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Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
@Chris_arnade
Oct 15, 2021 • 45 tweets • 17 min read • Read on X
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So begins my walk from among the corporate plazas of downtown Chicago to some dive bar (to be chosen) in like Everton.

17 miles of whatever. I don’t know north Chicago at all. So should be interesting
Didn’t expect this
Why am I walking north, not south? My daughter lives in the north and i am meeting her for dinner. And I kinda know the south.
Chicago gots a Woolworth inspired building I see.

Ok. Too much great architecture down here to possible react to.

Well done Chicago
This is like very very some time period. 90s? 80s? 70s?
Was ready to proclaim downtown Chicago as best buildings award winner, then it gave me this
The cruelty is the point
Newspapers? How 80s of you
Just a side note that downtown NYC has like only 3 alleys & they are always busy with film shoots because everyone films videos & shoots pics in them because everyone expects downtown NYC to have alleys
Change of plans! Walking west for a long while, then veering north. Can’t do CUBs headquarters territory. Just not in my DNA
Even seeing Wrigley field on TV triggers me. I hear George Will pompously opining on the Beauty of blah blah blah. Can’t image seeing it in person.

Also. The Cubs beat my Indians in a World Series where all anyone did on TV was talk about how great Cubs are.
This is a good intersection
It was only a year ago that I realized the circle K logo was a K in a circle.
Hmmmm
Metaphor alert!
Lol.

Ps: whenever I see a bald ad I think of Julius Caesar sporting a bad combover while ruling the known world
Everyone of these long city walks is a reminder just how deeply interstates & highways impact cities, determining so much. The decisions made X decades ago, often brutal ones (& very classist & racist), still linger
Had public libraries not been a thing, modern politics wouldn’t have ever made them. We would get opEds from neoliberal left & right , opposing them. Free books? Free movies? What? Let the market decide!
Oh my god. I found my personal heaven.
Honestly. How did I not know about this place. Smells good. Sounds good (great music). Has everything
Want that scorpion belt buckle. Used to have one.
Ok. One last pic. Sorry. Mexican western wear is like the only fashion thing I get
I have really tried to like Ukrainian & Russian food. But it just never takes.
Is the Ukrainian version of a “I would rather be fishing” coffee cup.
There was a period when catholic architecture took a bad turn
This neighborhood (Ukrainian village) is really great though.
😊
Tacos. Pope. Well done Chicago
Ok. This place was a good as advertised. And I was the only over educated neolib in there. Usually they draw us like a swarm of mosquitoes to blood
Seems like that upstart North eastern artisanal coffee place @TheStalwart keeps talking about has made it to Chicago
While waiting out the rain in a nook smelling of piss, I glance down every few moments to admire my amazing fashion sense.
Did they just take some catholic clip art and jam it on an auto insurance sign?
Look @MattBruenig, Chicago gots your fav pizza & hot dog place. Next to each other!
Chicago owes Bronx copyright payments for this block
Why does all good things have to die?
This simply rocks. A+
I love all of this, especially the pasted on Mickey
Best thing about this mural is the Schwinn call out
Found my rest stop
Very good. Very good. Very very good
Specialized staffing solutions. 🧐
Thank God Kosciuszko got this nice park named after him — naming that BQE bridge after him was like condemning him to eternal hell.
Having a Kosciuszko park demands this church be a block away
Then this.

Ps: recent ancestry tests confirms I am obliged to have a drink here
Ok. Good place to end my walk. Took me in another direction. But that is what walks are for. 15 miles. Saw lots. Still only a tiny bit of Chicago. Enjoy and thanks. Now Time to figure out the subways.

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More from @Chris_arnade

Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
May 19
US has about 140,000 miles dedicated to freight rail and 20,000 miles to passenger rail, for a total of about 160,000 miles

Europe has approximately 94,000 miles (151,000 kilometers) of railway track.
US uses rail, but for freight, because density differences means flying is easier
The US moves well over 5,000 ton-miles of freight per person per year

By comparison, the European Union moves about "500 ton-miles of freight per person per year" by rail.

