HOT DAMN- SUMMER IN THE CITY
It's in the 70's today. I'm fine with that.
There's an alarming number of people in the city of Chicago (and elsewhere around the midwest, to be sure) that seem to love themselves some hot-ass weather. I am not one of them. I'm built mainly for indoor tasks- sorting things, counting, sitting and looking at things.
I grew up in the midwest (Iowa to be exact, which in parts currently resembles the elaborate sets constructed for the Kevin Costner epic Waterworld, only with a farming theme. Oh, and no one drinks their own pee.)
I've never fully understood why anyone would want to live in the cities here solely for climate reasons. You visit places like Seattle, or London, where it's never terribly hot or cold, and then you visit a place like Chicago where something like 10 months out of the year are either hotter than hell (but not a pleasant dry, baking heat- a thick, gooey suffocatingly humid heat), or Absolute Zero cold (where everything, animate or non collectively says "fuck this".)
During the remaining 2 months of fair weather, people completely lose their minds. And during the transitional days, this mass insanity shows itself no place better than in what people choose to cover their bodies with before leaving the house.
Contrary to what some native Chicagoans might try to tell you, this IS the midwest. Though there are not as many hearty, field-hand types here as in other parts of the area (Chicago undoubtedly has more Bally's Total Fitness locations than the rest of the midwest combined) there are still a great many people in this city whose physique resembles nothing greater than Grimace, the purple dome-like character created by McDonald's in the 1970's to frighten children into eating cheeseburgers.
As soon as the temperature has warmed to a not-terrifying level (let's say...55) the streets are flooded with people in inappropriate clothing. And for every pretty girl in a thin, low-cut dress, there seem to be ten folks who look not wholly unlike vast, hairy Michelin Men wearing nothing but a tight fitting, spaghetti sauce stained under shirt, threatening and upsetting shorts and open-toed sandals letting their thick layers of shoulder hair just a-blow in the wind.
I don't want to see that.
Though it may have something to do with my modest Catholic upbringing (though any remaining symptoms of those days have passed long ago) I feel it is my duty as an American to keep the innocent from bearing witness to my large, exposed self, even as I am sweating profusely, most prominently from my head, making it appear as though I am much hotter than I actually am.
I will not even wear shorts. No one should be forced to see my giant, hairy tree-trunk limbs as they take me to go buy a cup of coffee. It's merely common courtesy.
One would think this to be a lesson in common sense. But no.
Say I decide to go to the grocery store to buy apples and a drain strainer. As with any boring task, my only interest is to make my way to the store, get these things, and get out. But alas- what should be looming in front of the apple shelf but an enormous Silverback of a man in a tent-like, yellow sweat-stained sleeveless shirt advertising some kind of motorsports, armpit juices spraying directly into the fruit trays laid out for public consumption, making sure to take his sweet time in rolling each piece of fruit around in his meaty ape paws. I am helplessly relegated to the broccoli section, averting my eyes from his armpit-y self, hearing the apples scream silently in my head.
Fuck that.
If you're involved in manual labor laying black top or elbow-deep in the soil growing food for the rest of us soft, malleable city folk, please do whatever you need to do to keep from passing out from the heat. If anybody makes a stink about your exposure, give them a swift punch to the throat. I can personally guarantee that anyone who sould raise a guff is not going to fight back.
But if you are a soft, malleable city dweller, please take note:
Be proud of who you are, sure. Just please don't make me look at it.
It's in the 70's today. I'm fine with that.
There's an alarming number of people in the city of Chicago (and elsewhere around the midwest, to be sure) that seem to love themselves some hot-ass weather. I am not one of them. I'm built mainly for indoor tasks- sorting things, counting, sitting and looking at things.
I grew up in the midwest (Iowa to be exact, which in parts currently resembles the elaborate sets constructed for the Kevin Costner epic Waterworld, only with a farming theme. Oh, and no one drinks their own pee.)
I've never fully understood why anyone would want to live in the cities here solely for climate reasons. You visit places like Seattle, or London, where it's never terribly hot or cold, and then you visit a place like Chicago where something like 10 months out of the year are either hotter than hell (but not a pleasant dry, baking heat- a thick, gooey suffocatingly humid heat), or Absolute Zero cold (where everything, animate or non collectively says "fuck this".)
During the remaining 2 months of fair weather, people completely lose their minds. And during the transitional days, this mass insanity shows itself no place better than in what people choose to cover their bodies with before leaving the house.
Contrary to what some native Chicagoans might try to tell you, this IS the midwest. Though there are not as many hearty, field-hand types here as in other parts of the area (Chicago undoubtedly has more Bally's Total Fitness locations than the rest of the midwest combined) there are still a great many people in this city whose physique resembles nothing greater than Grimace, the purple dome-like character created by McDonald's in the 1970's to frighten children into eating cheeseburgers.
As soon as the temperature has warmed to a not-terrifying level (let's say...55) the streets are flooded with people in inappropriate clothing. And for every pretty girl in a thin, low-cut dress, there seem to be ten folks who look not wholly unlike vast, hairy Michelin Men wearing nothing but a tight fitting, spaghetti sauce stained under shirt, threatening and upsetting shorts and open-toed sandals letting their thick layers of shoulder hair just a-blow in the wind.
I don't want to see that.
Though it may have something to do with my modest Catholic upbringing (though any remaining symptoms of those days have passed long ago) I feel it is my duty as an American to keep the innocent from bearing witness to my large, exposed self, even as I am sweating profusely, most prominently from my head, making it appear as though I am much hotter than I actually am.
I will not even wear shorts. No one should be forced to see my giant, hairy tree-trunk limbs as they take me to go buy a cup of coffee. It's merely common courtesy.
One would think this to be a lesson in common sense. But no.
Say I decide to go to the grocery store to buy apples and a drain strainer. As with any boring task, my only interest is to make my way to the store, get these things, and get out. But alas- what should be looming in front of the apple shelf but an enormous Silverback of a man in a tent-like, yellow sweat-stained sleeveless shirt advertising some kind of motorsports, armpit juices spraying directly into the fruit trays laid out for public consumption, making sure to take his sweet time in rolling each piece of fruit around in his meaty ape paws. I am helplessly relegated to the broccoli section, averting my eyes from his armpit-y self, hearing the apples scream silently in my head.
Fuck that.
If you're involved in manual labor laying black top or elbow-deep in the soil growing food for the rest of us soft, malleable city folk, please do whatever you need to do to keep from passing out from the heat. If anybody makes a stink about your exposure, give them a swift punch to the throat. I can personally guarantee that anyone who sould raise a guff is not going to fight back.
But if you are a soft, malleable city dweller, please take note:
Be proud of who you are, sure. Just please don't make me look at it.
posted by Pete Klockau at 6:44 AM
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