Occupied Chicago.

 One of the great things about living in downtown is taking a Sunday stroll along the magnificent lakefront of THE GREATEST CIY INNA WORLD!!!

It's not so hot though when it is hot, because summertime is full of events like Taste and the big marathon and Lolla and the stoopid race, which means they have to put up porta potties and tents and worse of all fences.  Can't go here, can't go there and if you attempt to take a shortcut there is some fucking adenoidal high school drop out kid yelling at you.  I hate that.

Like last Sunday.  I was walking along the lake and thought I would take a turn west to see Buckingham Fountain because that is always open.  And it was open last Sunday.  I could see the spray clear from the lakefront.  But as I approached it my path was blocked by a fence.  The Queen's Landing was blocked by a fence!

Well I thought I would just walk south along the fence and surely there would be a break.  I got three blocks and no opening so I asked a cop how far do I have to go, and he reckoned Roosevelt.  Roosevelt!  Fer Chrissake, so I started heading back north.

And then I noticed a couple cops standing in a kind of dent in the fence.  As I approached them I noticed that one of the cops was wearing a face mask.  Fuck, cops don't wear face masks.  And as I got closer the face mask guy kind of backed away behind the other cop like he was hiding.  I could still see him though and as I passed I leaned in to get a better look at him, but then I remembered all those videos on tv and fb with brawny thugs slamming people to the ground and even if they had ID's they could be locked up for a couple days.  I walked on looking straight ahead.

After I got past them I was still thinking why is a cop wearing a mask and then I thought maybe he wasn't a cop.  How can you tell anymore?  Remember when cops wore uniforms?  Now half the time they are wearing combat gear, like ICE, like the border patrol, like the national guard.  We now live in a city where some crumbum in a mask can choose to slam you into the ground and that is just your tough luck.