Chicago Postcard - Day 4

I came to Chicago to stalk the Bubble Gum Princess.

When I came here in 1995, I spotted her in the lobby of my hotel. She was about 12 years old, with a haircut that better suited a woman of 40, and she was wearing a pink hat/blouse/skirt ensemble better suited to an eight-year-old in 1983. I was sketching people as they walked by, and I labeled the drawing of her "sad little bubble gum princess".

The name has been stuck in my head for 14 years. Every time I tried to write about her, I stalled. It's gotten to the point that I don't care if her story is worth telling, I just want to know what it is.

She wasn't on my mind when I set out today. Still looking for that bookstore I can't remember much about, I wound up in Lincoln Square. I had no idea what I'd find and was delighted to discover a quaint German-American neighborhood. It was early afternoon, and the streets were quiet except for a street fair being set up for later that evening. My first stop was Merz Apothecary, an old-fashioned drugstore with high wooden counters stacked with exotic grooming products from all over the world. Concentrated mouthwash from Germany? Check. Carmel flavored toothpaste from Japan? Got it. They also carry homeopathic remedies.I envied the woman with a sore throat because the man behind the counter so confidently recommended a remedy. Needless to say, I was in product-junkie heaven and had to force myself to stick to purchases I could carry on to the plane.

The Chicago Brauhaus was across the street, and I knew when I saw it that I had to eat there. I questioned the decision when I walked in and found just a handful of people in the giant restaurant. The hostess assured me that they did serve lunch, so I settled in and looked at the folk instruments on the wall. The decor is mid-70s Tyrolean, kitschy but earnest. Imagine the Hilltop Steak House as decorated by the Von Trapp children. (Yes, I know that's Austria. It's hard to think of a famously quaint German.) There's a stage in the corner where a traditional oom-pah band plays at night, but this afternoon I was listening to a muzak version of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

I couldn't decide what to get, so the waiter suggested the boiled spareribs. They came with a liver dumpling soup that stopped the vacation in its tracks. It was a giant liver meatball in a cup of the most comforting, fortifying broth. It tasted familiar. It tasted experienced. This soup knew what it was doing. As I ate, I looked around the room and was drawn to a wooden carving of a man with a moustache. The waiter didn't know who it was, but told me a little bit about the restaurant. I'm glad they haven't really changed since the 70s. These are the places I want to survive, the independent stores and restaurants that have character. What's the point of traveling if you find the same chain food and the same mall stores everywhere. The world needs more places where you can be served things you've never heard of. I started writing about why I'd never find the Bubble Gum Princess in the Brauhaus, why she wouldn't have even been in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. And that's when I found her, or at least a part of her story that I hadn't expected.

Apophenia is the mental process of linking unrelated elements. I've become very aware of the phonemenon watching LOST, a show where clues are so numerous that nearly every scene can be twisted around to suit the story as you want it to play out. That's what I'm doing with Bubble Gum Princess on this trip. Something catches my eye, and I imagine how she would have seen it. Chicago is her town. She's leaving clues for me everywhere.

My plans for the night were dinner and Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind with Jill and Sara. The show has been running for over twenty years and changes every weekend. They do 30 short experimental plays in 60 minutes. It's a wild mess of thrown confetti, topless men, confessional monologues, a woman holding her head underwater, and whipped cream. It was amazing, as expected.

I got back to the hotel a little too awake and fell asleep watching Carrie on the Sci-Fi channel. Not the good one, a recent remake where Emilie De Ravin from LOST played the mean girl. I fell asleep wondering what that had to do with the island.