Urban Signs of Spring

People say Chicagoans don't have spring. We go from snowy and cold to rainy and cold. To the dismal heat of heavy, humid summers. But I say we do have spring, and it's easy to identify.

You know it's spring

• when you come across women, who sit in a tavern, but look as if they'd just comes from an audition for The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
  
• when 10 men in a bar all take shots on the one girl in the joint who's trying to use powers of persuasion to egg-on summer by dressing as if it were twenty degrees warmer.
• when a girl rides the Red Line and drinks from a Heineken bottle, not so expertly concealed in a transparent sandwich bag. Sipping from a straw. Sip Sip Sip. Then pulling a long black hair from the back of her head, forming a neat little crop circle amidst the tall fields.
• when three prostitutes all proposition the neighborhood bum in the alley behind your apartment, and the bum says, in a Polish accent, "Fuck you! I know how you are!"
  

Yessir. That's when you know it's spring. Because at just above 45 degrees, the crazy-repellant stops working.