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Oct. 1st, 2006 07:12 pmSam Starbuck -- I do the research so you don't have to!
Seriously. I went to White Castle this evening and now you really don't have to.
White Castle is a midwestern/eastern chain of fast food restaurants. Even before the stoner film Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle, it had a cult following for reasons that are sort of unclear but very, very human. White Castle makes really cheap, really awful "steam grilled" hamburgers called sliders, which are characterised by being small and greasy. Thus, White Castle food is sort of famous for being truly awful. I can only imagine that the reason it ever made it as a company is that one, people sometimes really need awful food, and two, White Castle is hugely popular for people with the munchies. You can get a box of thirty sliders for $15, which feeds as many people as will fit around a bong or into a car at eleven-thirty at night. White Castle knows this; their motto is "feed your craving".
( Or not. )
On the way back I was watching people come home from work and a few latecoming kids get home from school and thinking about the neighbourhood. Mum was a bit nervous about me living here, and I was -- well, less nervous than her, but I won't lie and say I wasn't at all, because some of the windows do have bars and there's graffiti and a couple of little bodegas where I'm pretty sure I could score weed and possibly methamphetamines (not that I would ever do meth, cause I've seen Requiem for a Dream).
Since I moved in, though, I've noticed that most of the people who live around here are working-class families who are doing their best to get by. It makes me think of Cockbill Street from the Discworld novels: people who are too poor to paint but too proud to whitewash, as Vimes put it. In the afternoons, the yard's full of kids playing and a few mums and siblings looking after them; this sounds like something you'd put in a novel, but sometimes when the mums come up the stairs they sing what I've tentatively identified as Gloria Estefan's ballad Milagro. I can hear them as they pass my door.
Which kind of makes up for whichever punkass tends to play rap music with the bass turned all the way up from three to five on weekdays. I like rap music, but I like to be able to hear more than just the bass line.
Anyway, the point is, it's a good place. And I bought a TV aerial (as well as two much-needed cereal bowls) and now I get pretty good TV reception on my laptop. I get every major network channel except CW, three Spanish channels, one Japanese channel, and a bunch of local ones whose function I'm not yet sure of, like My50 and The U.
So: White Castle is gross but justifiable, my neighbourhood is cool, and Chicago's local networks are strange.
Seriously. I went to White Castle this evening and now you really don't have to.
White Castle is a midwestern/eastern chain of fast food restaurants. Even before the stoner film Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle, it had a cult following for reasons that are sort of unclear but very, very human. White Castle makes really cheap, really awful "steam grilled" hamburgers called sliders, which are characterised by being small and greasy. Thus, White Castle food is sort of famous for being truly awful. I can only imagine that the reason it ever made it as a company is that one, people sometimes really need awful food, and two, White Castle is hugely popular for people with the munchies. You can get a box of thirty sliders for $15, which feeds as many people as will fit around a bong or into a car at eleven-thirty at night. White Castle knows this; their motto is "feed your craving".
( Or not. )
On the way back I was watching people come home from work and a few latecoming kids get home from school and thinking about the neighbourhood. Mum was a bit nervous about me living here, and I was -- well, less nervous than her, but I won't lie and say I wasn't at all, because some of the windows do have bars and there's graffiti and a couple of little bodegas where I'm pretty sure I could score weed and possibly methamphetamines (not that I would ever do meth, cause I've seen Requiem for a Dream).
Since I moved in, though, I've noticed that most of the people who live around here are working-class families who are doing their best to get by. It makes me think of Cockbill Street from the Discworld novels: people who are too poor to paint but too proud to whitewash, as Vimes put it. In the afternoons, the yard's full of kids playing and a few mums and siblings looking after them; this sounds like something you'd put in a novel, but sometimes when the mums come up the stairs they sing what I've tentatively identified as Gloria Estefan's ballad Milagro. I can hear them as they pass my door.
Which kind of makes up for whichever punkass tends to play rap music with the bass turned all the way up from three to five on weekdays. I like rap music, but I like to be able to hear more than just the bass line.
Anyway, the point is, it's a good place. And I bought a TV aerial (as well as two much-needed cereal bowls) and now I get pretty good TV reception on my laptop. I get every major network channel except CW, three Spanish channels, one Japanese channel, and a bunch of local ones whose function I'm not yet sure of, like My50 and The U.
So: White Castle is gross but justifiable, my neighbourhood is cool, and Chicago's local networks are strange.
