Chonkosaurus & Chicago River Botanical Survey

How you don't like that? Why don't you listen to it? It's not
too bad, it's not bid bid, it's not too bidh fere a little
rejuvenated. Maybe it's because I just took a nap. How the fuck don't
you like house music? How the fuck did I not listen to house music
until I was like hell of thirty six or something. I don't listen.
I had stuff growing up, you know, I was allergic to it.
I was skeptical. But that's a nice Chicago house mix of defective records,
which is nice background. You know, something's it's all about timing right.
Sometimes you want to listen to you know, uh oi bands like fucking Blitz.
You know, sometimes you want to listen to to harmonica blues. Sometimes
you want to listen sometimes you want to listen to Luciano Pavarotti. You know,
there's a time and a place for everything, and sometimes there's a time
and a place for Chicago house. So I don't know. Some people who
are still strict with their musical taste I'm skeptical of normally normally indicates some sort
of unresolved trauma they're not dealing with, you know, gonna get loose,
a little bit relaxed. Anyway, Welcome to another episode of crimepe is about
and he doesn't podcast just cut back from Chicago two days ago. I drove
to like four in the morning. I did the fuck did I stay?
I stolen? I say, I stayed in Joplin, Missouri, which is
probably one of the most depressing towns in that whole region. All of Western
Missouri is kind of avoid How many KKK meetings do they have in Western Missouri.
They've gotta be like probably a dozen more. I think it gives off
that kind of vibe. It's fucking weird. Then you get to Oklahoma.
It's a little more chill there. You know what, I got a bunch
of natives, got a bunch of Resussi evations. It's a little bit more
loose, you know, feels like it. You know, you get less
of that mean fucking that means there. I had someone like scream at me
in traffic in Joplin so they could fucking go around me. Some neck beard
in a giant oversized truck so he could, you know, speed up to
the red light that was like half a block down. Like the whole landscape
just looks like shit, dude, I mean again, like the I know
I've said this before, but the typical that are crumbs. Uh, you
know, transition of America drawing where it goes from like idyllic pasture, the
forest, idyllic pasture to just like retail slum, just all the all the
all the strip mall signs on the you know, on the side of a
row with the telephone wires and fucking parking lots. And that's what Joplin,
Missouri's an ugly town. Man. No offense to anybody who lives there.
You probably know what I'm talking about. You know, you're probably not bullshitting
yourself, just kidding. I think a lot of people are bullshitting themselves these
days. But uh, you know, anyway, I stayed in Joplin.
I drove all the way from Japlin down to the Mexican border, and like,
uh fuck, I don't know how long it take me, twelve fourteen
hours and it was it was a terrible drive. It was brutal and then
it was rainstorming here when I got down here. So anyway, um,
yeah, I just the last week or two in Chicago was fucking great.
It was really fun. It was hilarious. The stupid chonkasaurus thing blew up
like hell. I kind of wish it would stop now, you know,
but it maybe it'll get someone into into appreciating nature quote unquote in their own
backyard. Um, that fucking sixty pound turtle probably has no idea how how
famous it is now. Um anyway, how about how about clickbait? You
like clickbait? Um? I got a bunch of stuff to talk about.
God, I saw a beautiful speckled king snake in these fucking mountains. I
always stop at near a Toka, Oklahoma, Oklahoma. It's like these upturned
carboniferous limestone beds and uh, it's a little it's near the freeway. Used
to be an old highway that isn't used anymore. Was probably before the freeway
was built. In these limestone beds have been flipped up at like, you
know, seventy degree angle. They're fucking beautiful. They're really cool. You
can look at them and see all kinds of cool crynoid fossils and stuff.
So it's a spot I stop where there's like a bunch of cool iatris and
there's an Ariagonum. I think it's lauinge of florum or launge of Folium.
I don't know either way. It's one of the It's a beautiful ariagonym species,
a beautiful buckwheat species, which is you'll know, the genus is mostly
out west, so to see one hanging out right there in Oklahoma, you
know. But but seeing the gentle transition from the prairie to well, now
it's all you know, hideous corn fields, you know, monotypic, monotypic
agriculture. But seeing that transition to h you know down here where you get
the fucking Texas ebenies and giant miskeats and all that shit, was so real.
It's a real pleasure, you know. But the drive is absolutely terrible.
I hate I hate driving. Um So I saw a giant desert centipede,
which I didn't know. It was like the eastern edge of their range
over there in Atoka. But that whole area if you look on like a
tobograph of h or a topographic map, and there east of Atoca, you'll
see all these upturned beds. These you'll see, you'll see the terrain,
you'll see the topography which's going on. You know, these mountains that have
just been flipped up the Wachatas, which I had more time to explore there,
but I had to get home. But the last week I was in
Chicagoe. It was great, the Field Museum. I went to it twice.
We went and checked on the feral cannabis patch on eighteenth and Western hadn't
germinated yet. Not because I particularly care for cannabis, but I think it's
I think it's interesting that this weed patch has been there for fucking almost twenty
years, probably longer than that. And uh, you know, now now
potts legal in Chica, I go, no one cares, and and this
is the I think pretty sure it's a psychoactive stuff. It's not. It's
not the ditchweed. It doesn't look like the ferret like the ditchweed you get
in and Nebraska. It's got a little bit different of a color to it.
And I just remember, you know, the cops used to always park
the patty wagons up on the hill above where it is. It's near these
train tracks and this kind of like diamond, near this railroad embankment. But
uh, yeah, the pot comes back every year. I got a tick
when we were looking for it there. I couldn't believe it. I found
a tick on me, you know, like a mile and a half from
downtown Chicago. So it's evidently there's a lot of coyote activity. I mean,
I know there's a lot of coyote activity, but the fucking buck there
and there's terrible. I hope someone will go back because we used to hang
out there when I was younger. You know, it was a night near
the train tracks. It was kind of like no one could see you if
the tree cover was up. It was really thick tree covered too, beautiful
old cottonwood tree right there, huge, like you know, six feet it's
like three or four trunks, but six foot diameter cottonwood tree right there.
And so we'd hang out right there. I found the remains of our own
our old fire pit covered in leaf litter. It was almost impossible to find
because it's been you know, like fifteen twenty years. But we would hang
out there, and you know, we'd see coyotes coming down down, you
know, coming down the railroad and payment and shit, probably eating rabbits eating
those cotton tails, maybe the occasional feral cat, the occasional street rat as
well. I saw a beaver on the Chicago River, which blew my fucking
mind. Man kind of knew where we saw Chankasaurus right there near Goose Island.
I couldn't believe that. That was fucking weird. You know, almost
looked like a new tree. But they don't get those up there. That
was an actual That was a genuine American beaver, another rodent. But still
I'm still missing the Field Museum Plant Dungeon, their plant Family Dungeon, where
they have the well, witchy, mirabulous diorama, which I encourage every went
to see. If you can get into the fucking Field Museum, please please
do it. You could sneak in there, you could do it. Get
a fucking museum pass. They got reciprocal admissions. Oh you know what I
went to too. I went to the these fucking museums. Man, they
got some there. I went to the American Museum of Surgical Science, which
is certainly not worth the amount they're charging. If it was like four or
five bucks, i'd pay it. But but uh, it's you know,
it's it's kind of like a gag. It's kind of a hack. You
know. It's like the first floor too. They got one room that just
has all these these creepy statues in it, you know, of like famous
European doctors throughout time, just kind of annoying. And it's got the nice
checkerboard tile floor, so it looks like some rich pricks mansion. And they've
got like an old drug store set up like dioramic thing with like a wooden
model of a pharmacist in the back, which is also kind of spooky.
