i had a conversation with a friend of mine this morning that has been sitting with me all day. we talked about my big move to chicago and what that's going to look like: the people i'm going to meet, the places i'm going to go and the things i'm going to do. i've talked about it before, but although i know that moving doesn't make me a new person, i can't help but feel like does. i feel a shift in my energy when i think about my new home, like a bubbliness that feels like glitter has exploded in my abdomen. it feels like i'm going on first date with someone i've been talking to for months and i'm at the point where i'm counting down the days until its time. and see, i'm the planner of my friend group, so figuring things out is kind of  "my thing". i'm the person who is writing up an itinerary for a three-day trip. i'm the person with a list of places to go broken down by cost, each person's interest, and how relatively close they are to other things we can do. i'm the person who always knows what is going on for the week, who's going to be there, and what the vibes are. or moreover, i'm the person who can always find this information out relatively quickly, so people usually look to me to figure out what they wanna do. 

however, when i think about all the things i want to do when i move, i feel a bit stuck because my life in the small town i'm currently in was consumed by partying and drinking and socialization. all of which has been killed by covid to some extent. now, obviously, covid has killed any large, gathering/party-type scenario. however, during isolation, i still found ways to socialize and drink in my little quarantine bubble of a few close friends. we would drink and sit across from each other in a huge parking lot, yelling from across the concrete. we'd go on socially distanced walks and dance parties. we played drinking games and watch movies over zoom. i even threw my friend a socially distanced birthday party and set a cake on her doorstep and blasted music on a speaker from across her yard. my idea behind the sort of things i planned for my friend group sort of revolved around me really thinking about the things i wanted to do with my friends vs. things i felt like i had to do because they were familiar to us as a group - namely involving the drinking.

often, our friend group hung out at bars. we'd go to a concert karaoke, or trivia night or salsa night or any of the "nights" that had been planned for the week at the bar. every few hours, i'd get sent a facebook invite from someone to some event that would mentally compartmentalize for my friend group to go to when the time came. we drank, partied it up and had a great time, but this is namely because that's all there is to do in the small town we were in. there were no museums or fancy, fun restaurants or small businesses and shops to visit. we had one and a half movie theaters (one that showed indie classics a few times a month and one that showed everything else). we had one mall with only between 5-7 operating stores. we had a bunch of local restaurants and stuff like a dennys and a steak n' shake. however, the biggest thing out small town was known for were its bars and the wide variety of them that we had.

we had a indie hipster bar where local bands played and you could order fancy, local IPAs and smoke on the patio and get hit on my creepy townies. we had two gross local, dive bars where you'd probably be able to find meth more easily than most places. we had a two actual clubs where you could order and drink complete bottles of wine on the dance floor. we had a country bar. a gay bar. a bar that only sororities and frat bros went to. and going to those bars were just about the only things that my friends and i used to do before the pandemic hit because if we wanted to do anything else, we'd have to leave town to do it and in order to leave town, it required a lot more planning than any of us wanted to put the energy into, so, instead, we sat at home and we drank.

and that was before things got bad. now, i personally can't remember the last time i had a drink. actually, that's a lie. i think the last drink i had was last year during an online movie night i had with some of my friends whom i hadn't spoken to in a while. we always talked about drinking and going to bars, but unlike with my current friend group, we had never done that. so, i had the idea to crack open a drink and watch a movie with them, but, hours later, my drink sat across from me open and warm and half-full and i didn't really care about it. however, as i stared at the open container across from me and the smiles on my friends faces as we goofed off online, i really thought "huh, that's weird" because it made feel weird that i was having a good time with other people and not necessarily having to drink.

now, this is not to say that i feel the need to drink when i am with other people because i don't. i can operate quite normally around others without drinking. however, because i liked hanging out with people and going out, drinking was normally apart of the equation - that drinking was a part of the entire function of "going out." however, this time, i was in my house, in my pjs and cuddled up next to my laptop, so it felt weird to be applying this "going out" mindset from the comfort of my bed, but here i was, trying to do it and, like i said, it made me feel weird, so i stopped drinking.

and i haven't really even thought about drinking as much until the idea of the world opening back up and getting out of this small town kind of hit me - because its one thing if drinking seems to be the only thing to do and everyone is doing it, and its another thing where i have a choice to do other things and i choose to have a drink because it's what i want to do. however, after my friend asked me about all the things i planned to do when i moved to the city, it got me wondering, do i want to drink in the future? am i into drinking more than i thought i was? and is this going to be a problem for me?

