Connoisseur or Wino?

Alas, another gray day in Streeterville. At least it warmed up a little bit. Last I checked, it was 65 degrees under cloudy skies at the Mini. However, even as I write these words, the sun is attempting to break through and when I look out the windows on the 14th floor, Navy Pier and the Chicago Water Treatment Plant are bathed in late afternoon sunlight. There is hope for the morrow.

I was driving home from the Outpost in Back of the Yards today, and as I cruised down 47th Street in an Easterly direction, I noticed a man sitting on the sidewalk outside a tire store. He was the owner of a scraggly beard, and his clothes were worn and wrinkled and a bit on the dirty side. He was leaning against a fence and sipping wine from a bottle carefully enclosed in a paper bag. My immediate reaction was, "Oh Jesus. Here's this dude getting sloshed on the street in the middle of the afternoon." There are many terms we usually associate with such denizens, wino, drunk, low-life, sot, etc., etc., etc. I thought about Jethro Tull's Aqualung, "Aqualung my friend, don't you start away uneasy. You poor old drunken sot, it's only me....Sitting on a park bench. Eying little girls with bad intent...." All of these terms, images, judgements come easy from the comfort of one's car, leaving a full-time job, and commuting to a condo on the 14th floor, overlooking Lake Michigan.

Then I began to think, "What's so different about people I see in my neighborhood, or over on Rush Street, in the Viagra Triangle." On any given afternoon you can see people sitting on the sidewalks, albeit at tables placed on the sidewalks, drinking wine and watching the world go by. The gentlemen in these locales may not be "watching as the frilly panties run..." as our friend Aqualung would be, but they no doubt are eying every surgically enhanced woman under the age of 30 "with bad intent," just as our friend Aqualung watches the sub-teen crowd.

Are they really so different? One drinks wine from a paper bag. One drinks wine from a glass provided by a waiter. Both are imbibing in the middle of the afternoon. One is labeled a sicko for lusting after little girls. One is labeled a ladies man because he has the money to attract women barely old enough to drink legally. One is a wino. One is a connoisseur of fine wines. I suspect both are old, wrinkly, and greatly unattractive with their clothes off.

The difference, after all, is a matter of class. The one is poor and down on his luck. The one has cash and resources. They both are after the same thing. If you have to do it on the sidewalks in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, you're scum. If you can afford to do it at a bar on the Gold Coast, you're an exemplary citizen.

I'm not really sure what the point of this rambling is, except that we could all do with a little bit less judgement, and a lot more humanity. "There, but for the grace of god go I." Where would you be if your job crapped out on you, and you were unable to pay your bills anymore? Selling Streetwise? Begging for handouts on Michigan Ave.? Living in a flophouse? Sleeping in the park? One wrong turn in life could put any of us in the position of being judged, instead of judging. Think about that.