I had a friend in college who turned down a hardwood-floored, $500 dollar a month one bedroom with a garage and a southern exposure because it did not meet her number one criterion for an apartment: it was not within walking distance of at least two bars. To me this is like coming home to find The L Word’s Shane in your living room, white shirt unbuttoned to her sternum, Feeldoe hard-on with your name on it, and saying, “Thanks but no thanks, babe. Your hair just isn’t sufficiently tousled today.”

But then I’m not much of a drinker. My college friend however, hailed from Waupaca, Wisconsin, where if you don’t fit in with the cow tippers, you’d better latch onto the alkies. By the time she moved to Madison, WI, or as she called it, ‘the big city,’ there was no straying from the path she’d chosen. Each year she started drinking at ten AM on the day after finals, and when it came time to apartment hunt, like Sophie, she had to make a heart-rending choice. Too bad she didn’t live in Andersonville.

I’d call her up right now and tell her to move here, but last thing I heard she’d escaped from Promises, shaved her head, and lost custody of her children. Wait, that’s Britney Spears. And it’s also old news. Here’s the latest on Britney: she’s just been apprehended attempting to leave a local Walgreen’s with two bottles of Revlon “Get Reddy” nail polish, a jar of macadamia nuts, and the Kevin Federline issue of GQ hidden in her vagina. When asked about her motivation, Britney bleated, “I’m just so bored!” Wait, that was me. Hey, it’s been snowing unremittingly for two days, and before that it was so cold that my dog’s pee froze midstream, and we had to get the guy next door to knock him loose with a ball peen hammer. Wait, that was me. Sometimes I like to urinate in the backyard. It makes me feel at one with the earth.

I haven’t had to do much of that lately though. I’m already sufficiently close to nature. In Illinois in February, there’s no other option, especially if you are a pedestrian. The hems of my pants are always dripping, because according to the city of Chicago, drainage systems are superfluous. My fingertips are always flirting with frostbite because I can’t afford insulated gloves, and my undershirt is always plastered to my skin with cooling sweat because when asked to choose between the fashionable winter jacket I bought in Venice Beach, and what is essentially a down comforter with sleeves, common sense wins, and each time I decide to be a victim of fashion rather than weather. It is becoming increasingly clear that I am also a victim of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I’m not up to my usual acronym hijinx here folks; there’s nothing funny about depression unless it’s happening to someone else.

I’ve been back from California for two winters now and instead of growing accustomed; I think I may be growing horns. Consider this your warning: I’m about one more sunless day away from total nervous breakdown. The other evening it snowed so hard that I briefly considered attaching one end of a clothesline to my belt and the other to the Bryn Mawr El train stop ala a modern Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’m beginning to feel like the guy from Into the Wild only with slightly less facial hair.

Going downtown and back for a night class should not feel like a trek through the Alaskan tundra. Speaking of which, how dare the Clark bus ban my dog sled? They let the hipsters clip their little ironic bikes to the front; they let those selfish blind people ride with their Seeing Eye dogs! So what if I broke the front window trying to get my sled lashed on? So what if I insisted my lead dog Lucky sit in the handicapped seat because he had salt in his paw? Does that give the Chicago Transit Authority the right to plaster all the buses with posters warning their drivers about me? And why did they have to use the picture where I’d just taken off my ski hat? My hair looks like shit. The whole ordeal is enough to make a girl stop going out at all.

But what’s my other choice, stay home with my sick girlfriend and watch Eyes Wide Shut? We did that the other night. I’d never seen the movie before. Now that I have, there are two things about which I am curious: 1) Was Nicole Kidman recovering from a stroke when filming began or was she actually directed to speak that slowly? 2) Did the producers decide to save money by not hiring an editor? In other words, I loved it, all eight hours of it. After it was over my girlfriend went back to sleep, because when you’re as sick as she’s been, twenty nine hours of sleep in three days just doesn’t cut it, and I let the ghost of a butler talk me into killing my wife and son with an axe. Wait…that was Jack Torrance in The Shining. God, I’m confused. I may be a non-drinker, but I think it’s time for a drink. Luckily, I don’t have to walk far to get one.

