Night shift
The people who keep Chicago going from dusk till dawn.
The city doesn’t go to sleep just because most of us do. Some people work nights, keeping the city going. Haley Hatton, a harm reduction specialist for the Night Ministry, put it plainly: “[This work] doesn’t just happen by magic.”
So, for a month, I stayed up late and met night workers across the city and across industries. In addition to Hatton, a corner store clerk, a diner server, a firefighter, and a vet tech all shared their stories with me. Most of them feel working nights offers a cheat code to the city’s chief annoyances, like traffic and crowds. There’s also a magic to Chicago nights to which they have special access: the golden hue that radiates from streetlights, the skyline shining off the lake, quiet solitude difficult to find in the city, and a kinship with their fellow night workers.
Working nights also presents its unique challenges—exhaustion, rowdy and drunk people, rude customers, long hours (and, of course, strange photographers)—yet they all have done it for years. And some wouldn’t have it any other way.