#one chicago party

[gregorygerwitz]

no one told you life post-grad was gonna be this way...

Growing up in Chicago as the son of a corporate lawyer, Gregory knew exactly what his life was going to look like. He would go to business school near home, then an Ivy League law school, just like his father. Once he had his law degree, he would work for his father's firm and establish himself in Chicago again so that all the right people knew his name and how to reach him.

And, by the time he was moving into an apartment in New York City, everything was going exactly as his parents had planned for him.

Columbia's law campus was close enough to enough bars and clubs that he could enjoy himself without going out of his way. He could buy drinks that were too strong. He could take a few pills from friends. He could hook up with an equally drunk hot local far away from anyone who knew him as the Gerwitz heir.

He was getting good grades. He was active on the social scene. He was a front runner for one of the best summer internships in the city. He was completely, totally successful in all the things his parents wanted him to do, and he hated every single second of it.

If it had been up to him, Greg would be a few hours away on the MIT campus, finishing up a master's degree in computers and technology. He never would have gone to Columbia, or even finished a business degree in the first place. He would have started his legacy instead of following in his father's footsteps. He would have been his own person, maybe even had a boyfriend, if such a thing wouldn't tarnish the family image beyond repair, or whatever his mother believed. With the weight on the entire family name on his shoulders, he didn't even have the option to imagine a life like that.

When he went back home, he would inevitably be married off to one of his mother's friend's daughters, and he'd have a new to do list for his life to start checking off.

On one night in particular, when he was even more upset than normal, he sat at a bar further from his apartment so that he didn't encounter any of his usual crowd. The last thing he needed was whispers about his bad habits spreading around right before midterms. He'd much rather do shot after shot of expensive whiskey poured by an exhausted looking student, based on the age of the bartender across from him, and ignore the look that was shot his way when the name on his credit card was read off with a level of disdain that was only used by half of Chicago.

"Gerwitz, huh?" "Yup." "From Chicago?" "There's a number at the end of my name, isn't there? Take your best guess as to why that is."

Will knew he was lucky to get out of Canaryville when he did. A scholarship, even if it was only a partial one, got him from his tiny family home to a dorm in New York, and he could figure out the rest from there. The rest just so happened to include not talking to his father, and being too far away for a proper goodbye when his brother enlisted and was sent across the world, and having too much of his life in shambles when all he wanted was to go home for a funeral.

Through his first four years in college, he had... someone. He knew better than to call Matt his boyfriend, especially after he'd "met" Matt all over again when Moira invited him to breakfast while she was in the city. That didn't stop him from opening the door every weekend at the drop of a hat, ignoring his studies so that he could be laid out in his bed with a hot med student on top of him. It didn't stop him from doing anything with Matt, wherever they ended up or whenever he got the phone call. It should have.

He'd spent the night with Matt just hours before he missed his flight home. He still knew exactly where the blame lay for his alarm conveniently not going off when he needed it to. Jay didn't, and that meant everyone else blamed him for skipping out on an important weekend that his brother never should have spent alone.

After that, during the summer between graduating with his four-year degree and starting at the Columbia med campus, he decided he wanted nothing to do with Matt ever again. He had the support of his rival, of all people, and Stevie quickly became his best friend when they formed a truce long enough to sign a lease on an apartment close to campus. He would have to work multiple jobs to keep up with his half of the rent, but that was something he'd been doing for years just to keep himself fed, as much as he could.

Between classes, and his job in the dining hall, and his job in the library, and a new job at the bar a few blocks down from their apartment, he didn't have the hours in the day to even let Matt Cooper cross his mind, and that was exactly how he wanted to keep it. The only thing he wanted to do was focus on becoming a doctor so that he could go home again, eventually, with his head held high. He wanted to prove he could do what he'd said he would do, even if he was the only one in his own corner.

Without Matt on his mind, the idea of another boyfriend was a distant one, at best, and completely impossible when he took what spare seconds he had to think about his life. It wasn't like he could take a man home to meet his Irish Catholic father, and he doubted that Jay - safely home from Afghanistan, just barely, and dressed in blue while he patrolled Chicago to keep it safe - would approve much, either. Still, being flirted with came with being a bartender, and no one would shame him for flirting back to get a bigger tip so he could afford lunch one weekend.

Especially when the name Gerwitz came up on a heavy platinum credit card.

