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Chicago has a lot of newspaper columnists. We've been watching them ebb and flow for years. But the good ones, or at least the ones we like, have stuck around. Mary Schmich at the Trib is one of them. Her columns inform, provoke thought, remind us to wear sunscreen, and usually cause us at one point or another to laugh out loud. On the Brown line. During rush hour. And then everyone stares.
Today we innocently began reading her column, which starts as a joke: "So three guys walk into a car." Simple enough and par for her usual course. But we were baffled by the inanity that followed.
She recounts a trip from O'Hare to downtown on the Blue line as seen through the eyes of three men, who apparently haven't been on the CTA trains before. They're defined as the L.A. guy, the Florida guy, and a Chinese man. She notes that one makes a gently racist reference. They don't know the difference between Montrose and Monroe, Rosemont and Roosevelt, and yet Mary can't believe her new pals are confused by her explanation that "There are trains to the Loop ... and trains that loop the Loop."
The story ends with two of them exiting downtown, in the hopes of catching a cab. And one still riding the train to Roosevelt. We hope.
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Your usual shtick informs.
This time, what gives? For your columns we live!
So why bust out of your norm?
Image via transitchicago.com.
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I thought it was a great article. Against my better judgement, I will say it was cute.
I'm a lifetime Chicagoan and I still find it baffling and frustrating that so little effort appears to have been put into naming El stops. Three distinct lines with stops called Chicago? That's the best they could manage?
(Incidentally, I've actually seen somebody start to get off a Blue Line train at Chicago because she thought, "Oh, great! This is, like, the main stop in Chicago!")
Worse still, the Blue Line has two Harlem stops, two Cicero stops, two Pulaski stops...
In light of the city's continuing effort to court international business, tourism, and events of Olympian scope, it would behoove the CTA to reshape the landscape by naming some key stops after neighborhoods or landmarks. You know, actual destinations that people use the CTA to reach.
To say that Mary Schmich is one of the "good columnists" in Chicago's papers is to damn with the faintest of praise.
Her columns complaining about back-up beeps and the "wear sunscreen" article are just 2 examples of her facile "wisdom." Feh!
I am amazed that a once-great newspaper town continues to give valuable newspaper real estate to the likes of Schmich (or Roeper).
God, she just simply sucks. Has she ever written anything with that old-fashioned quality some of us like to call substance?
At least Roeper is so bad he can make you laugh--sort of like your aging drunk uncle who doesn't realize the glory has faded from his Rush Street lifestyle.
I'm a lifetime Chicagoan and I still find it baffling and frustrating that so little effort appears to have been put into naming El stops. Three distinct lines with stops called Chicago? That's the best they could manage?"
Umm, that would be because that is the name of the street.
"Worse still, the Blue Line has two Harlem stops, two Cicero stops, two Pulaski stops..."
So what? It has two stops on each of those streets. And they aren't even on the same branch.
""In light of the city's continuing effort to court international business, tourism, and events of Olympian scope, it would behoove the CTA to reshape the landscape by naming some key stops after neighborhoods or landmarks. You know, actual destinations that people use the CTA to reach."
That is truly a nutty suggestion. Nodody would be able to figure out where a stop is located. Metra's stops in Chicago (other than downtown) are all named after neigborhoods and it tells you very little about where a stop is located. I know many people who have been confused by this. If someone only knows the name of the stop, under your suggestion, they would have no idea where it is. If they wish to find it to get on the train they will have trouble(as I did once when I assumed incorrectly that Metra's Clybourn station was on Clybourn). If they want to get off the train they would not really know where they would be. Who cares if it does not require effort to name the stops the way they are? It is the most informative and passenger-friendly way to do it by far. Would you want your home address to be named in some exotic and complicated way just so that it requires more effort to do so? After all, it requires very little effort to simply use a number that is between the two locations next to it and to simply use the street name. Of course, it means people can find your house.
Yes, let's change the whole structure because some backwater rube thought there was only one stop in all of downtown.
I think the CTA has better things to spend their money on than a ton of new signs, maps, etc.
Where's Mike Royko when we need him?