Wordplay's Tony Bennett Moment

Attentive readers of this blog may recall a post in which I compared San Francisco with New York and London and gave a sort of Jungian interpretation of the character of all three. (I was looking at New York from a distance only, as I've spent little time there.) What I said about San Francisco was that it was introverted and hard to know and that it felt claustrophobic. While I don't actually disagree with this assessment after spending a few days there earlier this week, I felt my old fondness for the city returning even before I got there.

My feelings are caught up in a persistent sadness hanging over my last couple of visits and the death of a friend who lived there. Nevertheless (and quite surprisingly to me), I found the old San Francisco magic starting to exert its influence in the soft air and misty dampness that emerged somewhere around Vallejo, unmistakable harbingers of the city. I had too many happy associations with visits past to be able to deny the anticipation this created, and it wasn't even destroyed by the yellow ticket I got for not having enough cash for the toll. (Here's a hint, though, to the bridge authority: credit cards--embrace them. I'm not sure why you remain seemingly alone in taking cash only. I thought even Popsicle stands took credit cards these days.)

I had been in touch with an old friend before arriving but had no place to stay on my first night. I made my way through construction- and pedestrian-clogged downtown streets out to the avenues, where I managed to find a parking spot and a Starbucks where I could plug in and investigate the possibility of hostels and tourist hotels. I found a number of places, some with suspiciously low prices (if they were genuine) and was also considering 24-hour coffeehouses if worse came to worst. I was getting up to leave when someone brushed almost imperceptibly against me; I turned around and gave my signature dirty look to the gal who did it. I felt rage rising up and considered whether a verbal response was called for (I decided it wasn't because that would have required me to actually talk to the person, which may have been her ulterior motive, for all I know). Let it pass.

I began to feel the "I hate San Francisco" part of me taking ascendancy, so I decided to drive out of the city and try to find a low-cost chain hotel. That might or might not have worked even if the Silicon Valley weren't presently experiencing a second-wave dot.com boom (with prices to match) and even if there weren't some sort of classic car show taking place in Pebble Beach that apparently justified tripling hotel prices as far away as Morgan Hill. However, it didn't work, much to the surprise of more than one hotel clerk who seemed surprised that I didn't consider $140 a bargain for a tired and threadbare hotel right off the interstate. Instead, I ended up at a 24-hour Denny's near San Jose, drinking coffee, having breakfast, and thinking about the unlikely but undeniably true chain of events that had led to precisely that moment.

Back in San Francisco as dawn was breaking, I weathered the strangeness of the early morning crowd at Starbucks on Fillmore, played "move the car when the two-hour free parking expires," took a brief catnap while parked on Clay Street in Pacific Heights, and discovered how difficult it is these days to find true rock and roll on the radio in the City. The latter circumstance seemed so unlikely that I was considering asking for help in finding a rock station if only a knowledgeable-looking person would happen along. Maybe Pac Heights wasn't the best place for it, as I saw very few people who looked like they ever listened to rock music, most of them being either elderly or otherwise lacking in anything remotely resembling a rock 'n' roll vibe. Such is San Francisco in the year 2017, where the Summer of Love is almost as if it never happened, depending on how hard you squint.

What San Francisco hasn't lost is a certain psychedelic quality, which requires no mind-altering drugs but is present in the very air (though I don't know: perhaps there is something in the water that alters the behavior of residents over time?). I told my friend that it was very noticeable, in this introverted city, how many pedestrians made eye contact with you over the course of a day; I was wondering if there had been some major catastrophe in the news that I hadn't heard about that was causing people to eye one another closely, but if there was a precipitating event, I never found what it was. I would have enjoyed my walks better if not for this peculiar and unnatural watchfulness, but I wasn't altogether surprised, since San Francisco seemed altered in some indefinable way the last couple of times I was there. I can't account for it, but I do not think it a change for the better.

I found the spirit of the old San Francisco coming on me at odd moments, as if to prove that, yes, the heart of the city is still beating somewhere, hidden away in some obscure corner or shabby coffeehouse. Stopped in traffic, I would look up and see an elegant, many-turreted Victorian with a broad front and crisp paint and think, "Yes, I could live there." Searching for a parking spot, I would top a hill and glimpse a sudden view of the bay, a lovely vista that was free for the asking and almost made the frustrating parking game worthwhile.

