Eager to shake the desynchronosistic hangover acquired by a transatlantic British Airways flight and having exhausted the hotel’s understandably sparse early-morning entertainment opportunities, I figured that a hike through the downtown Chicago area would perhaps prove the remedy I was looking for. For a major US metropolis, Chicago sure is quiet at 6am. In addition to myself, the only other people occupying the city’s gridded sidewalks were the down-and-outs and homeless. Each seemed to have his (I didn’t see any homeless women) own clearly delineated patch of begging turf, a clear strategy to fairly optimize each gentleman’s income potential while eliminating any sort of confrontational competitive advantage. I couldn’t even begin to understand – let alone articulate – the particular set of socio-economic factors that makes the beggars in the United States just seem, sort of, well, more ambitious than their European counterparts. The phrase “upwardly mobile” springs to mind. This “be the best that you can be” quality, I’ve noticed, seems to permeate every facet of American life and is simultaneously charming, infectious and somewhat unsettling.

There is something quite haunting and beautiful about a city at dawn. With the exception of the occasional passing car or rattling “L Train” in the distance, the city stands in silence, affording one the space with which to better digest the strikingly industrious character of the city’s architecture.

Only later was I advised that walking the streets of downtown Chicago alone at that time in the morning was possibly not the brightest of ideas.

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