Lessons on Becoming a Chicago Apartment Gold Digger

Being a self-proclaimed feminist since age 3, I usually like to discourage the use any misogynistic stereotypes like slut, prude, gold digger. There just tacky and clichéd and usually wrong. But I’m going to ease my strict no sexist stereotypes for one entry because in truth I am a gold digger: a Chicago apartment gold digger.

So to take another leap from my feminist roots, I’m going to quote Carrie Bradshaw and say women are always looking for three things: a career, a boyfriend and an apartment. It is simplilistic but for this 23 year old moving to the big city, it held true. Moving to Chicago without the first two, I thought it was important, no vital, to have a kickass apartment.
So last December, I scoured craigslist for the best Chicago has to offer, and in the process I learned some important lessons on how to become an apartment gold digger.

Lesson #1: You have to get down and sometimes quite literally dirty.

I saw about 15 apartments and probably talked to some 40 or 50 different potential roomie searchers before I struck gold. I saw an apartment described as a smallish room, which was actually an 8X9 apartment complete with peeling paint and melted candles on the windowsill but lacking a door. There was stained carpets, mice turds, cigarette butts, moldy refriderators, empty beer bottles and unwashed pungent human bodies; none of which is shown on craigslist and all of which were deal breakers.

Lesson #2: It isn’t just about the looks.

You can’t judge a potential beautiful apartment just by looks; you’ve got to actually meet your potential roommates. There was one to-be-roommate, a struggling stand up comic, who didn’t smile through the entire tour and didn’t even crack a smile at my classic puns. That just isn’t right. Also watch out for the “LTR” because you will either never see them- in which case you might as well live alone- or you will always see their partners- in which case you are paying too much rent. And the geeky Twilight reading thick framed glasses girls while sympathetic and sweet are some major kill joys when you want to do anything besides watch Buffy past 10 oclock at night. On the other hand, the Dry Eye Drops carrying, my friends and I have a band, I have every bob Marley album on vinyl folks might just carry the party on a bit too long. It’s important to have your dealbreakers in roommates, ie, no smoking, no cats, no live-in partners, no Richard Simmons work out videos. Even gold diggers need standards.

Lesson #3: It is all about the accessories

Accessories: gold diggers little secret to a true find. It’s easy to forget, the little things when you are just looking for room measurements and CTA access, but the “etc.” can make all the difference in the end. Look for shared common things like a flat screen TV or if you’ve hit the motherload- TIVO. Also check out the kitchen for appliances- blender, stainless steel pans, or even a Kitchen Aid- are all reasons to celebrate a found gold mine. Also check out the potential room and see if anything will be staying. One place offered to give me all the shoes the previous girl left behind. It is these little things that can make a plain old apartment a golddigger’s home.

So how did these little lessons work out for me. Well I’m living the gold digger’s dream in a 3 story grey stone complete with TIVO, a Kitchen Aid AND a wine cabinet. The floors are all hard wood, the ceilings 12 ft tall, and there is an enclosed back porch. Plus my roommates include an indie rock thespian and wino lesbian, two of the coolest people I’ve met in Chicago.

Yup I hit gold.

City of Villages: Wicker Park

I’m going to be upfront here. I am a huge judger. Worse I am a closeted judger. I like to pretend I have no preconceptions of people or places, that my big liberal heart loves everyone but really I’m a judger and occasionally a hater.

So when I headed west to Wicker Park last weekend, I expected to only see skinny jeaned, flannelled hipsters roaming the streets with their oversized headphones and angsty expressions. And although I did see the skinny jeans and they were disturbing, I also saw the flannel and kind of fell in love with it.

That is Wicker Park to me, true to its hipster stereotype but still strangely lovable. Loosely defined by the Chicago river and Western Ave to the East and West and Bloogingdale and Division to the North and South, the heart of Wicker Park is really Milwaukee. That is were you will find all the thrift stores a hipster could ever want plus Reckless Records, one of those record stores you can wander through for hours without anyone asking you if you need help because they know you are not shopping you are experiencing.



