Yesterday, I blogged what I expected to be my last words on living in Marina City. I didn’t expect to be called home from the office today by our management company to attend what is our third apartment flood in 12 months. Silly me. After seven years of blogging about state-of-repair disasters in both towers–including numerous fires, floods, drunken attempted apartment invasions, and at least one interstate prostitution ring abetted by former board member and local dentist Gary Kimmel, I really should have known better.

If you think I’m kidding, please (oh, please) browse through my Marina City archives–from beginning (in June 2005) to end (this month)–or read this recent coverage of the Gary Kimmel scandal from Chicagoist. Sadly, it doesn’t get any better. At least not in these corncobs. If you look at an apartment here, either to rent or to buy, ask the person showing it about these issues. If they–or anyone else–tell you things like this don’t happen here, they aren’t telling you the truth. Do your you diligence. One word: Google.

Today’s events just bolstered my sense of relief about finally leaving this place. But as with everything, there’s always a blessing if you look for it. As I wait for the residual dripping from our newly damaged window-wall ceiling down directly into our electric baseboard heaters to putter out, one comforting thought keeps coming to mind.

At least we don’t have carpeting.

(Can’t see this video in your news feed? Watch it here.)

In the photo above you can see our current Marina City balconies. They’re no different than most other balconies here, so there’s no need to point them out. As you can see, there’s an eternal consistency to life here at the corncobs. Some of that consistency I’ll miss, and some I’ll be glad to leave behind. Ryan and I have signed a lease on an apartment in Edgewater Beach for March 1st. We signed the lease a couple of weeks ago. It just took me a while to realize that this is the end of an era in my life.

We’re moving because we realized that our lives are centered elsewhere–primarily on the far north side and the northern suburbs of Chicago. North is where our synagogue and most of our synagogue friends are. North is where the heart of the Chicago area’s Jewish community lies. North is where most of the restaurants and stores are located that we like to frequent. After a year living in Marina City and more than a year of living Jewishly, it just turned out that Milan Kundera was right. In our case, life really is elsewhere.

I’m looking forward to the move. For years I’ve blogged about the consistent agony and ecstasy of life in the Marina City corncobs, and all of it still applies. You always know your neighbors. Via foot, ‘L’, bus, or expressway, you can easily get anywhere from here. The architectural and cultural wonders of the Chicago Loop are your front yard. And the 61st-floor roofdecks are sublime.

However, an eternally combative condo board, nonstop punishing noise from every-fifteen-minute emergency sirens and late-evening Chicago Riverwalk cafe music, fraternity-level antics from numerous college-age residents, a noticeable lack of neighborhood amenities, and the persistent feeling that once you step outside your lobby, the block belongs to hipsters lined up to get into the House of Blues and drunks stumbling home from Dick’s Last Resort, bring any sense of soul soaring right back down to earth.

So I suppose, at long last, these are my final words on Marina City. I was thrilled to move into Marina City in 2005, but in the end, I agree with my last last statement about living here. It’s cheap and well located, but it’s not worth the quality-of-life trade-off you have to make to be able to live here and keep your sanity. Unlike last time, though, this time I’m leaving on my own terms. I won’t be back.

We’re off to an apartment twice the size of our current one for only slightly more rent, in a Sheridan Road high-rise with a spectacular city and lake view. It’s near two of our favorite supermarkets, the Red Line is two blocks away, and an express bus is outside our front door. But what really matters to me is that we’ll be living on the same block as our synagogue. For at least one Reform Jew, gaining the ability to walk to synagogue on Shabbat–and in five minutes, too!–really will be a dream come true.

But far north side living is a far cry from a lot of my life that came before. Growing up in New York, it was my life’s goal to live as close to Manhattan as possible. Eight years living in Park Slope, Brooklyn, satisfied that urge. A graduate degree in urban planning sealed my then-permanent anti-suburban sneer.

During the past nine years in Chicago, it’s been much the same thing. First I tried to live as close to downtown as I could get. Then I moved into it, and for seven years downtown is where I’ve remained. A boyfriend moved to New York, but I stayed. I moved out of Marina City once already, but I still stayed downtown.

