11.18.2025

In Chicago during High Covid there were a select few other loners I'd see on the lakefront between Hollywood and Montrose Harbor, the same ones every day. It was the closest thing I had to a social group.

We never interacted or had anything to do with each other other than occupying the same space, give or take, around the same times every day, more or less, and this was when if you were responsible you didn't go up and introduce yourself to strangers.

I imagined conversing with them, sometimes out loud but stifled by the green cloth mask I'd purchased at a craft store in Logan Square before the Shit got really Real, and I'd imagine who these people were and what they were up to and what they were doing in the public space I'd come to think of as my own. Territorial fantasization, if you want to put a name on it.

I wondered about the freakishly tall guy with the red bandana around his neck and if he was a socialist, maybe a Wobbly like those insufferable people me and an old bandmate performed for on May Day once. I imagined I respected his politics and was better off not meeting him.

One was this tiny woman, built like a baby bird you find on the sidewalk after a windstorm. For her own safety she wore these massive heavy platform boots to weigh her down.

And of course the parade of raving lunatics crashing through the parks, off-trail, yelling things I was also thinking but mostly keeping to myself.