Thinkin' of U, Chicago

So last time I left off I think I was talking about Chicago and some of my thoughts on it. Maybe this blog will be called "Thinkin' of U Chicago" or something kinda gay and artsily titled because that's kinda how Chicago was, Gay and Artsy and just full of great stuff and stuff I didn't like and gosh it's so easy to make comparisons, but let's start by talking about how easy it was to DRINK there.

Fun fact: Chicago is basically synonymous with Al Capone, a prohibition-era gangster who liked to shoot a Tommy gun and wear striped suits and kept the streets of Chicago flowing with liquor and violence, along with consummate corruption. He apparently had a safe underneath the city that contained his secrets which Geraldo decided to blow up sometime in the early 80's, creating a big fat red herring of a moment when he left everyone to wonder if we could ever trust the news media ever again. 

FAST FORWARD: It is the 2000's and you now have a city steeped firmly in a strong history of alcohol; when I moved to Chicago in 2009 it was rated as the 10th drunkest city per capita, and the drunkest "Big City". In Chicago, you can drink pretty much anywhere at any hour, legally. Summertime, the laws become even more lax, as street parties become rampant and the cops seem to be only present only when things truly seem on the precipice of getting out of hand. I moved to Chicago where, by Chicago standards, I would be considered a teetotaller: I drank at most once or twice a week. It was very hard to keep those kind of standards in a city where 5 a.m bars were in every neighborhood, premium imported and domestic draughts could be found for 2 dollar specials everywhere, and pretty much everyone I knew loved to drink. It was like living in a city of alcoholics who had found their perfect city. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't think everyone in Chicago is an alcoholic, it's just that the ease of availability of cheap booze 24/7 and a superb public transportation system made it very appealing to go out and get drunk A LOT more than I ever wanted to. But shit, it was a ton of fun.

And that's what is great about Chicago: it is a FUN city. A million things to do every night!  And it's all within 5 miles of you. The only problem is for about 4-5 months of the year you don't want to go out; the wind whips around you like an annoying mosquito that won't quit and it is FUCKING COLD. Everyone is very connected to social media and it makes it very easy to find several things within your neighborhood to do, but the weather makes it very appealing to sit at home on your laptop and eat comfort food while you wonder how the fuck it got dark at 4:15 pm. 

Sometimes I don't think I really should have moved there. I visited once when I lived in Nashville (another not-so-smart place that I moved to on a whim) and decided it was better than living amongst honkey-tonks and rampant institutionalized racism, so I went. And it was really great for the first year or so, especially the first three months of Summer when I got to crash on a friend's couch and pretty much just party all summer long and live off of my savings I had made back in Tennessee. It was especially wonderful, too, because I had made pretty much zero friends in Nashville in a whole year and ended up making like 50 (or at least facebook friends) in Chicago in a matter of weeks. And that's when you begin to realize that Chicago is really just a largely populated city that begins to feel like a small town that is also drowning in booze. 

My first scene that I fell into was a group of friendly people that liked to drink and have bbqs and liked to have a fun time, but there was a certain shallowness I felt after repeated hangouts with the scene, so I branched out by deciding to go out on my own and try and meet some people. The first person I met unaffiliated with the aforementioned group (let's just call them the "late 20's hipster group") was a 19-year old kid with a fake ID I met dancing at Beauty Bar. He invited me back to his place and drink boxed Zinfandel while I lamented to him how the first girl I dated (from the late 20's hipster group) had gone completely bonkers on me and had started stalking me at a street festival. He lived in a big art gallery which was amazing to me since I was living on a dirty couch in a rat-infested box in Ukranian Village and I immediately assumed he was rich (he wasn't, he just had lucked across the deal of the century in terms of loft space). For whatever reason, he came out of the closet that night to me, which wasn't that big of a deal except he told me later that I was like the 2nd person he had ever formally admitted to being gay to, which made me feel pretty special and kinda felt like this secret bond we had in the ensuing months when I was going to art openings at his space. 