That name was synonymous with royalty, back home. The only family names that were more recognizable were Rhodes and Sheffield, and they all traveled in the same circles. He just never expected to encounter that circle of people in a dive bar five blocks from his shitty apartment. But there, on a worn out bar stool no more than three feet away, was Gregory Gerwitz IV, heir to one of the biggest fortunes anyone in Chicago could imagine. And he'd been downing shots like a man who got left at the altar and fired within hours of each other since Will started his shift.

They weren't the same, they never could be, not when life dealt them such different hands, but they weren't exactly all that different. They were both alone, in a city far from their home and their families, and maybe being alone didn't always have to be so lonely.

[karihighman]

One Chicago girls night ft. 🍱 & 🍷 •• 😄👍

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Plates from The Dinner Party (1974-1979), with raised central motifs based on vulval, floral, and butterfly forms, and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honoured, by American feminist artist, art educator, and writer, Judy Chicago, born in 1939.

Judy Chicago is known for her large collaborative art installation pieces focusing on images of birth and creation, which examine the role of women in history and culture.

Complete work (image in comments with a closeup) ceramic, porcelain, textile, 14.63 x 14.63 m, 47' 3" x 47' 3" approx

Collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New York

The Dinner Party, an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art, comprises a massive ceremonial banquet, arranged on a triangular table, symbol of equality, with a total of thirty-nine place settings, each commemorating an important woman from history. The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils, and china-painted porcelain plates with three-dimensional designs representing individual women, resembling flowers, butterflies, and female genitalia. The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.

The individual plates pictured are:

Top, left to right:

Primordial Goddess plate Virginia Woolf plate Theodora plate

Bottom, left to right:

Saint Bridget plate Hatshepsut plate Boadaceia plate

China paint on porcelain, diameter 35 cm, 14 in approx

* * * *

“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

[gayofthefae]

If season 2 were about El and Mike fighting to get back to each other they wouldn't have had El almost not come back.

If it were about Mike and El fighting to come back to each other, it wouldn't have been a decision whether or not should we would.

But she almost stayed in Chicago. And they made a point of her saying she went back for all of her friends, not just him, and for Hopper. She went back for Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and Hopper. It was played as big and loving. But it wasn't played as romantic. That wasn't her reasoning and missing Mike wasn't enough to bring her back in the first place.

In the first few episodes of the season, she fights with Hopper about not being able to see Mike. But as the season progresses, we find it isn't about that. It's about not being able to leave. She goes to Chicago and almost doesn't come back. There is a full stand alone episode about her maybe not coming back and she ALMOST STAYS.

If it were some big romantic payoff of their reunion, they would have simply had an obstacle they had to fight to overcome - like Hopper or the monsters or something. But instead, Mike was hoping she was alive and El was considering letting him come to terms with her death and living out her days with her sister in Chicago.

El almost never saw Mike again. It was a very close decision. She changed her mind last minute. It's valid and it remains loving, but in trope simply put...it isn't romantic.

"I almost never came back to you but I changed my mind" in the context of being separated against your will? Isn't romantic.

And similar is true in their separation in seasons 3 AND 4. She does not reach out after her time with Max. Granted maybe she would have, it was a short time, I will give that. But then she didn't get back together with him until the end of the epilogue to our knowledge. She did not run back to him in grief in need of comfort. She did not get back together with him for the familiarity even in that, she got back together with him to keep a piece of Hawkins. Her priorities would not have been the same of "wait and see if he says it" - and he could have done that in a relationship too, as we saw was an arc for him in season 4. Once again, she waited until the last minute - even almost walking away and leaving for Lenora - before coming back to him at the last possible second.

In season 4, then, she did not include him in her plans when escaping NINA. She only noted Max and her friends. Really, this re-established her priorities from season 2. Her intention was to return to all of her friends, to return to Hawkins, and to help her loved ones out of danger. Not to return specifically to him. When he was out of the equation, he was skipped over. She and Mike had a bad fight. And she still loved him just like she still loved her brothers who were also not mentioned, but her focus was only verbalized as being on Max and Hawkins. The original intention of her leaving was for Owens to take her back to Hawkins. She had zero knowledge that her family and Mike (and Argyle) were coming to get her. She thought they were back at the house in Lenora and that she was going straight to Hawkins and would call them once it was all finished. We have no knowledge that she was going to make a pitstop - unlikely given the stakes and distance between Nevada and Lenora.

In season 2, El almost stayed in Chicago. In season 3, El almost stayed broken up with Mike. In season 4, El almost went back to Hawkins without them - this decision being out of her control when it was changed.

Each and every time they are separated, El only makes the decision to reunite with Mike last minute after seeming to have intended to stay apart from him. Their reunions are always so sweet. But they are never her goal.