And then they've just got a bunch of like disturbing I don't know, it's
not that cool. Their exhibits are weird. It's uh, they got an
iron lung. I guess that's cool, right, you can remember what polio
was like. Um, but it's they wanted nineteen bucks to get in there.
We didn't pay it. I had this fucking pass, but I was
still kind of blown away they were even charging that much. And it's weird.
It's in like a it's near all these you know, it's in the
North North Loop, which is a fucking the North Loop. Is it gives
off a certain vibe, I'll say that, and I do not like it,
certainly, a vibe where it's kind of fun to piss people off,
you know, just by just by doing your thing. It's by being yourself
if you can. Um. There were a bunch of ash trees that died
too that that someone had whittled down, probably with a chainsaw. Ash trees
that had died in the park. Somebody had whittled down with a chainsaw into
various sculptures, which I kind of thought was cool. Um. We went
to Montrose Beach, me and al did one night because we were gonna we
were gonna do our workout order. You know, we were on a due
the fitness tip. We took the weights and the fucking uh he get these
way he took he took like exercise bands and ship We must look like tweakers
because we didn't know what else to do. It was just it was a
nice day by the lake. It's still kind of chilly, I mean,
it's always chilly in Chicago, man, compared to where I lived now,
you know, the first it was it was still like fifty degrees in early
May, like forty five. But we took these weights to the fucking to
Montrose Beach and I had that I found this old like army army coat,
like a flak jacket, you know, with the like rambo style like green
which just like you see someone in those I didn't realize it made me look
that sketchy, but um, I used to I used to use it when
I would be out paying graffiti when I was like sixteen, you know,
and had these pockets selling to the back of it, and so I had
that. It was only coat I had. I didn't realize it's gonna be
that coat. So I was wearing that, and I was carrying these twenty
pound weights and I was laughing his ass off at me, like twenty feet
behind me, because I'm like this dude with two unleashed dogs walking across h
Montrose by the Lake carrying these weights. Just the hardcore tweaker energy, just
hardcore wingnut energy, Like what the fuck? Um? Yeah, he videotaped
me what his phone was kind of funny. I saw it later. I
was like, yeah, you know, I do kind of if I did
see someone like that, I would probably think they were on meth or I
don't know what i'd think, but it doesn't It don't look normal. But
we went out there and then we were we were gonna go find there's like
a feral posse of raccoons that lives on the lake. They live on the
all these all these rocks that were dumped to prevent the lake shore from a
roading, you know, because Lake Michigan used to all be like Marshland it
was. I would have loved to see what it looked like. I think
all the Thuya occidentalis aka arbor vity swamps were further to the north in Michigan,
but I've been up there. If you go to like Point Beach Staint
Park in Scatson, and you could see these undulating It's a really beautiful place.
You could see these undulating dunes, like there's like you know, by
undulating, I mean it's like three not doinges, excuse me, undulating Thuias
swamps where it gets like three foot tall hills and then there's a little dip
and then you know these these undulating berms. I guess I don't really know
what caused that, but uh, you know, they got lego fights in
there, and it's the shady underneath. It's all. It's all Thuyia occident
and Talis all arbor viti, which there's a specific cultivar, so, in
other words, a mutant of Thudia occident and Talis Thuja. However, you
want to pronounce that occident talis. It's got these it's kind of like fucked
up looking foliage, Like it doesn't look smooth. I don't know what it
is, but they treat them like Italian cypresses here and they just you know,
beat you over the head with them. They're just so overused in horticulture,
and it's kind of funny since they're all the same clone. I'm waiting
for the day that's something some virus or or or whatever evolves to fucking kill
these things and they all night at the same time. Because they're kind of
hideous. They're not that spectacular of a tree. They don't get that tall,
and they maintain this iconical form. They get like twenty feet tall at
the most. And they just remind me of all these places that suck,
like like the landscaping at a fucking oil changed place, or like you know,
suburban style office parks. They got a lot on the in the non
suburban areas of the city too, But it's just, you know, it's
it's a very it's a very Chicago thing. It's a very Midwest thing.
I wish I could remember the name of the cultivar, but I don't really
pay attention to things like that. But I've seen my moss house. I
planted these dune redwood trees in her tiny little yard. They're fucking taking over.
I got a Baker cypress in there too, It's taken over. It's
nice. It's the only the only true cypress that can survive Chicago winters in
the genus has sparrow cyprus, you know, the New World cypresses. It
fully smells incredible on it. They're from northeast California, but they can take
a Chicago winter, and it gets cold in northeast California, but it doesn't
get Chicago cold. I wish more people planted that. You got to plant
them in a in a protected location. I get something more than arboretum.
They killed it within like a because you know that's how they plant everything,
or the more an arboretum is a is a and they do. I love
what they do, a lot of good stuff, but there's still like that
old school, uh kind of archaic style of botanic garden arboretum, which you
get a lot on the East coast and Midwest where it's like these these olms,
steady and lawns, you know, like these kind of like uh referencing
Frederick lawn almost like because it was kind of the way he built parks.
But um, kind of like the more British botanic gardmen, You've got these
these open lawns with like a specimen tree with like a neatly mode uh bed
around it, you know, or it's it's in a it's in a bed
with a neatly mode margin. It's just it's so fucking lay man a botanic
garden that's dependent on lawnmowers. Um. You compare that with someplace like ucb
where it's just everything's just packed and tight like it was in the wild,
you know, like like it would be and grouped like it would be ecologically
like by region, you know. So he would like the Mexico section,
you can steal them all these plants from that grow together in Mexico. You
go to like the Asian section, you gonna see all these plants that grow
together in Asian. You go to South America section and see all these plants
that go together in South America. So anyway, they planted this this Baker
cypress that I gave them modoc cypress in the middle of this garden bed in
the middle of this this essentially open field because they were planting it was like
a specimen tree in the fall. And then it was like a brutally cold
winter and the thing just got fucking murked by these desiccating you know, forty
mile an hour winds that Chicago gets in the winter. And there was no
protection. There were no trees around them, there was no wall, like
no wall around them, nothing to protect them from just getting hammered. And
so they did. It was just like this like this icy blow dry around
them for five months, and the fucking thing just it was still alive at
the end of the year, but or at the end of the season.
I remember seeing it later, but it was it just looked like a stick,
you know, it looked like shit where it's like where my mile lives.
Like see there's another house next to her. There's like a it's like
a brick wall. And they're one one of the Banker's cypruses, so you
know, they're kind of protected, you know, as they would be in
situ like a in a grove or a force them. So um, but
yeah, man, I don't know. There was the fucking Film Museum.
