One Winter Since Rat Hole: How I’m Managing

Not Great.

It’s been a bit over a year since the imprint of a rat in the concrete shook the whole city of Chicago by the shoulders and said “Remember who you are!!!” People came to pay respects, Pay Respect, and I think a lovey pair even got married there? Party goers had a new hot destination, and transplant influencers were almost on it like Trivoli Tavern. In fact, Chicagoans were so bemused that celebrations of the funky fossil were shut down for being too damn fun. Soon to follow, Chi-towners would wake their sleepy-awesome heads to the somber news that the city actually filled the Hans Solo Rat Spot, aka “Rat Hole;” it was time to move on.

Chicagoans, almost like Philidelphians (ehh…not quite…Philly, you’re a certain special), often get in trouble for having too much fun. It’s tricky, how to let go of something so silly, so uncontroversial, so instantaneously classic. Rat Hole–you were our community’s connective tissue for a moment. And what if you were still here? Would there be Rat Hole Hot Dogs? The Annual Rat Hole Parade? A small new Rat Hole Museum on the corner of Roscoe Village that somehow also wrapped Abe Lincoln into the picture?

Humans are funny creatures. I’ve been managing okay–I’m single now, I live in a new part of town, and everything is new, with all the good and bad that that comes with. But I wonder, since then, have we forgotten how to have a little fun? I believe we’ve been preoccupied by the current circumstances of our society, our increasingly authoritarian situation of which we are subjugated. I am also aware of the new found springtime, and the birds this year are especially vocal.They can fill Rat Hole, but they can never rid the city of its spirit. And if my bird translations are correct, I’m pretty sure they told me to throw a Rat Hole Parade.