But life goes on, and while doing so it changes us, little by little, until it changes us a lot. For many years, I haven’t been an urban planner. Over time, I’ve realized how much more I like Chicago’s outer neighborhoods–and suburbs, too–than I ever liked their New York counterparts. And in converting to Judaism and joining a synagogue, I did something I never dared do back in my hometown. I put down roots. Those roots just happen to be planted in soil that isn’t in the 42nd Ward.

And so. I guess this is the point where Mike Doyle, the post-college, agnostic, pessimistic, inner-city, out-of-place Gothamite is finally let go of by Michael Doyle, the forty-something, religious, optimistic, city-as-neighborhood, where-he-belongs Chicagoan. Who I’ve been for a lot longer than I’ve let myself realize.

I guess I’ll never be an urban planner again. Or a New Yorker. Or maybe even someone with a 15-minute walk to work. I’ll never brag about living in a Goldberg building again, or meditate on my life from the panoramic roofdeck of one. There are a lot of “I’ll never agains” when you reach past forty, I’ve come to see now.

On the other hand, I’ll never again wonder where and how I’m supposed to fit in on this planet. I’ll never again feel lonely in a room alone. I’ll never again face a challenge, yell “Why?” in my head, and fear there’s no Eternal being out there to hear me cry out. I’ll never again hate the suburbs like I used to. I’ll never again fear outer neighborhoods like I used to.

And you know what else? I’ll never again fear moving on like I used to, either.

When I moved on from my formerly beloved high-rise home, Marina City, last May, I never planned to be back. At the time, drowning in the watery surge of the tsunami of the Great Recession, I decided greener, more northern, and, er, cheaper pastures would be in my future. Lincoln Square seemed more bucolic. Edgewater was a lot closer to my temple. And after five years living in Chicago’s (in)famous, twin corncobs (regarding the ‘in’ part, just read through my Marina City archives), I needed a break from living in the dead-center heart of the middle of urban America.

Three months later, living with roommates at the foot of Milwaukee Avenue, tantalizingly close to downtown but not really in it anymore, I started to reconsider my decision. But I was still too poor to do anything about it, and too humble after my emotional and spiritual leaves (after forty years finally) turned over midyear to do anything about it. And spending time in Edgewater, I really started to fall for the neighborhood vibe of the place. In many ways, it reminded me of the local-neighborhoodiness I gave up when I left Brooklyn in the early 2000s.

By year’s end, I started a volunteer position managing the web presence of a major local nonprofit that very quickly turned into something more. (I’m not at liberty to flesh out further details yet, but suffice it to say, I can let my Link card expire now.) But I had spent a lot of time loving on the vibe of Chicago’s northern neighborhoods–and a lot of time doting on the noise, scandal, and troublesome condo board at Marina City. So downtown still wasn’t in the picture.

I had forgotten about the community spirit of the corncobs’ longtime-resident couch ladies, the comfort of knowing so many of your neighbors (don’t ask why, but Marina City in all its 60-story glory seems to promote neighborliness), the security of being on a first-name basis with building staff, and the sheer convenience of having five supermarkets and the entire Windy City transit system within a short walk from your front door.

I was reminded of all these things when Ryan, whom I love and–for once–whom you haven’t heard all about, suggested we have a living-room picnic a few weekends ago. We visited my old Trader Joe’s, on Ontario Street in River North, just up the street from Marina City. He almost had a heart attack from the crowded, Saturday evening bumper-shopping-cart action. But I started to remember how much I missed it, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot along with it. (Oddly enough, Jeff Tweedy, lead singer of Wilco whose so-named album featured the towers on its cover art, is a member of my temple.)

Gainfully employed, I had already started planning my move to Edgewater. At the same time, Ryan wanted to move closer to his Berwyn job than his current Aurora home. We decided to look for an apartment together and move in (now there’s a buried lede for you), and mused that maybe we should look downtown. But we really figured we were going to move in together in Edgewater.

Until Trader Joe’s.

So in February, for the first time ever, I’ll live with my boyfriend. And we’ll be living in Marina City’s West Tower. So remember all that yapping I did in 2007 about yearning to move home? Well, I’m finally doing it. Just not to New York. But back to where, in the end, I guess I really belong. Downtown Chicago.

Also…yahoo.

