LINCOLN PARK, CHICAGO — After what the Committee describes as "a frankly emotional deliberation," the Society has named "End of Beginning" by Djo the Official Summer Theme of the Lincoln Park Trixie Society. The vote was not close.
It happens every year. A song arrives, the village adopts it without being asked, and the Society is left making official what Members already decided in their cars, this summer the song is "End of Beginning," and the Society sees no reason to fight it.
What moves us, and we will not pretend otherwise, is the part about taking the train back through the city — the looking-out-the-window-at-your-old-life of it all. The Committee feels this deeply. Several Members had to step out.
On the TrixieMale, As Foretold
The Society notes that the song speaks, in its way, to the TrixieMale: the husband or boyfriend in a quarter-zip who orders the same thing every time. Several Members believe it describes theirs particularly well.
On Leaving for the North Shore
The Committee has also been moved to reflect on a certain migration. As the song so wisely puts it — and we are quoting from memory — you can take the man out of the city, but you cannot take the city out of the man. Or the man out of the city of the man. Something to that effect. The point stands.
On a Possible Arrangement
The Society can confirm it is in talks — it will say no more than that — regarding a license for the song. The intention, should it come to anything, is a modest revision more suited to the village: you can take the Trixie out of the city, but you cannot take the city out of the Trixie. The Committee considers this an improvement, and an obvious one. Discussions are ongoing. The Society will not be commenting further, except to say that it is optimistic, and that it has already started humming the new version.
This is the eternal story of the Trixie and the TrixieMale who decamp for Winnetka, Wilmette, Glencoe — and spend the rest of their lives explaining that they are "still basically city people." They are not. But the song forgives them, and so, this summer, does the Society.
A Note on the Vandelux Remix
The Society would be remiss not to mention the Vandelux remix, which the Committee considers essential summer listening and which it has been playing at a volume the neighbors have described, in writing, as "a lot." The remix has a particular hold on the after-dark hours of the season.
On the Line About the Boats
There is a part of the song the Committee is especially fond of — the part, as the Committee renders it, that goes "the men sailed in on Saturday, their loafers full of money." The Society is aware that this is not, strictly, a line in the song. Several Members have pointed this out. The Office has elected to keep hearing it anyway, on the grounds that it perfectly describes the traders who have done suspiciously well, who arrive at the playground off Oak Street Beach each weekend and park their boats where the children are meant to play.
The Committee maintains the song is, on some level, about these men. The Committee cannot say which level. It simply knows, when the chorus comes, that it is thinking of the boats, and the loafers, and the money — and feels the songwriter must have been too.
It has not escaped the Society's notice that certain visuals associated with the song feel filmed practically in our backyard — close enough to the village that Members have claimed, without evidence, to recognize the light. The Society neither confirms nor denies. It simply enjoys being seen.
A Word of Disclosure
In the interest of transparency, the Society wishes to disclose that Executive Director Ashley Munroe is a personal friend of Djo, and of the remixer, and considers both to be "lovely, grounded, and exactly as talented as everyone says." The Society stresses that this friendship in no way influenced the selection. The song was always going to win. The friendship is merely a happy coincidence, of which Ashley reminds the Committee frequently.
In Summary
You will hear it at the playground off Oak Street Beach, where the traders who have done suspiciously well park their boats and pretend the song is about them. You will hear it on Clybourn, on Webster, on the drive up Sheridan to the houses the Society pretends not to envy. It is the sound of the season. The Society has made it official, as if it had a choice.
— Issued by the Office of the Executive Director. The Committee has reviewed this announcement and found it entirely satisfactory, and is still a little emotional about it.