All this Wrigley whining an unnecessary reminder
As most of you already have determined, I’m a wimp.
The dead giveaway was that I grew up on the North Side of Chicago instead of the South Side.
What I don’t need is to be reminded of my wimpery every time Tom Tunney, the alderman of the ward that includes Wrigleyville, complains about something involving the proposed Wrigley Field renovation.
Tunney reportedly did it again Wednesday and can’t seem to help himself.
Seriously, on the North Side we could take care of ourselves and fight our fights and even hold our own in the military. What we couldn’t do was live up to the standard of toughness established by guys who grew up south of Madison Street.
That inferiority complex hangs over my head. No matter how nasty I thought my guys could be, the perception was that South Siders could be nastier.
Fast forward to a couple of issues that Tunney and some of his Wrigleyville constituents oppose: Night games and fireworks.
You know, things that for generations have been a way of life for next-door neighbors of the White Sox in Bridgeport.
When I go to a Sox game I get off the Ryan, head west on 31st Street and turn down a side street toward Comiskey Park. All the while I’m wondering why people there don’t whine about living near Sox games like people whine about living near Cubs games.
Along my route to Comiskey the locals live, work and play around the ballpark. Now get this: None of them appears to be terrorized and traumatized from residing there.
I try not to get too close to them because, as I said, they grew up tougher than I did with more tattoos and motorcycle jackets and chest hairs.
Those are the women, by the way.
The North Side has closed the gap in those areas since I wimped and limped out to the suburbs, but a gap does still exist.
How do I know? Because while I do try to keep my distance there hardly ever is a report out of Bridgeport that sounds like an alderman sniffling over too many night games, an exploding scoreboard or drunken visitors.
OK, so we’re talking South Side stereotypes here, but they aren’t stereotypes if they’re true any more than I’m not paranoid if everyone really is out to get me.
You know what I mean?
Anyway, Bridgeport folks don’t go off crying to politicians about minor inconveniences like night games. That’s right, minor inconveniences. On a topic like this it sure seems that a North Sider’s extreme hardship is a South Sider’s minor inconvenience.
Every time Tunney speaks I think of my old neighborhood in Logan Square. We had guys nicknamed Lefty and Cockeye and some great athletes toughened by a blue-collar upbringing.
But in the back my mind I always knew our place. It wasn’t the South Side, which I envisioned as a badlands populated with people you didn’t want to mess with.
I’m spilling my guts over this because whenever I start forgetting what a relative wimp I am, complaints coming out of Wrigleyville about the size of advertising signage remind me.
My problem is that I sympathize with Tunney’s concerns. I wouldn’t want to live near where fireworks celebrate a home run while I’m trying to concentrate on knitting mittens for neighborhood kittens.
Bridgeport people probably smirk, snicker and snarl every time Wrigleyville people’s alderman makes another hollow threat.
When, that is, those same South Siders aren’t just flat-out laughing at North Siders.