I’ve been away from State Street for two months and I’m eating my words. Some of these words, written shortly after my May move to an apartment share with friends in the Fulton River district (read: across the street from trust-me-it’s-stinkier than-you-realize Blommers Chocolate factory.) I’m merely a mile west on Kinzie Street from my former Marina City digs, but the difference couldn’t feel more marked, and not in a groovy I’m-in-a-better-place way, either.

I moved due to the economy, with my game plan centering on exiting consulting, getting a day job, and moving on to the cheaper, more neighborhoody pastures of Lincoln Square on the far-ish North Side–my apartment share with friends an interim stop along the way. The day job element of the plan still holds–I’m pretty tired of being in charge of my own health insurance and taxes. But the leaving downtown thing? Not so much.

This makes the third time that, try as I might, I just can’t drag myself away from downtown Chicago. First, I failed to move back to New York after a terrific 2007 job offer there–I figured I’d wake up screaming the names of Chicago ‘hoods and missing being able to walk to the Art Institute. Then I bailed on moving in with former boyfriend Pastry Chef Chris because I couldn’t bear to trade living a bridge away from the Loop for living a 15-minute hoof to an Oak Park ‘L’ station.

You’d think I’d have learned by now.

There are two things at work here. Most of all, I miss being able to walk out my front door and be in the middle of the capital of the middle of America. Knowing you’re a short walk from any Loop attraction, from (as most people don’t know) half a dozen great grocery stores, or from a one-seat bus, ‘L’, or Metra ride to anywhere in Chicagoland is pretty powerful. I said it in 2007 and dammit, I’m saying it again: I can easily visit outer-neighborhood trees, restaurants, and friends, but I’d prefer to sleep in the skyline. Call it the New Yorker in me, but I’m a raging urbanist at heart and I’d come of as far less locationally fickle if I would stop questioning that fact.

I’m also learning that, although I think there are many things woefully wrong with Marina City and the way it’s run (just look through my Marina City archives), I can’t fault the building staff. At all. You’ve got to love a condo high-rise with a daily cleaning schedule, a live-in 24-hour engineer, a  responsive door staff, and regular exterminator visits.

In two months at my temporary, supposedly luxury digs in the high-rise rental K Station development, I’ve witnessed dirt sit in hallways and garbage sit in trash rooms for a week at a time, the engineering staff scoff at fixing broken appliances, and the door guards walk away from their posts for ten minutes at a time in the middle of the night, leaving the security door to the elevator lobby locked open.

Things are no better at Overly Frank’s new South Loop pad, where I visit from time to time. Whenever the 56 bus bothers to come down Milwaukee or I make the 10 minute walk to the Clinton ‘L’ stop to wait another 10 minutes for Green Line train into the Loop, I can make it from Kinzie and Desplaines to 1130 South Michigan in…the same time it used to take me to get from Marina City to Frank’s old place in Lincoln Park.

Once at his Yolk-topping high-rise abode, I always need to make sure the Elphabugs aren’t present before I kick off my shoes. I call them that because the giant flying roaches the building is well known for on apartment-rating web sites may someday band together, levitate, and overthrow the roach wizard. Last night while I was catsitting for Frank, I briefly shared a bathtub with one of them.

Life would have been easier if it had been small enough to go down the drain. It being, however, the normal dimensions for an 1130 South Michigan roach–approaching a Glade Plug-In propped up on hairy black bobby pins–it took a ten-minute drenching and a half a can of Raid to stun the crayfish-sized thing enough to grab it with food tongs and flush it down the toilet. (I started out with a quarter can of Raid, but when I came back with the tongs, it raised its five-inch antennae and started to twitch.)

I pulled the chain twice, then took a whore’s bath. Any part of me I couldn’t reach with a washcloth I powdered and moved on. Then I slept on the couch with no part of my bedsheets touching the floor.  Say what you want about Marina City, but at least there when you throw a shoe at the vermin it doesn’t get picket up and thrown back at you.

It’s not a ringing endorsement, but it works for me.

(Photo: Could you make it upstairs at Marina City without elevators? This week, 1,500 residents almost found out for themselves. Credit: Steven Dahlman.)

Judging by early-April wind squeak in the walls of my Marina City high-rise home, spring has sprung. And as regular readers are well aware, with the change of any season generally comes yet another fire, flood, or legal controversy here at the corncobs.

