On the Chicago Adventure: Michigan Avenue

In which the siren song of adventure is answered in the Windy City.

Chicago in mid-March can be a cruel place.  Well, I guess if I was being honest Chicago from about November through June can be a cruel place.  The wind shoots off the lake fiercely, biting through most anything you have on and in the winter months you add to it snow and ice and darkness.  But I truly think that it is worse in March, April and May.  Spring is around the corner, or in full effect, the sun is often out and even makes you feel warm at times.  Until the clouds come and that cold wind picks up and you remember that Chicago can be a cruel place.

My second spring break of graduate school I decided to take a trip up to spend a few days with Mike and hopefully run into Katie as well.  It was just a handful of days, a long weekend really, but I was looking forward to it.  And then I found out that Trumper and a friend we are going to call "Monterey"  were planning on going up as well, right away I knew this would be a trip to remember.

The visit began about how you would expect it to.  The trip into Chicago took longer than it should, finding a parking space was a huge hassle, the reunion was full of hugs, and we wasted a surprising amount of time just deciding what we wanted to do¹.  Eventually though a decision was indeed made.  Coming up with a plan for the entire evening was too daunting so instead we would take a bus from Mike’s apartment down to Michigan Avenue where we would meet Katie and then we would go from there.  So we were off.

As I think back the bus ride and walking to the bookstore, where Katie was waiting to meet us, was a total blur.  When we reached Katie she had staked out a little table near a window overlooking Michigan Ave, her table covered with a variety magazines and books, she was clearly in for the long haul².  We all said our hellos and stood around awkwardly in our giant coats.  After a time it was decided that Katie would remain in her cove of literacy while we men would brave the cold and the wind and the tourists as we ventured down the road a spell.

With the tall buildings acting as a funnel cold couldn't begin to describe what it was like.  Frigid was much more apt.  As we walked the length of this shopping Mecca we stopped in more than a few stores not out of any interest we had in what they were selling, but rather as an escape from the elements.  Certainly none of us had plans to spend any money, however, that did not stop us from visiting shop after shop.  Everything seemed to be on a repetitive loop, we would walk until we were cold, stop inside a store, warm up, leave and repeat.  But then we met the man with the sign, and everything changed.

Trumper saw him first.  In fact, Trump was the only one of us that talked to him.  But he let us know what he said.

“Guys, they have suits,” Trumper explained, “there is a store just up the road that sells suits really cheap.  This guy's going to show us where it is, come on.”

So we followed the man wearing a giant sign that said “Suits Half-Off!!” on it.  For a block and a half we followed this man, until abruptly he stopped and pointed us to an unmarked door that led into a nondescript commercial building.  “Upstairs,” he said gruffly as he opened the door for us.  We walked in.

Once inside we took the escalator up and found the suit store.  That was literally all this place was, a store for suits.  Wall to wall, double-stacked with absolutely no room to maneuver, it was if George Zimmer³ threw up all over the place.  Trump was excited, Mike mentioned that he needed a new suit, and Monty kept saying something about a fur store.  I kind of wandered around half heartedly looking at suits and suit related paraphernalia.  At one point one of us looked up and realized that Monterey was no where to be found.

Knowing Monterey as we did none of us were really concerned, or surprised, that he had disappeared.  What was surprising was what he told us when he came back.

"You have to check out this store I found; it is nothing but fur coats."

Mike and I laughed and continued to look around.  Jon (or Trumper), whose interest in this paradise of menswear was fading, left with Monterey.  A few minutes later they return and Jon told us that we really should check it out.  So we headed next store.

The store was small, about twenty feet wide and fifty feet long.  All around the outskirts of the store were fur coats.  Hundreds of them.  Each rack was packed so tightly it seemed that the store itself was one large animal.  There were seven people in the store, the four of us, and three people who appeared to be employees, two men and a woman.  They huddled near the cash register talking quietly, their only interest in us a short glance as we walked into the store.  We each started at a different point walking along the edges the store looking at fur coats.  Every coat was labeled with a tag, on that tag was the style, the price, the type of animal and the county of origin.  The cost of the coats often reached into the thousands.  It boggled the mind to consider how much money was crammed into such a small place.

After a time Monterey stopped and came up to us and announced, "The best furs come from Norway, I think."

What exactly he was basing this on we will never know; but if you find yourself in position to purchase an expensive dead animal to wrap around your shoulders remember to buy Norwegian.

It was at this exact moment when one of the three employees finally came over to us and said, in a thick Russian accent, "You guys looking to buy some furs?"

"Ha ha, no they are a little out of our price range," Mike replied.

"Yes, they are expensive, but also, very nice," the man said.

Monterey turned to the man, "I've got some stock options with my company, maybe when they go public I can afford one."

"Oh you are into the stock market.  That's good way to make money, but risky."

"The company I work for is doing some big things.  These stocks should be worth a lot."

"Then you have the big money, yes?"

"Well probably not for a few a year or two."

"You get the big money from the stocks, then you come back and buy a fur."

"Ha ha, okay⁴."

We left the store and headed back out to Michigan Avenue.  While we were on escalator Monterey said, "Man that guy really liked to talk about the stock market."

Mike replied, "You know Monterey, he was referring to drugs."

"Huh?"

"Oh yeah, that place was a front for the Russian mafia," I added.  "Look at that place, all that money in furs, three people sitting around doing nothing, no one goes there to buy fur coats.  When he asked you if you were into the stock market is was code for selling drugs."

"Oh, that makes sense."

Mike, Jon and I laughed as we exited the building and were hit by a wave of cold air.  We had gotten a hold of Katie and were going to meet her so we could walk to a restaurant she had picked out.  When we reached her Monterey excitedly shared with her what had happened.

"We found this fur store that was really a front for the Russian mob.  And one of the employees asked me if I was into the stock market, but he was really asking me if I made my money selling drugs."

Katie looked from Monterey to each of us before responding, "Uh....okay."

We laughed again and filled Katie in on the particulars of the day's events as we talked to the tapas restaurant.  Little did we know that while the day was winding down the adventure⁵ was just beginning.

To be continued...
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¹ This seems to be the ways things tend to go amongst my friends.
² Which, for those that know Katie Soderberg, will surprise exactly no one.
³ You'll like the way you look, he guarantees it.
⁴ That is not how the conversation went exactly, but you get the picture.
⁵ By adventure what I mean is hilarity.