Returning from an excursion to Marin, I would see the gigantic towers of the Golden Gate bridge, stately and serene in the golden afternoon light, framed by hills--an enormity almost too much to absorb, as if a race of Titans (instead of mere men) had placed it there as a token of might. I would think, looking out at the ocean as we crossed the bridge, "I don't know what I'll be doing a week from now, but I'm going to hold this image in my mind as a reminder of where I was today." Glancing down a side street on the way in from the Sunset district, I would encounter an enchanting view of a street of cozy houses with a leafy burst of fall color, a quiet street that whispered, at least in my mind, an invitation to come back and walk around some time.

Peering up while stopped at a light, I would see a white curtain blowing in the breeze at an open bay window, a homey and domestic sight in hyper-sophisticated San Francisco that suddenly made me wish it was my window and that I was returning to it after an ordinary work day. I would see how green the grass was in the city parks, catch sight of a laughing child in its parent's arms, get a peek of a morning side street full of cafes in the Financial District, read a sign for a show at the de Young and wish I had the time and money to attend, and pass a corner apartment building with an empty lobby and plate glass windows that was gorgeous as it was but seemed the perfect spot for a tiny cafe.

I was sorry to leave San Francisco, despite the strangeness that hangs over it, because it is a place that manages to maintain its beauty in spite of whatever miasma may be clinging to it. I saw many streets, buildings, quarters, and corners that seemed to call out for further exploration, and I hope to be able to accomplish this some time. I don't know if I could ever live there permanently, and I don't know if I could be happy there, but I could spend some time wandering around, looking here and there, trying to avoid the noise while letting the city itself, the actual city, speak to me. If L.A. is a prehistoric creature disguised as a trendy starlet, a nymph, San Francisco is a cultured dowager hidden behind the face of a computer geek, a graceful lady currently incarnated in a techie, dot.com persona. She may be acquainted with sailors and robber barons, but even earthquakes can't dislodge her.

I Visit Skid Row and Come Away Chastened

Lately I've been thinking of ways to economize on my lodging as my job search continues, so I decided to investigate community resources that might be available to someone in my situation. The answer, as I discovered, is not many. Most of the resources are allocated (as is fitting) for people in very dire circumstances, and I guess the assumption is that middle class people have enough of a safety net in friends and family. I ascertained this for myself by visiting a downtown women's center, where I was told that they serve only the homeless, meaning women who have been living on the streets for a year or longer.

My immediate thought was that in that case a homeless person might be half-dead by the time they got there. I was incredulous, but I realize I shouldn't have been. I applaud the work these people are doing, but of course their resources are limited. Another agency I was directed to had a basement parking structure that was locked but so grim in appearance that I imagined a sign above it in medieval lettering saying, "Abandon all hope ye who enter here." Seriously. I could picture driving into it and never seeing the light of day again, so I was left to consider other alternatives.

This was my first visit to that part of downtown Los Angeles, and although I didn't find anything that would benefit me there, the streets were teeming with life, the good, the bad, and the ugly all side by side and on top of one another. The big flower markets and the homeless camps were within steps of one another: one block was lined with sidewalk tents and the next was clogged with tourists. I navigated a couple of narrow side streets packed with small shops and pedestrians that suddenly reminded me of London. I saw several landmarks--City Hall, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, and Olvera Street--from different perspectives than I'm used to. And finally, I figured out how to get onto Sunset Boulevard from downtown without the weird little detour through a sketchy neighborhood that I remembered from the past. Have they possibly done some road work in that area?

I was sitting at a traffic light across from Olvera Street when I had one of those past, present, and future deja vu moments I was talking about last week. That is, I looked over and saw the exact spot where years ago I stood--on my first visit to L.A.--and looked with yearning in the direction of Sunset Boulevard, the street sign being all I could really see of it. I had been dropped off at the train station by the Amtrak bus and had a few hours to spare before catching my train back east, and boy, was I itching to see at least a little of the city I'd heard so much about. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be any way to take a bus tour like I'd done in Chicago, and I'd been warned before I got there about wandering around alone (this was shortly before the city erupted over the Rodney King beating). Thus it was that my first experience of L.A. was limited to Union Station and Olvera Street, which nevertheless left a lasting impression.

As I was sitting at the light yesterday, I thought to myself, "This is one of those watershed moments in your life in which you realize that the present has finally caught up with the past (or perhaps it's the other way around). You'll remember this moment all your life." The truth is, though, that while I knew it was true, it didn't feel like a transcendent moment: I just felt like my everyday self, sitting in traffic, with my usual concerns, worried about splurging for coffee but feeling that, for the money, it was probably a good investment in mental hygiene, a small treat in lieu of bigger ones--and wondering when the light was going to change.