The latest episode of Marina City Stupid is a real head-scratcher, though. Last weekend, the management company, Draper and Kramer, slipped a memo under all 900 apartment doors in Chicago’s most notorious twin towers. Our three-years-late annual elevator inspections were coming. And according to the memo, so were 16 hours without elevator service from the top of the 60-story residential towers right on down to the river level.

Starting at 7:30 a.m.–before most residents would leave for work. Ending eight hours later. Over two consecutive days. With no provision for apartment-floor access or egress other than walking down the stairs. Potentially all 60 flights of them.

I know what you may be thinking, “That can’t be right! They can’t cut all elevator service to a 550-foot tall apartment building and tell people to take the stairs!”And if you’re thinking that, you’ve obviously never lived at Marina City.

Last August, I and my colleagues at Marina City Online bemoaned the management company’s longstanding inability to write a coherent public memo to residents.  This week’s memos about the elevator shutoff–and there was a flurry of them–were no different. I give you, verbatim, the (as-usual) undated first memo slipped under our collective doors (emphasis in original):

ELEVATOR SERVICE DISRUPTION
Thursday April 9th and Friday April 10th

The City of Chicago and Thyssen Krupp Elevator Co. will be inspecting the elevators.

They start at 7:30am and will continue until 3:30pm. When the City performs their tests ALL elevators (both high-rise and low-rise) in a tower will be simultaneously sent to the guard level as each floor’s smoke detector is triggered.

Anticipate a 20 minute delay for the elevator to come to your floor.

During the middle of the afternoon, personnel from the City will inform residents when it is good to take an elevator up from the guard level.

Specifically, during this test, if an elevator stops to pick you up on your floor (to go down), you can expect that at some point the elevator will tell you it is “in fire service” and take you directly to the guard level, open the doors and rest there. You can get out and go about your business.

Also, if you get on an “Up Elevator” without authorization and start the climb – the elevator may go in to [sic] “fire service” and return you back to the guard level and open the doors and rest there.

Hence it could be frustrating to try to do laundry on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. And it would be inadvisable to use the bridge level (plaza level) for entry. Signs will be posted to enter via the guard level.

The front stairwell can be utilized for exit. But remember, rest every ten floors. Your hamstring muscles are not normally used to long downhill climbs.

Here’s what came immediately to my mind after reading the above verbally diarrheal description of what appears to be a train-wreck of an idea:

• You’re kidding, right? How do you expect about 1,000 people to leave for work in the morning?
• Will the elevators be out for the entire eight hours each day or in spits and spurts?
• Why do all elevators (including the service elevator) need to be taken out of service simultaneously?
• Do Chicago building and fire/life safety codes even allow the purposeful, total shutoff of elevator service in residential high-rises?
• Points for almost threatening use of the adjectives frustrating and inadvisable. Bonus points for spelling them correctly.
• Rest our hamstrings?! OMFG. Not only are you people serious, but you’re obviously out of your freaking minds. You’re telling a building with dozens of elderly residents to walk down 60 flights of stairs? You’re seriously telling anyone that?
• I wonder what Marina City Online will say about this memo?
• Wait, is this suckiness happening Thursday and Friday? Or Wednesday and Thursday? Your as-always lack of proofreading means some unlucky maintenance staffer will have to pass a revised memo under another 900 unit doors once you correct your glaring chronological typo.

Which, no surprise, is exactly what happened later in the day, followed by a third, reminder memo yesterday morning. What I did in response to the memo swarm, however, was a bit more unexpected.

I did nothing. For once, I decided not to complain (although Marina City Online actually had a grammar teacher grade the memo–see the marked-up memo here). After four years of condo board controversy and management company unprofessionalism, I’m tired of the constant battle. Instead, I’m considering leaving Marina City after this year.

I’m not the only unhappy resident, either. I know many other corncobbers–renters and owners both–who question their decision to move into a condo building beset by such ongoing, unending controversy. As far as I’m concerned, the longtime-coming answer to the question I hear over and over from my readers seems increasingly clear.

You frequently ask me, “Should I move to Marina City?” Given my experience here, no, in my opinion I really don’t think you should. Not unless a.) you think nothing I’ve ever written about the place is true, or b.) you’re a masochist. (And really, if your answer’s b., you’re better off heading to your nearest leather bar and going home to a less-controversial condo tower).

