November 9, 2008
Crowds in Grant Park
People demanding change, a museum fixed in time.
Posted at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 12, 2008
Throwback
I'm headed to Wrigley this afternoon to catch the Cubs in their current hot streak. It's going to be a unique game. Apparently today the club will celebrate 60 years of being televised by WGN by trying to emulate a game from 1948.
There have been retro days before, but this one is fairly unique. In addition to the 1948 uniforms (which for the opposing Braves is a Boston uniform) the telecast will be in black-and-white for the first few innings. Camera angles will be limited and the center field camera (which provides the batter close-ups) will be offline. Certain vendors will be offering 1940's-era victuals at 1940's-era prices. How cool is that? More info here.
Fans are encouraged to dress the part too, but I'll be damned if I am going to put on a suit and fedora. Well, maybe just the fedora. How does one dress for 1948?
Posted at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
April 23, 2008
Lions, lambs
You know, the cougar-in-the-alley thing was funny, in a too-surreal-to-really-be-dangerous sort of way. Of course it was a serious situation -- as having any alpha predator in your midst would be -- but when you receive community news bulletins that start with "no doubt by now you all are aware of the 150-pound cougar that was on the loose in our neighborhood yesterday" you have to chuckle.
Well, the chuckling is over with the latest newsletter.
Tuesday afternoon, police officers brought to my attention a letter that they have received threatening the safety of Audubon's students and community. The letter appears to have been written by someone angry about the shooting of the cougar in the neighborhood. The letter threatens the safety of Audubon students and makes threatening statements regarding the Spring Gala and the Audubon Family Fun Fair.
My children don't attend Audubon, but it is right around the corner. It is being targeted because the first report of the lion in our neighborhood came from the school.
There's been a minor kerfuffle since the shooting about whether the police acted rightly in killing the lion instead of trapping it or tranquilizing it. The city says that a wild lion in an enclosed area is a threat to public safety and that they did what they felt they had to do. Tranquilizers, they say, take time to act and require very precise insertion. And besides, they were not equipped for that.
It is true that there were dozens of shots fired, only a few of which hit the lion. And I admit that I don't have a hard time envisioning a phalanx of adrenalized Chicago cops shooting with more abandon than perhaps warranted. But I have a fundamental problem with the criticism of what happened.
Cougars track humans in the wild. This is a fact. Cougars are predators; they're strong; they can kill a man easily. Moreover, a cougar wandering through a city is clearly addled to begin with. Roscoe Village is a couple dozen square blocks full of hundreds of children under six-years-old. This is a very real threat.
To now have someone threaten the safety of children as retribution for killing the lion seems not only evil and stupid, but deeply ironic.
I'm kinda done with the cougar. Can we just enjoy the fact that it isn't snowing outside?
Posted at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 15, 2008
Hakuna Matata in the Village
So it's big news back home that Chicago police shot and killed a cougar in the alley not two blocks from my house. Coverage here.
A few years ago I was dropping some friends off and I am certain a coyote ran across the road. Others have claimed to see game like that in the city too, something about hungry animals following railroad tracks and the smell of human trash from the forest preserves.
But a cougar?! In the alley. God DAMN. Looks like I have trash duty from here on out, says thelovelywife.
So, Roscoe Village needs to capitalize on this, don't you think? First thing to do is print up some t-shirts. Some slogan ideas.
Roscoe Village: Not All Our Cougars Are Middle-Aged Tramps
Roscoe Village: We Don't Have a Rat Problem
Roscoe Village: Our Trash is Part of the Circle of Life
Submit yours today! And look twice in the alley.
Posted at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
February 24, 2008
Shattered lakefront
A fractured floe along the shore of Northerly Island in Chicago. Obviously the scene of much upheaval, but it was completely still the whole time I was there. My son asked if the waves themselves just froze in place.
Does anyone know what process causes this? Is the west coast of Lake Michigan where Mother Nature tries to sweep the shards of winter under the rug?
Posted at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 16, 2008
Snapshot of a summer day
Looks like Google Maps just did a refresh of Street View. Chicago proper has been available for a while, but they've just added most of my neighborhood, Roscoe Village. The shots were clearly taken on a beautiful day this summer. A little gift as we hunker down for even more winter weather. I haven't seen the sidewalk through the snow in weeks.
Let's start at the west end of my street where the Four Treys Tavern announces "Hey This Is a Party Block" to entrants (also the scene of the flaming garbage truck). Apparently the Four Treys has been on this spot since 1887. It's a bit out of whack with the style of other bars in the area, a throw-back to earlier incarnations of the neighborhood. Part biker bar, part karaoke bar, part never-really-left-the-1970's bar. Why the "Four Treys", you ask? Location: 3333 N. Damen. (Took me, oh, two years to figure that out.)