There is also the smattering of bars on Milwaukee and down to Damen. I had the privilege of briefly experiencing Rainbow Bar on Damen before the crush of tipsy trendies pushed me to a quieter bar down the street called Easy Bar. From the Rainbow Bar complete with creepy baby doll image on the wall and sizing up glances at the front door to Easy Bar, the quieter gap/j crew crowded bar down the street, Wicker Park lives for the hipsters but indulges the rest of us as well.

Like a lot of neighborhoods in Chicago, Wicker Park has evolved to become the hip community it is today. It has seen brewery owner’s mansions in the late 1800’s, an influx of Puerto Rican immigrants in the 50’s, followed by a round of gentrification and then invasion of artists in the 90’s. And like most Chicago hoods, Wicker Park is welcoming even to those less trendy.

The key lesson of Wicker Park is timeless: don’t knock flannel until you try it.

Big Chi Town Temping

Today one charismatic former IL senator and one youthfully optimistic Wisco grad got jobs. One is set to run the country, the other to run the copy machine, coffee maker and fax. One is full of determined hope for a better America, the other is full of desperate hope for a permanent real job. One is the President of the United States, the other is a temporary administrative assistant.

Today newspapers are filled with all the minute details of the first day of Obama’s presidency. But I’m going to tell you a little different story about my first day of temp work in Chicago, IL.

First let me lay the ground work that lead up to this day. The past six months have been filled with cover letter, resumes, resume reviews, indeed.com emails, monster.com emails, careerbuilder.com emails, trips to 3 career counselors and unhealthy amount of whatever pale ale was on tap at whatever bar was closest. All of this to understand the reality that unemployment is 7.2% in America, 7.3% in Chicago and college grads, no matter how many revised resumes they send out or how much smoozing they do, are still not finding jobs. Grads who searched 3- 6 months last year now are searching 6-12 months.

So while the path leading to temp work was somewhat physical including getting fed up with Green Bay and moving to Chicago, it is mostly a mental compromise between my dreams and the reality of a depressed economy. So with compromise in mind, I applied to a temp agency, was rejected, applied again, was brushed aside and then finally appeared in person and was given a temp job based on the fact that I look presentable.

And now on to all the gory details of my first day as a temp:

I arrived early of course, coffee and New Yorker in hand, in my most semi-professional garb, aka dress pants, collared shirt and a vest from the gap. My outfit and attitude screamed I can do this job semi-professionally well. My trainer arrived slightly late out of breath and without makeup. She quickly let me in, swiped on some mascara, gave me the grand tour of the five offices, and got me a chair.

Then for the next 8 hours she does paperwork with titles I can’t even pronounce while I man the phones and try not to drop calls. At the end of this training day, I am exceedingly impressed by admin’s ability to multi-task and yet be humble enough to get coffee, and extremely worried I will be expected to be this humble multi-awesomeness myself. I am relieved to learn my only jobs will be to answer phones, collect the mail, get coffee and occasionally make some reservations.

And so here I am for the next week, making nice neat little piles of work for someone else to do, drinking black coffee and pushing buttons. That is now my life as a temp.

It is not the first day of the leader of the free world but it is the first day many more Americans will experience. As companies search to cut corners, they are firing their veteran admins, and hiring cheaper, no insurance necessary temps to fill the void. This job of breath holding, of not knowing if you will have a job next week, has become the life of many not just recent grads but professional administrative assistants.

So no it is not the most glamorous or exciting of first days at work but it is realistic and dare I even say humble. Perhaps one day I can write a book about this most humble of beginnings: Dreams of an Admin, the Audacity of Temp Work, or perhaps just Once when I was a Temp.

Taking Time: Everyone Deserves Two Weeks of Vacay to Survive the Winter

I think anyone moving to Chicago should take two weeks of vacation before they are forced to join the real world of the working.

So technically my two weeks of vacation were two weeks of unemployment but with the Obama optimism train coming to town, I’m going to just say I’ve had the best two weeks of Chicago vacation ever.