I always love going to the Field Museum. You got it. Like I
was saying, you gotta just get a pass, get a fucking pass,
you know, or find a good way to You can't sneak in a lot
of these museums anymore. They got on lockdown. You know. The museums
are just they're just they're not places for learning anymore. They're they're suburban theme
parks. So but Field Museum is still pretty great. But we did a
show me and All did uh. We showed two screenings a kill Your Long
and then shot the ship. It was weird. It was like it was
like a blend of like stand up and then as screening for our TV show
that nobody can watch because nobody watches cable. They only you know, I
don't blame them, you know, Direct TV. Yeah, yeah, sure,
Spectrum Cable. I've tried watching. I stayed in a ship back motel
while I was in Joplin, and I saw I saw our show in the
guide you know the TV guide button when you put the hit the TV the
guide button and it shows you like a listing what you could watch every time
I watch cable television, Like I don't ever watch TV. I mean,
I'll stream stuff sometimes, but I don't certainly don't pay for any sort of
cable service. Anytime I watch it just reminded how nauseating the fucking ads are.
They totally make it not worth it because you end up watching forty percent
of what you end up being exposed to is just advertising most like just the
most obnoxious shit, you know, where they turn up the volume on it
and talk to you in that horrible, that over excited, fucking consumer voice.
So uh, but yeah, I saw her. I saw our show
on two sixty seven. I saw it listed there. This is like great,
two sixty seven. You got two hundred and seventy. How many channels
on direct TV. You can go to a motel and you can watch TV.
You could just sit and oh god, I was just I was excited.
The place didn't have bedbugs though, it just had the specter of despair
and the faint scent of cigarette smoke. Um. But yeah, we went
to this. Uh. We had to show at a on the northwest side,
at what was it called Color Club or something. It was nice.
It was a fun little event. We got to shoot the ship. I
saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, and then I saw that
it was cool. The forest preserve near my moss house, the Cook County
Forest Preserve, they masticated a bunch of a bunch of the undergrowth. They
should have they should have burnt it, of course, but you can't do
that when you got you know, suburban homeowners around. People get mad about
that. So all the trout lilies were coming up, all this cool shit
that people have no idea about, that I had no idea about, even
though I grew up only a few blocks away from it, you know.
And that, of course is the that's the huge problem with all this stuff
is there's no exposure to it. I mean, I was I gained such
an innate hatred for for tulips, like the second or I just remembered still
being exposed to tulips, just endless tulips as a little kid, which of
course it's you know, makes it feel like it's northern Europe because that's where
all this shit is, you know. Bread Um. I think tulips are
actually native to you know, Eurasia, but still, um, they plant
them like hell man all downtown, I mean, no native plants anywhere downtown
and the North Loop and any of these in any of these places that would
feel fun to get thrown out of, you know, Um, God,
and tulips are so whack man, I just beaten over the head, just
one bed with like a four hundred tulips in it, Like, really,
where's the fucking where's all the vernonia, the silphium, the fucking there's so
many cool native prairie plants you could be putting in there, you know,
Um, the kankakee mallow, the fucking Iliamna romota, you know that that
could be. It's the list is endless, you know, go to like
Illinois wildflowers and see what they got popping up. The fucking maypops that I
always forget the name of it. It's in Berbera daisy. Let's see Arisima
even like a nice shady understory, you know, Arisima trifl um aka Jack
in the pulpit aka jack and a jerk off booth aka skunk cabbage or is
that something else? I don't know, all these all these stupid common names.
Sensitive fern, Monoclius sensibilis. That's a cool one, h god damn
bunch of nice stuff. Oh yeah, Potophylum peltatum, no may apple they
call it. Yeah, mayapple. What a weird flower too, But you
know, there's so many, there's so many options. I mean, it's
just it's weird. I thought native gardening was like native plant gardening was on
people's radar there, but it's not really, at least not in them.
You know, whoever's working in city horticulture, they still just beat you over
the head with the fucking tulips and the what were some of the other plants
I can't even remember what uanymous and pakasandra are two other things they beat you
in the overhead with, which is cellistracy and two other non natives, non
native I don't know if they're invasive, but just you know these like boring
groundcovers, cellistracy and bucks they see the boxwood family, respectively. Oh god,
they're everywhere. Man, it's brutal that in the fucking Vinca. It
just kills me. So many cool prairie plants, so many cool prairie plants
you could use, and instead you just use this this trash that doesn't benefit
this stuff. It's all that stuff is the desert for cool insects too,
you know, for cool pollinators and birds and shit. I saw really excuse
me, Oh saw really uh beautiful humming bird I've never seen before, probably
flow up here from Mexico, you know, to steal our jobs, you
know, doing so. Biden watched these these you know, illegal alien humming
birds come in and here, you know, because Biden hates America, because
it's what watched the Duel Order. I saw this really cool hummingbird pollinating this
rips less Amazonica. I got in the pseudo ripslist. Excuse me, Amazonica.
I got in a back in a backyard here. I kind of got
down here. Man, everything was fucking overgrown. It's just like a fucking
jungle. That mockingbirds hanging out and that that oak tree I'm trying to kill.
They use these, they plant these these quirkas Virginiannas around here in South
Texas. They're not really native. There's a couple native to the sand sheet,
but they used you know, it's like the home depot. It's like,
I'll give them that that it at least is native east to here.
It's native to the region. But out where we are, it's like transitioning
Gulf Coast, transitioning the desert. You know, let's say, yucka payote
twenty minutes away, that kind of thing. So they plant these oaks and
they just they always end up kind of looking like shit, or they they
take forever to get established and then it just it looks weird. Why did
I plant the misquite? You know, I went to Harold Washington Library when
I was in Chicago too. That brought me back to my youth. That
was so nice. I used to just hang out there. This is probably
like two between two thousand and three and like two thousand and six, whenever
I come back to visit, because I was basically traveling for like three or
four years straight, and so whenever i'd visit, you know, we didn't
have smartphones back then, which was nice. It was actually nice, and
so if you wanted to like lurk on the internet or research something or just
you had time to kill you on the loaders somewhere, I'd just go to
the library. And so I'd hang out there at these big tables, get
a stack of books to look at, like just get like pick eight or
nine and just go sit at the tables and fucking read and draw for like
three or four hours. Didn't have to pay to hang out there, obviously,
you probably will in the future. I think that's the direction of America's
going. But but yeah, it wasn't. It was. It was a
nice reminder, you know, like the I love, like the smells of
a place bring you back. Harold Washington Library is such a cool spot.
Do you go to the top floor. They've got that like open atrium with
these four big planters with trees in them, small trees in them, and
in the skylights up top. It's such a beautiful place in a central location
too. Go there, and then I would go to like Billy Go Tavern,
the underground one, the original one. Go go there and get like
a egg sandwich, like an egg and cheese sandwich, and then just lurk
there for a while drinking coffee, had cheap coffee. It's nice to see
all these places. It's it's fun, man. You go back to these
places and you kind of remember. I remember bits of myself, you know,
and I also gives me some insight into, you know, my own
bullshit, Like how how I would feel back then, like what was actually
I can and looking back on like who I was, Like shit that was
that I wasn't dealing with my own bullshit. I wasn't dealing with like just
you know, fucking being too fighty, just too much of a like stick
in the mud, paint in the ass um I don't know. I mean,
I still am in a lot of ways. But there's I'd like to
think there's been some personal development over the last I don't know, fifteen years,
twenty years. Not enough, but there's been some um. But yeah,
the city is so clean now, man, And there's there's I've seen
more of those stupid rectangular buildings, those condos. You know, they the
developers would buy a lot, take down these beautiful old buildings, so many
cool buildings that were built one hundred years ago, highly ornamented, you know,
a treasure to walk to having on a block, because it's just it
makes everything look nicer. It's like, you know, and the shit they
put up now are just these instant buildings to house affluent people with no taste,
and that's generally what it feels like. It's it's so sad, man,
I've seen so many they build these things out of fucking center blocks.
