Thank You, Craigslist, the Modern Newspaper

In the opening pages of Devil in the White City, Larson’s narrator describes Chicago as both a liberating and precarious opportunity for women in the late 19th century. (This resonates with me on a variety of levels, but I’ll save you the literary and feminist theory.) I was struck by the following warning for ladies that Larson quotes from the March 30, 1890 Chicago Tribune: “[N]o thoroughly honorable business-man who is this side of dotage ever advertises for a lady stenographer who is blonde, is good-looking, is quite alone in the city, or will telegraph her photograph. All such advertisements upon their face bear the marks of vulgarity…” The reason this struck me is because you’ll find exactly the same thing on Craigslist today, and, I bet, unsuspecting women still respond.

I recall trolling through the employment pages of Craigslist Chicago throughout summer 2008, and for much of spring 2009, reading very similar postings, playing themselves off as legitimate employment ads: I would read them aloud to my friends for a laugh. Under the office/admin category, men would post ads for young women who were “good-looking” to fill a personal assistant position, and part of the application requirements stated, “Must include photograph.” Now, we all know there are certain areas of Craigslist where you’d expect to find something like this, but I guess I was surprised to find them masquerading as something legitimate. I just feel badly for any young woman who unsuspectingly applied and interviewed for one of those positions.

When I first started using Craigslist, I was fairly naïve, myself. The site is pretty much useless if you don’t have a sizeable population that’s actually going to use it. So, I didn’t really know much about it before I started using the site to find jobs in Chicago. Yet, if it weren’t for Craigslist, I most likely would not be where I am now. I did not come across the posting for my 6-month internship on any other sites; in fact, the line of business was a bit different from anything I’d ever really contemplated. But I found it on Craigslist, applied, and ta-da, I was moving to Chicago to work for a big corporation. But not before finding roommates--through Craigslist, of course. I met my future roommates when I came to interview, and I was comfortable with them and their home (so comfortable that I didn’t meet with any of my other Craigslist possibilities), and had no problem moving in two weeks later. In fact, I never had a problem with my Craigslist roommates at all.

When my internship was ending in the spring, and I started job hunting again, Craigslist had been thoroughly infiltrated with scammers (I hadn’t noticed it being as much the summer before). Well aware of the hardships faced by so many Americans during the recession, many posts would prey on desperate job-seekers, directing them to other sites to try and gather personal information, or tricking them into scam jobs (like my friend Jess who handed out The Printed Blog for hours one evening and then went to pick up her paycheck and they made up an excuse not to pay her.) I finally learned not to include any personal information on my resume, other than an email address for contact, unless I could find a legitimate company website through which to apply, or the company responded to me and, in some legitimate way, identified themselves. There are a lot of honest people on Craigslist, but, as in reality, there are plenty of ill-intentioned souls lurking there, too.

I like living in a place where people actually use the site, even if you do have to be cautious about how you use it. I actually owe Craigslist quite a bit, and I feel like it’s an integral part of city life, particularly for those who live on a budget, because the site is loaded with deals. If I’m looking for used furniture, or freebies, or even a date, I can go there. That last part was a joke; I do, however, know some women who have met guys through Craigslist, but that, to me, is scarier than interviewing for one of those sleazy ads for a leggy young chick.

I read in the news recently that Craigslist encompasses the simplicity for which newspapers strive but can’t achieve, and that the secret to that simplicity—and the site’s success—is that its creators didn’t care about making a profit (here’s an article from Boing Boing that will insert you into that discussion.) I feel like Craigslist really does encapsulate the simplicity of early newspapers. You’ve got your classifieds, your job postings, your personals, your humor/advice/opinions (Missed Connections, Rants and Raves), your apartment-hunting. All you’re missing is news. And what makes Craigslist better than a newspaper is the fact that there’s a search box in every category: minimum energy, maximum reward. And as much as I don’t want to see print newspapers go extinct, I won’t be giving up Craigslist anytime soon.

Starry Skies, Pine Needles, and Chicago, My Stinky Love

(An appropriate title for a rambling post.)

Spending last weekend in Toledo, the little city felt oddly defamiliarized for me, for the first time in my life. As a writer, I challenge myself to defamiliarize the familiar on a regular basis, but you don’t expect the place where you grew up to ever really feel that way. When I went home, I was reminded that the recession is still on. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an economic bubble in Chicago. I know that many jobs have died in Chicago, that the city is hugely in debt, and that people living here have seen hard times, too. But the rate of decline feels much slower here than in so many areas of the country, and the rate of recovery seems quicker here as well. Toledo isn’t a back-water town. It’s a small city, but it’s blue-collar, and a lot of those jobs are gone. It’s only a matter of the ripple effect from there. Many shops in my parents’ part of town sit empty. Toledoans have talked for years about the depressing facades of empty buildings filling the downtown after all the fortune 500 companies that once propped up the city moved out for cheaper lodgings in the suburbs and other Midwestern towns. But, as if tentacles had reached out from downtown Toledo, the little places on the edges of town are emptying out, too, and most of those businesses aren’t fortunate enough to relocate.

Hotels along Reynolds have been abandoned, leaving only their dated 70s construction and bland window treatments behind (yes, the curtains are still hanging in the windows). Restaurateurs have moved out of their buildings, with no new tenants to take over their abandoned kitchens. Some areas of the city look on the verge of ghost town.

Riding around Toledo, I was struck by how low everything was, and I don’t just mean depressed economically (don’t get me wrong, the city isn’t dying—I refuse to believe that—though certain limbs are faring worse than others), but physically low to the ground. I have become acclimated to high-rises and skyscrapers, and that was the single most conspicuous detail I noted about my hometown that I had never considered before. So many one- or two-story buildings! I don’t mean this in a condescending way, but some parts of the city started to feel like a toy town.

I enjoy visiting Toledo. In addition to spending time with my family, it’s a nice break to take a leisurely drive through streets that feel practically empty; I don't feel rushed there. And it’s nice to walk down quiet neighborhood roads where stars can be seen at night, and you can hear crickets and falling acorns.

And, honestly, my nose appreciates the break. I mean, I have to admit that one of the first things I recognize when I’m back on the streets of Chicago is the foul smell. It’s that waft of sewage that drifts up from the manholes in the streets, or the sweet perfume of fresh urine, or that odd, stale McDonald’s scent that drapes certain intersections downtown. I’m reading Devil in the White City right now (fantastic!) and when I was reading about the dead cats and the sewage and the muddy streets I thought of that Swift poem, “A Description of a City Shower,” and felt like 19th-century Chicago and 18th-century London weren’t all that different. But then, today, when I was walking downtown and my nose was assaulted by a urine-and-moldy-Big-Mac odor, I thought, “Well, we may not be wading through shit, but you can never get away from the smell of it in a city with so many people, whether its 1889 or 2009.” Anyway, that’s the long way of saying that I appreciate the scent of pine needles and fresh grass in my parents’ neighborhood.

But after a short while away, the rumble of the city starts to call me back. The activity, the people, the events, the architecture—they all contribute to the overall seduction of Chicago. Chicago, you are a stinky city, and you’ve got lots of crime and homelessness and corrupt politics and frigid winters, but somehow I just keep coming home to you.