But the truth is I needed those two weeks.

I needed those two weeks to be able to see the loop as a cultural playground filled with the glowing headlines of theaters, the sleek marble of century-old architecture and the eye-raising heights of modern skyscrapers, instead of only seeing the depressing mill of overworked business suits.

I needed those two weeks to be able to see the el as the common bond of the Chicago community where middle aged stately African American women with long purple coats mingle with 20 something iPod lip singing hipsters, instead of only seeing a cattle car of "I wish it were still Sunday" people.

I needed those two weeks to see my home as just that, a home, a home where I will make enough jambalaya to feed my 40 yet-to-be-made Chicago friends, where I will read Obama’s books or Sandburg’s poetry on snowy lazy Saturdays, where I will TIVO embarrassing shows in hopes my new roommate doesn’t judge me too harshly, instead of just seeing a 10X10 bedroom where I crash at the end of a carpel-tunnel-filled day.

I can’t ignore the reality. This is Chicago in the middle of winter. It is cold and slightly miserable with seemingly little to love. If I didn’t allow myself the time now to take this mental picture of all there is to love in the city than I surely would only know the city as numbing work. And soon I would come to hate it.

America in many ways resembles this reality of Chicago. America is cold and bearish with seemingly little of which to be proud. But love him or hate him Obama has given us our two week vacation from real life. From his gracious and heart-lifting acceptance speech to his inspirational innagural address today (which everyone must read at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20text-obama.html) we have had more like 2 months of vacation from the dreary political landscape of Bush. Obama has shown us again those snapshots of what we love about America: the equality, the progress and even though I mock it, yes, the hope. He has taken away the numbing feeling of hopelessness and given us back the power to love our country.

Today his inaugural address united people in offices, classrooms, and bars across this city and the country. It momentarily gave us a little break from the repetitive motion of working life and reinvigorated us for tomorrow. Tomorrow is another working day, a day when we will probably have to work even harder than yesterday, but it will be a day when we will know again why we are working so hard.

Tomorrow I will see both the mill of suits and the marbled staircases. I will see the purple-coated lady crammed in among the cattle car. I will crash in my bed, pet my adopted cats and know I am home. Tomorrow America will see the failing economy, see the global security crisis, see the poverty that still plagues its communities but it will also see America as home once again.

Chicago: a city of villages

My second favorite adjective to describe Chicago, after awesome, is manageable. New York with its jigsaw puzzle of islands and burbs or L.A. with its maze of freeways and traffic jams, just don’t hold the same appeal as easily broken apart and digested neighborhoods that define Chicago.

From Uptown over to Wicker Park down to Bronzeville, Chicago contains 77 communities as defined by the U of C or 210 neighborhoods as defined by Wikipedia. For the most part, these mini-chi-ties are entirely self sufficient, supplying their residents with food, shelter, entertainment and community. But thanks to the el and a web of buses, these 77 villages are connected allowing North Siders to indulge in soul food in the South, Hyde Parkers to enjoy Swedish pastries in Andersonville and Wicker Park Hipsters to play for spare change in the financial district.

To be clear, I’m not hating on New York or L.A….well maybe I’m hating on L.A. a little as the only decent thing it has produced in the past decade is Kat Von D. They are gigantic metros filled with respectable art (New York) and the less respectable modern pop art (L.A.), which are suitable for the big city “I like living in a sardine can” people or the “I like living in the burbs away from any real life but in the proximity of chic culture” people. But to me, Chicago is the burbs and the city in the same frozen breath. It is a city that I constantly energizes me with its diversity but never exhausts me with limitless possibilities. It is manageable.

So in order to show the all diversity the city has to offer and to force myself to explore the city in negative wind chills, I’m going to highlight one chi town hood each Sunday. Of course, I have to represent my area first and represent Boystown.
Boystown

I guess they could have chosen a subtler name for the first officially recognized gay neighborhood in the United States…then again subtlety is not what Boystown is known for. The boys are roughly contained north and south by Addison and Belmont and east and west by Lake Shore and Clark but the heart of the community is really rainbow statue lined Halsted Street.

