Meat

Chicago is a meat town. Everybody knows that, but in Chicago, people actually talk about meat. Back home in Berkeley, no one discusses the pleasures of carnivorism. We all are too intimidated by the super hipness of vegetarianism.

I don’t like to think of myself as some stupid sheep who follows trends instead of setting my own style, but I avoid those pariah “what-are-you-doinghere” looks. I’ve always eaten meat, but I’ve never talked about it. If I did, I might be ostracized, and if I don’t belong to a group, who am I? Here in Chicago, they write articles about butchers, guides on how to buy the best meat, poems to rare lamb chops. None of that could be written in California. Because western meat isn’t very special, no one rhapsodizes about it. More to the point, though, it is simply unhip to like meat in California.