The Hipster Handbook describes Wicker Park as the hippest neighborhood in Chicago. This means I should not be living here, since I am quantifiably not a Hipster, according to their online inventory. That’s fine with me; I take it as a point of pride that I’m not “deck” enough to be a Hipster. However, just last night Aden and I were discussing how the Hipster taxonomy, while mostly accurate, doesn’t really adhere too well in these parts since deck and fin never really caught on in our vernacular.

“I look forward to living with your CD collection. And your corpus, of course.”

In my new room, I found the following items left behind by the previous occupant:

an old computer monitor
a decomposing wooden dresser
two sections of a swank loveseat sectional
a twin mattress
various lids for absent containers
a toolbox
an ironing board
two postcards with German on them
approx. 10 feet of clear plastic tubing
a navy blue visor that says, “World Anti-Doping Agency”

All items are free to the first comers. Except maybe the visor. And the ironing board and the toolbox. We need those for ironing and tooling, respecitvely.

“Bjork is so weird, and hot.”

The bedroom-painting project will commence soon, whenever I get off my ass and go down to my car to retrieve the paint. Originally I wanted to paint it the same shade of blue that Yves Klein invented, but I’m sure I’m not the first person to do that, especially not in Wicker Park. Besides, the actual pigment can only be found in Paris. So I went with a shade that is very close, called Deep Water. As in, I’m getting myself into some Deep Water by moving to Chicago without a job.

“I’m going to go get naked with myself in the shower.”

All in all, it was a good evening. We ended up at Graver’s, drinking rye and listening to Yes’ Tales From Topographic Oceans, which actually makes for some pretty good, trippy after-hours music. Yet another reason why I am not deck.