Ultimately, the elevator shutoffs never came to pass. Though I sat silently, apparently many of my neighbors did not. According to building staffers I spoke with late Wednesday, Draper and Kramer called off the inspections after a multitude of residents came or called downstairs to complain, argue, or otherwise (and for once) say, “No!”

The cancellation memo posted throughout Marina City last night–curiously not on Draper and Kramer letterhead–was somewhat more disingenuous:

Elevator
Inspection
CANCELLED

The City cancelled [sic] the elevator inspection scheduled Thursday and Friday of this week. Management will advise when the date is rescheduled.

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

The Management Office

That cancellation by the city probably comes as a shock to those building staffers who told me the kibbosh came from elsewhere. And I really got a kick out of an official apology for not cutting off our elevator service. Seems to me, what 900 apartments of people are really owed is an apology for floating such a bone-headed idea in the first place.

As I headed up to my apartment Wednesday night, a neighbor stopped me in the lobby to complain about our latest homegrown controversy. “No elevators at all?” he groused. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Have you?”

“Sure,” I replied. “I know a place where it happens all the time.”

It’s called Cabrini.

(Photo: I wonder how much they swayed back then?)

[As I wrote these words overnight, I wouldn't know someone was also taking their life at Marina City. According to the Chicago Tribune, here's one unfortunate soul who apparently leapt off of East Tower--my tower (and from my own elevator tier, too)--early today. As always, unfortunate news arrives unexpectedly and in shocking measure here at the corncobs...]

Friends rarely believe me when I tell them about the grandmother on a rocking chair who lives in the walls at Marina City. At least, that’s who it sounds like inhabits the cast-in-place concrete of my high-rise corncob home every time a stiff wind blows through downtown Chicago.

It doesn’t take a tornadic gust, either. Any of the brisk lakefront winds that often pass across the Loop after sundown is enough to set Marina City’s 60-story twin condo towers in rhythmic, cacophonous motion.

I experienced my first unexpected skyscraper dance shortly after moving in four years ago. Having never lived in a high-rise before, I spent my first few days in Marina City gazing into water glasses and at my empty toilet bowl to see if I could detect evidence of movement–of course to no avail.

Then it rained and I almost wet myself in fright.

The howl of thunderstorm winds across a Marina City balcony is off-putting enough. They whistle through the metal railing like a pipe organ as they roar past the towers with the sound of a freight train. Every gust hitting the balconies is felt a split-second later as a sudden vibration in the floorplate.

And then the swaying begins. Civil engineers will tell you skyscrapers don’t really sway, they displace. What you feel isn’t the building being pushed away by the wind, it’s the building snapping back into place after the wind has done its job.

I doubt the civil engineers who built Marina City ever had to live in it. Otherwise, their story might be a bit different.

First you hear a short, muffled creak. If you’re anywhere near your computer, you might mistake it for the sound of your hard drive seeking data. Within moments, though, the muffled creak grows into a sustained to-and-fro groaning. A two-seconds-long-in-each-direction groaning.

A loud groaning. And I don’t mean 2 a.m. screaming crowd exiting the House of Blues down on the plaza level loud, either. I mean, the freakin’ building is yelling into your ear loud.

Now regular readers know I put up with a lot to remain in these beloved corncobs. From fires, floods, and water shut-offs, to condo-board controversies, management company misprints, and at least one (now-convicted) pimp dentist, for better or worse, life in Marina City is rarely uneventful. But how many people can say their apartment accidentally woke them up because it, er, moved?

Last night, as a particularly powerful late-evening wind passed over the towers, I put my Macbook on a shelf near the wall, fired up Garage Band, and hit the Record button. I ended up with a faithful representation of what I heard sitting on my couch five feet away.

When I played it back, the ominous groaning was so loud, I was glad the swaying is usually never apparent enough to be felt. But the fact that I could record it so easily made me realize just how much must be moving deep inside the superstructure. It could be concrete and reinforcing metal making all the racket, though I think the real culprit is the old-school, rigid metal lathe supporting the equally days-of-yester plaster walls.

Not that I’m comforted by that. No matter what’s making the noise, it’s still an entire, 550-foot skyscraper leaning hither and yon that’s actually causing it. But when you live in a building built on stilts, you try not to think of primal causes.

