the top 5 snowstorms of the last 7 years
So a week ago, I thought that I loved the snow, that the snow was magical, that thirty degrees was as warm as I needed the world to be to stay content. A week ago, I was a fool. The snow clouds my mind like it clouds my windows. Now that it's all gone and my bike has been returned to me, I don't think I'll ever need it again. It makes me stay inside too much, and write too much bad poetry.
Here's something that was relevant one and three weeks ago today, but not now, and hopefully not again, ever:
Leaving the radio station at four in the morning, I find that the whole ground is covered in snow. The footsteps of the DJ who's come to replace me have already been disappeared and it's still coming down strong. The streets were empty, and even the birds and rabbits who'd stayed in to tough it out this winter had gone into hiding.
It was my own personal snowstorm. No one would get to see it as I was seeing it. In a few hours, the salt trucks would come and the morning rush would force people to trek across the field of and transform it into low octane sludge. The whole surface of the city will have shifted by the time I reached the car.
Under the streetlamp halogen, the snow glittered like glass when it's crushed into powder, like Lisa Frank's vision of a snowstorm, like a landscape painted on tinfoil.
I've always liked the snow, much to the bemusement of everyone I've ever said this too.Here's a list of my top five favorite snowstorms.
5. Sex. We'd been testing the waters for weeks with flirty text messages and emails, so even though the snow was piling up on the interstate and there was no good reason to be out, I was not to be deterred. I picked ________ up from a poker game. There was no slickness to it. I don't play poker and everyone knew what was going on, but tact wasn't much of an issue. We raced down the street for a fervent one night stand and twice the car spun out into the oncoming traffic lane. It was alright though. The street was empty, save for one lone cop, who looked at us, facing the wrong direction, and waved us on.
4. Love. It was back when I lived in Wicker Park. Erin and I had left a show at the A-Zone, back when they were doing a lot of vegan dinners and film festivals. We were too drunk to wait for the Blue Line, so we stumbled down Milwaulkee. Everything was quiet until we got to the six corners, of course, where it was lit up and noisy again. That intersection is quiet for a total of one hour a day The wolfman was howling and people were streaming in and out of Flash Taco, but by the time we got to the park it was all quiet. As we walked through the trees and the playground, the snow fell quietly, like a scene from a movie.
3. Childlike glee. The pressures of the world were building up and I was starting to feel detached so I went to the party with the highest concentration of friends, even though it was in Wrigleyville. It was your traditional drinking-and-dancing themed party, but someone had moved the keg into the middle of the dance floor so that no one could really do either. Brandon was on the same wavelength, and already pocketing shit from the bathroom, and was ready to leave. Jeff, Margaret and her roommate joined us as we raced back to the friendly confines of Humbolt Park, where we climbed onto Jeremy's roof and started a snowball fight. People on the street cursed us in Spanish and tried to tag us with bottles, but we just fell over laughing, with clawed, cold hands and frostbit, drunken cheeks. Maybe because we'd come from such a pathetic scene earlier, but it was here that we really felt like we were the only people in the city alive.
2. That weird part of a relationship early on where you feel pangs that may very well be the first signs of love, but since no one is willing to say it, the feeling is manifested through decadent sex. As we left the Village North we were greeted by a half foot of snow that wasn't there when we started. We still had stars in our eyes from the movie, and we were ready to whip the night into something perfect. We decided that we needed pie, so ______ and I piled into her car and skidded towards Baker's Square. There may not be anything on this Earth less sexy than the thought of two chubby people ripping each other's clothes off and incorporating a full cake of French Silk into sex on a creaky twin bed, but as one of those chubby people, I can't think of a better way to spend a snowy evening. The chocolate cakes onto the hair and skin, and hardens quicker than you'd like, leaving you looking more like a scat freak than someone who's just fucked their way through a food fight, but there was something about the grossness that made it all the better. It was stupid. We laughed about it, and it took the pressure off of the word that was dancing around in our heads.
1. Magick. It was my first year away from home, and I was spending more time at Brianna and Liz's than I was at my own house. I was supposed to be getting ready for a trip I would take in the morning, my annual trip to spend Hannukah with relatives in Florida, but there was a blizzard outside and I didn't want to leave. We had found an old VHS of Brianna's, movies taped off the television when she was a child. We watched Hook and Willy Wonka, complete with nostalgaic commercials and bumpers for WGN, knowing full well that we were the music makers and we were the dreamers, and the only reason I left was because the next movie on the tape was Willow, and if I saw a full minute, I would stay for the whole thing and I still hadn't packed. I walked to Lawrence, where the bus runs 24 hours between the Blue Line and the Red Line, shivering in front of the Blockbuster Video that Tom and I used top go to when we were stoned. The bus never came though, after ten, twenty, and thirty minutes, but a car did.
"Heyyyy. Get in! I'm going all the way to Sheridan."
The driver was old, older than you might expect to see someone driving at this hour. He was Korean, and he seemed harmless so I got in. A few blocks later he starts telling me about the car. It's borrowed; he totalled his a week ago. It was just nice to be out of the snow for a minute.
I took the train to my parents' home and borrowed their car. It was that perfect hour where I got to have the snowstorm and Lake Shore Drive all to myself. These rides are my favorite. Lake Shore Drive at night may be the most beautiful way to see the city, and when it's snowing, you can't help but to be awed. I went to the dorm and threw as much as I could into a suitcase, and rode back with the skyline in the rearview, nodding to Kid A or whatever I was listening to ad nauseum at the time, smiling and feeling happy to myself that I was alive and able to experience it. I don't get a lot of nights like those, even when it's snowing.
