50,000 screaming drunken assholes can't be wrong I went to the Jewel this afternoon and was surprised by mobs of people outside my home. Most looked lost or drunk or both, and everyone was bitching about the weather. (It was threatening snow, which Chicagoans don't deal with as well as you might expect. Except the ones from Michigan.)

Two separate mobs were gathered around a parked-in SUV and a mildly intoxicated guy was cheering the driver on with gusto. From where I stood, I didn't see how the SUV was going to get out, but perhaps his mind was opened to more imaginative geometries.

I bought my Liquid Plumr Professional Strength at the Jewel, came back and the mobs were still there although the configuration of SUVs had changed.

It was, in short, the Cubs' first home game. It got worse, too. The Bud-breathing crowds weren't too bad, but when I walked to the L behind Wrigley Stadium the place looked like a landfill, skeezy guys were everywhere, and every cabdriver in the state was trying to run me down in the hope of winning my business, demolishing their competition, or getting past me before the light turned red (or green).

Which means I've got what, six months of this?

On the positive side, every bar in the neighborhood now has a little fenced-in beergarden. I've seen at least 10 within 3 blocks of my home. Thursday it's supposed to be 78 degrees AND the Cubs are playing in somebody else's neighborhood!

 

¶ 11:32 PM