They look like shit. They slap a fake balcony on there, a balcony
that you can't go like I don't understand not going to ornament the thing.
You're not gonna you're not gonna go on like a decent architectural plan. You
can't take extra time to put a couple you know, extra borders or I
don't know what the fuck, what is the word you come at an architecture
guy, but you know, whatever you call extra extra am on there or
whatever. But you could put us like a fake balcony in like a balcony
you can't even use. It's just like these these steel beams, like these
you know, small steel slats and beams. I don't get it, you
know. And they all look the same too. The instant buildings, instant
boring rectangles being sold for way too much money that replaced these beautiful, cherished
civic monuments. You know, even it was just like a corner store or
there was a bar inside, or even just like a nice looking apartment building.
So there's all these just I don't know, I don't know if they're
like yuppie condos or what they're I assume they're mostly to own, I don't
know, but they look fucking hideous, and you know, they're obviously cheap
to build, and the developer just slaps them up, sells them for a
lot of money, makes makes their money, and takes off. And meanwhile,
you know, the entire the public sphere, the way that the street,
the street decore essentially looks, the buildings that the rest of us have
to pass by, just get dumber and more bland looking. So uh,
you know, it's kind of the general direction of of America. I guess
though. It's all just about It's all just about the bottom dollar. You
know. Build shit is as cheap as possible, sell it for as much
as possible. Um. But uh, I was. I was impressed at
how much the cops have laid off in recent years too. It was kind
of nuts. I remember the cops used to always come in. They'd show
up at all the parks at night at the time that the parks to due
to close and run everybody out of there, which you know sucked if you
were hanging out with your friends it's like ten pm, the park closes.
The ten PM. They'd actually come in and run you out of there.
They'd drive into the park. Um. You know. I had a friend
who got arrested for smoking a joint at Pratt Street Beach Beach once which was
nuts. Like I arrested for smoking a joint in Chicago. That's crazy.
Um. And now there's just there's like the smell of weed smoke everywhere,
which is you know pleasant. I think it mellows people out, especially what
a what a problem the Midwest has with uh, with alcoholism. It gives
people an alternative, you know, if they if they're not ready to go
through through life sober yet, at least they can do something a little bit
less unhealthy. Um. Obviously smoking weed every day is you know, not
great for you, but uh or for your mind. It'll make you a
little little wet brain, a little rusty, but uh, it's better than
than drinking. But um man, people were smoking cigarettes on the on the
on the Allen in the subway too, like in a fucking subway tunnel that
that subway tunnel between uh the Jackson Street Red Line and Blue Line. I
remember you used to be able to there was a tunnel beneath the Washington stop
in the loop for the Red Line and Blue Line too, but I guess
that's closed now. Um it's just just goes Munroe and then uh whatever,
the next stop is Clark. But uh, some fucking asshole was smoking in
the in that long tunnel between you know, the red line and blue line
at Jackson Street, and that wasn't even you never see that back in the
day, never see people smoking down there. That was just it's such a
like enclosed space too. It's dick boo. You'd always smell piss, but
you'd never smell cigarettes. But uh, you know anyway, and yeah,
yeah, all the graffiti was riding for a while too. You see,
you know whereas Mayor Daily's graffiti blasts, you just see that brown paint and
everything, you know, just the hideous brown paint that you know, you
people would paint something in a day or two later just get covered up with
that brown paint. Rooftops, alleyways whatever, you know, rooftops face in
the l. Chicago has historically been a rooftop oriented town for graffiti. You
know, you would because the rooftops all faced the elevated train, so that
was like they were just like little billboard billboard essentially billboard spaces for graffiti writers.
But uh, goddamn, but it's nice to not to see that brown
paint that much anymore. So, yeah, I don't know, it was
it was it was nice to be back, you know. But again that
Field Museum Plant Family Dungeon. You gotta go in there. It's like walking
into a plant systematics textbook. And I have a feeling they're gonna get rid
of it at some point because it's an old exhibit, like that whole room
is an old exhibit. But you can go through all these different plant families.
They've got models of the flowers and ship up there. It's really cool,
and they're gonna get they're probably gonna get rid of that Wellwitchia diorama.
I shit you not. It's a Wellwitchie and morablist diorama, so you could
feel like you're experiencing Wellwitchia. They got a you know, the mural in
the back. They've got the little mural on the wall on the back.
They got glass up front, of course, you know, because they don't
want guys walking in there, because that's what I would try to do,
you know, taking selfies with the plastic models of these plants. And then
they've got you know, two or three plastic models of Wellwichia, just like
for an animal diorama you'd see at the Natural History Museum in New York.
They got a couple of those too. Oh there's a lizard climbing the text
Sudium crenadum. That's nice just looking out the window. So you know,
should go in there and experience it, because I have a feeling in ten
years it's not going to be anymore. Ship five years. You know,
it's old, it's antiquated. They'll pull in, they'll put in some new
fucking exhibit that they charge twenty bucks to see on top of their twenty five
dollars admission or whatever they they charged. When was the last time have I
ever paid to go to the Field Museum? I think I used to always
sneak in, and then I got this, you know, reciprocal admissions passed,
so I can get into any museum, any museum that participates in it
in the US. But um anyway, Oh, it was cool to see.
I saw lupinous perennis and lit those sperm um connessance, which I had
never seen in Chicago. But I saw him at the dunes. I went
to the dunes in Northwest Indiana one day. What a fucking experienced Northwest Indiana.
Holy shit. I remember getting picked up hitchhiking by this this drunk racist
off duty sheriff once when I forget where we came. Damn, I can't
remember where I was coming from. I think it was coming from, like
I don't know, man, oh, I was coming from Memphis. I
forget how the fuck we gotta ride. We took a we rode a train
or some shit up to India. Anyway, we were in Gary and we
were hitchhiking. And Gary's a black town too. I wonder what the fuck
this cop was doing there. But he was drunk off his ass driving the
sketchy van with all these fishing poles in the back packing heat, had a
giant revolver on his hip, and went on this incredibly racist, you know,
uncomfortable rant where we're like sitting there like sweating bullets. Just, oh
my god, what is this fucking maniac swerving all over the road. Um,
I forget where he dropped us off. I think we might have told,
we might have lied and said we were closer than we were or something.
Just we get out of his fucking car. But yeah, and then
yeah, finding out he's a sheriff. Of course he's sucking off duty sheriff.
That made sense, okay, Um, but uh, but the dune
system. It was. It was so funny. We got it was like
May fifth or or no, maybe May eighth night. I forget why it
was. It was fucking already late into the spring. And I went to
a friend's parents live out there, and like the north they got like a
little house out there in the Northwest Dunes where they moved to they said,
Fox Chicago. They left, they moved out to Northwest Indiana and U and
so they you know, I saw this kind of dune system. It was
cool. It was a lot of invasive plants. But near Indiana Dunes National
Lake Shore, they're they're actually burning, and so you got to see what
it might have been like. I don't know. Fuck, you know,
two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago. And there's still industry everywhere
too. Yeah, Northwest Indiana got notoriously fucked into a coma by industry too,
the steel industry. It's like multiple super fun sites, highly polluted.