Despite the visit to Skid Row, it was a beautiful day. I was annoyed that my rental deposit from my old apartment has yet to arrive in the mail, but I still went in search of and found the cup of coffee I was looking for. (Well, maybe not exactly that cup. The coffeehouse, while suitably funky, was too full of hipsters, lending further credence to my feeling that I can't possibly be one.) The coffee was good, but the neighborhood didn't please me as much as it had on first impression. I capped it off with a walk in the park anyway (I do like the park) and was once again visited by local wildlife in the form of ducks and turtles as I stood enjoying the view across the water.

I had first taken the precaution of removing my road atlas, which contained a copy of my birth certificate and a job application, from my car and carrying them with me as I walked. That was after I noticed a white truck idling in the street near my car after I had parked it. Thinking that that looked a little peculiar, I decided to err on the side of caution, since my car's been broken into before. The truck pulled away as soon I started walking back to my car, not that it looks anything like a vehicle a typical thief would target. Never a dull moment, right? Actually, I think I would welcome a few dull moments, or at least a few ordinary ones.

Well, on the bright side, I am finding my way around a little better every day. For the second time in a row, I managed to get back on the Glendale Freeway going in the right direction and even remembered to get out of the exit lane in time to avoid a hair-raising last-minute scramble and a trip back to the neighborhood I had just left. I had decided against filling out the job application in the coffeehouse, where I didn't feel at ease enough to concentrate on it (I fell back on my library book, Martin Chuzzlewit, instead), thus necessitating a stop in a second cafe for the purpose of completing that task. I justified it in my mind as a business expense, though it will probably mean skipping coffee altogether for the foreseeable future.

With the job application completed, I headed back to my hotel, still wrestling with the same career and financial difficulties as before but having somehow managed to enjoy the day in spite of it. I'm a realist, but I try not to let that get in the way of a sunny day. The short cut I took on the way back didn't work out, as sometimes happens with my short cuts, which turn into learning experiences instead. I ended up in Long Beach, and it's a mystery to me how that happened, but it let me realize that some of the little trips I'd taken earlier, apparently fruitless, had paid off by allowing me to recognize street names and get myself going the right way while bypassing an area I'd rather avoid.

If there's a moral to this story, I suppose it is this: never drive into an opening that looks like the gates of hell. Nothing good could possibly come of it. Or else it might be: either you're a hipster, or you're not. Visit a hipster joint and find out; you'll soon know. Or possibly: you can learn something from everything, even if it's taking a wrong turn, as long as you figure it out in time. Or maybe it's all three.

The Soul and Three Cities

Last night, I picked up a book I've had for a while on psyche and the life of cities. I read two or three chapters some time ago and laid it aside; last night it happened to be sitting in a pile of books near at hand when I was looking for something to read. I started with the chapter on San Francisco, which I apparently hadn't gotten to before, since none of it seemed familiar. I picked the chapter out of curiosity, since I've visited the city a number of times and wanted to see what the author, a long-time resident and psychoanalyst, had to say about it.

A recent incident helped prompt my curiosity. I sometimes look at apartments and places to live in other cities, just for fun; I like to see how much things cost and to consider possibilities. I rarely look at San Francisco, but one night, in an idle moment, I did a search for apartments in an area of the city that I rather like. I did the search, pulled up some results, and looked at a couple of apartments; I was looking at one with a lovely view of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge when I was hit by a feeling of claustrophobia that nearly amounted to revulsion. I had the sudden conviction that I couldn't see myself ever living in San Francisco, and the strange thing was how strong the feeling was.

The author of the San Francisco essay confirmed my feeling rather than dissuading me from it, despite the fact that he obviously loves his city. His essay suggested to me that it might be hard to feel grounded in San Francisco, that the distance between people in that city of people in pursuit of themselves could make meaningful connections difficult. The writer describes an unusually high degree of self-preoccupation there, not that this is necessarily a bad thing. It may be unavoidable for the people who are drawn to live there, since the city's famous openness, as he tells it, almost demands that residents make a project of their individuality. It left me feeling, though, that San Francisco might be quite a lonely place, and a tenuous one, too.

I agree with the author that San Francisco is lovely to visit and has great physical charm; I also agree with his observation that the city probably doesn't reveal its inner life readily to a visitor. You could go to San Francisco for a week or 10 days and enjoy every minute of it as a tourist, but what you're seeing tells you very little about what it would be like to live there. This is true to some degree of most places, I think, but perhaps even more so of San Francisco. The author attributes this to a high degree of introversion among its residents, something a casual visitor wouldn't be likely to notice.

