Karl Klockars

The Perils of Not Minding Your Own Business

I was in the process of getting squeezed into the Red Line this morning, somewhere between Belmont and Fullerton, when I looked down at a notepad that an unfortunately hyper-blonde woman was writing on.  I’m a nosy bastard – I’m also judgemental as well, making snap decisions about people based on what songs their iPods are playing – and couldn’t help but try to get a read on what she was printing into her book.

I couldn’t make out all of it but what I could read like this:

“If admitted:

Cancel Charge Card”

Admitted?  What does that mean?  Like, as in going into a hospital?  You look healthy enough.  You appear to be mostly sane.  Aside from the gargantuan sunglasses, of course, but that’s an affliction you seem to share with a number of other people.  Some on this very car.  So what kind of secret insanity are you harboring?

No matter where you’re admitted to, you have the forethought to know you won’t need your Discover?  Can you charge cigarettes inside an institution?  Can you put a 5150 on Amex?  If you’re being admitted to something like Columbia, aren’t you going to need that card when you need a late night run to Panera or something?

I’m standing at your shoulder with some very sensitive body parts right at your stabbing level.  And you’re noting to yourself about getting “admitted?”  Maybe it’s swine flu.  Maybe it’s some affliction where you randomly just start biting people.  I don’t know.

I do know I kept my eyes on her the whole rest of the trip…just in case.  She got off at Chicago.  Probably just worried about getting into business school or Loyola or something.

Profiling And Its Relation To What Train Just Arrived

Hopefully this is more of a function of sociology than it is of what could be called “racial profiling” but I really want to know if I’m the only person that does this.

It’s fairly well established that Chicago is one of the most, if not the most, segregated major city in America, yes?  Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever decided what El train either just arrived or just left by basis of the racial makeup of who’s left on the platform.

Anyone?  I see a few hands out there.

I’m the traditionally boring Brown Line & Red Line northside denizen cliche.  And when I run down the stairs at State & Lake and see a flood of white people walking up the stairs, I think to myself, “Good.  That means a train from Lakeview just unloaded.  Maybe I can still catch the train north to Howard.”

When I run up the stairs to the Brown Line platform at State & Lake and I hear a train pulling away, and I look at the remaining CTA patrons on the platform and see mostly African-Americans remaining awaiting a Green Line (and the occasional Oak Parker salted in there as well), I can invariably look down towards Clark & Lake and see the train that I just missed.

There’s a thesis in this theory somewhere, but I’m no sociology grad student.  But if anyone does decide to do some research, let me know if my observations are justified.

Graffiti Hurts My Feelings

A new tag on a building seen while headed southbound, right before going underground:  ” Something something something You Guys Suck!” I found myself strangely deflated by that.  I don’t mind if someone puts up some quality guerilla art here and there, but you don’t have to tell me via spraypaint that I’m a stupid commuting wage-slave jerk, do you?  I’m hurt.

Were I a more motivated person, a better artist and a stronger climber, I’d go up there and add my own tag:  “He doesn’t mean it.  He’s just expressing his own feelings of disillusion because he’s not employed in the Loop.  Try to understand.  X-MEN 4EVA”

Maybe it’s because it was written in blue paint.  A perfect storm of a letdown on a nice sunny morning.  Like my friend Bones used to ask me, “Who pissed in your Wheaties this morning?”  Graffiti peed in it today, Bones.  It was graffiti pee.

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I would have called this “Mysteries of the Brown Line” but nobody cares about what the heck that artwork is at Addison.  I tend to assume they’re just waiting to put something that’s actually art in there.  The numbers are just place holders.

Plus, it sounds like a poop joke.  I try to avoid those – unless they’re really funny.  Then, everything one references about “taking the brown line” kinda sounds like a digestion reference.  My friend Bones also used to tell me, “Can’t win, why try.”  How true, Bones.  How true.