It's kind of sad. There's like that scene in Blues Brothers where you could
see Cow You Met. They've got an aerial shot of Cow you Met,
and it just looks it looks like this post apocalyptic industrial hill. You know,
this thick haze over everything. You know, the sun barely able to
shine through it, it's so dark. And that of course is just right
over the border from northwest Indiana. But this, um, we saw this
this, you know, this near uh Indiana Dunes. So I think,
I guess it's the National park now. But we saw where they had actually
you know, land managers whatever, the parks park system whatever had they had
they were intentionally burning. They were doing controlled burns. Munch of stuff was
burned, the larger trees survive, it clears out the brush. All this
stuff then comes up in the spring, and so yeah, it was nuts.
I didn't realize there was a loop in growing that close to Chicago.
There's so much I didn't realize when I was growing up there, I had
no idea of what the flora or the natural landscape was like. But to
see a loop in there was incredible loopinous parentnis, these beautiful blue flowers with
the palm leaves, and then that little sperm um hairy pecoon, hory pocoon
whatever whatever it's called, fucking ridiculous common name baragin as is. The family
of the Borge family was coming up right there too. It was fucking beautiful.
And then we went out to the uh, the lake which was still
frigid as hell with this mean ass wind biting us. It was fucking man,
I couldn't believe how cold it was. God, it was brutal and
uh, I guess it must have been May May second. Anyway, it
was fucking already May, and it was still cold as hell with these frigid,
icy winds coming off the lake. There was no one out there because
it was just so brutally cold. And I saw there was arctostaphlos uva URSI
there a bunch of cool plants. What else was there? It was,
Oh god, a rabbidopsis. Was it a Rabbidopsis la rata? I think
that's what it was. Let me see, Yeah, Rabbidopsis la rota,
which has kind of like a northerly distribution, like northern latitude distribution, but
it's you can fight it in the Chicago area around the lake. Just just
a little white flower of brassica, you know, which was flowering despite it
being you know, forty degrees forty five degrees. Time I hit to take
time, hit to go to the bedroom over there and get something to drink.
Took a nap today at six pm. I just woke up. It's
been fucking hazy over the sun came out today. It's really like ninety five
where I lived. Oh yeah, that's nice. Do you like that.
I'm going to Lake Wales Ridge over there in Florida in October. I'm going
to fucking New Zealand in June May twenty ninth actually to film and we got
I want to thank Is it a fucking no, it's just a torn up
leaf on it, sim flarid. I gotta stop looking out the window.
Sorry, I'm fucking distracted. I'm doing a podcast there. God damn it.
Thank you to anyone who sent cash to buy Alan Rockefeller a fucking plane
ticket because he said he was gonna go to New Zealand to film cilosopy.
New Zealand has like eleven philosophy species. I have no idea where there's so
much silosopy aka pilocybe, which is not I supposed to pronounce it. That's
actually one where I mean, you could pronounce it eever you want. It's
lad, but it sounds a lot better if you pronounce its philosophy. I
told him, you know, we were going in January, and he said,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll go whatever. They went to Ecuador
and he's fucking around. The dude just makes his money given presentations. So
I guess he was still broke. And I was like, fuck, are
you coming. He's like, I don't know, I don't really have any
money as fuck. He was really we leave in a month, man,
and so, uh, you know, and none, no plants are going
to be going off. And I don't know enough about my college to feel.
I mean, I can't do what fucking I'm not. I'm not a
mushroom guy. I do plants, you know. And so I was like,
you gotta cook, man, you gotta come with I'll kill you if
you flake. And then I was like, wait, why don't we don't
why don't we just why don't we just see we can crowd fund you a
ticket? And so we did, which is cool. So thank you to
everyone who donated money and who I'm now going to send stickers to just give
me time. I'm overwhelmed. I have intense eighty you can't get shit done
today. I had so much shit to do that I just kind of like
stared at the wall, got overwhelmed and took a nap, which is what
you need to do sometimes. But anyway, I'm going to New Zealand in
June to make videos about mushrooms, New Zealand mushroom diversity, and I'm going
to Brazil to do drenaling bromeliads, and then I think I'm just gonna try
and then I'm supposed to go to the Calloween Native Plant Conference and fucking mid
July, and then August I think I'm gonna try to chill and just not
do anything and get some writing and shit done and organized stuff for this book.
And then September I might be back in Chicago. Late September. I'm
going to fucking New York September twenty first or second, or I don't know
what the fuck. I'll be up and doing another presentation a cactus store,
which should be fun and nice. And then, oh, you know some
I got invited to fucking speak it Cornell, which is funny. I didn't
think Cornell would wanted to do with me since one of these oh I'm never
even gonna mention it. I'm not even gonna get negative. But some fucking
some lady who looks like she'd be the one to like call the cops on
you for having your dog off Leshan North Berkeley, who works there, doesn't
like me for some reason. I've never met this woman. I don't know
what her issue is, but she's got you know, ah, yeah,
I don't know. She's like looks like one of those people like you know,
other aspects of life aren't going well, so she's got to pick fights
with others. I don't fucking know. We've all been there, though,
I guess right. I always liked that for a while, I spent a
lot of time angry and just like needlessly creating conflicts with people because I was
already in a shitty mood or felt like shit about myself or whatever. You
know, I mean that it's a common human response, you know. That's
why you know, some people are just really trying. Man. It's just
a day to day effort trying stay positive, and you can't always do it,
you know, so until you know you end up putting you know,
ascid in their water supply or something, it's gonna be hard. You can't
some people you can't make cut loose, all right. But you know,
one thing back to Chicago, though, one thing that just drives me fucking
nuts. When you get on the CTA, the Chicago Transit Authority, which
is the subway there, the voice that comes on and they do it on
the Metro too, which is like the suburban commuter rail, is this obnoxiously
honky, unrepentantly vanilla. No one fucking talks like that except people that live
in Highland Park, which is a terrible place. That's like where all the
like Chicago lawyers live. No offense to anyone who grew up in Highland Park
or is forced to live there if you're young. If you're young, you
know, and your parents live there, and that's where you have to go
back to. I'm very sorry. I feel for you, but it's it's
not your fault. Okay, It's like you're choosing to live in Highland Park.
But some people do choose that. I don't understand why, but but
it's like the voice of someone that would live in in Highland Park, you
know, notoriously affluent north Shore suburb will met any of these places. But
it's uh, doors are closing, doors open on the left at Jackson.
It's this fucking it's so awful, man, and it's so it just represents
the sterilization, the fucking wafering, the vanilla flavoring of Chicago. That what
you know what the CTA used to sound like, was you know, someone
would come over this nasty ass intercom. It just sounded like the speaker had
blown out, you know, a decade ago and step. Yes, it
was hilarious. You couldn't understand. I mean, you couldn't make out what
he was saying or she or they or whatever the fuck You could you could
understand it, but it wasn't. It wasn't I'm not gonna say it was
King's English. Okay. It was loud, it was abrasive, it was
oh you kind of winced when you heard it, but it also felt good.
It was so at Chicago. What is this? Doors open on the
left at Jackson that code switching voice. Holy fuck, that hummer is right
there. Oh he's going for the Amelia. Oh that's nice. Damn.
Now he's hitting the Malva viscus. What the fuck is that? That's huge.