Proceeding eastward down Henderson you encounter a typical streetscape of mostly single-family homes, part of the urban grid of 25' × 125' lots. My neighborhood restricts height to three stories except in a very few special cases. Basically no one towers over anyone else, sunlight is equitably distributed (or, more accurately, equitably not distributed) and the scale of the street stays mostly in line with the tops of the trees. It's a charming block, a mixture of homes, a condo building or two, and renters. Jane Jacobs would be proud.
Interestingly, it is possible to date this panorama almost exactly without leaving the block. This is first because of the presence of MySweetRide on the south side of Henderson. (A dark blue/gray Honda Accord. Who can spot her?) Using my car's Twitter archive I see that she was parked in this exact spot on Sunday, July 1 and then again on Monday, August 27. My first thought was that it had to be July 1 because of the number of American flags hung out in from of houses and the fact there are so many cars on the street (i.e., not a work day).
But the proof is at the other end of the block. Two flimsy roadblocks lean against the last house on the north side of the street. These barricades were loaned from the alderman for our annual block party, held on Sunday, August 26. (Other evidence confirms that the GoogleMobile was in town in late August.)
It's kinda fun sleuthing about various lifestream data points on the web like this. In all I consulted Street View, Twitter, Weather Underground, Google Calendar, and my own blog and del.icio.us archives to figure out merely when a photo was taken. (I could have told you what music I was listening to when this shot was taken, but it was not, in itself, relevant to the problem at hand.) It'd be great to have some kind of meta-aggregator for the data-wake one leaves moving through time.
But mostly the new view is just a comforting reminder of a lazy summer afternoon. I suspect I will be returning to it for the smile it brings a few more times this winter.
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A couple of notes on Street View itself:
Never noticed this before, but there isn't a single readable license plate I can find. I think Google has deliberately blurred every one of them. Amazing.
Would be great if you could link to specific orientation of the panorama like you can to a specific address.
How soon until you can annotate Street View like you can the maps themselves?
Posted at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 12, 2008
Aural decoration or, further adventures in filtering one's music library
Last Saturday was our school fundraiser, an elaborate auction/party. One of those things you just don't think as being a big deal until you have children in school. The amount of planning required is only slightly less ridiculous than the amount of money raised.
Last year when planning began I was appointed in absentia to be the "entertainment chair", meaning the music guy. Naturally I envisioned myself on the decks slamming beats late into the night. But no, that wouldn't do. Couldn't really, as the focus needed to be on getting people to make outrageous bids for items, not crowded on a dance floor.
So I hired a band. Working with them put me right back in high school when playing keyboard in a band was pretty much the most important thing I had going. (You might remember such acts as The Jerks, Big Green Milk Truck, The Young Republicans, and Relativity. Wow, now there's a blog post that needs writing.) I had to resist every urge not to rent a smoke machine, 'cause, I mean, who can rock out without a smoke machine?
Anyway. There was also the issue of "interlude" music, what to play from my iPod during times the band was not on. Easily the most challenging playlist I've ever put together. What exactly is the mood that you want to set at an auction? Classical, too stuffy. Country, wrong demographic. Classic rock, too retro. Jazz, maybe, but either you like it or you don't. It was so much more difficult than I imagined. I needed an angle.
The city of Chicago helped me out. Apparently our local airports will soon play only music from bands from Chicago. They're covering all the genres, but leaving out really upbeat stuff. No Pumpkins or Ministry, probably no R. Kelly. The reasoning is that people are already on edge at an airport and don't need 160 BPM to push them off the cliff -- a similar problem to my own, in a way.
So I sliced my music library by Chicago-based bands. There's no tag for this, of course, so it was all manual. Last.fm's tags helped out immensely -- but wouldn't it be cool if Last.fm could actually add biographical data to MP3 headers? I added "chicago" to the grouping tag for all this music and put together a smart playlist to segregate it.
Andrew Bird
Califone
Chicago Underground Trio
Exploding Star Orchestra
Kanye West
Ministry
R Kelly
Sir Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Smashing Pumpkins
Styx (huh?)
Sufjan Stevens (honorary, only for Illinois)
Tortoise
Wilco
OK, fine, but that includes everything from Sir Georg Solti to Alain Jourgensen, neither appropriate. So, using Tangerine I generated a new playlist of Chicago-related band tracks between 100 and 145 beats-per-minute with medium intensity.