[some names have been omitted because I'm a gentleman. If you would like to have your name omitted, you may want to consider having sex with me]
Here's something that was relevant one and three weeks ago today, but not now, and hopefully not again, ever:
Leaving the radio station at four in the morning, I find that the whole ground is covered in snow. The footsteps of the DJ who's come to replace me have already been disappeared and it's still coming down strong. The streets were empty, and even the birds and rabbits who'd stayed in to tough it out this winter had gone into hiding.
It was my own personal snowstorm. No one would get to see it as I was seeing it. In a few hours, the salt trucks would come and the morning rush would force people to trek across the field of and transform it into low octane sludge. The whole surface of the city will have shifted by the time I reached the car.
Under the streetlamp halogen, the snow glittered like glass when it's crushed into powder, like Lisa Frank's vision of a snowstorm, like a landscape painted on tinfoil.
I've always liked the snow, much to the bemusement of everyone I've ever said this too.Here's a list of my top five favorite snowstorms.
5. Sex. We'd been testing the waters for weeks with flirty text messages and emails, so even though the snow was piling up on the interstate and there was no good reason to be out, I was not to be deterred. I picked ________ up from a poker game. There was no slickness to it. I don't play poker and everyone knew what was going on, but tact wasn't much of an issue. We raced down the street for a fervent one night stand and twice the car spun out into the oncoming traffic lane. It was alright though. The street was empty, save for one lone cop, who looked at us, facing the wrong direction, and waved us on.
4. Love. It was back when I lived in Wicker Park. Erin and I had left a show at the A-Zone, back when they were doing a lot of vegan dinners and film festivals. We were too drunk to wait for the Blue Line, so we stumbled down Milwaulkee. Everything was quiet until we got to the six corners, of course, where it was lit up and noisy again. That intersection is quiet for a total of one hour a day The wolfman was howling and people were streaming in and out of Flash Taco, but by the time we got to the park it was all quiet. As we walked through the trees and the playground, the snow fell quietly, like a scene from a movie.
3. Childlike glee. The pressures of the world were building up and I was starting to feel detached so I went to the party with the highest concentration of friends, even though it was in Wrigleyville. It was your traditional drinking-and-dancing themed party, but someone had moved the keg into the middle of the dance floor so that no one could really do either. Brandon was on the same wavelength, and already pocketing shit from the bathroom, and was ready to leave. Jeff, Margaret and her roommate joined us as we raced back to the friendly confines of Humbolt Park, where we climbed onto Jeremy's roof and started a snowball fight. People on the street cursed us in Spanish and tried to tag us with bottles, but we just fell over laughing, with clawed, cold hands and frostbit, drunken cheeks. Maybe because we'd come from such a pathetic scene earlier, but it was here that we really felt like we were the only people in the city alive.
2. That weird part of a relationship early on where you feel pangs that may very well be the first signs of love, but since no one is willing to say it, the feeling is manifested through decadent sex. As we left the Village North we were greeted by a half foot of snow that wasn't there when we started. We still had stars in our eyes from the movie, and we were ready to whip the night into something perfect. We decided that we needed pie, so ______ and I piled into her car and skidded towards Baker's Square. There may not be anything on this Earth less sexy than the thought of two chubby people ripping each other's clothes off and incorporating a full cake of French Silk into sex on a creaky twin bed, but as one of those chubby people, I can't think of a better way to spend a snowy evening. The chocolate cakes onto the hair and skin, and hardens quicker than you'd like, leaving you looking more like a scat freak than someone who's just fucked their way through a food fight, but there was something about the grossness that made it all the better. It was stupid. We laughed about it, and it took the pressure off of the word that was dancing around in our heads.
1. Magick. It was my first year away from home, and I was spending more time at Brianna and Liz's than I was at my own house. I was supposed to be getting ready for a trip I would take in the morning, my annual trip to spend Hannukah with relatives in Florida, but there was a blizzard outside and I didn't want to leave. We had found an old VHS of Brianna's, movies taped off the television when she was a child. We watched Hook and Willy Wonka, complete with nostalgaic commercials and bumpers for WGN, knowing full well that we were the music makers and we were the dreamers, and the only reason I left was because the next movie on the tape was Willow, and if I saw a full minute, I would stay for the whole thing and I still hadn't packed. I walked to Lawrence, where the bus runs 24 hours between the Blue Line and the Red Line, shivering in front of the Blockbuster Video that Tom and I used top go to when we were stoned. The bus never came though, after ten, twenty, and thirty minutes, but a car did.
"Heyyyy. Get in! I'm going all the way to Sheridan."
The driver was old, older than you might expect to see someone driving at this hour. He was Korean, and he seemed harmless so I got in. A few blocks later he starts telling me about the car. It's borrowed; he totalled his a week ago. It was just nice to be out of the snow for a minute.
I took the train to my parents' home and borrowed their car. It was that perfect hour where I got to have the snowstorm and Lake Shore Drive all to myself. These rides are my favorite. Lake Shore Drive at night may be the most beautiful way to see the city, and when it's snowing, you can't help but to be awed. I went to the dorm and threw as much as I could into a suitcase, and rode back with the skyline in the rearview, nodding to Kid A or whatever I was listening to ad nauseum at the time, smiling and feeling happy to myself that I was alive and able to experience it. I don't get a lot of nights like those, even when it's snowing.
[some names have been omitted because I'm a gentleman. If you would like to have your name omitted, you may want to consider having sex with me]
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