It's got like an orange ass, but it's big. It's not like
any of the any of the hummers you see out there in California. You
know, don't California in my Texas the minute I crossed into Texas two days
ago, I started seeing all the fucking hilariously cartoonish oversized trucks without a single
dent or scratch on them, And everyone drives like an asshole, like Texas
drivers at a fucking worst. It's like it's pure ego. Like everything else
in the state, it's pure ego, not that bright. And they'll they'll
make a big deal. You're going, you're going fucking eighty miles per hour
in a seventy and they're there, but there they want to go eighty five
or ninety, and so they'll just speed around you to fucking get up.
Even though they can't go any there's like a truck, you know, one
hundred and fifty feet in front of you, there's nowhere for them to go,
they're still going to do it. They make a big fucking swinging dick,
you know, display of like getting you know, they're cutting you off,
getting in front of you after they've passed you. It's so fucking annoying,
but also kind of funny because it's just it's such a like utterly Texas
thing. This fucking how much how much untreated trauma is there. There would
be trauma t r A U M A. How much untreated trauma is there
in a state of Texas, probably a lot, you know where they gotta
legalized weed down here too. You know, you get people instead of numbing
themselves with alcohol, maybe they can just uh can get somebo These these angry,
angry people just you know, smoke a weed, relaxing a little bit,
you know. Not like that's something I advocate. I advocate not doing
either really, at least not an excess. I'm not a big pot guy.
Once that once in every couple of weeks or something. I like the
physical effects. I don't like what it does to your mind. But I
said, I fucking hate alcohol. God, it makes people so fucking annoying
and still once in a while. You know, that was my problem.
It was like, you know, maybe some people can do that. They
could drink, you know, they'll have a pint and they'll let it sit
at that. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to drink
ten ten beers, go steal a forklift, try to get arrested, you
know, getting a fight with a friend over something stupid. Whatever. You
know, that was a fun night, a buzz. What do you want
to do with a buzz. You know, now, I drink an A
Beers. If I want that hoppy taste, I'll drink an A Beers,
you know, which the taste was sometimes nice, but you know, numbing
yourself, preventing you from being what you could be saying dumb shit, dumb
conversations when you're impaired. It was certainly not worth it. It wasn't wasn't
fun. The only reason you like it is because you're addict. Never mind,
Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm apologized, and I tell people that want
to smoke too, so to me, I'm that guy fucking annoying. Um.
Can I just go off on Field Museum one more time? Though?
But I got so much nostalgia for that building, man, I have so
many pleasant memories of being there as a kid. You know. The general
ambiance is so great. That's what I if. That's what I would like.
That's what I would want a house to look like if I had the
time or the money I have neither, you know, get that that same
kind of general ambiance. It's like, that's the same feeling I get for
Union Station in Chicago, which is a beautiful building. By the way,
If you've never been there. You know, it's like it'd be, you
know, analogous to Grand Central Station in New York. Like just you know,
really pretty fucking going for that Greco Roman thing on the inside, tall
ceiling two hundred feet tall, natural light coming in, tons of activity,
buzzing with activity, you know, and it's the spot where you can hang
out. You don't have to pay, you know. So Um, I
don't know, it's just it's so important for cities to have civic buildings like
that that people can enjoy, you know, whether it's the library, right,
I just get people out into the public sphere, you know, death
in life of great American city style. You know, there's a wonderful collectiveness
and bringing people together in many of these urban spaces that haven't been corporatized or
turned into four pay places yet, but that's increasingly happening. So you gotta
just you know, you gotta steal stuff when they do that, you know
it, Go steal stationary supplies, sneak in, don't pay man. It's
so funny. Al is all about making Chonkasaurus merch now. Um, oh,
my buddy was coming, my buddy Lance over railroad guy. Um,
but yeah, I was all about it. Man, He's all on a
merch table. So I was like, all right, fuck it, let's
do it. And that's fine. I'll draw. I'll draw this fucking bloated
turtle that that captured the hearts and minds of so many out there in Chicago,
land across the world. I can't believe how much this fucking thing blew
up. Talk to a dude from the New York Times last night, you
know, And I don't care. I mean, it's fine, it's I'm
all about. But I'm just the whole fucking thing I'm trying to get people
stoked on is you can have nature in a city anywhere. All you gotta
do is plant the native plants. You plant the native plants, all this
ship comes back. You know. If I lived in a city, I'm
fucking add to this stuff. I'd be planting shit in parks, planting it
illegally on the fucking railroad tracks wherever anywhere I can go, collecting seeds,
growing a ship ton in my yard. If I don't have a yard,
I'd still be out lurking documenting everything, documenting the invasive plants to come out.
That's all we were doing that day. We went out. It was
a nice fucking day and we were just like, let's go al was It
was Al's idea. You know, we were gonna go to the fucking Sloan
Urinal company a Mannheim Road and film a fucking gag video there. I've got
a couple of videos of us and stuff to edit, um, you know,
because we actually went there. Man, I remember when they closed their
hair in U. Where the fuck is that? What is it? What
is the guy? I can't remember what town is it? Oh? Bensonville,
Yeah, Bensonville, Illinois, home of Victory Auto Records, notorious Chicago
local commercial, A beautiful Victory Auto Records. You know where the guy opens
the door on like a fucking nineteen eighty Pontiac and the door fells off.
That old car is worth money. Anyway, we did this video on Bensonville.
I think it's still up on the YouTube if you go far enough back
where we were filming all these abandoned houses before they demolished them for the airport
when they did the airport expansion on like two thousand and eight, two thousand
and nine. We usually just go around fucking film and stuff just to be
fucking reading. You know, this is like before you could you could upload
it to YouTube, but I kept all my shit private, like you couldn't
watch any of this stuff. We were just doing it for fun, just
having fun, fucking around. But um, we went out that day.
We were gonna go to Manheim Road too, because we had done a Sloan
urinal factory tour of Mannheim Road. Did we can do a tour? I
don't know. We filmed some shit there once because I just thought it was
hilarious, you know, but uh, because you know, you'd see how
these urinals I'd say Sloan and then it would say Melrose Park or wherever the
headquarters. So we're gonna go to Manheim Road and do that. But it
was a beautiful day, so I was like, let's go to Let's go
to the river and go kayaking. And so we went down there. We
went to the Chicago Kayak they're cool there too, and it was like it
was like forty bucks for a tandem kayak per hour, so it was like
twenty bucks each, which is more unreasonable. And the dude we talked to,
nice guy, but he was like so obviously stoned. It was hilarious.
It's like all these hippies running this kayak place that are just probably constantly
stoned twenty four seven, which I totally support. I wouldn't have it any
other way. If there's someone that should be high as fuck, it's the
people that are running a kayak rental place. We get on this thing.
