Champaign-Urbana is the kind of place where residents really enjoy talking about where they live. Usually these conversations take the form of mutual complaints and promises to move to Chicago or Seattle. (Having never lived in any of the places people talk about moving to I can't say whether or not people complain about those too, but if there is a place no one wants to leave then East-Central Illinois is not it.) Sometimes I understand that all too well; I have to admit I'm one of the people who daydreams more about going to some exciting liberal arts college on a coast than spending another four years of my life in the midwest. At some point spending too much time here is bound to swallow up the little bits of bohemian street creed I get for having lived briefly in Europe. My repertoire contains a lot of the old overdone complaints (the bipolar weather, the lack of water, the distance from other cities, the midwestern over-politeness) in addition to some more abstract personal ones: the way the sky here dwarfs the tiny trees and buildings on the ground, and the way the empty flatness of the place hits me sometimes with the realization that we're all alone on a massive spinning orb (especially when it's dark and the wind is particularly harsh). But then you can say that for a lot of places, and as my time here is (probably) coming to an end, I'm starting to appreciate that this one in particular might not be as boring as people make it out to be.
When people are feeling generous towards our cities, the University is usually the first thing that gets brought up. While the contrarian part of me wants to skip that entirely since everyone's heard it all before, I think it's still worth pointing out how lucky we are to have the Quad, and the Bell Tower, and the libraries, and Boneyard Creek, and the entire sprawling nexus of enjoyable culture that springs indirectly from a massive population of young people and professors: the state streets, the Food Co-Op, the Art Theater, all the music, all the art, all the restaurants. If it weren't for the university we wouldn't have any of that, and the whole town would look like Decatur. You might not all want to go to the U of I, but everyone who lives here has to at least respect that it's responsible for much of what makes this community different so much else.
That's not to say that the university is responsible for everything there is to like about our area. If you're really sick of this town, and you're willing to drive a bit, I highly recommend visiting some of the smaller towns in and around Champaign county. Almost all of them have something to offer, from Homer Soda Company, to the Sidney Dairy barn, to Allerton in Monticello, to the inexplicable naval museum in the extremely landlocked Sadorus. I guarantee you that anywhere you go there will be something of interest to see or do, even if you have to use your imagination a bit. Even Rantoul has the reindeer ranch, which is worth at least one quick trip. I guess I should be encouraging you to bike to these places, since driving just to see the botanical garden in Mahomet seems a bit wasteful, but if I said that no one would even think about going anywhere further than the Savoy 16 -- which, by the way, is the one good thing about living in Savoy (we don't even have library access because the city council hates both taxes and learning, although they did lose their crusade against the MTD, so we now have bus service again).
Of course there are still a lot of things that I haven't brought up that make this place far from hellish, and not quite as dull as people make it out to be, but if you aren't exploring the U of I and/or the surrounding cities, you aren't making much of an effort to enjoy this place at all. Especially to the people who plan on leaving in a year or two and never coming back (and again, I'm probably one of them), just remember that this is still where you live, and possibly where you're from. A big part of all of us has been formed in Champaign County, and no matter how close to an ocean you move, that's not going to change -- so you might as well get to know what made you.
Excellent first post, Patrick. Very well written and satisfyingly developed. There are a lot of things I like about Champaign-Urbana, though I share your dissatisfaction about the lack of water, and also feel very powerfully the lack of topographic variety. But I think my favorite thing is the music scene, which is rich and varied on one hand and extremely friendly and hospitable on the other. But you definitely need to be of age to experience music fully here, given that so much of the live music revolves around bars and clubs. I'm also a pretty big fan of the downtown Urbana area (which would include a large section of the state street region), though that's a love that has grown gradually over the years.
ReplyDeleteI too have long struggled with learning to accept Chambana. Much of what you said about our towns gets me down as well--the weather, the scenery, sometimes the people. For me, when I'm feeling particularly down about here, it all just combines into more of a feeling of oblivion. That this town is so out of the way, so obscure, that to most people in the world it really might as well not exist--and since I live here, that is scary--I feel (sometimes, not all the time) that I then don't exist by extension.
ReplyDeleteBut your right, this place does exist. And there are good things about it--the U of I being a major part of that. Like Ms. Majerus said, when talking about the scenery of this town, I have to say that I really love the state street region, esp towards downtown Urbana. When I walk through the area, not only do I feel at home, but I am struck by its beauty, which doesn't reside in anything particular (although I think the brick road helps), but is more of just an overall aura. Sometimes on rainy nights, the lights give everything a purple tinge, and walking through I feel as though the world has been water colored around me.
I really enjoy this post and I feel like a lot of the things you said resonated with me in some way. I often hear people complain about the area and often times I'm a little taken aback-- even though it may not be ideal, this is the town that you live in and it would be much easier to enjoy in people tried to scope out the fun quirks of it. I used to live in a small town in Virginia and I would tell myself that I hated it, but when I moved I soon realized I missed the those annoying things because it made me feel at home-- the local ice cream shop, the huge trees that decorated the streets, the community, and so much more.
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