- Bernie Taupin and Elton John in 1971
Every year on Thanksgiving and Christmas, the city of Chicago celebrates what I like to call antiholidays—with most businesses closed and few cars on the streets, the town seems to be shunning its own people, demanding that we let it have some peace and quiet for once. The antifestivities usually start around midevening the night before the holiday and continue for about 36 hours. Stand on almost any aboveground el platform during that time and you can see the city sleeping for miles in any direction. Some people find this eerie (I’ve often heard the spectacle compared to a postapocalyptic landscape), others find it calming. I belong to the latter group.
I haven’t checked to see if this story is true, in part because I don’t want to spoil my mental image of a young Elton John rifling through trash. More to the point, it made such a good impression on the storyteller’s audience that I think it deserves to be true even if it isn’t. The schizophrenic and his new friends didn’t seem bothered when the baristas came around to kick us out at 5 PM. Wherever they were going next, they knew they’d have company, and the storyteller was clearly on a roll. On the antiholidays, people like these are the kings and queens of Chicago. I can’t wait to encounter more like them on Christmas.
