Metapheriffic

[cyrano]

Union Station is, to me, a microcosm of Chicago. Passages are filled to capacity with people, to the point where it's difficult to find a break to join the stream, let alone go opposite it. It may be dingy in places, but it's clean. There seems to be one restroom for the station, always busy and frequent location of the 'somebody else's luggage steeplechase'. It, of course, opens directly out into one of those streams, people flooding toward the escalator and daylight.
And the guy who's going up the walking half of the narrow escalator still says "Excuse me," to every person he bumps past.