After the San Francisco chapter, I turned to the section on London, another city I have spent time in. It was, oddly, rather a relief to turn to this chapter, though the author's designation of the color red as the city's signature color, a provocative idea to start with, got to the heart of something I noticed when I was there. One of the fascinating things about London, as he points out, is the way its long history is layered so visibly in its buildings, layout, monuments, and place names. He pointed to the double nature of the color red, emblematic of life and vitality but also of death, a reminder of the many centuries of struggle and upheaval the city has endured.

I remember my long-ago first visit to London's Westminster Hall and the almost physical feeling of the weight of years that hit me while I was standing inside. I'd never had a sensation like that before, a feeling of being buried under layers of history, as if all the events that had ever taken place were still present in the room. It wasn't a pleasant feeling and was actually rather frightening, though that was the only time I really experienced it that way. As I got used to finding my way around, I was increasingly fascinated by the way pieces of the past were embedded in the present, sometimes subtly, so that you had to know they were there--a piece of Roman wall visible through the window of a basement, for instance, if you bent your head and looked.

After reading the London chapter last night, I found myself thinking: if I had to choose whether to spend six months in San Francisco or six months in London, which would it be? London appealed to me more. Somehow, London seems more definite and less ghostly to me than San Francisco does, strange though it may seem to say it. Even as an American, I think I could find my way around London more easily than I could around the Bay Area, which says more about me, of course, than it does about the merits of either place. I'm not saying the same thing would or should be true of anyone else.

This afternoon, I read the book's chapter on New York City, a place with which I have very little personal experience. I used to find the idea of New York positively overwhelming, but lately I've begun to feel that I wish I knew the city better. Maybe sometime I'll get the chance. In any event, I learned more about New York, its history, and its layout (which has always been a source of complete mystification to me) in just two hours than I've managed to pick up in decades of hearing about it and seeing it on television and in the movies. The author of the piece made no assumptions, as others sometimes do, about a reader's prior knowledge of the city, providing not only a pictorial overview but also a succinct summation of history and geography that helped give it shape in my mind.

I'm not sure why I've always been content to have such a pleasantly vague notion of New York, to hear about Central Park, Greenwich Village, the Hudson River, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the Lower East Side without really having any idea of how they relate to one another. Curiosity finally seems to have kicked in, perhaps due in part to the many novels I've read in recent years that have managed to convey some sense of the city's allure, leading me to think that, while it's a tough place, it has its own magic. Why I have derived such a feeling for the city from reading fiction rather from seeing it in movies or on TV is a bit of a mystery. I do think that since 9/11, many Americans have developed a more protective feeling toward New York. The psychic wound created there still affects us all, and that may be another reason I feel drawn to the city.

After reading about New York, I posed myself another choice: "OK, what if you had to choose between San Francisco and New York?" A very interesting psychic exercise, to be sure, because there was a time I never would have said this (or even thought it), but New York appealed to me more. I wouldn't go so far as to say I can picture myself as a New Yorker, but if I had to choose a place for a longish visit, I'd pick New York. How strange that hard-edged, fast-paced New York should end up seeming more human to me than San Francisco, swathed in its fogs and soft hills, but that does seem to be the case. Again, this isn't a statement of absolute value but rather a reflection of a psychic shift on my part.

If you're interested in reading about the ways Jungian analysts describe the psychic life of their cities, the book I've been referring to is Psyche & the City: A Soul's Guide to the Modern Metropolis, edited by Thomas Singer. You may agree or disagree with the way a particular writer sees things, but Jungians are unusually sensitive to the inner life, distinctive rhythms, and peculiarities that give a place character, and this is reflected in their writing. Their intimate knowledge of the cities they live in may provide insight (or rebuttal) for experiences you've had as a visitor (or even as a resident) but couldn't quite explain. I'm still in shock over the way my psyche has rejected San Francisco (the home, after all, of Ghirardelli Chocolate--think about it!), but John Beebe's chapter on the city helped me to see some of the reasons why this may have happened.

Mnemosyne and the City Block

By chance, I was in the vicinity of my old neighborhood the other day and decided to drive through. I frequently drive by it but very rarely through it, though when I lived in my last place, its streets were almost as familiar to me as the back of my hand. As often happens with the passage of time, I found that I now had a different feeling about it. What was once merely commonplace and familiar now had a heightened significance: the brief excursion was like a homecoming of sorts, in spite of the fact that I still live in the same general area. (You'd probably laugh if you knew how close my current place is to my last one, but sometimes even a small distance can make a big difference. It feels like a different world over here.)