Anyway, through him I ended up meeting a whole ton of art students who drove me completely up the wall, but fortunately his roommate shared the same passion for art school-bashing and was older so we became bros for the summer. I remember that time being this weird combination of coming down from a lingering insomniatic depression (due to Nashville being such a horrible, horrible place for me to live), riding bikes, sweating through a lot of Hanes tank-tops, discovering lots of new places and becoming fully steeped in the Chicago Swagger and Attitude that permeates the pores of the city. 

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Chicago is filled with brick and its really brown and there's not a lot of nature. You kind of feel like you exist in a box inside a box inside an unfathomably large box. There's really no other way to describe it except for that it is crazy. It is nestled smack dab in the middle of the country, in the midwest, with no oceanic coast to be see for thousands of miles. There's something about that confining nature that keeps you a little bit more comfortable with going through the motions of the rat race and losing your ability to dream, but that could be a personal thing since, after all, Billy Corgan did come from there. And Wilco! And, I don't know, Tina Fey spent a lot of time there, along with pretty much any other famous, quick-witted comedian. 

And that is one of the things I loved the most about Chicago. People are so fucking fast in the way they think. And it's really just a survival mechanism you develop once you get there. Need to get across the street while a deluge of insane commuters are trying to beat the 5pm inner-city gridlock? THINK FAST! Need to figure out how to make it to your friend's sketch show in 15 minutes while you're riding your bike against traffic and you literally have no time to call, text or ask anyone for directions? THINK FAST! You learn pretty quickly how to make things happen. It really is the entire thesis of Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and the entire exegesis of improv rolled up and tucked into the city's entire ethos: You Don't Think, You Just Do. And it all somehow works. And you still are alive at the end of the day. 

The Battle for Getting People to Keep Reading Your Blog

by Lucas Bradley-Kelly | 5839485 Comments | Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Myspace, Geocities.com and also check out my Webinar on "Top 10 Funniest Blogs by a Young Boy who Writes Inside a Shoe"

Getting people to read your blog is hard. "Look at me, look at me, look at me" you say. "I'm a human meme" you moan.

Well, chump, it takes work, diligence, and perseverance. I've included a hyperlink to the word perseverance, which I've also spelled wrong because I wrote this blog is such a great haste and look I just wrote "is" instead of "in".

Transitionary Bold Statement.

Anyway, It begins with showing interest in others and providing quality content that people want to read. Check your sarcasm at the door, because this is the blog game, son. It requires you to care more about others than yourself and to show up to do the work, but not necessarily in a work environment, because you can do that IN THE REAL FRIGGIN' WORLD.

Why are you sobbing.

In light of everything, all of this is the easy part.

Photo credit: Mo Riza (Creative Commons)

A picture of a woman about to be smashed in the face with a burrito from a speeding train.

Hey, then, how do you get people to keep reading your blog?

That, my little hamster, is the real question.

Getting People to Stay at Your Blog

First, if people refuse to look at your blog, you must offer to fight them. The online world is only as good as a gentleman's word and a gentleman's word typically contains great myriads of violence.

And a voice that must be all your own.

In many ways, social media has trained us to have shorter attention spa

Look, cats.

So, once you get people to read your blog (and not just scan it or maybe even duplicate it), you have to fight to keep them. With punches!

Here are a few tips that might help:

Give your blog a sassy brand and good design

If you are marketing this blog towards children, it probably would not be a good idea to have your "blog friends" sidebar link to include "depressedpenises.com".

It’s worth your time to sit down and figure out the brand of your blog. Here I've included some underlining and a broken hyperlink. Once you do that, you’ll need a good-looking set of hooters, woops I mean "Homepages" to direct blog traffic your way.

What are Homepages?

Ha. That's a good question. Wait, just kidding. That was a dumb question

Make sure human eyeballs are reading your blog

This means that you should count the number of eyeballs by multiplying the number of homepage visits via your "Googlesenses" by the number of eyes most normal human beings have. Which I believe is 1.7.

In this crazy age of robots and cyborgs, wizards and warlocks, vandals and vagrants, who knows who (or what) is actually reading your blog (or even WHY?).

