9:56 am | 20 May 2003 | YOU NO CAN DRIVE

There's some kind of massive convention downtown today, which means that a lot of non-city-people are attempting to pilot their station wagons and SUVs through the downtown area with decidedly disappointing results. Congress Parkway, a sort of mini-highway that leads into the South Loop, is usually four lanes of fast-flowing bliss, swooping under the Stock Exchange and then gracefully dividing, right, straight, left, without too much monkey business. But today? No. Today, immediately after exiting the freeway, i watched in horrified disbelief (the way one would watch, say, a person attempting to simultaneously eat fifteen kielbasa, or something) as cars drifted aimlessly among lanes or came to complete stops, signalling pathetically, their little sad lights blinking next to AYSO SOCCER and UNITED WE STAND bumper stickers. Meep meep meep, they said, I have no fucking idea how to drive, while the pilots of these conveyances clutched the steering wheels and cast about themselves frantically, unable to fathom a world in which people drive swiftly and accurately. One helmet-haired woman's lipsticked mouth formed a perfect and horrified O as a gangsta-type in a rust-riddled Buick blazed past her, followed closely by a charming young girl in a green Chevy with red hood*. We daunted her, with our bravado, our panache. I drive with moxie**.

Chicago is, famously, a hard city to drive in, because EVERYONE here drives like a cabbie. I find it strangely comforting, though--it's more dangerous and thus more exciting, with the added bonus of a certain amount of necessary skill. Yes, you have to be a GOOD driver to whip through the streets like a flaming asshole, and so even if i gasp with fear on a daily basis as some freak in a Jetta comes thisclose to clipping my bumper, i also know he's just as concerned about his car as i am about mine. In Los Angeles, drivers tend to meander vapidly over the streets like they're trying to chew gum at the same time as they're driving. My first day there, i saw two fuckos in Porsches pulling some kind of Fast & the Furious-style testosterone-y bullshit IN THE MIDST OF HEAVY TRAFFIC at speeds in at least the triple digits. ON THE 405. What? That wouldn't happen here. Here, people like that get shot. clm.

*That would be your belov�d author, friends.
**Jer has informed me that 'moxie' is also a brand of New-England-specific soda. I am not driving with soda: inability to burp prohibits it; instead, here, i mean 'panache.'