Whether this is your first, fifth, or last winter in Chicago, I guarantee that you still aren’t ready for what is about to happen to us all.
Because it’s bad.
Winters in Chicago are pretty well known. Residents of the city talk about it all spring, summer, and fall, the way you’d talk about a monster that lives in your basement that wakes up every so often to feed on your children. You discuss battle plans, like your new fur-lined Doc Martens or a ski mask. You lament about having to wear a puffy coat and sacrifice your typically top notch street fashion to look like an overfed penguin. You bless the clear, ice free sidewalks, knowing that in just a few months time it’ll actually be safer to walk in the road rather than risk breaking your tailbone on a patch of black ice.
When winter actually comes, you’re never ready. You tell yourself that you expected this, that you prepared for it by covering your windows with plastic and shoving towels under your doors to keep out drafts that come right in anyway. You found all your gloves, still wet because last winter was like five f*cking seconds ago. If you’re careful, you wrap a scarf around the lower half of your face. If you’re a year-round bike rider (or a bank robber) you get your ski mask ready. If you’re me, you start listening to the Beach Boys nonstop to try and scare winter away with such bouncy summer tunes as “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” and “Catch A Wave.” This strategy has not worked for me yet, but I keep trying.
Damn it guys, get out of there.
If you’re new to the city, you’re probably wondering what the fuck is going to happen to you. I imagine you clicked on this link to see if I had any advice to give—I’ve spent three winters here and 19 winters in northern Wisconsin, after all—and surely I picked up some tips along the way.
If that’s what you thought, you’re wrong. I’ve got nothing. There is literally nothing anyone can do to help you. You should have stayed back wherever you came from. Did you know that sometimes the wind gets so bad that you can’t breathe? It blows frigid air straight into your open mouth, but you can’t inhale, because the wind is 30 mph and your eyes are watering from the smack of the wind and your lungs are like, “uh uh, no thanks.”
Also, the roads will be destroyed, the sidewalks will become dangerous terrain, and salt will ruin all of your shoes. Sometimes the wind will physically stop you from walking forward and push you backward. Sometimes the snow piles so high that Lake Shore Drive gets shut down for three days. Old people and babies die. Emergency homeless shelters are set up because during the worst of it, frostbite sets in within ten minutes and death follows soon after.
The winter is an endless vortex of pain. Every person you see on the street will be in just as much--if not more—pain than you, but you cannot even share in your misery. It’s too cold. It’s not worth opening your mouth to speak.
So get the ugliest, warmest jacket you can find, double layer leggings under your pants, wrap a scarf around your entire face, and get ready to physically fight 30+ mph gusts of wind.
You’re on your own, kid. All I can tell you to do is pray. But not to God, though. He can’t help you. Try Ra, the Egyptian sun god. Or some demon somewhere.
