roscoe street

this one might just be for me.

A year and a half ago I moved out of my favorite apartment, sooner than I thought I would. It was the longest I lived any one place since I moved to the midwest and for four years I was moving east and west down the same street. But I settled in that single apartment in Lakeview for three years and some change and I loved every minute of it, even when life was hard. When friends talk about that place, they talk about the parties we used to throw there. The apartment was large, old, and perfectly positioned between downstairs neighbors that didn’t give a shit about noise, and upstairs neighbors that also didn’t give a shit about noise. It was backed up against the brown line tracks that raddled our windows every ten to twelve minutes. Visitors from out of town always commented on how loud it was even with all the doors and windows shut, but after six months of living there I couldn’t even hear them anymore. After I moved out, I had trouble sleeping and I didn’t like how quiet everything was all the time.

The train was a feature of the parties we would throw. The place had a classic Chicago-style wooden staircase going up and down the back of the three flat. We were on the second floor so you could throw an egg up and over the garage out back and hit the train windows as they passed by. We never did that, of course. Large sections of the party would shift in and out through the sliding glass door. People would smoke cigarettes on the stairs and raise their voices when the train went by. Then they’d come back in, dance in the kitchen, and clog up the narrow hallway with their splintered off conversations.

Girls would sneak off into my room to gossip, debrief, and cry about how their boyfriends were treating them — I was no exception. My room didn’t have a lock on the door, just a little hook on the door frame. Everyone could invite anyone they knew, and it didn’t matter. We didn’t have nice furniture or nice artwork or expensive anything. We’d have three visitors from out of a town at a time on top of our three permanent residents, really putting our bathroom to work. Our rent was $575 each and the floor creaked in the room where everyone danced. A block away, drunk Cubs fans stumbled down Clark and onto our street to drunk drive home. You could see the Wrigley Field lights from the top of the back staircase. If the Cubs were playing well, you could hear the cheering too.

At three in the morning, like clockwork, the last handful of people at the party would call their ubers home or announce they were walking home through whatever weather Chicago gave us that evening. It would happen in the pouring rain, freezing cold, or more often on a perfectly warm summer night. We’d pick up the leftover cups from the counter and take out the trash. We’d wipe down the endless shoe prints all over the hardwood floor. We always, always picked up the bath mats before we had a party — then we’d lay them back down after everyone left. Nine times out of ten I’d fall asleep with all my makeup on and my contacts in.

We had birthday parties, moving in parties, moving out parties, and even a fake new years party in early December one year. Our final hoorah was an empty apartment party weeks after I moved out, with no furniture. There was literally nothing, which made the music even louder.

Me, and all my friends were in our early twenties and everything that took place in that apartment was so emblematic of that. Men we shouldn’t have been dating, people we shouldn’t have flirted with, injuring ourselves, puking off the side of the back porch (it being frozen to the ground the next day), watching forty seasons of Survivor in two months, and breaking our own faucets — almost all of it was so harmlessly fun. Even if it felt like anxiety ridden torture or potentially a waste of time (I don’t believe in that anyhow), in hindsight I think that apartment is where I finally grew up. It’s where I literally aged a few years, graduated college, got a full-time job, learned how to cook well (thanks to the ex-boyfriends), and started to figure out what I really enjoyed about life. It’s where I realized I was a doormat to the people closest to me, who were too selfish to notice they were even doing it most of the time — and where I decided I wouldn’t be one anymore. I don’t blame them at all, and I also don’t blame myself. That happens to be a pretty neat feeling — to not resent anyone who was growing up alongside me. It’s also where I listened to a lot of Pitbull.

Thank god I’m 25. Happy 2025. And I am in love with Roscoe street for the rest of my life, sometimes when I am bored (rarely) I miss the chaos.