"Faggot!!!"

Okay: I don't know if this happened for sure or not, but as I was walking to my class to teach in beautfiul Downers Grove, this black van speeds by the intersection I'm waiting to cross and some dude yells "Faggot!!!" only he doesn't look out the window or anything.

Was that directed my way? I wanted to believe so, if only because nobody's yelled that at me since...well...since I lived in my own burb, growing up and walking home from school.

But the dude wasn't looking at me when he said it. But, shit: it had to be for me, right? I was wearing a suit, walking--walking! not driving!--to work. Everybody in suburbia knows walking ain't cool.

I'm teaching now in the suburbs of Hinsdale and Downers Grove, and what strikes me the most about these places is how much they're like both Kirkwood, MO and Altamonte Springs, FL. Growing up, I wanted to believe that somehow Kirkwood and good ol' Sprizings were somehow different than other places, but they're not really. Just another Gopher Prairie. The kids in Hinsdale look like they're about to just go apeshit crazy....on drugs, on bad goth music, shopping--whatever it is that gets rich kids like these through boring days.

Downers Grove has a few bars and what looks like a really cool record store on its Main Street. I wanted to hang out there after work. I didn't, though. I took the Metra back to "the city." Getting on, and getting off--the same suburban archetypes I I used to think were somehow indigenous solely to Unincorporated Seminole County. The people, basically, just looked like either younger or older versions of the same rich folk who are conquering Division Street, one poorly-built condo at a time.

The Dale of Hins...have you seen these motherfucking houses!!! When I was a kid, my parents would spend afternoons driving around nice neighborhoods just looking at bigass homes, admiring their bigassiness. I felt like my parents as we drove through Hinsdale. People live like this. After 10 years of Chicago apartments and Chicago landlords, places like Hinsdale make me feel just a little bit envious and fascinated like F. Scott Fitzgerald at some godawful debutaunte ball. And everywhere--everywhere!--that look in the eyes--just like an Orlandoan! That know-it-all cockiness of people who don't really know jackshit. It's kinda like that Wicker Park Smirk: That smirk you see on indie-rockers (especially the newly-arrived indie-rockers) when they buy their 30-packs of Old Style at the Jewels, or that smirk they get when a band ironically "rocks out"...and each Metra stop as you go out or in is like some increase or decrease in tax brackets. Then, you're getting into Berwyn and Cicero, and then into the West Side, and eventually, you're back in dear old Humboldt Park, where the citytrash lady across from you yells nonstop at her kids and her husband about the "goddamn mess!"

Teaching, when done right, is the ultimate punk rock. You won't agree with me, and perhaps you even think I sound like an old hippie who gets a straight job so they can "change things from the inside, man!" but no, that's not what it is. Call me Jerry Garcia, but I believe anybody can write, and anybody can start a band. That's what I learned from punk rock. To get that there idea out to the world, it's gonna take more than playing music and writing books that are only read by my friends. I get to go into rich towns, poor towns (no, I don't just teach in rich suburbs), and all in between, and spread this idea in my own way. Hopefully we'll get some better writers and readers because of this. You have to start somewhere. I sound like a sanctimonious dick right now, and for that, I apologize. It's very difficult to express, especially when kids get it right.

If we can educate kids to really think, we have it in ourselves here to start a real renaissance. The technology is there now, and it's so easy to find out about anything...bands, writers, art, ideas...they're there and you can get them within seconds. We could fuck this up badly, or we could do this right. I see us on this precipice between another dark ages and a renaissance. Maybe we'll have both, based solely on how much money you have determines your level of renaissance. If that's the case, we're in just as much trouble as any other time, only on a larger, more destructive scale.

We can use this technology and these mediums to vote for the next American Idol, or we can create on our own terms. The former means reducing the idea of punk rock as something very narrow, very codified and exclusive, and the latter has endless possibilities.

Either way, I know where I stand here. With all of it.