfaced yet again during the weekend?

Not pictured: vomit stains.

Yeah, I went once. It was something that I figured I should do at least one time in my life.  And as it turns out, it was one of those few things where I got in underneath the wire.  I never once stopped to consider that the people that actually live in Beverly might not want me there.  I was the definition of the North Side Jerkhole who only wants to Drink Beer In The Morning.

And, as it turns out, they didn’t want me there.  Who knew.

Perhaps if I hadn’t gone, never took the time to sprint down south on a Sunday morning, I might feel different.  But being on hand, watching the rivers of beer piss flow through the streets, stumbling into some house party somewhere and then stumbling back out at 3pm to a street basically paved with empty beer cans, and then wandering around trying to find a bus to get back to my stereotypically-located Lakeview apartment, I now realize that I was part of the problem.  I never threw up in broad daylight or tried to beat up a cop, but still, I remain part of the collapse.

Perhaps this will be my office someday. Ha-ha.

So this leads us to an Aldermanic Moment.  Were I elected Alderman (ho ho) I would strongly urge the following: any event (unrelated to professional sports) that inspires sports bars to hire buses and pack them with kegs should be officially shunned.  If Shooters/Playoffs/The End Zone/Touchdowns has decided that an event is worth chartering a large vehicle and stocking it with liquor to take its screaming idiot patrons to it and get wasted, that’s probably an event that shouldn’t be supported, no matter what it is.

Maybe some sort of good could come out of this.  Some enterprising suburb could invite all the revelry within its borders – say, Cicero, for example – and then charge out-the-ass rates for parking.  Make a big tent and charge $5 to enter.  It would get the jump on Lincoln Square’s Mayfest, another “let’s drink all day and act like assholes” event.

Or maybe this is one part of Chicago’s history that’s destined for the textbooks, to be taught about as a lesson of what kind of animals we used to be.