Question: What’s the easiest way to start a riot in Chicago?

Answer: Throw a cheeseburger into the crowd.

It’s funny cause it’s true.  Chi-town (and the midwest in general) have enough fat people to make anyone but a Houstonite blush.  Occasionally this blubber comes in handy.  For example, nary a Chicago winter will pass without you taking at least one tumble on a patch of ice.  If your packing a can the size of Delaware when it happens, there’s a good chance you’ll walk away with only a little wet patch on your ass cushion to show for it.

But I digress.  This story is about food.  And shame.  And what Chicagoans are willing to go through to wrap their gums around some mediocre grub.

The taste of Chicago is the apotheosis of gluttony.  Each day, upwards of one million fatties converge on Grant Park over the fourth of July weekend to, as the Coneheads on Saturday Night Live put it, consume  mass quantities.  I’d heard the legends but I didn’t believe them.  The first year in Chicago I had nipped in on a Tuesday at 11 AM.  There were crowds, but it wasn’t that bad.  My second year, I got cocky.  My girlfriend wanted to go to the fireworks on the adjoining lawn.  This happens on the third, traditionally the busiest day at the Taste.  I suggested we pop into the festival a little early to grab a bite.  My girlfriend, a Chicago native, raised her eyebrow.  “If that’s what you want,” she said.

That’s what I wanted.  We got there around 3 PM, just as the festival was hitting full stride.  People were packed in so tightly that you could touch at least ten of your fellow city dwellers at any given moment.  At places where the crowds were thin, it was possible to waddle along at something resembling a slow pimp strut.  Where the crowds were thick you were lucky to move ten yards in a minute, and humanity pressed in on you from all directions.  At this incredible density, it was very easy to resent obese people, as their added bulk provided just that much more of a sweaty, greasy embrace to their thinner victims.

Naturally, the worse the junk food, the worse the crowd and the beefier the folks.  The fried chicken tent was awash with southsiders.  The deep dish pizza pavillion was mobbed by sunburned suburbanites.  And the absolute epicenter of this flesh storm was the funnel cake booth, the twain where both groups met.  A hundred yards in any direction from the tent, flesh was pressed so tightly that air seemed a precious commodity and what oxygen one could draw was tainted with the fleshy stink of overfed humanity.

This didn’t deter us.  I needed a funnel cake something fierce.  But wish in one hand and shit in the other.  After five or six minutes of trying to work our way toward the Mecca of fried dough, it became clear that we would get there a lot faster if only one of us went.  I sent the little lady, assigning myself the task of staking out a spot.  Serendipitously, this decision would lead me to witness, not one, but two defining images of these modern times.

It began mundanely enough.  A gigantic woman was waddling away from the funnel cake booth.  I estimated her weight at 350, give or take a chicken wing.  Despite her size, she had persevered in getting a funnel cake with the works, and was presumably bringing it back to safety (for her, not the funnel cake).  Because of the crowding, there was simply no room to hold food at your side.  This woman, like many others, had raised her funnel cake aloft, over her head and from the plebian masses.  It looked as though she was making a doughy offering to the gods.

The deities apparently declined.  As I watched her with the fascination all of us reserve for those living at the physical extremes, fatigue began to set in and the paper plate she exalted became oh-so-slightly unbalanced.  The scoop of ice cream topping her funnel cake began to roll, slowly at first and then faster as it picked up momentum.  There was a reason the funnel cake was so popular.  Each was covered with powdered sugar, chocolate syrup and ice cream, easily the three messiest substances known to man.  As the ice cream ball avalanched across her plate, it picked up plenty of each material before plummeting over the side, directly onto the top of her head.

Though she had undoubtedly registered the impact, the lady did not immediately react.  Slowly, her countenance changed to resemble that of someone whose head had been shat upon by a bird.  Then her eyes widened as she realized that bird shit is neither as large or as cold as the semisolid object topping her head.  Best of all (for me, at least) the copious heat of the day had conspired to destabilize the ice cream/chocolate/sugar mixture, which had now begun to slide down her face.

You must understand the woman’s position to appreciate the true direness of her plight.  Normally, plucking the ice cream up would be a simple matter.  However, this woman had neither a free hand or room to maneuver.  Plucking the ice cream off her scalp would undoubtedly unbalance her funnel cake completely, sending it crashing down and further soiling her (I shall ignore for the moment the possibility that the woman was simply unwilling to abandon her dessert.  She’s suffered enough.).  Nor could she set her plate down, or even bring it below head level.  In short, she was screwed.