Don't Trust Your Stats

In this day in age of Moneyball (The Movie), Japanese Robot Servants and Really Quickly Produced Tacos, who knows what you can and can't trust? Read a book, ever? The pages, which can usually be found in the upper lefthand or upper righthand corner, are merely "stats", and just as easily can be manipulated by your fingers just as can your "Googlesense" be. 

A statistic is typically a number. Don't trust numbers. We are writers, not numerologists.

Create a strategy

You need a plan to attract people to your blog, almost to a sexual level, and to keep them coming back. This strategy should include positioning (not sexually, joker), quality content, and incentives to continue reading because without this, there is nothing.

In the case of MY blog, I chose a particular voice and topic and tried to deliver the best articles possible on a daily basis.

Whatever you do, you need to be intentional. Call it a plan or a rough strategy; just know where you’re going and why.

When in doubt, write for humans (not search engines). Your words are for people. When you serve them first, the search engines (and cyborgs) will take notice.

A cyborg found my blog, oh no!

The bottom line: Be yourself. Create a blog that has many links. Destroy all humans. That wasn't me, that was a robot. Serve your country. That was me. Diversify your blog output. That was the robot again. Kill all machines. That was the robot malfunctioning. There is hidden meaning inside of all blogs. Learn to use it wisely. Don't stop. Believe. Breathe.

Just. Breathe.

Moving to LA: The Need for Speed

    I arrived here with 2 suitcases (actually one suitcase and a slightly torn Europack which is literally on its last stitches). LAX felt familiar, the long walkway into the baggage claim slightly fluorescent, people walking at various speeds towards men in hats holding signs that said things like "Tarintino" (I'm not making this up, the last time I flew in there was a limo driver ostensibly waiting for Quentin Tarintino) and "Molshkevik". My new roommate, Greg Ryan, arrived on time to pick me up in his new used, rust-colored CRV. By the way, if the way people are known to drive in LA is any indication of the general population's mental state, then they are, indeed, all lunatics. I grabbed my bags from the conveyor belt and tried to look like someone famous in a hurry because it's kind of fun to trick people into thinking that you are famous and hopped in his car. I eagerly rolled down the window and Greg rolled it up because he's Greg and this weather feels like paradise to me now but to most Angelino's it is cold (it is not cold). Greg is my new roommate and I have just landed in the city of opportunity, dreamers, runaways, celebs, bottom-feeders, bombshells and some of the tannest looking homeless people I've seen in my life. At the first stop light we hit, a giant rat runs in front of our car but it's not actually a rat its a possum and we both comment on how we haven't seen a possum in ages. I'm starving, so we try and Yelp some sort of Asian food, preferrably something that is Pho and, lo and behold, while we're lost on the long streets of LA a spot called "Pho Show" pops up. Perfect. We sit down and it tastes so good I feel like I'm finally "in LA" and Greg offers to buy my meal for me and nothing tastes better than free warm fish broth when you've just gotten off a flight.

    The next morning Greg has the day off, so we go out to the Hollywood Hills to purchase a Pioneer receiver from a young Iranian man who has a really nice house, except most of his furniture is oddly covered in giant, beige canvas drapes. On the way to the bathroom, I see an old man standing that looks like his dad in the kitchenette staring at me and I keep walking. We purchase the receiver, get lost while we're leaving and make it back to our apartment around sundown. My friend Collin, who I am replacing in the apartment because he got a movie job in China, arrives from his flight back from the Pacific NW and it's really good to see him since it's been almost a year and we slap each other on the backs and almost immediately start drinking Manhattans, almost ironically since that was the other place I was thinking of moving, and then Collin's friend Ben comes in to pick up a Jack LaLane juicer and we all mingle for a bit until we decide to go down to Silver Lake later. 

