Downtown Chicago is one of my favorite places to be. Sure, there’s an abundance of guns and political corruption (it’s not called “The Windy City” for no reason), but there is almost nothing that can compare to the feeling I get whenever I’m downtown. My face is pressed against the window as soon as I get off I-55 and hit Lake Shore Drive. The climbing skyscrapers and unique shops all crammed into one area make me feel like anything is possible, like there’s an adventure waiting for me in this concrete jungle. So without a doubt, I wanted to show my two best friends from Iowa what the Windy City had to offer. And I had a plan for the New Year’s weekend: we would go to see the star rise at Chi Town Rising and listen to some great music, eat some Chicago delicacies and do some sight seeing. 2016 was a rough year, but little did either of us know that the year had one last slap in the face for us in store.

The day started out a little rough, to be honest. We were supposed to wake up at a normal time and be functioning human beings, but all that went out the window when we woke up at 1pm and watched a couple episodes of Shameless. Fast forward through a “getting ready montage” full of glittery eye makeup and hair curlers, we almost missed the train to get downtown by three minutes. We would’ve gotten there sooner if I hadn’t gotten every red light on the way there, but oh well. So there we sat on the train, a little hungry and a little sleepy. The rushing and getting ready drained some of our energy, but I knew that the second we hit the busy hustle and bustle of downtown, we would have the time of our lives. But fate had different ideas of where the night would take us.

First of all, it was freezing cold. Living in the Chicago area my whole life, I already knew this. Yet for some reason, I decided to wear lace-printed tights that basically have no fabric to them. But I shouldn’t be complaining, because I was not like my two friends wearing high-heeled shoes. Walking to Michigan Ave seemed like it took centuries to do so. But after fighting through crowds of tourists and drunk party-goers, we arrived at the gates of the Hyatt Regency, where the Chi Town Rising festivities were taking place. There had been rumors of terrorist threats throughout the week, so an abundance of security measures took place. My bag was checked, I had been wanded down, and I was a mere two feet away from entering the party until a security woman pulled me aside and said five words that crushed my soul. “Your bag is too big.” I turned around to see that my friends were denied entrance as well, and I scurried back to them. We even ran over to the services booth to ask if there was anyway we could get in, only to be given the same answer: no. Anger broiled inside of me, not warming me up from the frosty wind nipping at my skin. I had rushed all the way over here to not be let in because my bag was too big? I looked down at my new Coach purse in shame.

To say we were pissed is an understatement. We were livid. We were frustrated. We were cold. We were starving. But the night was still young and our wallets were full of cash. So we decided to go out to fancy restaurant because we looked so good in our dresses and makeup. Our hard labors couldn’t go to waste. After a long time of standing in the cold, we decided on this Italian place less than a mile away. Of course, I underestimated how long of a walk that would be, so we ended up limping through the streets for a half hour, moving slowly to reserve the little energy and heat that we still had. The anger was still alive and well in the pit of my stomach; I had barely eaten so there was plenty of room in there. Google Maps led us astray and it took us much longer to get to our destination than it should have.

But alas, our bodies felt the sweet relief of heat when we entered the restaurant, which seemed way out of our league. The waiters wore crisp white suits, the rooms were lit by candlelight, adults sipped on martinis in sequined cocktail dresses. Meanwhile, I looked like a trainwreck with my lipstick fading and my hair already becoming wavy despite the fact that I straightened it. We approached the host and asked for a table. All of the tables had been reserved except the ones in the bar area. There were plenty of tables with no one seated in them, but there were two problems: they were reserved and we could only sit at the bar if we were 21, which we are not. We sulked back to the waiting area, the bags under our eyes very prominent, and pulled open Yelp on our phones to see what was nearby to eat. But then a miracle happened: the host removed one of the reserved signs from a table and gave it to us. It was definitely out of sympathy (because let’s be honest, we looked pretty pathetic and sad at that point), but I didn’t care. I was given the opportunity to sit down and eat, and I for goddamn sure was going to enjoy it.