Or was she?  As I watched, I saw a gleam of possibility in her piggy eye.  And then I saw the tasty solution she had devised.  The ball of ice cream was sliding down her temple.  The woman angled her head so that the ball would run by the corner of her mouth.  There it was: If she could somehow eat the entire ball of ice cream in one massive bite, all would not be lost.

It was a heroic attempt.  Her tongue sprang from her mouth like a predator on a national geographic video, lassoing around its prey and corralling it towards her gaping maw.  She was in her element.  It was going to work.  And then someone jostled her and the ice cream popped free.  The largely-intact glob landed on one of her slab breasts, where it lay, melting into her pre-shrunk cotton she-tent.  She did a little shimmy, trying to dislodge it, but there was nowhere to go.

This woman must have really been attached to her shirt.  Only now, she began to panic, making frantic little yelps that failed to articulate her situation but succeeded in drawing the attention of the five or so people who were pressed into actual physical contact with her.  Immediately, each of them began to panic as well, worried about being soiled by the ice cream leaking off of this behemoth (who,incidentally, still held her funnel cake high and proud).  They’re all yelling at her to back away from them, which freaks her out even more.  She begins to do a little spinning dance, which succeeded only in wiping ice cream against every trapped person around her.  In turn, most of those she tagged then did their own little evasive maneuvers, spreading the spilled dairy product into a second rank of unsuspecting folks.  It was the absolute worst-case scenario for a single ball of spilt ice cream.  I was laughing so hard I was worried about blowing a blood vessel and stroking out.

Before beginning part two of this story, let me caution you.  This will not top part one.  Stop reading if you like to go out on a high.  Otherwise, the second sordid chapter began only seconds after the conclusion of the opening act.  Cries of dismay still rang in my ears as I poked away from the scene of the mess.  I had gone no further that ten yards (albeit taking several minutes in doing so) when I witnessed a fight at extreme crowd density.  A woman (who we’ll call “lady one”) was coming through the crowd, child in tow.  With packed in so tightly, personal space was nonexistent and tempers were running high.  Lady one was no exception.  “Stay back!  Stay back!” she brayed.  This was akin to asking a person with the world’s most cataclysmic case of diarrhea to control their shitting- it just wasn’t going to happen.  As the crowd surged in, she changed tactics.  “Don’t press on my child,” she admonished no one in particular, “Ima whup yo’ ass ifya press on my child.”  This time her challenge was taken up by a woman of (presumably) similar manners and temperament, whom I will refer to as lady two.  “Shut up and handle it, bitch!” she said.  It was on from there.

I won’t cover the back and forth exchanges, as rendering in ebonics hurts my fingers.  There actually was very little verbal jousting, as things escalated pretty quickly.  What triggered the altercation was lady one (who was putting on an admirable job as a role model for her kid, I should add) threatening to slap lady two “back into the cooch she came out of.”

“You ain’t doing shit- yo’ pimp hand be trapped!” replied lady two.  In addition to being hilarious, this comment was fairly accurate.  We were still in the thickest part of the crowd, and hands were by-and-large relegated to the side.  Still, it was too much.  The gauntlet had been laid down and, were it possible to do so, picked up again.  It was setting up to be the lamest fight ever.  There was no way to swing, kick, elbow, pull hair, or any of the nastier moves that we’ve all claimed to use in our street fighting days.  The women, probably realizing this, decided to go at it by shocking each other by going “BWLAAAAHHH!” really loudly, each letting their tongue hang out like one of the “Wassup” guys from the been commercials.  They also widened their eyes threateningly for emphasis.  This goes on for a minute as they decide how to escalate.  Finally lady two says “Ooh, bitch.  You gonna get it now,” and headbutts her nemesis.

There is a proper way to do damage with a headbutt, by rearing back and loading the spine before delivering the blow.  With no room for that, the ladies exchanged harmless, neck-only headbutts.  This ineffective display goes on for an embarrassingly long time, to the delight of the crowd.  Several bets were placed on who would win.

The fight ended when the ladies (through their lame headbutting) tangled their braids to such an extreme degree that their heads were literally stuck together.  No, seriously.  Both of them had to ask for help from someone in the crowd to separate them.  Historically, being helplessly attached to your opponent is a great way to end a fight.  If Churchill had superglued his hand to Hitler’s, we could have saved a lot of lives.  In the present, there were a few more desultory insults regarding the quality (or lack thereof) of each participant’s weave, but things cooled rapidly.

As order was restored, my girlfriend reappeared next to me.  “Want some funnel cake?” she asked.  I bit a piece directly off the plate.  It was pretty good.  “Did I miss anything?” my girlfriend asked.  I shrugged.  The last thing I heard was lady one yelling at the crowd “anyone seen my little boy?!?”