   Silver Lake is kind of far, I think (I'm still getting used to the sprawling geography) so we get a ride from Collin's apartment neighbor Bianca and meet up with my old neighbor Ely from Vancouver at our friend Jesse's bar called Bar Stella. Jesse has a beard now and is wearing a white tuxedo jacket and black tie and the whole place has a swank but relaxed vibe. There I am introduced to two friends named Sam and Sean which are the names of my brother and mother, respectively, except this Sam is a girl and Sean is a boy. They tell me I have a nice voice and I should go into voice-over work, which is very flattering and my first moment in LA where I'm like "I can do things in this town". Bar Stella closes at 12pm, which seems early to me, but I guess lots of things close early in this town so we move over to a bar next door which I recognize from my last trip as the bar where Collin and I talked to two porn stars for several hours and I even got a picture with the male porn star where we kind of look like brothers. There don't seem to be any porn stars in there at this time, but pretty much everyone I cumulatively have met in LA is there and it feels really good. Ely buys us all a shot and some of us start dancing and I feel instantly welcome. The bar closes and they let us linger a bit longer and then we drive back to North Hollywood and everyone crashes at our place. 

    The next day I'm slightly hung over and Collin and Jesse are operating on pretty much no sleep because I guess they stayed up all night talking and Collin still has to go get his Visa approved for his departure to China. Jesse leaves to go bartend a private event and Greg is at work, so I sort of slink around the apartment like a cat, napping in various corners. Collin comes back and tries to invite people to his final night in the city on Facebook and it takes him a long time because he has like a thousand friends and doesn't know who most of them are. When the time comes, we drive down to Hollywood and meet at The Blue Boar, a sort of English pub, and Collin's co-workers from Kitchen 24 arrive, which I find out is right across the street and is sort of like a swanky Denny's minus the charm of Denny's. In one corner of the pub is a game where you have to swing a ring suspended by a rope and try to land it on a hook. It's a lot harder than it looks and at the moment only one of our group has successfully landed the ring. I meet some more of Collin's friends and it's embarrassing because since I've been to LA I've had the worst indigestion and have been breaking wind at a rate of at least 50/hr and it's becoming increasingly detrimental to my social skills. Jesse shows up from his private bartending gig and shows us at least $100 of free booze that they gave him at the end of the night and we all decide to again head back to our apartment in NoHo for more after-hours socializing. One of Collin's friends Sunmi jumps on my computer and is on there for like an hour and then she passes out on the long couch so I end up sleeping on the short couch and wake up several hours later confused as to where I am.

    I'm even more hung-over than I was the previous day and spend most of the day trying to will the hangover away via Jedi mind tricks but nothing seems to work except the passage of time. Later that night we drive Collin to the airport and say our goodbyes and it all seems like it's happened so fast--me showing up, his short visit, the fond farewells--that I wish I had tried to move here earlier. We head back and I sleep in Collin's bed, which is now my bed, and I have some incredibly intense dreams about Chicago, they city I left behind. Since I've been here I haven't thought too much about Chicago because I wanted to leave really badly for so long and maybe that whole thought process is best reserved for another essay, but I can't really control my dreams so they stay. The next day I wake up and Greg is gone and I'm kind of at a loss what to do so I try and catch the Farmer's market down the street, but it is raining and I miss it by like 20 minutes. I do a giant circle around my neighborhood and there is a huge LED sign that says "I'VE GOT THE NEED...THE NEED FOR SPEED" and it just seems like a very LA moment, this giant digital edifice cropping out the horizon with the tagline from Top Gun. I walk past some car dealerships and decide to turn around because it feels like I've gone too far since there seems to be less interesting stuff the further north that I walk.

   I've forgotten to mention that pretty much the entire week I've spent in LA it has been raining and I was looking at the weather in Chicago and for some reason there was a weird December heatwave and it was like 70 degrees and sunny for a few days, but at least there are hills and palm trees here and a lack of insanity-inducing wind gusts. The next few days I explore my neighborhood more and purchase goods that I didn't have enough room to take on the plane and procrastinate looking for jobs. All of my acquaintences are busy at the moment and the weather is kind of not great anyway so it feels okay. There are a lot of pretty girls in North Hollywood and LA in general but so far I haven't really talked with any of them, which is all right since I want to focus on other things like finding an income, playing music, writing and just meeting good new people and not getting distracted by all the beauty that passes me by. 

