Chicago Magic

After almost four years in Chicago, I'm getting ready to take myself back to the west coast. How do you say goodbye to a whole city? The City of Layered Clothing. The City of Mind Your Own Business. The City of Get Used To It.
-- Nomy Lamm

In the September/October issue of Punk Planet, Nomy Lamm shares a personal Top Ten Most Magical Places in Chicago.

10. The Music Box Theater
Goodbye to the too-small theater seats, the red velvet curtains and gold detailing, the live organist, the pinlight stars and the projections of clouds that drift across the ceiling. For all its decadence, somehow it always feels kind of stifled and unsure of itself. Maybe I have high standards when it comes to turn-of-the-century vaudeville theaters, but how can a 100-year-old haunted movie theater survive in a neighborhood full of yuppies?

I never saw or felt the ghost of the old proprietor but I took comfort in the legend of his presence, and imagined he was wringing his hands at the hoards of blond ponytails, and feeling relieved at an accordian-playing freak (me) moving in downstairs from the palm reader across the street.

I hate to see anyone who really gets our city leave it, but I feel certain that Lamm will spread the gospel of Chicago:

I believe in what I can feel, sense and experience. This reality is so often discounted, by ourselves, by television, by friends and family, by teachers, by... by...

Goodbye Chicago. I believe in you.