Positively Third Street

Sherwood Kiraly

As I write this, I’m in Chicago for a week. It’s not better, just

different.

And not even that different, really. I’ve been mulling the

similarities between Chicago and Laguna the past few days. There

really isn’t that much Chicagoans have that we don’t have back home,

besides tall buildings and population.

They have art; we have art. They had a fire; we had a fire. They

have a lake; we’ve got an ocean.

But one thing Chicago has that we don’t is a rich,

self-mythologizing musical tradition. There are scads of canonical

songs about Chicago and its icons, including the Wrigley Building,

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow and the Cubs. This is the kind of stuff that makes

a town live forever in the nation’s heart.

Laguna’s various features have been celebrated annually in the

“Lagunatics” shows, but we have yet to break through nationally with

a tune about, say, Third Street hill.

Like the Wrigley Building, Third Street hill is unique. It’s

impressively steep. Thrill-ride steep. X-Games steep. Steep enough to

be song-worthy. And it’s as spooky going up as going down.

My wife, Patti Jo, was driving down it with Katie the other day

and saw that the traffic ascending the hill had gotten backed up,

forcing a small truck to stop three-quarters of the way up -- a true

stick-shift nightmare.

Patti Jo told 16-year-old Katie never to get caught like that

truck did -- an unnecessary warning. Katie won’t go up Third Street

hill in anything but sneakers; she’s a conservative driver and

prefers to go around the long way.

I saw Third Street hill in my dreams before I saw it in reality.

For years I had a driving dream that climaxed on an incline quite

similar to Third Street, only a bit steeper -- so steep, in fact,

that every time I reached the top, my car and I would slowly tip over

backward and fall until I woke up. When I first drove up Third Street

for real, I got vertigo.

A hill like that deserves to be immortalized in song.

Now I lay no claim to the mantle of “Wicked” Stephen Schwartz or

Bree “Lagunatics” Burgess Rosen, but every now and then the muse

throws a glance my way, and today I came up with a sample opening

verse. So if you’ll let me tune up here for a second ... all right,

here we go:

Here’s a tune for those who go over the top

A leap of faith and a vertical drop

You can rhyme it as you climb it

You can hum it as you plummet

Feeling rather ill

Down Third Street hill

Space limitations, not to mention my own, prevent me from

continuing, but I’m sure someone out there can carry the torch the

rest of the way. Just forge on, heavy on the bass, and we’ll make

them forget “My Kind of Town.”