now, i don't want to call myself an alcoholic because i don't think that i am. for a long time, i thought maybe i had a bit of a problem because i felt myself having the need to drink few days, but a lot of that didn't stem from a problem with me internally as much as it was a fear of missing out and a fear of being judged by others. coming from a college town that is known for its bars and drinking culture, i think a lot of what drove me to drink so heavily was this idea that if didn't, i was boring. there were these judgements that i felt other people were having about me and thus, me placing on myself because this idea of not drinking made me feel even weirder about being around people who were - like i felt like "am i even supposed to be here right now if i'm not drinking?"

 the way that alcohol sort of became present in my life was like the way a food truck appears - you never know when it is going to be there, but when you notice it, you get excited and partake because "HELLO ITS A FOOD TRUCK." however, when its happening so often, it does start to take a toll on you - you get bored and uninterested and want to try new things, but what can you do when there's nothing else to do and, again, everyone else is doing it?

and so i found myself at a crossroads - do i drink? or do i not drink? do i have a problem? or is this normal and manageable? what don't i like about myself when i drink? what do i like about myself when i drink? what do i like about myself when i'm sober? what don't i like about myself when i'm sober?

obviously, a lot of my drinking was also a crutch because i did have some emotional problems that drinking sort of helped me cope with in a weird way - which that's just plain old substance abuse. and this isn't to say that i wasn't acting out in other ways like with overspending and casual sex because i definitely was. however, specifically when i drank, it felt different because it was so normalized in the setting i was in and the folks i surrounded myself with who went a lot harder at drinking than i did. however, during quarantine, i was forced to kind of look myself in the mirror and sort of face those issues head on because i was alone in my space and drinking couldn't absolve me from that, so i absolved myself from drinking until i could figure somethings out about myself.

as of right now, i don't know how i feel about drinking. i think there's more than just "people that drink" and "those that don't." there are obviously those who drink casually and those who drink socially and those that maybe just have a glass of wine at dinner for their health. i'm obviously not all around mentally well, but i am a bit better because i've started to address some of my own internal demons about drinking and my insecurities that i used to try to just drink to avoid. i am a bit scared to think about going back out into the world and how heavily people i know will jump back into the sort of habits i've started to try to wean myself off of slowly. this isn't to say that i'm never going to drink again because i don't think that's true - i probably will. 

i'm 23 and messy and gross and will continue to be that way for a while (maybe 'till i'm like 35). there are somethings i enjoy about going to a bar and listening to music with friends or going to a restaurant and drinking margaritas with friends. there's something so just great about that whole social experience of being out - not that there necessarily needs to be alcohol involved, but at least now, i can go ahead and check in with myself to see when and how i feel about it.

someone recently came over to my apartment and we ate food. it was good food, but at some point, they asked me i had some ketchup they could use. i, being the lovely host that i am, got up and searched my fridge, cabinets and just about all over my kitchen for ketchup. but, unfortunately, i did not have any.

and while they were truly astonished that i did not own any ketchup because of the mere principle of the situation, it confused me as well. not just because i deliberately remember buying ketchup a few weeks ago because my roommate asked me to, but because i couldn't quite remember the last time i actively put ketchup on anything or moreover, even enjoyed it as a condiment.

then i remembered: oh, i'm from chicago. 

so before we continue, i would like to say that: i am actually from chicago. i was born in the city of chicago. i will not be providing my birth certificate for legal reasons, but just know: i am not from rosemont or schaumberg, or elmhurst or naperville (god, fuck naperville) or whatever chicagoland suburb that most people like to pretend they're not from when people want to know about chicago.  

i know this is such a simple dichotomy, but its an important one. riding the green/blue line into the city every weekend from the suburbs does not mean you are "from chicago." knowing where maxwell's is does not mean you are "from chicago." however, if you have  survived a trip to the harold's on 87th street and also, at some point, had someone expose themselves on the cta, i will consider your case. personally, i have not lived in chicago for some time, but i will forever be indebted to my birthplace for the things that are associated with it and thus, me as a result.