She came back for Will.

She came back in her grief over Hopper and leaving Hawkins.

She came back for Max.

The key question ever time she reunites with Mike is: does the story stop there? Or does she do something very important next?

Mike always a sweet stop on her way to her goal. He is never "the point". He is a part of her life as many other people are. But he is not her life and he is not why she comes back.

[ophernelia]

I am an alternative black girl in the sense that I like some obscure shit and am coated in tattoos. Not in the “black people never accepted me because I speak properly >:(“ type of alt black girl way. Some of the girls, very clearly, hate themselves so!

[rexferg]

#i'm fine. #once we catch this son of a bitch i'll be JUST fine Chicago PD | 9x13 - STILL WATER

[bugieeeee]

@ifuckinghatebriansella tagged me in this even though I already know what they're stealing from my room

No pressure Tagging @i-am-not-to-be-perceived @myvirtuesuncounted @wellmanneredthief @somedancingdoodles @thatwasntlikeridingabikeuasshole @youmustfixyourheartt @iveofficiallygonemad

[inkstainedhandswithrings]

btw I’m a 100% that whenever Doris was on nightshift she and Crockett would sit at the nurses station spilling all the day shift tea

[thomas-mvller]

I wish people would understand that yeah, some movies are meant to be rated in every aspect possible (the so called "academy award worthy"), but some movies are made just... for the purpose of fun. Just that. They're meant to be mostly lighthearted, warming, entertaining so people can disconnect from all the stress for an hour and a half and just have fun. Said movies don't need a harvard level analysis in terms of direction, storyline etc like jesus henry chrysler have fun for once in your lifetime it's not that deep fam omfg

[jesuisgourde]

I'm reading trans girl suicide museum by hannah baer (almost done with it, it's really good) but it's really really making me miss having a group of queer friends and shit

[bones-sprouts]

i could get a tattoo. i could call my mom and guilt trip her into sending me a notary and i could go to the place downtown and i could have one. and just keep it hidden and not infected

[avoidingdestiny]

What’s inconvenient about my breakup is that the easiest Purim mitzvah for me to fulfill (buy a Reese’s cup and a bag of Cheetos from the work diner and give them to my ex) has now become the most difficult.

[ijustgothereimnewhi]

Or human babies are ugly

My best friend and I had a call recently—she’s back with her family for a bit helping out with some hometown stuff. As part of the stuff, she’s been going through a (deceased) relative’s scrapbook, compiled in the American Midwest circa 1870-1900 and featuring mostly cut-out figures from the ads of the day.

She talked about how painstaking this relative’s work was. (Apparently the relative was careful to cut out every finger, every cowlick; this was by no means carelessly or hastily assembled.) But she also she talked about how—the baby on the baking soda ad is ugly, it is so ugly, why anyone would clip this heinously ugly illustrated baby and paste it into a scrapbook? Why would you save the (terribly told, boring) ghost story that came with your box of soap?

(Why include these things in the first place? we asked each other. ”There’s a kind of anti-capitalism to it,” she mused.)

And we discussed that for a bit—how most of the images, stories, artists, and ads were local, not national; they’re pulled from [Midwestern state] companies’ advertisements in [Midwestern state] papers, magazines, and products. As a consequence, you’re not looking at Leyendecker or Norman Rockwell illustrations, but Johann Spatz-Smith from down the road, who took a drawing class at college.

(College is the state college, and he came home on weekends and in the summer to help with the farm or earn some money at the plant.)

But it also inspired a really interesting conversation about how—we have access to so much more art, better and more professional art, than any time in history. As my bff said, all you have to do to find a great, technically proficient and lovely representational image of a baby, is to google the right keywords. But for a girl living in rural [Midwestern state] of the late 1800s, it was the baking soda ad, or literal actual babies. There was no in-between, no heading out to the nearby art museum to study oil paintings of mother and child, no studying photographs and film—such new technologies hadn’t diffused to local newspapers and circulars yet, and were far beyond the average person’s means. But cheap, semi-amateur artists? Those were definitely around, scattered between towns and nearby smallish cities.

It was a good conversation, and made me think about a couple things—the weird entitlement that “professional” and expensive art instills in viewers, how it artificially depresses the appetite for messy unprofessional art, including your own; the way that this makes your tastes narrower, less interesting, less open.

By that I mean—maybe the baby isn’t ugly! Maybe you’ve just seen too many photorealistic babies. Maybe you haven’t really stopped to contemplate that your drawing of a baby (however crude, ugly, or limited) is the best drawing of a baby you can make, and the act of drawing that lumpen, ugly baby is more sacred and profoundly human than even looking at a Mary Cassatt painting.