So I drove through and noted something that shouldn't have surprised me but did, a little. The streets of modest bungalows mixed in with a few apartment buildings were mostly intact, but here and there houses had been torn down and replaced with what I take to be student housing, newer construction that doesn't match the look of the older brick dwellings and single-family homes of the neighborhood. I'm not certain if a person unfamiliar with the old look would be struck as much as I was by the patchwork quality of the neighborhood as it is now, but to me it was as if I had seen the handwriting on the wall. The neighborhood is changing--I wonder how much of it will even be there 20 years from now.

A eulogy is still somewhat premature, and I really have no say in what happens to a neighborhood I don't live in, so I'm strictly giving my personal reaction here--but it did make me sad. It's not the fact of change in itself but the way in which it seems to be tearing holes in the fabric of something that used to seem organic and of a piece. I used to walk those streets every day without thinking about them much, but after driving through the other night, I started thinking about Joni Mitchell's song "Big Yellow Taxi." It is indeed true that "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Understand, we're not talking paradise here, but rather a very ordinary neighborhood . . . though I don't know, I guess it depends on how you define paradise.

I started to remember small things from the days when I was a familiar sight on those streets: the day in late April, finals nearly completed, when I suddenly noticed how gorgeous the dogwoods were at the end of one street. The flat-roofed home that I always thought looked like a Florida house, an anomaly in that neighborhood but a reminder of my childhood. The stretch of shady street overhung with trees that somehow gave the impression, for a quick half block, of a country lane, especially on a hot summer day. The house with the lamppost in the front yard that gave me a comfortable feeling, especially that night I was out walking with friends and the lamp was on when we passed by. I couldn't find it the other night and don't know if I just missed it or if it's been torn down.

After my detour through the neighborhood, I was in a thoughtful mood, thinking about things, people, and places that have passed through my life. In a strange miracle of timing, a friend from the old days called the next afternoon to say she was going to be in town. I told her about what had happened. We didn't spend a lot of time reminiscing, but the subject of how much time has passed did arise. She commented on how long ago it all seems, and I said that to me it feels like almost another lifetime. She herself, however, seemed unchanged, which was some consolation.

I was just writing about the inevitability of flux last week. If someone is going to put up a new building, I would rather they did it with some regard for aesthetics, but realistically speaking this isn't always going to happen. Nevertheless, places matter, as do trees, buildings, and homes. One realizes that paradise will occasionally be paved over, as Ms. Mitchell says, for a parking lot (or parking structure, in this case), and you're going to lose a lamppost here and there, and as long as some things remain constant, I guess it's not a total loss. Knowing that it won't always happen, I still wish, though, for some attention to things past and some respect for the spirit of place, something our society hasn't always been good at giving.

If we don't respect where we've been, how can we build something worth moving toward?

Genius Loci

As a follow-up to last week's post about Rebecca Solnit's book on the anthropology of walking, I should mention that I went out of my usual bounds today to take a short walk downtown. I used to work downtown, and its streets, buildings, cafes, and sidewalks were a part of everyday life, but I rarely have reason to go there anymore. I was only there today because I needed to go to the library on an errand and decided it would be easiest to go to the main branch. I was struck by how little downtown felt like a "hometown" any more, in any sense of the word. I almost had the feeling that I had been living elsewhere and dropped in for a visit after an absence of several years--that's how alien it felt. And yet I've been here all along.

There have been many, many changes downtown over the years; I'm old enough to remember "Urban Renewal," and even before that, what the city looked like when it still had department stores on Main Street. I have nothing against shopping malls per se, but I do think the decline of downtown areas as principal shopping districts has had a bad effect on many communities that they have spent years trying to compensate for. In many cases, "downtown" is still the principal business district and offers such diversions as restaurants, museums, and nightclubs--such is the case here. But the changes I felt were more subtle than the coming and going of a business, the resurfacing of a street, or the introduction of a new parking lot. The soul of the place seemed to have leaked out somehow.

It looks much the same now as it did when I was down there every weekday, but it felt foreign to me. Of course, you have a major problem any time the center of your downtown district has, literally, a hole in it. Directly across from the library is a huge pit in the ground that takes up an entire block, the result of a stalled construction project that began a number of years ago, when I still worked downtown, in fact. Why would any city, especially one with such pride in its historic districts and one-time reputation as the "Athens of the West," allow such a gaping hole to exist for years at a time in one of the most visible spots in the entire city? Good question.