i never really knew that wherever you are from really crafted your identity and the way that people see you. that is,  however until, i moved away from my birthplace and had to tell other people about it.when people hear that i am "from chicago", they begin to associate various things with me. whether it be the food, da bears, lori lightfood or moreover, the crime, it either makes people very curious or very concerned for me. this is not the same for who live in the "chicagoland" area, or moreover, the suburbs, because don't have to deal with these sorts of things where they're from. they can simply take the metra or the cta and just get safely back home until they want to come back into the city once things have died down.

however, regardless of where you are from, everyone in or around the chicagoland knows this: never, ever, ever put ketchup on your hot dog. 

moreover, when you google the words "chicago", "hot dog" and "ketchup", one of the questions that appear under the "people also frequently ask" section  of google includes "is ketchup illegal in chicago?

of course, it is not illegal to eat ketchup in chicago. refusing to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic is not illegal in chicago. wearing those disgusting foot shoes in public is also not illegal in chicago.

but should they be?  

absolutely. 

but will people do whatever they want as long as they won't get arrested for it?

they sure will. 

therefore, you can go ahead and eat ketchup on a hot dog, but does that make it okay?

well, that depends on who you ask. i don't actually know because i truly have never given it that much thought, but, let's take a walk to figure out what the hell is going on together.

so, there could be a number of reasons why a city is just across-the-board against a simple condiment, like ketchup. it could be just mere taste. is could also be pride because there is such thing as the "chicago style hot dog." it could also be fear from the kind of citywide gate-keeping that keeps people from wheaton from going around and telling people that they're "from chicago."

so i decided to do the thing i know best and... ask the internet. 

i put up a poll on instagram and many people from the city had things to say about their feelings on ketchup. these responses ranged from "it's just not right" to "it's childish. grow up" to various "scientific" explanations on its properties as a condiment and how it affects the other things on the hot dog itself. while i didn't ask for all of this, it is interesting to think about if we consider all that comes on the aforementioned "chicago style hot dog." so, if we break down the chicago dog, it consists of the following:

• yellow mustard
• white onion
• sliced tomatoes
  
•  dill pickles
  
• green relish
  
• celery salt 
• the dog itself
  

from the responses in my inbox, the reason that ketchup is not on this list is because it is far too sweet and messes up the sort of acidic combination that chicago dog has going on with mustard, pickles, relish and so forth. 

someone also mentioned the redundancy of adding ketchup to a chicago dog because there is "a whole damn tomato" already on the hot dog, which i get, but i also don't get it because ketchup and tomatoes taste hella different, but i digress. 

the last point that i will bring up is that some people truly believe that it is childish to put ketchup on a hot dog. see, while i find it to be childish to believe that ketchup and tomatoes are the same thing, (just because they really aren't. i really don't know how else to explain this) i personally do not fully believe that ketchup itself is childish. do children consume it? yes. do full grown adults also consume it? yes, absolutely. but again, does that make it right? again, depends on who you ask.

for the most part, ketchup is considered childish because kids put it on everything. for the life of me, i will never understand why kids put ketchup on chicken nuggets. they cover their food in the mess and it's weird, but, again, i digress. the point i am trying to make here is that kids cover their foods in condiments so that they can't really taste what they're supposed to be eating and with this in mind, if you decide that this is what you want to do, you are essentially just being a big ass kid.

now, with all this in mind, i will say to say that everyone from chicago hates ketchup because that would be a lie. do a majority of people from chicago actively hate ketchup? yes, they do. do i personally walk around chicago fearful that someone will snatch my food out of my hands if they see me with ketchup on my hot dog? absolutely, because they will. will you piss some people off if you, too, walk around with ketchup on your own hot dog? yes, you will. 

 

and if you think that i am wrong, please visit exihbit a:

 

but at the end of the day. just do whatever you want. a place is just a place. a hot dog is simply a hot dog. if you want to take the extra precautions and eat a hot dog secretly in an alleyway because you're afraid of being chastised, go ahead. if you want open have people scowl at you while you eat a mess of a hot dog in public, be my guest. if you want to a 35 minute conversation with a stranger and explain to them that you don't actually live in chicago, but rather, 20 miles away in a town no one has ever heard of, that is fine as well.

 

 i don't even eat hot dogs of any kind. i personally think that all kinds of hot dogs are actually just kind of gross anyways. they're literally mashed up parts of random animals and moreover, the shape of a hot dog is just weird. that's the real problem if you ask me, but, then again, you probably didn't.