#faaaaaavorite

·If you dangle your feet in Lake Michigan near the abandoned warehouses where bootleggers and mobsters sat on their thrones of whiskey and gin, the ebony and amber seaweed secured to the muddy floor of the harbor with cement boots might tickle your feet.

·A customer asks politely for ketchup for their hotdog. You sigh and hand them a packet and pull a headset over your ears to drown out the sound of the city swallowing up the man just like it did the four other customers that day who asked.

·In Wrigleyville, A petrified goat carcass slumbers under mounds of ancient concrete where the strains of the seventh inning stretch can’t be heard. “This is the year!” No. This is not the year. A hundred have passed since the ritual failed. Spectral herds of goats charge down Clark Street every year on opening day. The ivy drips red when no one is looking.

·The thunder cracks and the rain pours and you pop open a black umbrella. So does everyone else on the sidewalk, except for a woman with a yellow umbrella. You blink and she’s gone.

·A brown streak runs through the city. We told ourselves that the last girl who fell in was clumsy and ignorant, but the river chooses. The river has always chosen.

·Those from the suburbs who claim residence in Chicago should take care to speak in hushed tones lest the floating red stars who patrol the neighborhoods pick up on their conversation. Niles is not Chicago, the red stars whisper. La Grange is not Chicago. Naperville is not Chicago.