Artist	Song
Mamashoe	Ode to Joy
Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch	I'll Fly Away
Ervin Webb	I'm Going Home
Jimmy Rogers	Chicago Bound
Louis Jordan	I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town
Shonen Knife	Bye Bye
Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer With Brave Combo	Home
The Heartbeats	A Thousand Miles Away
Big Daddy	She's Leaving Home
The Poppy Family	Free From The City
Louis Prima & Keely Smith	Baby, Won't You Please Come Home
Hoopsnakes	Home Away From Home
Ian McCulloch	Hey That's No Way to Say Goodbye
Wanda Jackson	Lonely For You
Luther Allison	Sweet Home Chicago
Robbie Fulks	Goodbye, Good-Lookin'
David Byrne	Don't Fence Me In
Bay City Rollers	Bye Bye Baby
Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans	Longitude And Latitude
Jean Goldkette And His Orchestra	That's What Puts the Sweet in Home Sweet Home
Alison Krauss	Every Time You Say Goodbye
Willie Dixon	So Long
The Yayhoos	Oh! Chicago
Hank Ballard	I'm Gonna Miss You

Comment:

Joy's affair began in high school, skipping classes to spend the day roaming with her best friend around the city, hanging out at the Museum of Science, taking elevators in high-rise office buildings to see how far they could get (and pretending, when caught, that their fathers worked there).

In college, her infatuation become full-blown love: seeing local bands at Jack's (no ID required) and the Bobs at Jonathan Swift's, defying death at the Channel (which routinely disregarded fire-code limits), gorging her 101-lb, 19-year-old metabolism with impunity on ice cream at Steve's, and catching $2.50 double features at the Harvard Square Theater (Joy saw Casablanca so often she could practically quote the entire movie, much to the dismay of her roommate). Small boutique stores on Newbury Street, all-you-could-eat brunches at 33 Dunster, slam-dancing at Spit.

Boston was Joy's Bohemian boyfriend: wild, spontaneous, unselfconscious. He could show her a good time for just a few dollars and never make her feel cheap. No money? No problem: plenty of things to do, places to eat, things to see. He had his sleazy side: the South End and Central Square, where you didn't go after dark, but that air of danger only made him that more delicious.

Then the late 80s came, and the Bohemian sold out, or perhaps his spirit was simply broken by the juggernaut of supply-side economics. Real-estate skyrocketed. Boutique stores vanished overnight, replaced by Gaps and Bananas Republic (which had once been merely a fun catalog of worldwide surplus at dirt-cheap prices). Harvard Square, once the refuge for the college poor, is now the domain of kinte-clothed yuppies and and grungers with trust funds. No more Jonathan Swift's, no more 33 Dunster Street. Cheap eateries have been swallowed up by microbreweries, the Channel is long demolished, Jack's burned down, Spit became Axis, and the punks were replaced by frat boys and debutantes.

Joy hung in there, hoping she could rekindle the passion of those early years, but the fact is, Boston and Joy have been on the rocks for awhile now. Joy recognized that she was spending too much energy on an emotionally unavailable relationship; time to give in to the flirtation she's been having for the past couple of years, and make it official.

She's decided to move to Chicago. Chicago, with its sexily accessible waterfront, friendly people, great clubs, gorgeous apartments, and affordable rent. Its nurturing heat lamps on the El platforms, easily navigated grid of streets, its bon vivant street fairs and sophisticated museums, its dark history of scandal and corruption. Chicago, where people who are neither coeds nor married don't magically disappear. The Brown Elephant, where one can mainline used clothing; The Chicago Cafe, with the best vegetarian comfort food imaginable; The Melrose, where the gorgeous British host naively asks in his lovely East End vernacular, "Have you been done yet?".

Joy's moving in April. Chicago will be a brighter, happier place, and Boston a slightly darker one.

This one's for her.

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