Halsted is where you can find the infamous Sidetrack club, which bumps just as loud on Monday show tunes night as it does on Hi-Energy Saturday nights. The street is also home to futuristic looking Center on Halsted that is home not only an array of LGBT support groups and events but also has a beautiful Whole Foods under it. And of course there is restaurant galore, my favorite being Nookie’s Tree, a 1950 esque café with soul reviving cream of broccoli soup.

But most importantly Boystown is filled with good folks. There are families with little kids dragging sleds down the street. There are middle-aged respectable professor types sharing the coffee counter with young gel-haired aspiring actors/writers/directors/waiters. And everyone is willing to give you directions or advice on the best bars. (note: Hydrate for young glossy gay men on the dance floor, The Closet for a chill lesbian dive bar.)

Yesterday at Treasure Island- “America’s most European Supermarket”_- the middle eastern produce lady told me the secret to amazing cous cous, which is pine nuts, almonds and a lot of butter. I didn’t ask; she just saw the cous cous in my cart and wanted to share some cooking advice. It was probably one of my favorite Chicago moments so far.

The thing is Boystown is not just a gay hot spot; it is a community, one of those rare places you can call home even when you’ve only been living there a week. I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to live any where else.

If GQ says it, it must be true: Chicago is the City of the Year and my new home

America’s most reputable news source, GQ magazine, recently named Chicago its City of the Year, and I’m going to have to agree with GQ and whatever half-naked woman is on the front cover this issue.

The magazine made its decision based on four areas of Chicago’s awesomeness. First, of course, are the politics; think initially mispronounced Obama not still bumbled over Blagojevich, who technically belongs to Springfield not Chicago anyway. Second is film, thanks to Christopher Nolan’s decision to covert the loop into Gotham City for Dark Knight. Then there is the always-prevalent literature, from past legends like Sandburg to present day too trendy to be legends publications like Stop Smiling. And finally the unavoidable architecture; forget the Sears Tower and the multitude of other skyscrapers that grace the city's skyline and look to the future with the tallest, thinnest residential building in the U.S….yes Chicago is finally going anorexic-model-chic with this 115 story spiral beauty.

But while some skeptics, cough bitter east coasters cough, have suggested that Chicago is just riding the fashionable coat tails of Barack Obama, I believe that Chicago has always been the city of year/decade/century thanks to its good ole’ Midwestern roots mixed with its nurturing love of the arts and culture. Chicago isn’t some fad come to temporarily distract people from filth-lined New York or smog-ladened L.A., but a honest-to-goodness old-fashioned good ole city.

Now in the spirit of journalistic ethics and disclosure, I have to admit I am in love with this fair city of Chicago. Actually I am so much in love with the city that I decided to move here in the frozen dead of winter.

It was love at first el ride before I even heard the golden gods of GQ has blessed the city with its prestigious award. The moment those subway doors gracefully slid shut and I was whisked away towards the skyline of glowing buildings, I knew Chicago and I were meant to be. Although some might think this biases my theory on Chicago’s awesomeness, I know it just makes me the best person to tell her story.

Now, after my first week living in Chicago, I know this city is chocked full not just of soap-opera-worthy politics, uber trendy film and literature and the Kate Moss of skyscrapers but also of good people with worthy stories to tell.

There were the Serbians in the sports bar proudly telling me of Blago’s ties to their motherland; there were the chubby bears out Friday night explaining the politics of boystown’s bars; there was the young Palestinian man who told me he would only occasionally visit the city because it was too dangerous, not like the safety of the Middle East.

Chicago may be the city of the year but Chicagoians are really the people of the year and the faces of 2009. Here is where Joe the Plumber is actually Svet the do-it-all-repair-guy who would never give up his private business to pretend to be a war correspondent. In the end Chicago is awesome because it is real, its people are real.

That is why GQ named Chicago the City of the Year and that is why I’m now calling Chi Town home.