And even if that isn’t the case….there was this girl in [American Midwestern state] for whom it was very, very important that she capture every finger, curl, and bit of shading for that ugly soap ad baby. And some one hundred years later, her great-something-or-other took pains to preserve her work—because how terribly human it is, to seek out all the art we can find that resonates with us, preserve it, adore it.

It might be the most human impulse we have.

[ace-and-ranty]

That Rolling Stone article about Chappell Roan... the bits about the shit she went through are already wild, but what really gets me is when the article starts listing. every. single. singer. who reached out to her, worried, to commiserate, to give tips, to agree that the harassment of fame is indeed hell. I'm like. "So y'all agree?? All of y'all agree being famous is horrible???" Good LORD.

Fellow stars have reached out to see if she’s OK. Charli XCX was one of the first to do so (..). Eilish has been keeping tabs on Roan (...). Hayley Williams DM’d her, offering to chat with Roan anytime. Katy Perry told her to never read the comments. Lorde gave her a helpful list of things to do at an airport to fly under the radar. The band Muna hosted her for dinner. Miley Cyrus invited her to a party. Lady Gaga has passed along her phone number (...). Roan went on walks and grabbed coffees with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. Their boygenius bandmate Phoebe Bridgers came over to Roan’s just to hang, commiserating on how fandom behavior has become increasingly “abusive and violent.” Sabrina Carpenter, who’s also had a shockingly massive year, suggested they meet up and unpack their summers. “We’re both going through something so fucking hard … she just feels like everything is flying, and she’s just barely hanging on,” Roan says. “It was just good to know someone else feels that way.” Backstage at the Vic Theatre in Chicago, Roan flashes her phone to show a lengthy email from Mitski she received that morning. “I just wanted to humbly welcome you to the shittiest exclusive club in the world, the club where strangers think you belong to them and they find and harass your family members,” it reads.

I?? MEAN???

[girlfictions]

something i’ve been thinking about lately is like. growing up muslim right after 9/11 is something i’d never really reflected on much because it was all i’d ever known — at 5, my friend’s mum didn’t let her invite me to her birthday party because i was the only brown girl in our class, at 12, my classmates would joke about my family being part of isis, at 16, my dad was interrogated by american airport security for hours — and it always stung and it always hurt but it was just the way things were because the western world hated muslims. but i don’t think i’ve ever fully comprehended the extent to which we were hated until now.

palestine is being turned into a mass graveyard. every single day there are new photos of the atrocities being carried out against them and videos of them pleading for help and still those who can actually intervene turn a blind eye. israel is claiming to only be targeting hamas “terrorists” while bombing a refugee camp. israeli police raided and assaulted a non-zionist jewish neighbourhood. israeli soldiers are posting tiktoks of them torturing captured palestinians. this is not a complicated issue and it never has been. ethnic cleansing is being committed right in front of us. and yet the western world leaders refuse to call for a ceasefire.

and while zionist organisations accuse pro-palestine demonstrations of anti-semitism, while zionist celebrities insist that they’re afraid to leave their mansions in los angeles, a six year old muslim boy was stabbed to death and his mother wounded in the same attack in chicago. a muslim doctor was murdered while sitting outside her apartment complex in texas. hundreds of peaceful protesters have been arrested (many of whom have been jewish). despite what zionists want you to believe, this is not a jewish/muslim conflict. i have so much love and gratitude to my brave jewish brothers and sisters all over the world who are condemning israel for their actions.

ultimately, israel have been granted impunity by the west. they have slaughtered thousands upon thousands of innocent palestinians. they have bombed hospitals and schools indiscriminately. they have used white phosphorus, violating the geneva convention. they have completely eradicated nearly 900 bloodlines. how many more need to be wiped out? how many more children need to be buried underneath the rubble? how many more doctors need to be confronted with the bodies of their own family members? how many more journalists need to detail the horrific acts of violence they are witnessing? what more can be done to the palestinian people that has not been done already?

i truly believe that palestine will be free one day. i believe the palestinian people will receive the justice they finally deserve. but what breaks my heart is how much they have suffered and will continue to suffer before they are deemed worthy of help. and it would be to all of our detriment if we ignored how much of a factor palestine being a predominantly muslim state has played into the way the world has reacted to their genocide.

[teenagefeeling]

have to go pick my dad up from the doctor in like 30 min and i was just looking at the route on waze and watching the traffic get worse in real time