7th Street Cuddle-Up

Funny how so many of you picked up the man/monster aspect of the poem and my thoughts behind it. And, yes, Capcom, the Pacific Garden Mission is known outside of Chicago, but the place is not what it used to be even a decade ago. Part of it is that so much of the south Loop is being renovated, the Roosevelt Hotel, once an SRO, is now condos. Around the corner is the Wabash Tap, near Buddy Guy's Legends blues club. About two months back, a guy and his girlfriend were celebrating her 25th birthday and had just left the tavern, which, back in 1998 likely would have been the twin to the 666 Lounge, a black man and woman ask them for a light, they presumably answer the wrong way (this being the wonderful city of equality, right?), and they proceed to get beaten nearly to death. The man, all 210 pounds of him, kicked the girl in the head at least ten times. If someone called me a cripple (if that man was even called a name), I highly doubt that I'd rail off physically on that person. I still recall the photos of the girl in the paper, she survived and is fine now. But here it is three in the morning and the two fuckheads give the cops an address of the Pacific Garden Mission. So why weren't they there and in bed? Sure, they offer religion there but the cops should have given some blue religion to that bastard who thought it just fine to kick a girl half his weight and size in the face. He's in jail on ag-assault, awaiting trial. If I was at the corner of Wabash and Roosevelt that early morning in the false dawn, there'd have been a stained chalk mark in the shape of an @$$hole after the cops finished their job and carted him off to the morgue. You gotta know who to love in this city. And you gotta know who is taking up a bed in a shelter that should be going to a much better individual. Carl Watson, a writer from Uptown, wrote it best in BENEATH THE EMPIRE OF THE BIRDS. The best religion in the world consists of two words: be careful.