So, regular readers will know that I am just now finishing up my first month as a Chicago bicyclist, the first time since an undergraduate that I've ridden a bike on a regular basis. And what have I thought of my first month as a Chicago bicyclist? What lessons have I learned so far about the experience?

Well, probably the biggest one is just how profoundly one's entire life can be changed, just from a simple catalyst like getting a bike. For example, one of the things that I immediately learned after getting mine, just days after it had arrived, is that the ease or difficulty of my bike trips are directly related to what food I ate the day before. And since my bike is what I am now considering my main form of daily transportation, this is a pretty big issue indeed. So, over the last month I have been quickly switching over to a diet that's much healthier than the one I had before - nuts instead of chips, fruit instead of candy, those weird-ass "fortified water" drinks (you know, with the vitamins and ginko and shit added to them) instead of soda. Okay, so that all of a sudden means that I'm eating a lot better, as well as getting a hell of a lot more exercise, simply from the act of getting the bike.

But then, see, this then leads to yet another new thing in my life - namely, I find myself with a lot more energy these days as well, and a lot perkier of an attitude about life, mostly I think from finally putting a stop to all that shit I was shoveling in my body on a daily basis. And see, I also suffer from a mild form of the mostly-bullshit Seasonal Affection Disorder (that is, I am definitely more in control of my emotions, the more sunlight I get in my life), and my daily bike rides are ensuring that I get a whole hell of a lot more of that these days as well. So now, not only am I eating better, not only am I exercising more, but I'm also literally in a better emotional state these days as well, and a lot happier in my overall life, all from the simple act of getting a bike.

But see, it doesn't stop there either - as I've been learning this month, all these changes are apparently also making me appear a lot more sexy to the people around me, which is never a bad thing to achieve. Or at least, in the last month I've run into two different friends I haven't seen in awhile, who both immediately dropped their jaws when they saw me and said, "Jesus, Pettus, you're looking fantastic these days. What, did you get a new haircut or something?" And since I'm in such a profoundly better mood these days, I'm also a lot easier to get along with, and am not saying nearly the amount of disparaging remarks in public that end up pissing off all the people around me.

So - more exercise, better body, deeper tan, looking sexier, getting along with people better, more energy, money saved, transit time saved, all of it a direct result of simply receiving a $60 bike from Wal-Mart a month ago. And it doesn't stop there, either - I'm smoking profoundly less (because of all those 30-minute periods per day that I used to sit around waiting for a bus or train, that I'm now spending actually biking to my destination); I'm getting out a lot more (since my mobility is now no longer tied to whether or not I have CTA fare); I'm actually developing some muscle tone. And almost all of these things is stuff I've been saying for years that I wish I had more of in my life, although lack the discipline to just arbitrarily add - for example, I would never eat more healthily just for the sake of eating more healthily. So that's probably the most important part of it all - that the biking is giving me an excuse to add these things to my life, an actual concrete reason that will actually add a concrete benefit, instead of this hazy "it's good for you" justification that never, ever works on my particular brain.

Other lessons... Well, I've learned that there are just as many assholes on bikes as there are in cars, which I guess should really come as a surprise to no one. I mean, I simply can't believe how reckless so many bike riders here in Chicago are - on a daily basis here, I see at least a couple of bikers per day who just go whizzing through stop signs and traffic lights, 30 miles per hour sometimes (48 kph), without even looking to see if there is cross-traffic coming perpendicularly. What are you fucking morons thinking, man? Let me just say something here that a lot of bicyclists don't seem to realize - that if you and a car decide one day to meet head-to-head, you will always lose, and the car will always win. And if you are the one breaking the law in that situation, you will have absolutely no recourse - you won't be able to sue the driver, you won't be able to have the driver arrested, you might not even be able to get your insurance company to pay the bills.

It's easy to see why so many people hate bicyclists, now that I've been out on the streets myself for a month and have had to deal with them myself. You know what I'm talking about - that pretentious fuck wearing his little Lycra shorts so he can bike to the grocery store, ignoring all the traffic laws he's supposed to be obeying, refusing to yield to pedestrians, riding on the wrong side of the street sometimes, getting all self-righteous when cars refuse to pull over to the side of the road and simply let him continue on his merry way, screaming "ON YOUR LEFT! ON YOUR LEFT!" when you dare to be a fellow bicyclist ahead of him, going slower than he wants to go. God, fuck you! Why don't you assholes just go back to screaming at Starbucks employees for getting your order wrong, and leave the rest of us the hell alone?

I guess when all is said and done, pretty much the most important thing I've learned in my first month as a Chicago bicyclist is this - not only is it possible in this city to consider your bike your main form of transportation, but it's actually cheaper, easier and faster than any other transit options you have here (including car, scooter, foot and public transportation). And that to me says something really profound about the city of Chicago - that this is a place that understands why exactly us city-dwellers love being city-dwellers.

I mean, you see this all the time, in American cities like Detroit and Baltimore and St. Louis and others, who are experiencing severe drops in their populations these days - a desire to lure people back to their cities, but a complete lack of a goddamn clue on how to do so. And so instead you see just insane amounts of money being spent in these cities, building what suburbanities think will lure people back into the city - in other words, giant expensive mall-type structures, usually situated downtown and opened with a lot of fanfare, under the belief that people will want to live in the city full-time so that they can have access to this mall-type structure on a regular basis. And of course, we all know what happens - all the suburbanites get in their cars on a Saturday morning, drive to the mall-like structure and spend the day, then drive back to their suburban enclave at the end of the trip. And the city officials scratch their heads in confusion and go, "Why don't nobody wanna live here?"

