Urban Whatever

Creative Loafing's November 2, 2005 issue introduced a new feature by Jared Neumark, a homeless Chicago carpetbagger set to prowl the Center City under a column ironically titled the Urban Explorer.

Sound familiar? I take no creative credit, having retitled this Nightlife column the Urban Crawl in early October (the 10th, to be exact) and converting to a blog, but I'll be happy to waive any intellectual property rights associated with CL's debut. I was a fan of Timothy C. Davis' "Scene & Herd" although I never met the fella.

So Crawl vs. Explorer? Which carries the superior weight? One definition of an explorer, after all, is a "person aged 14-20 who is a participant in the exploring program of the Boy Scouts of America (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)." Now, seems to me that while the kid's got his housing struggles, the boy can't be taking his first photo sporting a smirk and a brew in front of Dixie's as a late teen.

I say that he fancies himself as an investigator, and as a Charlotte rook, will undoubtedly consider everything as fresh as that baby's bottom he once had diapered. Coming from Chicago, it may not be a fair fight, although we do have two Morton's now.

A crawl, by definition, is to creep, of which I only play one on TV. Envisioning the weekly prowl in some version of a combat technique seems much more appropriate, considering the space of our suburban sprawl. Besides, I thankfully passed on the Explorer title as an option. Too vanilla, I say, and reminiscent of that overbought SUV.

On the contrary, the Crawl could also play to my juvenile behavior, which is entirely accurate. I'm only thirty-something years from infancy, having adopted my college nickname "Junior," and still despising anything with eggs in it.

So do we have an issue with the new guy on the block? Absolutely not. In fact, I embrace the return of the local mag's drinking hunt in continued tribute to a prior comment of mine that our nightlife is actually newsworthy.

So welcome aboard, Jared. We're tired of your Subway commercials and hopefully the low carb beers you slug will keep the pounds off. Good luck, bro.