An Inconvenient Truth

We've all been through it before with Ticketmaster. When you'd pick-up concert or sporting event tickets at a local Ticketmaster location and they would charge you the dreaded "convenience charge." To be completely honest, I have never had a big problem with this concept because it was, after all, convenient to go to my local Ticketmaster location and buy whatever ticket that I wanted instead of going through a scalper, or the pain of going to the actual venue. It truly was convenient.

When I'm hard up for alcohol, or a frozen pizza, or a Slurpee--what's more convenient than going to a Convenience Store? Sure their prices are 20-30% more expensive than going to Jewel or Dominick's and English is not the primary language spoken there, but damn it it's convenient. You see, I don't mind paying a little bit more for something when it makes my life a little bit easier--it's supposed to be a reciprocal relationship, isn't it? So with that concept in mind, I have a question for my loyal three readers; if we are paying premium prices to live in Chicago, why is it so inconvenient to live here? Shouldn't the suburbs be more expensive to live in since it is definitely more convenient to live out there?

In the city, we pay more for real estate, gasoline, cable TV, cigarettes, alcohol, groceries, parking--all staples for the most part. We have to endure the horrible traffic, over priced parking garages and meters, bogus parking tickets, 10.25 % sales tax, potholes that will never be fixed, and highways that are always under construction! If you raise a family here would you be comfortable sending your children through the Chicago Public School system? After all, we pay taxes for these schools don't we? Sure, if you'd like to fast track your kids to an early grave, or a nice bright orange prison jumpsuit. So this means you'd be sending your children to private schools and having to pay a somewhat different kind of convenience charge for grade school, junior high, and high school even though you pay taxes for public schools that you can't use.

So let me get this straight; you pay more for a condo and property taxes for a condo that you can't sell, you drive a car that you can't park, or actually drive because of the awful traffic, you also drive a car that can be destroyed by a pothole even though you pay taxes for somebody to repair the potholes even though nobody repairs them--same goes for the highways--we have wonderful stores to shop at, but you can't shop here because the sales tax is ridiculously high, same goes for liquor and cigarettes. You do all of this just so you can get married, have children, and move away from the city because you can't send them to the Chicago Public School system because it's horrible and dangerous--even though you have been paying taxes for said schools that you will never be able to use anyway. Sound accurate?

What is so convenient about any of these inconveniences for a city dweller? Just so I can have the luxury of cool bars, better restaurants (a debatable topic) and live closer to where I work? This doesn't seem like a fair trade to me. I thought that this was a reciprocal relationship, right Mr. Mayor? Mr. Stroger? Govorner Quinn? Can anybody give me answer? Nobody is talking, huh? How convenient.