Megha’s eyes grew even wider when I mentioned Swap-o-Rama. She has never been there, but as a Chicagoan by birth she grew up watching\u00a0commercials of Swap-o-Rama on TV. I tried to imagine what it was like.<\/p>\n
I took bus number 9 from the Ashland Orange Line station. It went pass quite a few big deserted buildings with broken facade revealing almost-intact staircases, which had become cool graffiti sites. It’s obviously easier to do extra-tall graffiti from the landings on those staircases. I didn’t want to look like a tourist though. At least not in that bus, and not right then, when I didn’t even know where I was going.<\/p>\n
And surely, I didn’t look like a tourist at all when with a certain conviction I jumped out the bus and went into what looked like a big parking lot. The sign above the building at the end of the lot was a bit too far away for my myopia, so I convincingly just marched forward until I could read it. It was the right building, fortunately. But while it said that it’s open on Tuesdays, I couldn’t see any market activity around.<\/p>\n
I realised then, that a woman was walking behind me. So I asked her – it is<\/b> open, right? <\/p>\n
“I thought you know!” She said. “I saw you walkin’ here and I thot okay, I’d jus’ follow her!” I couldn’t help giggling in my tummy. But I kept my serious act of being a local, “Well yeah it is, and it says it’s outdoors, and there’s nothing here so maybe they’ve packed up already – ?”<\/p>\n
That was when I saw that the outdoor market was actually in the next parking lot. So this woman and I walked all the way back, bought the $1 entry ticket at the gate and got a stamp on our right hand. It was black and it says “A,” for Ashland.<\/p>\n
The woman wanted to buy a phone cover. “The guy downtown wanted $35 for it,” she said, uh-uh, I said, that’s waaaay too much. “Yea, way too much! So I thought where can I get a cheaper one? The flea market!” And she was right, because the first stall we saw, even from the outside of the gate, was selling exactly what she was looking for.<\/p>\n
“What are you<\/b> looking for?” She asked me. I said I didn’t know. “Oh you’re just looking?” Yes, just looking, I said.<\/p>\n
On my way back, I bumped into her at the bus stop. We waited for the same bus, and she showed me her new phone cover. $10, including a protective sheet for the screen. That’s what we want. $35 was simply too much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Megha’s eyes grew even wider when I mentioned Swap-o-Rama. She has never been there, but as a Chicagoan by birth she grew up watching\u00a0commercials of Swap-o-Rama on TV. I tried to imagine what it was like. I took bus number…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chicago","category-hyde-park-art-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2627,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/2627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tintinwulia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}