Area woman Tricia McMillian has new awareness and elevated
concerns about life in the wealthy north shore suburbs of Chicago. McMillian
recently attended a concert in Chicago where she was seated in front of four
fancily clad and fastidiously groomed women. McMillian initially noted that
their fresh highlights and coordinating Tory Burch blouses were a little out of
place in the more middle income/art industry crowd, but she assumed they were
having a ladies night out and thought it would be fun to pretend to relive the
alternative music phase they didn’t have when they were in college. Much to
McMillian’s surprise and concern, the erstwhile politely and delicately seated
women rose on four-inch-Aquazzura-heeled feet and chant-yelled the lyrics to a
disturbing song with such zeal and vigor that they drowned out the stage
performers.
“I don’t usually judge on appearance, but these women stood
out of the crowd. They were obviously not like most of the rest of us in that
venue who still bear visible scars of socially awkward formative years. I mean,
they were wearing white jeans and enormous diamond-encrusted jewelry from
crying out loud. I could understand women ‘like that’ identifying with, oh, I
don’t know, maybe Kiss Me a Lot or even Suedehead, you know, when they get
sloppy drunk on girls night, but to hear them belting out, ‘Hector was the
first of the gang with a gun in his hand and the first to do time, the first of
the gang to die,’ was a little unsettling.” McMillian noted that the women
didn’t just know the lyrics, they knew every note and nuance. “These women have
clearly studied that song with the intensity and earnestness of a 13 year old
Justin Bieber fan. The song obviously touches them, they seemed to relate,
deeply, to the plight of Hector and the gun in his hand and the bullet in his
gullet.”
Their depth of emotion over the song was made more profound
by the relative lower key audience during that song. The crowd was jubilant and
even riotous for many of the more WASP relatable songs, but ‘Hector’ is not as
easy for most of the performer’s fans to relate to on a personal level. Many of
the fan base in attendance, who are primarily white, aged 30+, work in science,
libraries, IT or the arts, and are of a more sensitive and gentle souled nature
with limited or no personal experience with gang affiliation or weaponry, took
the time during the performance of ‘Hector’ to sit down for a few minutes, rest
their middle-aged backs and feet and have a few sips of their beverages. This
break in the crowd’s standing enthusiasm for the concert made the four
zealously-singing women stand out all the more.
It was at this juncture that Ms. McMillian grew concerned
about the spread of gangs in the Chicago area. “I know gangs are not limited to
the city boundaries. But I didn’t realize that Tory Burch blouses might be some
sort of gang apparel, a type of ‘colors’ worn to signify gang affiliation. And
all of them were wearing white
jeans…”
Ms. McMillian also chastised herself for judging the women
based on their appearance. “I berated myself pretty harshly for a while. I
thought, ‘for all I know they could live in a rough ‘hood in the city. They
might be living in the midst of gang violence with drive-by shootings on their
streets and gang tags spray painted on their houses.’ I felt really awful for
judging them and making presumptions about where and how they live.”
McMillian’s worries quickly turned back to the suburbs,
though, when the concert ended and she voiced concern about finding a cab with
all the concert goers hitting the street at the same time. The posh women had
vague looks of confusion until one of them said, “Oh, a cab, yikes. I can’t
even imagine dealing with that. Our
drive back to Highland Park [an affluent North shore suburb of Chicago] doesn’t
seem so awful compared to that,” motioning to a taxi stand line wrapping around
the building. The four women suffered a brief moment of panic when they
couldn’t remember which one of them had the valet tag. A quick check of their
coordinating Balenciaga handbags erupted in a surfeit of giggles among the
women when the one they call ‘Becca’ produced the valet tag. Apparently Becca
has a history of forgetting where she stows valet tags, an inside joke the
ladies find uproariously funny, perhaps harkening back to a gang initiation
rite.
“I don’t know what’s going on up there on the North shore
that makes these women relate so deeply to a song about gun violence,”
McMillian lamented with a somewhat confused tone, “but the next time there’s a
gang-related shooting in my inner city alley I won’t be so quick to assume moving to the
suburbs would solve that problem for me."
