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Sep. 3rd, 2006 11:07 amSo, I went back to the new neighborhood this morning to take some photos and have more of a peek around. Much as with my place in Boston, the apartment building hovers right on the boundary line between two areas. Turn right at the intersection and you're heading into a gentrifying, neo-hippie-collegiate kind of area with lots of metaphysical bookshops and coffee places; turn left and you're entering a higher-crime, lower-rent area with a lot of auto body shops and fast food joints.
It's pretty diverse, as an area; within two blocks of my flat there are family-owned Mexican, Chinese, Greek, and Thai restaurants, as well as a laundromat straight out of My Beautiful Laundrette, an internet cafe (YAY), and a Dunkin' Donuts (ugh). There's a Jewel Osco about four blocks down, a Walgreens across the street, and a small corner grocery at the intersection. All in all, it seems like a good situation.
Baseball season ends before I arrive, which is a shame, as I'd have liked to go to a few games and figure out which team to root for. At heart I'll always be a Red Sox fan, but everyone's a Red Sox fan now that they've won the Series, and anyway I need to have a local team to follow. I'm automatically disinclined to like the Cubs after a brief encounter with a few thousand of their fans on the El two days ago, but I will be gracious and give them a sporting chance.
I will be here in time to see the Tut exhibit at the Field Museum, which is nicely symmetrical, as four years ago I saw the British Museum's traveling Cleopatra exhibit there.
For now, though, I'm ready to go home, allow my parents to buy me some Chinese food, and watch Master and Commander (which I have never seen). Communal hostel life is fun for about three days, and then you start to really yearn for just two minutes of privacy. Last night I was amused to see a hippie-bicycle-riding-tourist up from Champagne-Urbana sleeping on a top bunk, while below him slumbered a Southern holy-roller touring the great African-American Christian Ministries and Historic Sites of the US on a sixty-day Greyhound pass. I'm guessing he was either a minister himself or some kind of religious-goods salesman; he had the vocal roll-and-cadence of a professional preacher and was extremely friendly.
I left one of the two-for-five-dollars locks I bought in a locker for the next poor lockless person to inherit, and abandoned Tales From A Buick 8 in the lobby, with the following inscription:
"Free to take and pass along
Chicago, 09/06"
In the hopes that, it being an international hostel, the Buick 8's next stop will be somewhere interesting. :D
I leave here around 11 and my flight goes out at two; I probably won't be home before six or seven, since we're going out to dinner from the airport. I'll post when I finally do get home. :)
It's pretty diverse, as an area; within two blocks of my flat there are family-owned Mexican, Chinese, Greek, and Thai restaurants, as well as a laundromat straight out of My Beautiful Laundrette, an internet cafe (YAY), and a Dunkin' Donuts (ugh). There's a Jewel Osco about four blocks down, a Walgreens across the street, and a small corner grocery at the intersection. All in all, it seems like a good situation.
Baseball season ends before I arrive, which is a shame, as I'd have liked to go to a few games and figure out which team to root for. At heart I'll always be a Red Sox fan, but everyone's a Red Sox fan now that they've won the Series, and anyway I need to have a local team to follow. I'm automatically disinclined to like the Cubs after a brief encounter with a few thousand of their fans on the El two days ago, but I will be gracious and give them a sporting chance.
I will be here in time to see the Tut exhibit at the Field Museum, which is nicely symmetrical, as four years ago I saw the British Museum's traveling Cleopatra exhibit there.
For now, though, I'm ready to go home, allow my parents to buy me some Chinese food, and watch Master and Commander (which I have never seen). Communal hostel life is fun for about three days, and then you start to really yearn for just two minutes of privacy. Last night I was amused to see a hippie-bicycle-riding-tourist up from Champagne-Urbana sleeping on a top bunk, while below him slumbered a Southern holy-roller touring the great African-American Christian Ministries and Historic Sites of the US on a sixty-day Greyhound pass. I'm guessing he was either a minister himself or some kind of religious-goods salesman; he had the vocal roll-and-cadence of a professional preacher and was extremely friendly.
I left one of the two-for-five-dollars locks I bought in a locker for the next poor lockless person to inherit, and abandoned Tales From A Buick 8 in the lobby, with the following inscription:
"Free to take and pass along
Chicago, 09/06"
In the hopes that, it being an international hostel, the Buick 8's next stop will be somewhere interesting. :D
I leave here around 11 and my flight goes out at two; I probably won't be home before six or seven, since we're going out to dinner from the airport. I'll post when I finally do get home. :)