   Ben, Collin's friend who picked up the Jack LaLane juicer, comes over to pick up the rest of Collin's things and put them in his closet for storage and Greg and I help him out and in exchange he gives Greg an office chair. Ben is a solidly built, huge guy with a huge personality and seemingly endless reserves of energy and is extremely personable. He bartends down in Encino at Tony Roma's where Kareem Abdul Jabaar is a regular, his giant knees peaking over from behind the tables as he orders probably a large quantity of food. I mention to Ben that I took improv classes in Chicago since I overheard the other night he was taking classes at Upright Citizen's Brigade and he invites us to a show immediately that night. Greg misses the show because he's stuck in traffic trying to buy a turntable off of Craigslist (to compliment his Pioneer receiver, which by the way is the EXACT same receiver my parents had when I was a kid) so Ben picks me up and he shows me how he memorized the entire Aesop Rock verse for "None Shall Pass" and that practicing it has helped his diction out considerably. I tell him how I was practicing freestyle rapping a week before I left Chicago and it has helped out my improv skills and the rest of the week we pretty much go see a show every night and he becomes my new best friend in Chicago and I become his de facto replacement for Collin.

   One night we go to do karaoke at a tiki bar down the street and we walk into the middle of a karaoke contest where the winner receives a grand prize of $100. A girl sings an AC/DC song and hits the notes pretty well and even does a full Angus Young duckwalk down a row of tables and she wins the hundred dollars, which inspires me to start practicing my karaoke staples in the shower the rest of the week. The next night we try and go to a show at UCB but it is sold out so we go down the street to Improv Olympics and I meet my first "celebrity", a guy who has been on the show Community several times. He seems pretty nice and talks about wanting to lose weight because he doesn't want to be cast as the "fat guy" anymore and it is a conversation I can't really relate to at all because I have the metabolism of a goose on methamphetamine but I recommend to him listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, which most recently deals with comedians getting into shape. We watch an all-female show and then an 8-person team that hands out free cookies and hot dogs before their performance. There are a lot of people from Chicago milling about before and after the show, since that's where IO got it's start, and it seems familiar and like home but I'm also slightly turned off by being around it. 

   Sidenote: A few things about LA: now that the rain has passed the weather IS truly amazing. It's been an average of 70 degrees and apparently it stays like that throughout the year. On top of that, the air is fairly still, so there's none of that mercurial wind that swoops your hair around like a nattering typhoon like in Chicago. As far as people here go, I haven't noticed anything remarkably different from Chicago except that there are a LOT of attractive people here, men and women. For an aesthete, it's somewhat nice seeing attractive faces everywhere you go, and I admit I am a bit vain so it's something that is somewhat soothing. It seems a little bit more earthy/spiritual down here, too. I just found out last night that the giant, space-agey building down the street from me is actually a Scientology center, which is kind of hilarious/frightening since I didn't really think stuff like that existed but it's all over the place here. So far I've been able to navigate a limited portion of LA without owning a car, mostly thanks to generous ride-offers and a not-too-shabby subway system, but I'm still wondering if I will have to make the plunge and go back to owning a car or if I can really make it happen here sans a 4-wheeled gas guzzler. Did I mention the weather here is awesome? It's like not frightening to leave my apartment in winter, in fact it feels exciting, like a personal treat that almost nobody else in America gets to enjoy. I never have to ask anyone how cold it is outside and I came almost at the exact perfect time, except that all the medical marijuana dispensaries are being shut down and all male porn stars are required to wear condoms, but just like anything in LA, those guidelines feel relaxed and bound to be reversed. 

   Anyway, I'm here and I've found a coffee shop down the street that sells ridiculously overrpiced, albeit delicious, pastries and plays pretty crappy music, but it's pretty much the only place to sit down and write that has free wifi (although it is only dispensed in 60 minute increments). Everyone behind the counter looks cleancut and there's a canopied outside seating section which is rare for a coffee shop, but there's plenty of dudes with beards and Macbook's with various stickers advertising various brands. The sun sets around 5pm, but until then it shines bright and beautiful, and sunglasses are mandatory until you hit a dark shaded area. I'm in LA. I'm writing. And that feels good.

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