A colorful weekend ride to Sox Park
I saw a few interesting sights Saturday on my way from Morse to the Sox/35th to watch the second game of the weekend sweep/spanking the White Sox put on the Detroit Tigers. And encountered lots of slow zones and the train backing up at Addison to switch tracks.
First, a 30-ish guy with a shaved head boards at Loyola wearing a black T-shirt saying:
SEX is not the answer
Sex is the question
YES is the answer
All-righty then.
Then a petite woman in her early 20s enters at Granville, wearing Sox regalia from head to toe, including a Bobby Jenks jersey over a World Series T-shirt. She was reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." If you hadn't heard, this year is the 100th anniversary of its first printing. Do you think Sox fans are more literate than Cubs fans?
At Bryn Mawr, a 20-something woman (in accompanying photo) sits down with her martial arts stick. (Sorry, I don't know what it's called. Help me out here guys.) Some guy next to her was peppering her with questions about it, and ended up trying to get her to accept Jesus as her personal savior.
After she left, a large man sat next to the same guy, and the Jesus guy starts some inane banter with him. Except Jesus guy had to exit at the next stop in the Loop. So he left him with a three-page treatise about making Jesus your personal savior.
Finally, at Madison, a transvestite in her late-50s boards wearing a lovely white skirt with a White Sox blouse. S/he wears a jaunty White Sox cap on her huge head. The nearby suburban parents pulled their children away from her.
The Sox won 4-3 on four unearned runs after three Tiger errors. Good times.
The Red Line is always a "special" ride, it seems. My partner and I made a brief hop from Berwyn to Granville on Saturday night and were entertained the whole way by the large, belligerent woman who was blocking the doors with her baby stroller and talking loudly about how everyone had better "shut the f**k up", punctuated by the periodic mumble of, "Damn right, you better not talk to me!" The few passengers seated anywhere near her studiuosly ignored her, of course. We squeezed past her at Granville, and she was still railing at her unappreciative audience as the doors closed and the train departed.
Posted by: Tom Brady | August 14, 2006 at 09:17 AM
The answer is yes - Sox fans are more literate. I'm the girl who reads the New Yorker on the fan deck.
Saturday was too much fun - oh please let the rest of the season be like this.
Posted by: Amy | August 14, 2006 at 10:05 AM
Looks like a bo staff, maybe a jo staff, but it looks too tall for a jo.
http://www.imperialweapons.com/oriental/weapons/06bojo.html
Definitely not escrima sticks, as those are usually in pairs and carried in a bag.
http://www.imperialweapons.com/oriental/weapons/07escrima.html
Oh, and as another Sox fan, I'd just like to throw my hat into the "Sox fans are more educated" ring. I can often have discussions with anyone in my section about which relievers have a better WHIP, yet all the Cubs fans I know are too busy betting on whether the ball thrown at the end of the inning towards the mound will land on the grass or the dirt.
Posted by: Flynn | August 14, 2006 at 12:49 PM
I don't know about the literate-Sox fan question. I'm a Yankees fan, so I'm not part of the equation, but on average I would say that the Sox fans that we're discussing are an aberration of Sox Nation. I would venture that on average, Cubs fans are more literate than Sox fans. Or maybe I should say that I've met more literate Cubs fans than I have Sox fans. Just my opinion.
Posted by: CoolHand | August 14, 2006 at 05:24 PM
Unless you're working under the false notion that a college degree and pale complexion confers a notion of literacy to its beholder, White Sox fans are more literate than Cubs fans.
Posted by: felix heredia | August 15, 2006 at 10:25 AM
Donatello, DUH!
Posted by: tom sherman | August 15, 2006 at 01:34 PM
Are the literate sox fans the ones that also magically reappeared last year?
Posted by: Joe Blow | August 15, 2006 at 10:39 PM
I was at the game Monday night against KC. Good times then, too. For the record, the four of us in my little group are a librarian, a systems administrator, an editor for an educational publishing company, and a paralegal/indy filmmaker.
Posted by: Cheryl | August 16, 2006 at 12:19 PM
Three points on literacy:
1) University of Chicago vs. Northwestern University.
[insert flame war here]
2) Was at Comiskey on Monday. My crew (other than kids):
a lawyer, a nurse, a law school student, a teacher, a database administrator, and a college student.
3) I'd bet that since ticket prices are going up (after the WS win last year), the richer fans (and new, rather affluent fans) are going more often, while the old school fans are sticking to half-price Mondays.
Posted by: Erik | August 16, 2006 at 01:44 PM
Within 5 miles of Wrigley Field's zip code (60613) Google identifies 134 book stores and 35 libraries. Total book related facilities = 169
Within 5 miles of US Cellular Field's zip code (60616) Google identifies 105 book stores and 66 libraries. Total book related facilites = 171
If the number of book outlets is any indicator of the demand for books in a certain area, I'd say that it is damn near a tie, so stop baiting each other.
Posted by: Zeeck | August 16, 2006 at 04:51 PM