They didn't ask They forgot to ask for our IDs or any We could have
just like paddled off with the thing and never come back, you know,
never came back. I mean, it was the first day they were open,
So I guess I can't blame them for it. You know, i'd
be a little out of it too. Shit, I'm out of it right
now. Just woke up from a nap an hour ago. But anyway,
so we were just paddling around. We were just documenting what plants had popped
up. I mean, I made a fucking video about it. You could
see it. And of course most of them were invasive. It was a
lot of buckthorn along the creeks, which hopefully or along the river, which
hopefully someone can go in there and just hack this ship back, you know,
treat it with roundup, just paint some round up on the stump and
kill the fucking buck thorn. God, it's so so terrible, and plant
some natives, you know, in their place. Once you plant the natives,
they'll overtake, or at least keep the invasives down, you know,
at least shade them out a little bit. You'll stuff to go through and
remove them every once in a while. But um, and then we saw
we even saw an alder man. We saw it all their going out of
this. The whole river has been channelized into, you know, like there's
no natural bank and along most of the river it's all just these steel corrugated
retention walls. We saw elie agnes, another invasive. We saw Siberian elm,
or one of the invasive elms. The only thing that was native was
yeah, it was box cell there acer ugundo. But there's a ton of
shit that would thrive there. But it was cool to see the bioswales that
Urban Rivers is doing two or Urban Rivers dot org and they're north. That
Choko source was at the Division Street bridge and the east side of Goose Island
and just like half a mile up near the riis where Urban Rivers. Then
those guys are fucking cool. We met them. They're really nice people.
They've created these floating bioswales where they're planting all these native plants Hibiscus mosuetos,
the native Illinois hibiscus, which is fucking thriving there, bunch of swamp milkweed,
rose c it's called Queen of the Prairies, the common name. But
it was thriving. And this fucking bioswil that has got to just be completely
inundated with water. I mean, the soil has got to be all the
time. It's a floating bioswil. So that was cool to see. They
had verbinajstada, which is the common names blue blue, vervane. I mean,
these were all dormant. Now they're coming back, but I mean all
these cool native shit thriving there. They said it's covered. I mean you
could see across it. It didn't look that impressive now because it's just coming
out of the dormant seasons, coming out of winter. But they were telling
me, the two dudes we talked to there that you you know, during
like fucking July August, you can't see on the other side of it.
All this shit is like five or six feet tall. It's just this thicket
of these these you know plants, these I guess not a quad. They
had a native junkus too, a bunch of native actual aquatics, but like
Queen of the Prairie is not an aquatic, you know. But this stuff
just it's so thick. The hibiscus too, I mean, the hibscus gets
five or six feet tall, so thick you can't see across it. It's
fucking amazing creating habitat, and it's so easy. They just take these little
nets. They fill it with this like this aggregate that's kind of akin to
like pummice, and and then some organic material they had hand on there too,
and h they've got it. You know, basically these floating beds,
the margins of the beds I think have some sort of floating I don't know
what now they kept it afloat, but so either way, it's fucking cool.
I'll put this. I'll put the video out whenever I get around the
working on it. But it was really impressive to see. And I mean
anyone could do that. You could gorilla do that. You could do that
illegally and unauthorized. Who's gonna give a shit on the filthy fucking Chicago River
or if you're in you know, Cincinnati, wherever, any nasty body of
water, you know, you could create these little floating bioswales using like the
plastic netting something to hold it up. You know, just fuck around,
figure it out, you know, find out what works, and then start
planting stuff in there. But it was wild to see because I just remember
that river growing up. Man, it was so nasty. I remember running
from crackheads once when I was after I was doing graffiti, forget where it
was, and then it was on a Chicago and Halstead I can't remember anyway.
You know, these crackheads that see me painting, they stopped me.
Fucking dude is big too, and he's like, you know, give us
twenty bucks. We're gonna call the cops. They were not going to call
the cops, but they were certainly gonna fuck with me. And I remember
I had to like run through this fence up beat standing on one of those
sketchy retention walls above the river to get away from these dudes. And they
I mean, of course they didn't. They weren't that ambitious. Once I
made it past them and went under the fence, and then was on the
river, like you know, six feet above the river, not much room,
just a little ledge and not much room to stand, holding onto this
fence to get away from them with a bag of spray paint and whatever.
They of course didn't come after me, but you know, I remember looking
down at the river and being like, oh guy, it was probably like
a half a mile not even from where we where we saw Chonkasaurus, and
just you could always smell the river. It's it's it's got to be this
this some sort of algae or something that you know, benefits from the sewage
and the runoff that because it's it's like an organic smell, but it smells
gross. You know, it smells like a dirty body of water. Whenever
you smell that, it's a dirty body of water. And uh. And
that was that was my experience with the river. So to see if fu
sixty pound snapping turtle and then the bioswales and the beaver and all this cool
shit was so great. I mean, it's you know, and that's what
I tell these media people when they were asking me about the clickbait thing with
the Choka Soaurus. It's like, I think it shows that people like being
around nature. You bring nature back to a city, it makes everybody feel
good. It's and we have to bring nature back to the city because nature
is getting forced out of everywhere. Else is urban sprawl, you know,
as a as America finishes, turning it's over abundance of land into more of
this depressing extremely emotionally isolated, physically isolated, car dependent diabetes landscape. You
know, of consumer retail and just fucking driving, you know, during your
whole waking life when you're not at work or sleeping or watching your TV program
you know, on your cable. All right, God, but yeah,
I gotta get that fucking video done about the biosweals. It was real nice.
So it's good. It's a good you know, that's and I made
that point the video too. It's a nice if cities are going to become
so fucking expensive to live in, where it's just these shitty developers and landlords
making all the money off of everyone else because it's it's it's they're way over
priced to live in. Price gouging is a thing, of course, especially
with rent. All the buildings look like shit because it's they're just built you
know, these quick get these get rich quick schemes for developers to you know,
house affluent people who don't have any taste. They don't care that their
building looks like a fucking you know, external hard drive to begin with.
You know, at least the benefit maybe is is that now, I mean
rich people don't like being around pollution, and you know, maybe now there's
a little bit more money to go around to do things like, you know,
build fucking bioswales on a formerly polluted industrial river. So and the fucking
beavers are coming back. God damn the beavers. Man, That's it was
nuts. Could see beaver We were at fucking Montrose in the beach and we
saw beaver activity there too. I couldn't believe it. And they're as the
cruising spot. I always think that nature preserved Montrose Beach in Chicago is like
a notorious cruising spot. Boys Town is only a mile or two away.
How far is boy I don't know either way. They got a bar called
the Manhole there, which I've never been in. Sadly enough, I'd like
the fucking because you get a you get a fucking If I still drank,
I probably could have gotten a few drinks there, you know, But Uh,
but the fucking logo for the manhole was hilarious. It was like a
big time of Finland, muscular bound, fucking beefy boy standing out of a
fucking sewer holding the manhole above his head with like a hard hat, like
a YMCA hard hat, just like the most clichde gay. Uh fucking it
was. It was as the manhole still there. I don't know, maybe,
but um, either way, it was a notorious cruising spot over there
by Montrose Beach and now it's a nature park two and you got a beaver
living over there, or maybe a couple of them. And that's where me
and Al were. We went and met up with fuck for get his friend's
name. His friend was cool. He was like this old fucking uh you
know, old Lefty, old fucking like I w W Lefty rolled up on
a bike. We shott the ship with him for a while. It was
still early May and the lake got cold as fun when we were in.
I looked like a tweaker in the fucking I don't know anyway, that was
where we went. We took our little weights and shit, you know it's
nice. We go to work out on the lake at ten o'clock at night
looking like total weirdos. Um but uh anyway, so that was that's what
I try to tell all these reporters that were kind of me. It's like,
anyone can you know? The take hold message here is anyone can do
this. If you build it, they will come. Build the native plants,
all the cool native wildlife will come back. It feels good to be
around this stuff. It's in our genome to be around this stuff as humans,
as primates, we are part of nature. We're not separate from it.
