Miscellaneous Debris – Archive

It’s 1:27 and I just can’t sleep. My head aches and my back aches and bits of my heart still ache, though they have no right to. Every 4 minutes a train passes by my window and my battery will run out in a couple of minutes. It’s 1:30 and I just can’t sleep.

This is the Chicago of the skyline and the shoreline, of parks and stadiums, wide streets and clean, clean rivers. It’s touristic but not overly so, urban but not as crowded as New York. It’s got green grass with joggers and the Magnificent Mile with shoppers and universities with slackers, coffee shops and poetry slams and […]

(Update: Fixed the image links) Chicago is very different when you don’t drive a car. There is no subway in Chicago, just the “El” train – the Elevated train running throughout central Chicago. Its metal and concrete tracks run over the city, especially the central Loop, making the streets both distinctive and very, very loud. […]

My first taste of Chicago was Chicago of the Ground. Chicago of the highway. It’s a Chicago of interstates and road construction, a Chicago of tollbooths and traffic jams. It’s a sprawling metropolis, 50 miles from north to south, criss-crossing streets, gas stations and restaurants. It doesn’t end. It looks small on the map but […]

Jay lookalike: Hey, where are you guys from? Us: Israel Not-So-Silent-Bob: Hey, that’s cool, man. That’s cool. We got you guys’ backs! Us: Yeah. Bob: I mean, lots of places in the world don’t like us, but we know that we’re cool with you guys, because we got you guys’ backs! Us: Yeah, we’re cool. […]

At the Metro Lodge motel in the outskirts of Detroit there is no WiFi. In fact, there are no wireless networks in range at all, whether open or protected. A first time that’s happened since we’ve been here. This is appropriate for an area where people bum you for food on the street, the bedcovers have […]