On 10 things I see every morning

Foster Beach, Chicago, looking north

Every morning I get up at about six o’clock and go for a fast four-mile walk. I live less than a mile from Lake Michigan, in a vibrant part of Chicago’s north-side, and there are ten things I see on my route which are daily reminders of why this is such a great place to live:

1.  The Nicholas Senn high school, a huge and impressive building built in the classical style, with columns, pediments, pilasters, and so on.
2. The Indian ladies in their brilliantly coloured saris, sitting on the grass by the running path on the lakefront gently rolling their shoulders around and stretching their arms while the young people race by on their bikes or in their expensive running shoes.
3. The three old Asian women doing Tai Chi towards the rising sun.
4. The group of fit women doing group yoga at the lake’s edge on Foster beach.
5. The young guys playing basketball on the cement court next to the beach.
6. The Chicago-Tibetan Friendship Centre.
7. Big Chicks, one of Chicago’s best-known lesbian (and gay) bars.
8. The scores of Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodian businesses squeezed into two blocks of Argyle Street (known as “Little Vietnam”), and the old Asian guys squatting in doorways, smoking and chatting before they start their day’s work.
9. The bare-footed, shaven-headed Buddhist monks in their bright orange robes walking up Broadway Avenue, on their way to or from the several Cambodian temples in the neighbourhood.
10. The Essanay building, now a school, but a century ago a movie studio for whom Charlie Chaplin briefly worked.

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