After four years, I’m at least used to the noise. No passing blizzard, tornadic front, or steep temperature drop seems right unless I can hear that grandmother in the walls rocking vigorously enough to divert my ADD-addled attention away from whatever task I’m trying to settle into.

Mind you, there’s no fear anymore. I don’t even get out of bed unless the creaking is at least as loud as the Portuguese danger cat, Camões, meowing about an impending hairball. Even then, it’s only to call a friend and put the phone up to the wall to try and prove the auditory urgency of the event.

Well if this doesn’t prove it, nothing will. Click through to hear last night’s recording of Marina City’s high-wind wall creaking.

And if you still don’t believe me, check the Weather Channel for the next storm front and invite yourself over for dinner. Don’t arrive empty handed.

I prefer a spicy, young red with hints of cherry and black pepper.

(Photo: Notice anything missing? Original Credit: Steven Dahlman.)

There are two ways to brand and position a world-famous residential tower: the right way; and the way downtown Chicago’s Marina City condo board is planning to go about it.

Marina City Online Debuts

First, the right way. I’ve always wondered why no one’s ever written a book about my beloved twin corncob towers. Certainly, lots of information exists out there about the place, and I’ve certainly spent a lot of time scribing about my high-rise home. Finally, however, comes word that someone is setting to the long-ignored task.

Two tower residents–real-estate broker Michael Michalak and author-photographer Steven Dahlman–have launched Marina City Online. The website’s primary focus is to offer prospective owners and tenants a treasure trove of information about the towers (including available units, floorplans, MLS listings, and frank inside information) from a source independent of Marina City’s controversial condo board. For this reason alone the site is laudable.

Even more interesting, however, is the massive treasure trove of historical vignettes and stories about the corncobs provided by author Dahlman, who is writing the first contemporary book about Marina City history. Dahlman has even uncovered the long-lost 1965 marketing film, This Is Marina City (follow the link to watch).

For anyone who ever thought MC’s modern-day shenanigans (regular readers know the towers are a veritable vertical Peyton Place) are anything out of the ordinary, think again. As Dahlman demonstrates, the corncobs have been quirky for years. If you’re interested in the history of downtown Chicago, you owe it to yourself to read this site.

You Can’t Talk, Don’t Ask Me

Far less impressive are the current plans of the Marina Towers Condominium Association to levy a new set of fines against condo owners that many in the corncobs find insulting to enraging. Among the items that may get a Marina City resident fined if the condo board gets its way:

–Asking a board member a question about Marina City outside an official board meeting;

–Complaining about the same issue that another resident has already complained about;

–Asking more than once for information that the board has already refused to provide; and get this-

–Using the image of Marina City or the name of the condo board without paying the board for permission to do so.

Are you laughing yet? If you’re lucky enough not to be a Marina City homeowner, you should be. While I haven’t blogged about it much this year, I can tell you the alleged propensity of the Marina Towers Condominium Association to ignore owner complaints, verbally attack residents at meetings, and sic the association attorney on inquiring residents has generated more ire from residents here than ever before.

Michalak and Dahlman do a splendid job of rebutting (if not lampooning) the condo board’s ludicrous proposed rules on Marina City Online both here and here. (You can download the proposed rules (in PDF format) from Marina City Online and ponder them for yourself).

For me, the idea that Marina City’s image is somehow the board’s property is laughable. For one thing, the board only owns the towers from the 20th floor up. Perhaps Chicago architectural photographers should all get out their Photoshops and whittle their photos of the 60-story towers down to 19-story nubs?

I’m reminded of a quote from my favorite movie of all time, the phenomenal 1978 Halloween:

“Fate is immovable. It stands where man passes away”.

These towers represent a seminal time in mid-century modern high-rise architecture, when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s boxy “less is more” ethic was called into question by the organically inspired Bertrand Goldberg. They are peopled by residents who care about each other and who, in more than a few cases, have lived here since 1962 or 1963 when East Tower and West Tower respectively first opened their doors. There is a stability in all of that that transcends the poor judgment (or in this case, seeming total lack of it) of any sitting condo board.

However, if the Marina Towers Condominium Association’s bone-headed fines are approved, until this particular board passes away into memory, those yearning for a life in the corncobs might be better off satisfying their cravings by regularly browsing Michalak and Dahlman’s site (or this one, for that matter) and spending their money elsewhere.

I hear the Hancock’s nice…