And I leave without bothering to ask him for the best train route back north.

I head west on Division for a few blocks, see a black man get slammed into the concrete at an intersection by undercover cops, cuffed and thrown into a police car all in less than a minute. “Impressive,” I think to myself.

Off in the distance, a few blocks later, I see the silhouettes of dark vacant buildings ahead that look like the remnants of Cabrini Green. There are tricked out cars driving slowly next to me on the street. After I walk under train tracks and notice no entry in sight, I decide to turn back and head up Wells because it looked safer.

A few blocks up on Wells I saw the signs indicating that I was in Old Town. This area is mildly familiar and I find a bar I remember stopping in last time I visited Chicago as a tourist.

I stop into the Old Town Ale House, a bar I visited on that last trip in town and remember being pretty sweet.

If it wasn’t for the girl bartending telling me the Clark St. bus ran all night I’d have just said fuck it and gotten a cab after leaving the Old Town Ale House. But since she seemed to know what she was talking about and I had ten more dollars left to spend in my pocket, I stayed.

“Ah… that means I can stay and have one more drink then,” I said after she let me in on this piece of information.

Having ten dollars in my pocket meant this: I could spend the $5.25 on a tequila rocks with lime, tip her seventy five cents, have two bucks for the bus faire home and have an extra two dollars to buy a half gallon of milk with which to make my Lipton noodles with for lunch before I go to work at 1:30 p.m.

So I stay for one more and I don’t feel at all guilty.

The Old Town Ale house is a now somewhat legendary literary dive bar located just around the corner from the Second City, Chicago’s renowned improv comedy theater that has produced stars Bill Murray, Chris Farley and Colin Mochrie. It’s a unique bar. Lewd 1930’s era paintings adorn the walls along with portraits of the regulars painted by one of the regulars himself. It looks like the place hasn’t been cleaned since Eisenhower was in office.

Behind me on the east wall of the joint, just over my right shoulder, is a poorly-drawn mug shot of Bill Murray. He’s smack dab in the middle of a row of former Second City performers. I only recognize about half the faces.

“How long has the current management run this place?” I ask the bartender.

“Actually just about a couple months,” she replies.

“But there’s a lot of regulars that still hang out here, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“So people’d know if this used to be one of Bill Murray’s old hangouts?”

“For sure. He used to hang out here all the time. All those Second City guys hung out here back then. This neighborhood used to be a lot different than it is now.”

The Old Town district of Chicago, as it is now, is a gentrified tourist trap
for those not adventurous enough for the trendy clubs downtown. A chain movie theater sits across the street from the bar. Around the corner are a slew of roadhouse style bars that attract traveling meatheads and the petite, shallow women that follow them.

This bar I’m sitting at right now represents the last of the true old town establishments and that’s why I like it so much.

If Murray were to live in Chicago now, It’s not likely he’d be anywhere near this neighborhood if for any other reason than a Second City reunion or a rare nostalgic trip back to the old stompin’ grounds. I keep wishing he’d stumble in and pull up a seat next to me. The questions I’d have for Bill Murray: Stripes, Ghostbusters, Ground Hog Day, Mad Dog and Glory, Rushmore, Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers. The fuckers starred in three of my top ten. Then there’s the cameo in Coffee and Cigarettes where he serves RZA and GZA coffee. Classic.

“They stiffed me!”

But enough about Bill.

I toss back the tequila and hit the streets in search of this fabled 24-hour N. Clark bus, which I quickly find and realize it’s right next to the lake. This is problematic because it still gets pretty damn cold by the lake even though it’s been in the seventies all week and in nothing but jeans and a long sleeve shirt I’m drastically underdressed. I seek shelter in the buss stop but the bitter Lake Michigan wind whips in from the small gaps underneath the glass at the stop, so there’s nowhere to escape and this bus is nowhere to be found.

Instead of standing there in the cold I decide to head north up Clark and keep turning back every 15 seconds or so to see if the bus is coming. There’s a stop about every block so I figure I can catch up with it if I spot it early enough.

I pass a black guy standing outside a random building by the lakefront leaning up against the exhaust of a heating duct that’s blowing out a steady stream of warm air. Then I double back to him and the warm air.

“You waiting for the bus?” I ask him.

“Naw man.”

“Have you seen one pass recently?”

“Yeah, just a couple minutes ago.”

“Shit! Well, do you mind if I stand here for a minute and thaw out.”

“No problem, man. No problem.”

Who knows who this man is or what he’s waiting for: his girlfriend to pick him up, a shuttle bus to a late-night shift at work, crack. Or maybe he was just standing there because he had nowhere else to be in this was the only warm spot on the Gold Coast where some cop wasn’t gonna come shoo him away.

I stood there with him for a moment and engaged in awkward conversation. He seemed like an affable guy. Most of the guys you bump into on random street corners at 2:30 a.m. can’t always be described as affable. If I were racist and paranoid I would have walked by him without even making eye contact, but since I still have faith in mankind this man didn’t scare me.

But quickly lights appeared down the block that looked like those of a bus so I departed from the warmth and bid the man adieu.

The bus ended up not being a CTA bus but a hotel shuttle bus. This did me not an ounce of good so I kept on walking.

I walked, and walked and walked, still no bus. By now I was damn near the 1700 N block of Clark, which mean, if I were to angle north on North Ave I’d only have to walk about 12 blocks to get home.

After standing at another bus stop fruitlessly waiting with a speechless Mexican who looked like he was the morning prep cook at some ritzy Lincoln Park restaurant I decided that this bus business was for the birds and decided I’d hoof it the rest of the way.

Fresh blisters are forming on my foot cased inside a new pair of trendy boots I’ve yet to fully break in. The skin of my inner thighs are rubbed raw, so much so that I resort to walking in a manner in which they don’t rub together because the pain is so excruciating.

Instead of walking I’m now waddling up Lincoln.

I’m running on fumes of anger, embarrassment and determination at this point. I’m pissed because I’m sore and it’s late and I’ve wasted damn near an entire evening walking all the way from downtown to Lincoln Park. I’m embarrassed for obvious reasons. And I’m determined because I won’t let this fucking city, and all its enormity, beat me. A richer, weaker man would have given in, taken out another $20 from a White Hen ATM and flagged down a cab.

But not me. I won’t make it in this town by taking expensive shortcuts like those. I’ll run out of money and have to come crawling back home with my tail between my legs. I’ve got a few singles in my pocket and will be severely disappointed in myself if I spend a cent more than that this evening.

Cabs are whizzing by me, one every minute, as if to rub it in. There’s a group of cops ahead on Armitage giving a black man white looks to be a field sobriety test.

By now I’m flying and the streets are buildings are becoming familiar. I’m getting closer.

“Shit, this walk wadn’t that bad,” I say to myself as I turn left on George realizing I’d just gone from the one hundred north and west intersection to the 2900 north and 1300 west block. That’s a long fucking walk to make at 2:30 in the morning.

I fall face first down onto my bed and reach into my pockets to take out my phone, wallet and change. I’ve got four bucks left.