Saturday night in Chicago: Weeds Tavern. On stage are three men pushing the end of middle-age, banging their way through (I can’t make this stuff up) Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird.” I’m surrounded by a thin crowd of several more middle-aged couples, a few jaded Trixies and a pack of hoodie-wearing hipsters, each sipping on Bud. The French-Canadian divorcee to my right leans in to get above the noise and asks me: “What are five young, good-looking guys like you doing in a place like this?” My answer is plain enough: “Getting drunk cheap before we go off someplace else.”
Which was about half right. In reality, we had gotten ourselves lost after a show at Second City, and Weeds was the closest tavern to turn up on my friend’s handy iPhone map. Nevertheless, the woman’s question stuck with me. It was the same question we’d gleaned from the bouncer’s glare as he greeted us at the door, and one we’d each been silently asking ourselves ever since we realized that the burly guy behind the bar in the denim overalls was for real. It stuck with me because here, in finding my snotty, half-true answer to it to be just that, I think I found the true definition of that much overused term, “the NU bubble.”
The NU bubble isn’t just determined by campus boundaries or by students’ Keg-bound social lives. It is, rather, a collection of social norms and activities that extend well beyond Evanston’s city limits and into the Chicago scene. In short, it is a bubble of class and culture, a way of life and an approach to the world that stays with us even to the south of Howard.
I’ve been kidding myself all these years. Afternoons at Wrigley Field, excursions to the Art Institute, clubbing in Lincoln Park. This was the Chicago experience beyond Northwestern; these were the things that made the bubble burst. In our prospective-student viewbooks, as well as in the advice of many a well-meaning upperclassmen, here was our Chicago: No longer hog butcher to the world, or maker of tools – but brimming with hogs and tools just like anyplace else, and proud of it.
While exploring the depths of so many an impressionist landscape and overpriced martini, I must confess I did find in Chicago a welcome reprieve from the familiar faces and places of Evanston. But there’s a funny thing about Cubs games, big-name museums and North side nightspots: seldom are the real Chicagoans at these places very far-removed from the Northwestern bubble themselves. Michigan Ave., Wrigleyville, Lincoln Park – these are Chicago’s equivalent of Club Med resorts. The best way to travel the globe without having to, you know, meet anyone who lives there. As students and as adopted Chicagoans (for four years, at least), we owe ourselves something more than that.
I’m not saying Weeds is necessarily the best place to start, but next time you find yourself lost downtown, putting some blind faith in a guide – digital or otherwise – might not be a bad idea.
SESP senior Jake Wertz can be reached at [email protected].
