There are places in Alaska and Scandinavia and other parts of the world where you don’t see the sun for days at a time, sometimes weeks or even months. Then, when the sun returns, the villages rejoice.
There may be sunshine during the harsh Chicago winters, but it only serves to sting your exposed, wind-whipped skin. Outdoor time is spent dashing from building to building, train to bus, car to bar. People ask why you would need a car in Chicago where, despite its reputation, public transportation is reasonably accessible citywide. The answer is, for those eight months of a year where the weather is punishing, the thought of walking six blocks to the nearest grocery store or worse, standing still at a bus stop or on a train platform for ten minutes is unbearable.
As difficult to endure as the winters here (which seem to stretch from October to April, or longer) can be, the summer months are paradise. With the exception of a few 100+ degree days in July, the weather is usually between 75 and 90 degrees with the city’s famous winds exhaling every few moments to cool your sticky skin with a fan-like breeze.
The city comes alive in the summer. Tens of thousands pour in and out of the ballparks nearly everyday, and the North Side is humming with hope that the Cubs will break their 100-year dry spell and the South Side is buzzing with the sound of White Sox fans airing their opinions on the team’s management, potential trades, and hottest home run hitter. The beaches, stretching from Foster Ave. to Grant Park and beyond are dotted, from dawn to dusk, with people facing off in twos, fours, and sixes at hundreds of volleyball nets. Boats ranging in size from kayaks to tall ships come into and out of port, and family motorboats drift lazily down the river through the center of the city, the boaters’ tan bodies and beer cans a stark contrast to the towering steel skyscrapers above and suit-clad workers scurrying across the overhead bridges.
This is my third summer of beach volleyball, and this year I play twice a week: Mondays on the gritty, crowded silt at North Avenue and Thursdays under the shadow of the Hancock Building on the soft sand of Oak Street Beach. Most teams have alcohol-themed names, like “In It for the Beer” and “Six-Pack,” reflective of the popular post-game activity of drinking at your team’s sponsor bar. I’ve always been more excited about the playing time than the drinking. I love the feeling of throwing myself on the sand for a dig, the aching in my muscles immediately after a game that lasts for days, the way I feel stronger during the summer than I do the rest of the year. I feel momentarily ticked off that my pants all feel tighter, and then I realize that the reason is because I’m getting more toned, and my tanned thigh muscles are firm, therefore less likely to “give” when I squish them into pants. You know what I mean.
Last night, while waiting for my teammates to show up, I watched a professional photographer shooting photos of a couple on that part of North Ave. beach where it juts out into the lake, just south of the boathouse and the southern-most volleyball courts. There’s this breathtaking view, where the Hancock building, the Drake Hotel, and the cluster of skyscrapers near Water Tower just stretch up into the sky, only two miles away… far enough not to cast a shadow but still close enough that their magnificent, towering height is evident. The couple embraced, doing variations of him kissing her cheek and her kissing his cheek and facing the camera, and facing the city. At first, I thought, how beautiful. They must be doing those official engagement photos, the ones couples take and then have displayed at their weddings near the guest book and place cards. Then I felt jealous. That’s where I wanted to get my official engagement pictures taken! Granted, I’m not engaged yet. But the thing about Chicago is, it’s a big enough city without being overcrowded, so you have enough room to feel as though you “own” certain spots.
K told me that she went to a spot near the beach in Evanston, on the craggy rocks at the lakefront there, with a date. They wanted to just sit in the beautiful setting and watch the sunset together… when the tripped over a couple making out. And another. And another.
I don’t own that view on North Ave. beach anymore than I own Hot Doug’s, or the community garden along Ravenswood in West Andersonville, or the storefront windows of Louis Vuitton on Michigan Ave., or the scones at Taste of Heaven or the quiche at Sweet Occasions or the great parking spot at the Montrose “L” stop that I have to get to by 8:00 a.m. on workdays or it’s gone.
Outside of our apartments and offices, outside of our winter hibernation spots and our cars, we don’t own anything and at the same time we own everything. The wealthy have no more share in the sunset from Montrose Beach or the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park than the homeless.
I’ll have my pictures taken there too, one day, and so will thousands of other couples so long as there is a North Ave. beach and a Mag Mile and love in this city. In the summer, I know I have to share my Chicago, and you know what? I really don’t mind so much.