Some people regarded the long-existing buildings on the block before demolition as eyesores; others saw them as treasures. I remember trying to frame what was happening during the initial controversy over the project, a proposed multi-story hotel, in mythological terms. Certainly it seemed that two diametrically opposed forces were at work, one that valued the old and one that championed the new, a sort of clash of the Titans. Regardless of the merits of the project itself and who was right and who was wrong about its benefits and costs, it's tough to argue that having what looks like a rock quarry in the middle of Main Street is an improvement over what was there before. It gives downtown an air of neglect.

I can remember when it was fun to walk around and notice little things, a pocket garden here, a public art project there, something in a store window that caught the eye. A public art project called "Horse Mania" once transformed the streets into an outdoor sculpture garden with creativity and imagination on display at every turn--who would have thought there were so many ways to interpret the basic form of a fiberglass horse? Another project involved the installation of doors recovered from a demolished housing project that had been transformed into works of art--pure genius.

When I looked around today, I noticed a couple of sad-looking murals, neither one of which did much to appeal to either the eye or the heart. I actually stopped and asked a parking lot attendant who had painted the mural of the somewhat demented-looking elvish creatures presiding over one corner. He couldn't tell me. Any city that allows something like that to pass for art needs a bit of shaking up, if you ask me, and you didn't, but I'll tell you anyway. No amount of Thursday Night Lives or Gallery Hops is going to cover up something like that. Why is it even there?

It seems to me that the genius loci of our town is either missing in action, falling down on the job, or has something else in mind. If that's what passes for progress, I guess I'll stick to the suburbs. They're only marginally better, but at least there's no risk of stepping off the sidewalk and falling into a chasm that could lead, who knows, right into the center of the earth. I mean, it's a really big hole.

A Walk in Chicago

I was in Chicago for a few days last week. As often happens in an unfamiliar place, I was tired and a bit overwhelmed the first day. Downtown Chicago is an extremely energetic environment, and it took me a day to get in synch with it.

A lunchtime walk to the Newberry Library on the second day allowed me to get my feet under me. My natural love of walking kicked in, I enjoyed finding my way to the Library (and seeing the inside of it), and the skyscrapers and busy streets that had seemed daunting the night before started to seem exciting and intriguing instead. There was a lot to see.

My last night in town we had a conference dinner, which ended early. I started walking back toward my hotel, but it seemed too early to just go to my room and brush my teeth. I decided instead to walk toward Navy Pier. I was enjoying the views of the skyscrapers lit up against the dusk and the Friday night exuberance in the air. I knew if I kept walking I would come to the waterfront, so I tried to maintain a straight course while staying on well-populated streets.

I eventually came to Lakeshore Drive and was faced with an underpass I hesitated to use. While hesitating, I saw groups of people crossing it from the other side, so I made my way down to it from the street level and ventured forth. Navy Pier, on the other side, was awash with people as I strolled past. I wondered if I should try to get to Millennium Park or if I was going to get caught in the rain.

I asked two women emerging from the park near Navy Pier how close I was to Millennium Park. I walked along with them for a while as we discussed the best way to get there. As it turned out, it was a little late for Millennium Park by then, and I had conveniently but unintentionally (because of the lake shore) walked in a sort of circle so that I was not far from my hotel. By that time my feet were tired, and I had satisfied my impulse for a walk, so I called it a night.

Every place has its own presiding genius, its local gods. I don't know Chicago well enough to say what its gods are. I was downtown, and that's different from other parts of the city I've seen before. I saw glittering towers, groups of revelers out on the town, and beautiful window displays of artfully arranged housewares and home decor. I saw a man playing a saxophone in front of the AT&T store. I saw a homeless family huddled in a doorway. I saw many tourists in a crowded Navy Pier arcade, a glimpse of the lake at nightfall, a young man taking a break in the cavelike service area of a large hotel, a doctor leaning against the reception desk inside Northwestern Hospital, and a pair of young men posing proudly for a picture in front of an underpass mural.

I navigated by prior knowledge of the map, attention to the presence of others, the advice of guides, and my own intentions. I'm glad I followed my hunch that it was too early to go to bed. During the day, Chicago is busy, directed, and purposeful. It gave me a fuller sense of things to experience a more festive but still multi-faceted city as it wound down into evening.