You Can't Get There from Here

I'm judgmental towards tourists. Not all of them, just the gratuitously ignorant ones who arrive at their destinations with absolutely no clue how to get around once they get there. Harsh words, but I judge on the basis of the actions they take in my city versus how I'd act if I were funning through their town. I get flack from Devyn over it, he thinks I'm too critical. He thinks because I went to urban planning school it makes it easier for me to find my way around an unfamiliar place. He says other people don't think like I do.

I'm not convinced. It doesn't take a grad school education to figure out where you want to go before you get there. And to pick up a map, or a phone, or a laptop and figure out, well, where you're going.

Last month, a young couple paying an automated parking machine called out to me while I passed by the Printers Row parking lot where they had chosen to stow their vehicle while they visited the Second City. "Friend, can you tell us how to walk to Union Station from here?" the husband asked.

"Union Station from here?" I said, baffled, since the three of us were standing a good mile away. "Where are you trying to go?"

"Wrigley Field."

Oy. In town from St. Louis for a Cubs game, some Missourian told them they could get anywhere in Chicago from Union Station. So they jumped in a car and drove. No map, no idea where Union Station was, or Wrigley Field for that matter. Just a beat-up Chevy and a dream to magically figure their way around the third-biggest city in America once they got here and found a parking space.

A parking space that turned out to be a block from the Red Line. You know, the Red Line that leads directly to the front door of Wrigley Field for $2.00? I talked them out of their original, unfathomable plans and guided them through buying a transit card and speeding more directly on their way. They were grateful and I was glad to help.

Sometimes, however, the conversation goes a little differently.

An evening last summer at the corner of State and Randolph, I'm asked by a suburban housewife heading home from a performance of Wicked, "How can I get to LaSalle from here?"

"LaSalle is three blocks west, that way."

"Three blocks? I remember walking longer than that when I got here. Are you sure."

"Yes, LaSalle. That way."

"I don't think so. Are you from here? Maybe I'll ask someone else."

"I live on this street, ma'am. LaSalle is three blocks that way."

"LaSalle Street station?"

Honey, if you're reading this, know that when I pointed south and exasperatedly snapped "that way" I fought the urge to ask you what I burned at that moment to ask you. Like why didn't you say station in the first place? Or how, exactly, did you forget in the space of a mere three hours the direction in which you originally walked to the theater?

I refuse to believe most people set off on cross-country drives, walks through unfamiliar territory, or visits to alien cities without giving themselves a heads-up first. It's not just advance-planning urbanites like me who first think, "Ooh, now how do I get there," before we set off for trips beyond our stomping grounds and out into the larger world. This must be true, or a continent full of tourist boards and auto clubs would cease to exist. I think most people value their time and money--and, Gods of public transit forgive me for saying it, their gas money--to fly, walk, bus, train, and drive blind like that.

So it just sticks in my craw when someone else just assumes that the locals will be happy to do all their thinking for them. Or ignores their good sense when it is shared, for that matter.

Take the middle-aged blue-collar couple whom I ran into last spring as they pondered over a graffiti-covered platform map in the Red Line's Roosevelt subway station.

Wife: "It looks like Monroe is going towards Howard. See honey, this sign right here says Howard. It's this side."

Husband (peering at map): "...hmm..."

Me: "Yes, the train towards Monroe is right where your standing. Three stops."

Wife: "Oh, good! Honey?"

Husband (peering at map): "...hmm..."

Wife: "Honey? Honey?"

Husband (peering at map): "Shut up, I'm trying to figure this out."

Me (to wife): "Good luck."

Of course, sometimes you just have to smile and let nature take its course. Like with the hipsters I encountered at Michigan and Washington in July, who, with 10 minutes left to walk the last mile and a half to the erstwhile Meigs Field for a concert, pointed to Millennium Park's cool, curvy bandshell, and asked me, "The Charter One Pavillion is that thing there, right?"

Or how about these two young women who boarded a northbound 146 bus with me downtown in front of the Tribune Tower on North Michigan Avenue? No words passed between us as downtown's towers receded into the distance during our three-mile, ten-minute ride up Lake Shore Drive. I believe it was somewhere near the corner of Sheridan and Addison, though, when one of them leaned over the bus driver and asked, "When do we get to Museum Campus?"

And then asked if they could transfer to the southbound bus for free.

I kept my mouth shut; the roll of the bus driver's neck said it all. Three miles, ten minutes. Let's do the math. Sixty minutes in an hour. Ten minutes goes into sixty minutes six times. Six times three miles gives 18 miles. There you have it ladies and gentlemen: 18 miles an hour.

The official speed of stupid.