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nobody wants to answer.
    Should there be no “ethnic neighborhoods” or Chicago-style segregation? Should the races all mix together like a true melting pot? Must we interbreed until the entire notion of “race” is lost?
    Or should we instead proudly cling to ethnic heritages and neighborhoods—espousing how they enrich our cultural lives— but insist on economic equality? That is to say: Is success when there are still black and white and Latino neighborhoods, but they’re all equally wealthy, and they all have schools and firehouses and hospitals that are just as good?
    There is no consensus upon these questions—within my own brain or within the highest echelons of city government. The only thing that the clergy and the politicians and the community development people can agree on is that things are not okay as they are. Things need to change.
    But change to exactly what? Ladies and gentlemen, nobody has any idea.
    Nobody.
    Anyhow, I pull off the expressway and head a few blocks into Logan Square.
    That’s when I start to hear the mysterious thumping noise coming from the back seat.

Maria Ramirez
    So I decide he’s kind of cute . . . but also weird.
    Those guys in their 30s who still dress like hipsters . . . they don’t lookkold, but they don’t look young either. It’s like plastic surgery. You’re not old but you’re not young. You’re this weird, third thing.
    He has a wrinkled dress shirt with the top unbuttoned and a tie hanging low on his neck. He’s tall—which I like—but also a little thick around the middle. Not exactly Stewart Copeland. But then he does have the thick black Stewart Copeland-style glasses. I have to admit I like that.
    And it turns out he actually does know a little about zombies. At least he’s less cynical than what they were saying on Gawker and Drudge Report. That they may be a prank, or some new medical condition. That the stumbling, decayed people in the clips are mutated residents of a nuclear accident in some former Soviet republic. (A lot of the newer zombie videos are from Eastern Europe.)
    He isn’t calling them zombies though. He says he thinks that if they are real, that they’re people. Maybe deformed. Maybe sick. He also thinks it could just be a giant internet joke though, or a hoax by a company to promote a product. (Stranger things have happened.) He says that something’s up . . . but not necessarily zombies.
    So, yeah, he talks about the zombies with me for a while. Just when the conversation is winding down, he says, “Oh hey, SBVD. Right on.”
    He’s looking at the Strawberry Brite Vagina Dentata sticker on the side of my drum case. He obviously has no idea that we’re the same band. I tell him that we are.
    â€œNo shit?!? You guys just do this cover band bullshit for the extra scratch?”
    â€œDing ding ding” I say. “We have a winner.”
    â€œReally?”—not like he doesn’t believe me, but like he thinks it’s cool. “That’s awesome. Wow!”
    â€œI guess it’s kinda awesome,” I say. Now he’s going overboard.
    â€œYou guys are amazing,” he continues. “That one tune you do, ‘Flip the Trick’? That’s an amazing song. That part where the guitars drop out and it’s just bass and drums? Amazing. And you’re that drummer?”
    I kind of step back and look him up and down again.
    He doesn’t look like a typical Strawberry Brite Vagina Dentata fan. At least ten years too old and thirty pounds too heavy. Also, he says “amazing” too much.
    But he clearly knows our songs.
    â€œYeah,” I say cautiously. “That’s me. Did you hear us on the radio? We got played on ‘Local Anesthetic’ the other day.”
    â€œMy wife . . .” he begins, and falters. For just a moment his eyes flicker around, and his lips curl like he’s sad.
    I