It’s just after midnight in Chicago, 1999, on a Blue Line elevated train headed outbound, and a nattily dressed older man is drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle. He’s upset, he explains to no one in particular, because “my baby cheated on me,” even though “I gave her 20 dollars and told her to splurge.”
A younger guy teases the drunk, who then flashes something from a pocket and says, “I’ll cut off your ears!”
“With that butter knife?” asks the younger man, who also offers this pearl, although I miss whatever prompted it: “Just because you pour syrup on shit don’t make it pancakes.”
By Division Street the knife has been put away and the young man is trying to explain to the drunk – who thinks he is riding to Riverdale, which, outside the context of Archie and Jughead, I’ve never even heard of – that he is on the wrong train, the wrong transportation system, and headed in the wrong direction. He should be on Metra.
At Wicker Park the older man takes another pull from his pint bottle and steps onto the platform. As the train doors close the other passengers whoop with laughter. “Gave his baby 20 dollars and told her to splurge,” says one. “Man, you can’t cross the street with 20 dollars.”