Taste of Awesome

Good evening my peoples.

I hope you're world is grand and significantly lacking in ritual torture.  If you have recently been ritually tortured, then, um, I apologize for bringing it up.

Speaking of torture, how many of you have ever been to the "Taste of Chicago"?

Perhaps I should start with, how many of you have ever heard of the "Taste of Chicago"?

While I will admit right up front that city living is probably not for everybody, it does come with some perks.  There is always something to do.  You can get to most things you need to by walking or riding a bicycle (you know how I currently feel about that bit of joy).  And, there is more food and food diversity than you can shake a truck load of sticks at.

From my apartment, I could throw a rock and probably hit three or four restaurants.  With the same rock.  I'm totally that good.  (I'm not even close to that good.)

If you feel like traveling at all, within one mile in any direction, I can find enough culturally diverse foods to name off most of the countries of the world with.  And they are all (mostly) so good.

Chicago is known for many things, and food is right up near the top of that list.

But once a year there is this week long phenomenon called "The Taste of Chicago".  Every year, a bunch of eateries set up shop in Grant Park between Michigan Avenue and the lake.  Then, roughly every human on the planet (except you if you've never been, and all the other people who don't come) squeeze themselves all at once onto the one street to sample all the good eats and drinks and listen to the live bands playing.

It's really pretty great.  But it can get expensive very quickly if you like to eat a lot.  And, because there are so many things to try, you wind up stuffing yourself like a thanksgiving turkey to the point where walking is much more akin to an egg wobbling across the counter as it tries to roll away.  And even then, you still haven't come close to sampling everything.  You just can't do it.  There is simply too much.

So, you get tortured on two fronts.  One because of how much you ate, and two, because of how much you didn't get to eat.

And then, again(I guess this is technically three), because you feel bad about this food and how much more you want, and then you think about people who haven't had food in days as a normal course of life.

Huh.  Suddenly I feel guilty for going.

Hmm.

One thing my wife commented on this year was something only tangentially related to food.  This is one of the few things here in the city where you get people from all parts of town, North, South, East, West, all hanging out in the exact same spot.

You might be thinking, "But isn't Chicago one of those great culturally diverse places where everyone is sort of lumped together in this great melting pot of people?  You know, in a non-cannablistic-melting-pot-sort-of-way?"

Yes.  Yes it is.

However, if you spend any real amount of time in Chicago at all, you find it's a lot like many places.  The different groups have a tendency to stay in their own areas.  The south Chicago people tend to stay in the south and the north Chicago people tend to stay north.  Add to that how the city is broken up into "neighborhoods" and how many of the "neighborhoods" are relatively culturally specific.  It's true that there is overlap and the mixing of peoples, but if you zoom back and take a look at the city as a whole, you actually see a lot of groups just hanging out with themselves.

It's sort of strange when you think about it.

But at the Taste?  Everyone shows up.  Everyone all in one place.  And by "everyone" I do actually mean a sampling of everyone.  

And they all show up because of food.  Food, the great equalizer.  Everyone needs it, and most people like it.  Food is one of those things you can't avoid.

And historically, this has always been true.  The equalizer part, not the need part.  Clearly the need part has always been true.  

In the ancient times, when people came together for any reason, whether it was a festival, or a negotiation, or even to work out their differences, they would often sit under a tree and share a meal.  They would do the thing everyone had to do.  The thing that made them equals.  The thing that gave them common ground.  A need and love for food.

And the beauty of this is how it shows that, cultural differences aside, all people are largely the same.  I eat, you eat.  We need to survive, and hope to be happy doing it.  We like to love and laugh and make babies.

Everything else is self focused (not necessarily selfish) world view commentary.  Important, but not absolute.  Or maybe meaningful, but not important?

I'm not sure what the correct way to say that is, but what I do know is, the moment you bring out the food, most of that stuff suddenly vanishes and then we become this group of people who don't know each other and may not even speak a same language, sharing a meal, passing napkins, making space in the line for them, smiling as they walk by.

If only the rest of life were that simple.

Maybe, it is.  Or it would be if we let it happen.

Wouldn't that be something?