Wilco and Lounge Ax
On home...
Meeting my Heroes is an occasional essay series from Matt Carmichael.
This tale isn’t about meeting Wilco… yet. Although this story had to happen in order for that to happen (see meeting John Stirratt.) This is a story of transition, and home.
It’s early 2000. Twenty five years ago, today. I mentioned in the Steve Yahn/Ad Age story that my job was moving to New York. What I didn’t mention was that they wanted me to move with it. New York is a great place and I really loved visiting the city – on someone else’s dime. The handwriting was on the wall, so when I would go to NYC (almost monthly in this period) I’d always be thinking in the back of my head if I wanted to live there.
The answer was typically no, I didn’t. It was just more of everything… more expensive, more crowded, more dirty. Chicago also doesn’t lack for things to do. If you’re bored here, that’s on you. This is where I was making a life and home for myself.
Another factor was my photography. On the side, I was a young rock photographer and had achieved some success and was somewhat known in the community. In Chicago I was one of a handful of people shooting shows on a regular basis. The fact that Chicago had a scene so full of opportunity – so many bands, so many shows, so many special, unique experiences – and yet so few took advantage… Well, that played to my advantage.
One such venue was Lounge Ax, which was sadly closing because some idiot moved in next to a rock club and then was upset that it was noisy. He kept filing complaints with the city and somehow this one selfish jerk was able to shutter a beloved part of the Chicago scene.
Don’t be like that guy.
In its final week, Wilco played a poorly-kept-secret show, billed as “Summer Teeth.” Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s leader, was married to one of the clubs’ owners, Sue Miller. I didn't have an assignment confirmed and wasn't on a guest list, but I walked up to the front of the line with camera bag slung over my shoulder. It was January and people had been sitting outside the venue for hours and hours in the cold. Some had driven from other states. Doors weren't open yet but I walked confidently up to the door. I nodded in recognition to Dan, the longtime door guy, who recognized me, too. He waved me in and I was set. Fellow photographer Marty Perez greeted me at the bar and we chatted until doors opened at which point we moved to the stage and took our usual places.
The show itself was one of those quintessentially Chicago shows: A little sloppy; A little fun; Somewhat serious; Imbued with deeper meanings; and a gathering of old friends, family and new acquaintances coming together to enjoy the music that binds us all.
I knew I could never pull this off in NYC where I'd be one of too many rather than one of a small group of concert photographers. As Sinatra sang in his famous Chicago song, “My Kind of Town,” “Now, this could only happen to a guy like me, and only happen in a town like this.” I didn’t want to give that up. I stayed in Chicago and kept shooting shows.
Tweedy, in Wilco’s lyrics has sung about many thing that are important in this tale: storytelling, dreams, and home. Searching for a home. Coming home.
“If you're selling yourself on a vision
A dream of who you are
An idea of how it should be
And a wish upon a star”
Home isn’t just a place, physically. Home is where you feel comfortable. Home is where your people are. Home is the place you can’t wait to escape. Home is the place you come back to.
For me, home is the house in Bloomfield Twp, where I spent the first 19 years or so of my life, and it’s the beach down the road from there, past weird bug rock. Home is also Cranbrook, whose campus and buildings I know inside and out. It’s Northwestern, but really by that I mean Willard Residential College where lived for my years on campus. It’s Wrigley Field and before that Tiger Stadium. It’s the cottage in Holland, which is the only home I can’t really go back to. And of course home now is Oak Park.
And home was pressed up against a low, dark, noisy stage – camera strap wrapped once around my wrist, bag cinched around my waist. Listening to my hometown band, in my hometown club, doing a thing I loved in the only place I could possibly do it.
Walking into that show, really was one of those tipping points in my life and most of the stories you’ve read so far flowed from that. I’d shortly land the house photographer gig at Metro and my photography career would really start taking off. I’d settle down for real in Chicago.
During this period in the early part of the century I was working for a company that did consulting work for airports. It wasn’t the most demanding gig so I was able to keep shooting, up to 80 shows a year. It was a lot.
Then I got a call from Crain’s Chicago Business, a sibling publication to Ad Age. It was 2005 now. They offered me a ticket back into journalism full-time, which sounded amazing. That’s how I became the Research Director, aka the “Lists Guy.” After I started working there, my editor told me he considered the photography a potential conflict of interest and all of the sudden, rocknroll.net stopped.
Which isn’t to say that I stopped meeting my heroes. I just developed some new heroes in some new phases. Crain was kind of a home. There I worked on a project called “MarketFacts” which was page after page of data and infographics and maps. That project led to my switch back to Ad Age, which led to my interest in demographics, which led to my book, which led to my job at Livability, all of which led to Ipsos. I developed new heroes along the way, and you’ll meet them in the next section of stories.
But I want to come back to this idea of home. At Livability, it was central to the work we did there, helping people find their best place to live. That thinking and research is part of what brought us to Oak Park. Below is a piece I wrote near the end of my tenure there, and a video I made of my journey to my best place.
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A friend recently wrote that they were considering a move. Originally their family was from the north but they’d moved to the south on what was supposed to be temporary assignment. One year turned into three and they found themselves liking their new home more than they’d anticipated. They’re now confronted with a tougher choice about where to live than they’d thought they’d face. There were considerable pros and cons on both ends.
My advice was to consider the question: Will where I live allow me to lead the life I want.
What do I mean by that? I mean you should ask yourself the following questions when considering a new place to live. Some answers are objective, some subjective but I think it helps to get you thinking about the vital role of quality places in our quality of life.
Let’s play 20 questions:
What do you like/dislike about the place’s climate and how much does that matter to you?
What kind of house do you want to live in?
Do you feel safe here?
What kind of yard do you want?
How many cars will living here require?
Can you afford all of the above?
If no, what will you have to cut out of your life to be able to afford it?
How will you get around? Is there public transportation? Is the city walkable? Will you have options?
How long will your commute be? Are you OK with that?
How’s the economy? How hard will it be to find a job if you want one (or a different job if you want to change?)
How long do you plan to live here? If you’re wrong about that would you be happy if you wind up staying significantly longer or shorter?
What are your hobbies? How easy will it be to take part in them in this city?
Will you find a church that fits you?
What other community (AA meetings? Senior center? Girl Scouts?) needs do you have? Can you fulfill them in this place?
Do you have any special health issues? Can the hospitals/providers support them?
What kinds of foods do you like? Are their good restaurants/grocers for that?
Is this near friends and family? Is that a good thing?
How does this place vote? Is that how you vote?
Look around. Do the other people look like you? Do they drive the same sorts of cars? How much do you want them to?
And finally, as your answers to these questions change over time, can this city accommodate those new potential needs/wants or will you need to start over at question one?
Bonus family-specific questions:
How are the schools?
How do you want your kids to get to school?
Will your kids all go to the same school(s) and how will that impact how they get to school?
Do you want them to play in your yard or in a park or both?
Do you want them to play with their neighbors? If so, how close are your neighbors and will they play in the front or back yard?
How will your kids react to the move?
As your kids age will your answers to these questions change?
As your kids move out will your answers to these questions change?
The basic point of this is to provide some quantitative, but mostly qualitative ways to look at your decision. More to the point, it’s to get you thinking about where you live in broader terms. You’re not just buying a house, you’re buying into a community. Everything about that community – from its leaders to your neighbors to the way it’s physically laid out – will have very real impacts on how your live your life day-to-day and year-to-year.