Once again, I've taken a nearly month long hiatus with this beast. Sorry. I've been working on a handful of other projects that have been taking up much of my free writing time. They've involved a movie script and features on Regina Spektor, Pinback, and Chicago rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot (hopefully coming soon).

As stated before, college football season has greatly cut into productivity. But now that the Hawkeyes are back to sucking, I can go without the hour I spent each day perusing the sports sections of every major Iowa newspaper for any Hawk-related story I can find.

Plus, for whatever reason, not much out of the ordinary has happened lately worth chronicling. Don't exactly know why. I guess it's because I'm starting to really settle into the city and am less apt to get lost, have awkward moments while lost or stumble across something I've never seen before that I think is really cool (which is the bulk of the content for this project).

But I went on another epic journey into Hyde Park Sunday night, and while it was largely uneventful (except for laying on the beach at sunset and gazing in sadness at the vintage brownstones in Bronzeville that have turned into slums), I had a strange and somewhat unsettling experience that I can't get out of my head.

At dusk I was walking back across the front entrance of the Museum of Science and Industry and two younger black kids were by its steps. One was sitting on the steps fiddling with something and the other was standing in front of him with his shirt pulled up around his face so nobody could see it.

As I approached, I was thinking to myself that something potentially awkward was likely going to happen. I didn't think that I was going to get jumped or anything, but I figured one of them would say something to me. Whenever kids are in isolated situations with no adults they know around, they're usually likely do something absurd or outrageous (which is exactly how my friends and I operated when we were the same age).

Sure enough, as I walked past, one of them grabbed some sort of elongated object that looked like a hair curler, stuck it by its crotch and began to make masturbatory motions with it as he walked with my down the sidewalk. After about 15 seconds of doing this silently (with his face still covered) he says: "Do you think I'm n#gger cause I'm doing this?"

I thought to myself 'Wow, slow down little man,' and replied with something safe like "uh, no, not at all."

"Are you somebody who hates n#ggers?"

"No, man. I'm just a guy out for a walk."

He continued to walk with me for a couple of feet, then told me in an innocent tone that he'd leave me alone cause I was a cool guy.

As I walked off I wondered to myself what would prompt a kid, no older than 14, to ask me such a thing. Do the majority of white people he runs into call him a n#gger? Does he think that the majority of white people consider him a n#gger when they walk by him? Was he just fucking with me in hopes that I'd say something stupid in reply?

Since I couldn't see his face, I couldn't really tell. But either way, I think it shows something that's pretty sad about life on the South Side, and even society in general. Kids are supposed goad older people with fart jokes and juvenile pranks, not ask them flat out if they think they're n#ggers. That's a little too heavy.