I got the same story, same town! Different mode of transport. I'm at the train station in Chicago at 7PM after I find my car ride back to LA left that morning (royal schedule screw up) so I'm up the creek. Plane is too expensive, bus is too slow (like 3 days to LA) So train is my only option. My luck, the next train out is 10 AM tomorrow. I aint sleeping in Union Station in 1990 as it actually closed back then at 10PM or something so I had to find a place to crash, I asked the ticket guy where the cheapest place to sleep was around here cuz I got like 30 bucks on me , and he writes an address on a piece of paper and tells me to get a $6 cab, no more. Older black cabbie picks me up and I hand him the paper...classic over the glasses double take at me and asks me "You wanna go here?" Yup! OK....nasty southside dive hotel with the buzzing red neon sign literally right outside my window. I end up hooking up with an off duty stripper in the hotel bar who's got a baseball sized wad of 1's and 5's and is a Dodger fan! Well, 6 hours later I'm running from a bouncer of the bar that she just stiffed for about about 50 bucks and I get separated from her. Well, I made it back to the hotel by blind reckoning and never saw here again. Train ride home was somewhat uneventful after that, 'cept winning 50 bucks in dimes in a slot machine in Vegas (?) and almost missing my train trying to to recover all 500 dimes in a sundae cup I had to dump. Train was pulling out and I come running out dimes falling everywhere as I jump into the conductors open door. It really was that close.
