3rd of July

Chicago has NEVER celebrated Independence Day on the 4th day of July.

As my Southern Baptist grandmother in Texas always told me, there are way too many Catholics who need to need every extra holiday to recuperate from all their celebrating. . .

. . . So, the fireworks-and-mayhem has always been done-and-over-with on the night-of-the-last work-day, being July 3rd.

Most of the main streets into downtown have always been blocked off the night of July Third in Chicago. This is a hopeful endeavor to encourage everyone in the suburbs to use mass transit which consists of the EL, buses, commuter trains, taxis, or assaulting homeless persons for cash like God intended.

Iwanski, Miss Healthypants, and I were able to look down from my 49th floor balcony tonight at all the revelers.

I gotta admit that it was lots of fun to watch from five hundred feet up, everyone in SUVs from the suburbs be instantly snaggled and inundated with trying to have a good time in downtown Chicago.

Meanwhile, we're peering down, feeling all superior. We're thinking, "Yes, we pay a gazillion dollars a month for an apartment the size of an Ex-lax wafer, but you know what? We're home!"

Here's a photo from my balcony of the downtown traffic

Can you see all the bumper-to-bumper traffic down there on Wacker Drive trying to head into downtown?

Can you imagine how much parking attendants are making? (Hint: It's twenty dollars for the first hour and three dollars for each additional hour, just so you know)

And are not all of us downtown-dwellers just the most superior things? (Gas was $4.89 for regular at the BP yesterday)

Yes? Take a look. That traffic isn't moving. I could have taken this same photo two hours later and it would remain unchanged.

Doesn't that look like fun?