In Chicago, on the other hand, the city government really seems to get the point - that you don't live in a city for the big destination places it has, but rather for the tiny, mundane, local day-to-day things that city has. Is the city bike-friendly? Is the city dog-friendly? Are the sidewalks safe? Are there a plethora of fun bars and cafes? Does the city let these bars and cafes set up outdoor seating? Are there art galleries? Are there indie-rock clubs? Are there things in that city that are easy for urban dwellers to access, but would be extremely difficult for suburbanities to access? Are the potholes fixed on a regular basis? Does the city plant flowers, sponsor parks, provide a pleasant environment in which to be a pedestrian? Do they sponsor neighborhood festivals, sink money into community centers, force their cops to go out and get better acquainted with the citizens of their district?

Coming from St. Louis as I do, I can definitively state that the answer to most of these questions there is "no;" instead you've got things like Union Station and the new football arena, which are then surrounded on all sides for miles with empty streets, crumbling warehouses, and entire neighborhoods that aren't safe to walk around in at night. Being in Chicago for the last eleven years, however, I can definitively state that here the answer to all these questions is a resounding "yes," with their new emphasis on bicycles being yet one more thing about this city that I think is truly great.

I love being a citizen of Chicago. I love telling people that I'm a citizen of Chicago, and I love being a walking billboard for why others should be citizens of Chicago as well. It seems sometimes that there are so few people who can honestly say such things about the city where they live; every time I travel, it seems, every time I meet new people and ask them about their hometown, most people seem to be there not by choice, but rather because of circumstance (job, school, family, etc). There are many, many Chicagoans, though (myself included) who moved to Chicago precisely because it was Chicago, and didn't worry about what job they were going to have or what school they were going to go to until after they got here. I love that about this place. And as far as I'm concerned, it simply can't be mentioned often enough.

Oh, and one more lesson about biking that I've learned this month - there are not too many things out there that have the power to scare the shit out of me quite as easily as getting stuck on your bike in the middle of a rainstorm. Seriously, man, fffuuucccckkkk.

Hey, I went to the Brew N View this weekend! For those who don't know, the Brew N View is in reality the Vic Theatre here in Chicago (Belmont and Sheffield), a former grand movie palace that was turned into a live-music club in the 1980s. The owners, though, held on to all the old movie equipment, so any night now that a band isn't playing, they show second-run movies instead (the same ones you see at the dollar theatres). The great thing about the Brew N View, then, is that they show three movies in a row, all for one $5 admission; plus you can drink while you're there, plus you can smoke while you're there, plus you sit around tables with your friends instead of in rows like at a typical theatre, plus of course there's lots of drunken, hilarious audience feedback throughout the entire evening.

Anyway, it's a killer lineup at the Brew N View this particular week - Sin City at 8:00, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at 10, and Kung Fu Hustle at midnight. And these are all films I wanted to see when they originally came out, but didn't have the money to do so, so my friend Tom Henkey and I went down to the Brew N View on Saturday and watched them instead. And then our friend Brandi Madrid (a pretty great singer/songwriter here in Chicago) met up with us for the midnight show, and then afterwards we all went down to the infamous L&L at Belmont and Clark, to meet up with our friends Kate and Katherine, who had been out seeing a sketch-comedy show.

I had this interesting reaction to both Sin City and Hitchhiker - namely, even though both movies did an incredible job at faithfully reproducing the original source material, and even though the production quality and the acting and everything else was just fine, I still ended up shrugging my shoulders by the end of both and going, "Eh." Did anyone else have this reaction too? It was just...well, I don't know. They were both faithful adaptions to be sure, but neither ended up being that particularly entertaining. Which I guess just proves something I've been saying for years, which is that there's a reason certain projects are executed in certain media and not others. I'm a big fan of both the original Sin City comics and the original Hitchhiker novels, but after seeing the movies I suddenly realized why - because of all the subtle, tiny things going on in those projects, the things that don't necessarily make you gasp or laugh out loud, but just when added up by the end produce this profoundly entertaining experience. And sometimes there are projects that simply do this - that aren't that funny or profound or earth-shaking in their individual parts, but collectively are when seen as a whole. So, maybe that's why both those movies ended up feeling rather flat by the end.

Kung Fu Hustle, on the other hand, was completely fucking badass from the first minute to the last - laugh-out-loud funny, overwhelming in its technical prowess, even sweet and subversive in parts (as well as a very astute tongue-in-cheek parody of traditional kung-fu elements - "Come on, I'll fight all of you - but only one at a time!"). The movie only got a limited release here in America when it was first out, which is too bad - if you're a fan of kung-fu movies, I'd encourage you to rent it when it comes out on DVD.

Ah, but none of this really matters - it never really matters if the movies at the Brew N View are any good or not, to tell the truth, as long as you've got cheap beer, a full pack of cigarettes, and a rollicking group of friends, ready to yell and boo and shout smartass remarks at the screen. And I had plenty of all three this weekend, so ended up having a great time indeed. Here's hoping that I can finally find a damn job again soon, and can afford to do such things a little more often.