Once again, joy was removed from this equation. It all started with our waiter, who was so condescending and made our meal quite uncomfortable. First of all, it was incredibly difficult to pronounce the items on the menu. When my friend ordered her meal, the waiter cracked a joke and said “Everything on the menu is super easy to pronounce.” I knew he was joking, but my friend did not and felt really bad about herself. But let’s get to the meal itself. My two friends had a decent handful of pasta on their plates but when I looked down at mine, I was in utter disbelief. There was a total of four noodles on my plate and some mushrooms. I paid $16 for four freaking noodles. Of course I finished it under five minutes, and I was so upset I didn’t even make eye contact with the waiter as he took my plate away. When he came back and gave us the dessert menu, I oogled over everything because I was still starving from those four noodles. I decided on cannolis while my friends were each going to get cheesecake. The waiter then suggested that they split one because they were pretty big. After the cheesecake was delivered to the table the waiter said vey sassily, “Is that enough, or do you want more?” The dessert itself was pretty good, but the portions were once again small. We middle class suburban girls were not used these portions and prices and felt so out of place. I had a taste of the rich life and ultimately despised it; I just wanted to be home in my pajamas watching a terrible horror movie while shoving slices of greasy pizza in my mouth. But that was not reality. I was brought back to reality when my friend accidentally hit the waiter as he took our plates away. You could tell he was pissed about it and I just sat there frozen, processing the embarrassment my friend was undergoing. Alas, it was time to pay the check. In total it was about $80 but when we asked the waiter if he could split it amongst the three of us, he seemed really confused. I guess the rich don’t split checks, someone pays for it all. After a quick bathroom break, we were so close to getting out of that godforsaken restaurant when my friend realized she lost her phone. This was actually my fault because I accidentally took her phone and put it in my purse thinking it was mine. I just wanted to run out of there so the waiter didn’t see that each of us only tipped him $3.

Back in the cold we went. It was still an hour and a half until midnight (our goal was to wait outside the Hyatt Regency to at least watch the star rise), so we decided to get a Lyft driver back so we didn’t have to suffer in the cold like we did before. Whilst ordering a Lyft, a creepy man came up to us and started looking us up and down. “Damn, these beautiful girls”. He was literally inches next to me. We were super uncomfortable and ran across the street to our Lyft driver, almost getting run over by firetrucks.

I inspected the mini van we were inside of. There was hand sanitizer from Bath and Body Works everywhere and the driver seemed a little creepy (I think it was the moustache). I wanted to believe that he was a nice man who was doing this side job to help provide for his kids, but the other part of me suspected he was a serial killer. He didn’t say a word as he headed into the depths of traffic. My friends and I laughed a little bit about all the unfortunate events of the evening but hey, at least we were warm, right? The night was still young, and fate was not done with us just yet.

What should’ve been a ten minute drive turned into an hour. Cops were blocking off roads and the traffic was absolutely treacherous. The Lyft driver took on the opposite side of the city, and I was freaking out. I was not only beginning to accept the fact that I would be spending my New Year in this awful van, but I was also beginning to think about how the three of us would attack the driver because it seemed like we were being kidnapped. He escaped our wrath because luckily, we ended up on Lake Shore Drive, heading back towards the Star. But traffic was still a tad heavy. I was a little on edge, but it all came crashing down when I saw the Lyft driver turn around and look up my friend’s skirt. That’s when I told her we needed to go and get the hell out of that van. So he let us out, and we ran. It was four minutes until the clock struck 12 and we were not close enough to see the star, but we were close enough to Millennium Park to see The Bean. We bolted down the streets, my legs chafing and my lungs sharply inhaling the frigid air. The three of us ran up some stairs and through the park with less than a minute left. We had come to the Pritzker Pavilion when boom! Fireworks went off and 2017 had officially arrived.

Still slightly out of breath, I screamed Happy New Year at the top of my lungs and threw some glitter in the air. We headed over towards The Bean, wishing strangers a happy new year along the way. The whole night, I had questioned capabilities of my city as it got worse and worse but when I saw the lights and that shiny sculpture, my faith was restored. The reflection of The Bean held the skyline of Chicago, the towering skyscrapers made me feel lost in a jungle, the lights illuminated every curve and detail of the city. No matter how bad it got, this beautiful city made me feel alive. I just wish it didn’t involve me almost getting hypothermia.