(no subject)

El tráfico era tan caótico en ese lado de Chicago que no había tanta diferencia con su añorado D.F., y verlo así le causaba menos nostalgia. (Ricardo Armijo, "Chichicastenango Supermarket")

[Translation: Traffic was so chaotic in that part of Chicago that there wasn't any difference from his longed-for Mexico City, and seeing it so lessened his nostalgia.]

I always thought as much!

The story is set in Logan Square, but that description could apply to large swaths of the city. I stumbled across it in a collection entitled Se habla español (Miami, 2000)--and I smiled a gentle smile of recognition when I saw these words on the wall of an auto body shop near welcomerain's and spookyfruit's new place last night. (I'm not sure why they call it a Haus when it's really la casona del barrio.)

It's a neighbourhood I've passed through many times--usually on the Clark bus--but never stopped in. I'm not sure what the locals call it. Just a mangled version of "Rogers Park"? Or is there a cute nickname like la Villita or Hermosa? Do people identify their location by the local Catholic parish, as they once did on the South Side?

I can tell you one thing: The answer ain't to be found on the Web--at least not with the searches I was doing. It's experiences like these that remind me how great the digital divide still is. You can find plenty of sites on Jewish Rogers Park, whose existence is largely historical, whereas contemporary Hispanic Rogers Park is barely acknowledged. (Such sources as exist focus on showcase Mexican neighbourhoods, like Pilsen.) I found more lamentations of the lack of literature on Latino Chicago than I found literature.

I guess I've no choice but to talk to people. Were everyone as nice as the guy who waited on us last night, that would be no problem at all. It's the first time I've gone into a restaurant and been asked, "Who speaks Spanish?" (The answer is welcomerain, who carried the conversation while I occasionally gabbled along semi-coherently.) The server--we never caught his name, so I nicknamed him el buen padre--had only been in the country eight months, meaning his English was as broken as my Spanish. Nevertheless, by the end of the meal, he was showing us photos of his brother's trip to Cuzco and insisting spookyfruit return soon for the arroz con pollo.

El traje wants all to know, por cierto, that--despite the mocking he gets for not being adventurous enough (which I never really noticed, but, then, he's much more thenthitive than I am)--he volunteered to eat at every single restaurant we passed, no matter how unpromising. He was also the only one to clean his overloaded plate (I reheated my leftovers for lunch and still couldn't finish them all) and thereby earn an alfajor from el buen padre. welcomerain finagled one anyway and tossed me a crumb. Yum!

The least I can do in return is admit that I lied last night about the name of the Vietnamese place. I said nha trang simply meant "restaurant", when the Vietnamese word is actually nha hang; I'm not sure what trang means, but that's something I know where to look up.