The Big Bad City

MARISA KNUDSEN | marisaknudsen@comcast.net |@marisaknudsen

Marisa Knudsen is an MBA student at DePaul and an analyst for a nonprofit book publisher in Chicago. She completed her undergraduate work at Northern Illinois in 2008 and and enjoys reading, writing, and traveling as time and funds permit.

The Big Bad City

I moved to the city from the suburbs in May, much to my mother's horror. My mom has long-held, unshakable beliefs on a variety of topics – she is convinced every "pot has its lid" (i.e., there is exactly one person in this world that can make you a suitable life partner), she is certain that "everything happens for a reason," and she knows for a fact that Chicago is the epicenter of danger and evil.

In the past ten years, she has visited Chicago approximately one time and is therefore at liberty to make sweeping statements about what it is like to live in this precarious city. Also, she has a friend who biked along the lakefront earlier this summer and this friend reported back to my mother that, although she was not accosted in any way, she sure did see a bunch of shady characters. My mother brings up this friend's testimony as solid evidence of the city's perilous living conditions.

"I'm telling you," she'll say, "Mary grew up in Chicago and she says that that gang [note how the group of shady characters is an actual gang now] scared her half to death. She said she'll never go back."

The recounting of this incident gets better every time, as my mom remembers more and more details about how menacing the gang was. The "gang" was most likely a trio of Columbia students and one of them happened to have a nose ring, thereby rendering them ominous through the eyes of an elementary school teacher born and raised in the safety of a small town in eastern Iowa.

If you'd listen, my mom could probably tell you just where all the bad parts of Wheaton, Elmhurst and St. Charles are, too.

Apparently my mom saw a "shady character" herself while she was visiting me last month. I could tell her I've seen my fair share of creeps and suspicious jokers in the shopping center near where my parents live but she's fully armed with an arsenal of horror stories from friends who've visited Chicago or had a friend whose daughter was dating a guy whose sister-in-law was whistled at by some shady character in Wrigleyville.

You can bet my mom is taking notes on every shooting, mugging and traffic violation the nightly news report recounts. One evening while walking to a Target a quarter mile from my apartment, my mom called, presumably to fill me on what this evening's news report had to say about Chicago.

"Hello?"

"Hello, it's me. What are you up to?"

"Oh just walking to Target to get some –"

"Excuse me? What? You're walking to the store at six o'clock at night? You're not by yourself, are you?"

"Yes, I am, and it's perfectly safe."

"It's going to be dark by the time you walk back!"

"Well, it's a good thing the street lamps are working then."

"Oh my God, just be careful. I can't believe you're gallivanting around at night in the city by yourself."

I wanted to point out that buying paper towels and milk on a weeknight in broad daylight is hardly "gallivanting," but instead I just assured her that I would not spend more than three hours at Target and therefore would have enough daylight on the walk home to be able to spot any shady characters that might be tailing me.

"Oh my God!" she interrupted. "What was that?"

"That was a car horn."

"Were they honking at you? Why were they honking? Did they almost run you down?"

"No! They were just signaling that they were coming out of an alley."

"An alley! What are you doing walking by alleys in the middle of the night?"

I told her I had arrived at Target and would have to call her back later. I waited for her signature signoff (the always ominous "Just be careful…") but she insisted on squeezing in a quick story she'd heard on the news about the recent string of Loop-area robberies by a group of thugs still at large.

So there you have it. George W. was wrong; the true axis of evil lies in the South Loop somewhere between Jackson and Roosevelt.