There are three lesbian bars within a one-mile radius of my apartment, and countless straight bars. Stargaze is the closest of the lesbians establishments. I’ve never had a problem with the place myself, but most of my friends hate it. Granted it doesn’t have the most welcoming vibe, and the women who drink there tend to be pretty serious about it. Also the average Stargaz-ing dyke looks more like Stanley Kubrick than Angelina Jolie.

“But whatever could be wrong with mean, hard-drinking, butch lesbians?” I’ve asked my girlfriend, sometimes when discussing Stargaze, but frequently when picking out avocadoes at Jewel.

“Nothing if you’re you,” she’s grown tired of answering. “I, myself, prefer not having to snarl and pop my collar just to get a beer.”

Moving South across Andersonville, T’s is the next dyke bar you might want to pause and stick a finger in. I understand why my friends love it. It’s not the least bit seedy or sordid or sleazy, and now that the smoking ban passed, it’s not even smoky.  Service is generally good, the clientele is mainly college educated and upper middle class, and the food is like TGI Friday’s; mediocre and expensive as hell. If the cast of Happy Days were of age and if they were lesbians (and I’m not saying they aren’t), this is where they’d hang out. Overall T’s is like gay marriage as opposed to wild gay orgies - derivative and mainstream rather than distinctive and edgy.

I asked Linda why she likes it and she said, “Because I always run into someone I know there.” She paused. “Ask me why I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you like it?”

“Because I always run into someone I know there.”

I told Linda I’m not exactly wild about the place. I outlined my reasons and then added, “Also my girlfriend loves it.”

Linda acted all shocked, as if I don’t say snotty stuff like that all the time, and I had to explain that when you’re girlfriend gets excited about really good egg salad and going to the carwash, sometimes you have to hate the things she likes just to calm her down.

The final lesbian bar within walking distance is Big Chicks. I went there for the first time in mid-January to help Billi celebrate her 25^th birthday. Big Chicks is less than three blocks from my old apartment. They have “dollar burger night” one night a week, and the fries I stole off Billi’s plate were better than the fries at T’s. The crowded eclectic environment has both comfort and potential, two things every bar requires. I told my girlfriend I couldn’t believe she’d never taken me there before.

“I tried! You refused to go!” She informed me.

“Now why would I do that? It’s inches from my old place! We should’ve hung out here all the time!”

“You said you could never go somewhere with a name like ‘Big Chicks.’ You said just thinking about it made you feel fat.”

“I don’t remember saying that,” I said. But I had to admit it sounded like something I’d say.

Surrounded by lesbian bars, I chose to drink at Simon’s, a straight bar on Clark. Well, you didn’t expect me to hobnob with homosexuals, did you? Anyway, my dog Lucky loves their dirty martinis. I don’t let him drink when he’s mushing, but with his hurt paw, he’s as stir crazy as I am. I gotta let him blow off some steam. I’m a cheap date, even when I’m by myself: After half a gin and tonic I was warm and dizzy and ready to leave.

“This is why Midwesterners drink,” I told Lucky as I carried him home. “It keeps you warm and occupied.”

 “Why do Californians do it?” He asked.

 “They do it to disguise the fact that they actually drive that way.” I said.

 Lucky nodded, satisfied, and then chewed a hole in the sleeve of my down coat. He didn’t do it maliciously. I think he could smell the geese.

 Back at my desk, my girlfriend hacking and sneezing peacefully down the hall, I settled down to write. Actually, all of this snow-covered solitude has finally given me the time and peace to write my masterpiece. Would you like to read it? Here’s a taste:

 “All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl…”

 How are you holding up this winter? Have any bars in your area similar to the ones mentioned in the column? Discuss these questions and more on our message boards!

Sarah Terez Rosenblum spent the last four years of her life in Los Angeles and plans to return even though she hated it.  She will be thirty in two years. Thank God she’ll have received her MFA in Creative Writing by then. That way, even though she’ll still be lacking any real idea of what she wants to do with her life, at least she’ll be massively in debt. You can contact her at or visit her at myspace.com/raininariver. You can also buy her a pony. She’s always wanted one.