You know. We need to stop thinking that we're we're better than it,
that were that we can control it, that we can fucking turn the
land into a smoldering ash tray and then just leave for Mars. So,
you know, trying to sneak that message in there. But um, yeah,
we're also selling chunk of Souris shirts now. So I did a lithograph
uh at hoofprint, which is in the old Chicago Manufacturing District building. Sketchy
building, super old ceiling is going to collapse soon. We went up on
the roof, beautiful looks over the fucking train yard to the south. It's
on the south side. It's I like pershing and Damon Damon runs right into
that building and the building itself, well, the clock tower building is abandoned,
but the whole huge cold storage uh now it's artists. It was like
owned by the army during World War Two. It's an extensive, monolithic building.
It's so it's so fucking big. Uh, I don't know, it's
it's it's cool. It's a cool building. I mean we were up on
the roof though, and there was like trees. There's like a little garden
growing up out of the top of this flat roof. Man, it looks
so I saw it, and I was like, that ship's gonna collapse soon.
Oh my god. This whole building is so sketchy. It needs so
much work. All though, like calking and mortars like coming off the top.
I was standing on this like seven story roof looking down looking at all
all the pieces of the building falling off of it and ship. I was
like, fucking amen. But it was beautiful. You look to the northeast,
you can see the Loop and the Sears Tower in the Chicago skyline.
You look to the south, you can see the crepit industry, the train
yard, and the back of the yards neighborhood. And plus it's near the
stockyards too, which are always fun to just go lurking on the weekend.
I remember I rescued a little dog from a little straight dog that was covered
in ticks in the stockyards like fifteen years ago. Fuck man, it's nust.
That thing is probably dead now. I'd like to think it was a
puppy at the time. I'd like to think if I think it did find
a good home I called the fucking animals shelter where we took it to,
I'd like to think it grew up, had a nice life with someone on
the South Side, and then you know, gad rest. His soul is
now laid to rest. Uh, you know, after after living a very
fulfilling dog life somewhere in the back of the yards. Um so uh,
I don't I guess that's it. I guess I'll fucking rap. There's probably
something I forgot. I want to talk about that I forgot. But either
way, you know, if you want to buy the chunk of short shirts,
it's a chunk of short Chonkasaurus shirts and hoodies with the drawing I did
on it. It's um Oh, the lithograph that I did fucked up by
the way too, so we can't. There's not gonna be any But then
I went back the next day and did another one that I don't like as
much, but it's fine. It's like eighteen by twenty four too. It's
like a big it's a big image. So I guess they're gonna run lithographs
of it. Nice prints should look good, hopefully with a couple of different
colors. Um, it's fun, man drawn with those cramps. I hadn't
done that in a while. Senega it's a species of Senegalia, which was
formerly Acacia that they use for them. Oh god, what is the fucking
what is the compound they put on the stone? Gum Arabic? Oh yeah,
that's a gum Arabic. But it's a species of Senegalia for basi so
um anyway, Yeah, the shirts and hoodies are available at crime Pays,
but Botany doesn't do my shopify dot org. I put the link in in
my in my fucking bio, but um, yeah, I don't know says
it says Chokasaurus Biological Survey. I don't know, some goofy shit. We
were just trying to get people stoked about the fucking sixty pound snapping turtle.
It's mate was right there too, And it was funny watching these things scurry.
It's the little one, which I presume was its mate. The larger
one was probably a pregnant female, was like scurrying off these fucking those rusty
chains trying to it, and it was the smaller one was still big.
It was so fat. It couldn't like you know, the pond sliders when
we get close to that and these other turtles that they would just jump off
the logs they were on. But this snapping turtle, the smaller the two
of them, the smaller one was having trouble scurrying off in then the big
one, Chonkasaurus, finally dipped out. When we got closer, she wouldn't
let us get closer than you know, I don't know. We were still
pretty close, like seven or eight feet, but um, anyway, uh
yeah, it was just fucking hilarious. It was cool to see those pylons
they used to put She was hanging out on these these chains that hold you
know, essentially like twenty telephone poles together. Those were what the city used
to put in at the corners of the bridges. To prevent barges from running
into the bridges like these pylons. They would basically hammer them into the fucking
silt, sink them into the silk, pound them into the silt, and
that that's what would protect the bridges from barges, you know, say like
a tugboat driver was drunk or something. Um. But uh, there's not
really barges in the river anymore. I think there's one only one industry.
It's a cement plant. They've got silos and shit right there near Chicago and
hostead. It's the only that's the only business. It still gets river barges.
There's a couple we saw parked. But man, it's so fun.
We go to Chicago kayak, rent the kayak from the stone guy, and
uh and go check out Goose Island, go up river wherever the fuck you
know, there's so much good stuff and check out Urban Rivers to Urban Rivers
dot org or just they're near the RAI building on the east side of a
Goose Islands. You know, you can go look at you could join our
co op and look at you know, two hundred dollars sleeping banks whatever other
stuff they sell that stainless steel camping gear, fucking jet boil my balls,
whatever. I don't know what other stuff they sell and how they do apparel
at the RAI they do like expensive you could buy like one hundred and twenty
dollar pants, you know, look like look like someone at the climbing Jim
Right. Rock climbing is fun, but why is it the clientele. It's
good, no offense, no offense to anybody that does rock climbing, But
the clientele is like such a fucking brand, such a vibe. And I'm
not demonizing it at all, but it's funny. It's just like it's such
a like I don't know, dad, fucking v D. It's like a
V five. It's like V six D. Could D like like five eleven
five. It's pretty cool. I did pretty cool, but like I could
do better at dude, it's like pretty here to watch this. Check it
out me, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?
Anyway, No, I'm really gonna go now. I'm fucking finally waking up.
Thanks for listening, schmuck. Hopefully you had a good time. You
want to email me crime Pace, body doesn't email dot com If it's super
long, I won't respond. If you keep it short, I'll probably respond
and they'll probably be typos. And if I'm using voice to text because I'm
on my phone, I'm not on my laptop, maybe it won't make any
sense. You'll just have to decode my response. But I always try to
respond. If I haven't, don't take it personally. I just sometimes I
open that email inbox and I just want to go laid down, you know,
I just want to stare at the wall and give up. So,
uh, what the fuck else? Oh? Yeah, just kill your lawn
Channel two sixty seven on Direct TV. If you end up, you know,
staying in a ship bag motel for the night because you're driving. That's
probably the only way that anyone who actually listens to the crime Pace podcast would
be within a fucking a groin hair's worth of the direct TV channel two sixty
seven, or it's on Spectrum Cable one thirty nine or one twenty nine.
I don't know. It's on Earth X Man Earth x TV. Do I
have anything else exciting? Oh, I've still got books, but I don't
have any time to draw on them. Oh no, you know what,
I got like five or six books. You're already drew and if you want
to buy a book, off me fifty five bucks with the drawing or just
twenty five bucks without a drawing, but I'll sign it for you and throw
some stickers in there and what the ship. So anyway, just email me
if you want to. I don't fucking all right, I'm done. That's
all I got. Go fund yourself. I hopefully hopefully you got something out
of the have a good rest of the evening, morning, afternoon, whatever
the fuck they back