Nic Narrates

I’m sorry, but I just have to say it: I effing hate Lincoln Park. Hate, hate, hate it. I hate the people, the pretension, the one-up-manship, the prosaic, white bread, same-sameness (and quite frankly, Wicker Park and Southport have gotten just as bad). For all its self-importance, Lincoln Park is little more than a fancier, more compact version of the suburban hell that is Naperville.

Lincoln Park is McMansions and couture “dogs” no bigger than your hand. It’s designer chocolates and superfluous leggings and oversized sunglasses. It’s Intermix and Barney’s New York Co-op and their Recession-be damned frivolities.

Admittedly, I used to spend a good deal of time there once upon a time. I grew to love Pasta Palazzo, twenty for $20 tickets at Steppenwolf, brunch at Toast, shoes from Lori’s, and what I still think is one of the better farmer’s markets in the city. I came very close to a Lincoln Park fate. But those acquired pleasures were long ago ceded to an ex in The Break Up and I can’t say I was all that sad to see them go. Not really my style after all.

So when I found myself for the first time in over a year unavoidably in the haven of the Trixies and their Chads (and their mid-to late-thirties/early forties counter parts: the kept wives/stay-at-home baby factories and the men who “love” them), I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. It’s even worse than I remember.

Do these people really not know what a cliché they are? How out-of-touch with reality they come off? How tacky? I mean, I want a LV Speedy 30 too, but it’s practically a month’s rent for me and that’s just STUPID. The handbag I carry these days cost me $34 a year ago and I love it. Plus, there’s the Chicken Hut on the corner down the street and even though I refuse to eat there, I’m cheered by its very presence.

True, the “mystique” of Lincoln Park may be beyond my means, but I’m proud to recognize that it’s something I neither aspire to nor miss. Okay, maybe I do miss Sweet Mandy B’s, but still.

Filed under: city encounters, crossroads, domesticity is overrated, educating the masses, going postal, hateful, haterade, in memory, jaded, so what if i scream?, toolbaggery by Nic