[UA] Fwd: CTA guy

[Tim Toner]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Royal Minister of Stuff" <yokeltania at yahoo.com>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 5:58 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] Fwd: CTA guy


> Wow!  What a cool set-up for a UA group.  The players
> could be guys who were hired to do an inventory and
> find all sorts of strange crap down there.
>
> Maybe they find a "king of the bean" ceremony going on
> down there, ala "The Wicker Man" or something, where
> outside people elect and slaughter a sacrificial king
> to ensure good "pickins" (better scraps from the
> dumpsters, more generous donations when begging, etc.)

Three years ago, I lived along the Blue Line (the subway in question), and
after a particularly wretched snowstorm, I was forced to ride it daily for
two months to and from work.  The Damen stop (seen in Streets of Fire AND
High Fidelity) is the last elevated station before the train becomes a
subway when you're headed for the city.  At the maw of the tunnel, the CTA
have set up heaters, operating, I presume, on the same thermodynamic
principle that allows freezers in supermarkets to not have doors, even
though they're not basins, per se.  These heaters create a wall of warmth
that the cold outside air just can't compete with.  It's _so_ hot, in fact,
that under all my bundled layers, with a sealed glass window and metal walls
between me and it, I could still feel heat sufficient to scald, if we
weren't rocketing past at 25 mph.  At firsrt I thought, "Man, I'd hate to
have to walk through that, to find a place to sleep."  And then I realized,
well, that's probably why they do it.  Crank up the heat hot enough, and
you'll think twice about getting in on foot.  And then, in the part of my
mind reserved for paranoia and RPGs, I thought, "Maybe they're trying to
keep something _in._"

More creepiness on the BLue Line.  After the Damen station, there's
Division, and then a long assed haul to Clark/Lake, sort of the hub of the
various lines.  And that's a lot of underground, without any stations.  But
there ARE stations.  You just rocket past them so fast, your eyes barely
have time to catch details.  They're remnants from a time when the areas
above were a little more 'friendly,' and have been sealed for the duration.
One has been opened recently, since it's the best stop to access Navy Pier,
the family friendly venue.  But there's at least one other shuttered stop.



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