You will now experience Starbucks text

There are few sacred spaces in the city, few areas that draw everybody, few spots that have literal oral histories written about them, but the corner of Clark & Belmont probably qualifies, despite its acting as stand-in for the precise sort of urban change that we all hate. It’s four blocks south of Wrigley Field, adjacent to the center of Boystown, on your way from the Red Line to Broadway and the lake, and so if you live anywhere around East Lakeview you are absolutely going to walk through this intersection multiple times a day. It is on the cusp of four different micro-neighborhoods. Three major bus routes run through or near it.

The northwest corner used to be Punkin’ Donuts; it is now, mortifyingly, a Target. The northeast corner is the L&L, an absolutely haunted dive bar. The southeast corner was a bank; now it is a hole in the ground, about to become a megadevelopment next to another megadevelopment. And the southwest corner is a Starbucks.

I am among the last humans on this planet to recommend Starbucks on a conceptual level, but I will recommend that Starbucks, because it is a good place to kill time around Boystown, during those periods where you have too much time to stand outside and too little time to “do” anything else, in perhaps the most convenient location on the whole north side.

But that’s not enough to recommend a Starbucks. No, you go to that Starbucks to pop headphones in, stare at the carnival unfolding in front of you, and contemplate existence. The absolute best place for people watching in the city of Chicago is in that Starbucks, sitting on one of three stools facing a full-height north window. As every train stops a block west, gobs of people walk past, head down, oblivious that you are watching them, just trying to get home or go out. On game days, thousands of half-drunk Cubs fans stumble down Clark, past the intersection, and many head west down Belmont to get some hangover food.