Sounds like Europe needs to get its F-ing rail act together
Read 5 tweets
Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Jan 26
Since I walk about 3 hours a day, I try a lot of audiobooks & podcasts and so I stumbled onto this weird podcast about the history of rock music and after five minutes I was about to eject it because it sounded like it was made by a crazy guy in his basement, but his absolute dedication, encyclopedic knowledge, and understated enthusiasm for the history of the rock music won me over and now I think it might be the best podcast ever.Image
I’ve never seen a better example of amateur professionalism. No corporation would allow him to make the choices he has made, and that is a such great thing because his intense passion is on full display
Believe me. Give it thirty minutes. You are going to want to eject after two. Stick with it.
Read 4 tweets
Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Jan 27, 2024
Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) is one of the most unique cities I've walked. Almost zero tourist, because very few people even know it exists.

I wouldn't recommend it for someone looking for a relaxing vacation, but if you want to really feel your in a different place, a bit detached from the rest of the world, it's safe, inexpensive, and interestingImage
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About ten miles outside of Bishkek is a 3 square mile market, built, lego like, from shipping containers.

Almost entirely self-regulated, it started after fall of USSR as a place to swap goods -- where they came from, and how, nobody asked, or cared

Slapped down in the middle of an otherwise bland neighborhood of mud roads and single homes it's now Central Asia’s largest marketplace.

A complex of stores inside freight containers selling anything and everything you want: Toys, TVs, Jeans, Bras, Bikes, Spices, Trinkets, X-mas decorations, Tools, Gas Masks, Hijabs, Watches, Wall clocks, Slippers, Shampoo, Stuffed Animals, and on and on.

All of it imported from China, Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, South Korea, India, Iran, etc. Carrying on, in a very modern way, Kyrgyzstan’s Silk Road tradition.

It’s a microcosm of our very material global supply chain world. A visceral picture of how our world of stuff works. How the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the things that fill our homes, come from all over, shipped across the globe in rectangular metal boxes.Image
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It has it's own restaurants, a mosque, and keeps expanding.

Traveling to places like Bishkek has helped me understand history better. Not from going to museums, or historical sites, but from seeing how people physically live, especially those without a lot of money.

The marketplaces of Bishkek, or Istanbul, are not that removed from the marketplaces of ancient Rome, or Paris in the middle ages. They are crowded, loud, busy, colorful, communal, and self-organized. Or to put it simply, messy.

When you go to a historical monument, like the ruins of an ancient building, or a preserved cathedral or mosque, you get the entirely wrong image of the past. You see quiet, dignified, empty, sterile spaces. Places where you are scared to touch something. Places where people walk around in hushed voices.

That’s nothing like what the past was, and you can see that in the present in places like the shipping container market.Image
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Read 7 tweets
Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Dec 6, 2023
Update on this: I went to eye-doctor, & no I don't have cataracts. The doctor did mention, almost all her customers now complain about same thing, to extent some have completely stopped driving at night.

The primary offender is newer cars with very bright headlights -- Tesla's are particularly bad, & with them, it's not about the height, but only strength of beam.

There's also less awareness on when to use high beams, especially with younger drivers.

The combo of it all is, driving at night, especially in rural areas, has gotten dangerous. It's not some silly annoyance thing, but a real problem.
Limiting beam intensity, is an example of what competent Government regulation is supposed to be about -- curtailing selfish individual behavior, with limited benefit, that's directly dangerous and harmful, in a clear physical way, to the larger community.

Even hard core libertarians can get behind this one.
we'll be up against the Big-Beam-Industrial Complex. But think of bugs life. We can overcome!
Read 4 tweets
Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Nov 5, 2023
Living his best life #Mongolia
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Living his best life #Amman Image
Living his best life #Hanoi Image
Read 7 tweets
Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 Profile picture
Apr 1, 2023
'These deaths are caused by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving & such'

All of these are "reckless behaviors", simply forms of slow suicide

Thing you more likely to do if you feel your life is without hope & is meaningless

ft.com/content/653bbb…
Why is this happening? Spend more than one week, not visiting, but residing, in any big city poor neighborhood, or in a depopulating mid sized city anywhere in US, and you will get it.

Unless you have the strongest ideological blinders on
Pundits need to add Anomie to their list of buzzwords.
Read 7 tweets

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