Lastly, I removed stuff that would, you know, upset those of fragile sensibility. Like, say Ministry's Stigmata: "School families, silent auction table three closes in -- cutting my face and walking on splinters, I lost my soul to the look in your eyes!!! -- whoops, sorry. Next track."
So what did I end up with? 239 tracks became 59, far more music than I needed. Full track list after the jump.
The method was dorky, both horribly imprecise and overly complex, and unknown to anyone that night. Yep, just right.
Next year: embedded subliminal messages. Bid more, you will bid more now!
Armchairs, Andrew Bird
Simple X, Andrew Bird
Spare-Ohs, Andrew Bird
Hell Is Chrome, Wilco
Hummingbird, Wilco
Handshake Drugs, Wilco
Wishful Thinking, Wilco
Theologians, Wilco
I Am One, Smashing Pumpkins
Window Paine, Smashing Pumpkins
Trick Bird, Califone
Apple, Califone
Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother!, Sufjan Stevens
Chicago, Sufjan Stevens
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From The Dead!! Ahhhh!, Sufjan Stevens
Gamera, Tortoise
The Source of Uncertainty, Tortoise
Blackbird, Tortoise
Madison Area, Tortoise
Why We Fight, Tortoise
Goriri, Tortoise
CTA, Tortoise
Deltitnu, Tortoise
Not Quite East Of The Ryan (remix of 'Spiderwebbed'), Tortoise
Bullet With Butterfly Wings, Smashing Pumpkins
Pink&Sour, Califone
A Chinese Actor, Califone
Impossible Germany, Wilco
Sky Blue Sky, Wilco
Leave Me (Like You Found Me), Wilco
What Light, Wilco
Eden 2, Tortoise
Blackjack, Tortoise
I Set My Face To The Hillside, Tortoise
In Sarah, Mencken, Christ And Beethoven There Were Women And Men, Tortoise
Jetty, Tortoise
Everglade, Tortoise
Christmas Time, Smashing Pumpkins
Sting Ray And The Beginning Of Time - Part I, Exploding Star Orchestra
Sting Ray And The Beginning Of Time - Part III (Psycho-tropic Electric Eel Dream), Exploding Star Orchestra
Kamera, Wilco
Jesus, etc., Wilco
Heavy metal drummer, Wilco
Pot kettle black, Wilco
1979, Smashing Pumpkins
Posted at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
February 6, 2008
Wintry remix
I notice that almost exactly one year ago I had a similar urge to post about how miserable winter had become. Well, it just got miserabler.
It started OK. We've had a snowier January than I can remember in many years. Which makes the several days of bitter cold at least aesthetically pleasing.
"Daddy, my eyelids are frozen shut."
"I know, son, but if you could open them you'd find the streetscape very beautiful."
The other upside of this dose of winter is learning the seemingly endless forms that water can take. Snow, ice, liquid, of course. Add to that list the intermediate states of sleet, slush, sneet, and snush. (Can't forget thundersnow either.)
This morning as I went for a run I witnessed -- indeed experienced -- the most diabolical form yet. It only occurs when the thermometer is all over the place, warm enough for liquid water to stick around close to the ground yet cold enough for the water to freeze when exposed to the air.
What happens on the sidewalks is that certain squares of concrete that are askew and lower than grade fill with near-freezing water. A very thin layer of ice non-uniformly covers this water and looks distressingly like the textured surface of the sidewalk itself. So you never quite know if what you are about to step in is solid or liquid and (here's the kicker) how deep it all is. To make it a real gauntlet-run the edges of the sidewalk are piled high with snow. So you get shoes soaken with water that is trying desperately to become ice. And a bonus: windblown ice pellets that impact the face like a fragmenting comet hitting the moon.
The ultimate indignity comes only on the coldest runs though. I wear a little hat with ear flaps that fasten under my chin. Even on subzero days one sweats when running and the sweat from my head channels down the flap-straps ending at the fastener. Slowly this saline sweat freezes and, as more and more pours off my head, a little icicle comes to form. By the end of, say, a six mile run I have an icicle several inches long swinging from side to side from my chin. Quite comical, a cross between Frosty the Snowman and Fu Manchu.
Did I mention we're expecting the heaviest snowfall today in nine years?
Posted at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 19, 2007
Eversharp
In English graduate school my main focus was on technologies of writing, specifically the printing press. Imagine my surprise, then, to learn that I live right around the corner from the nursery (if not actual birthplace) of another such technology: the mechanical pencil.*
Our neigborhood of Roscoe Village in Chicago has seen its ups and downs over the decades. The latest up-cycle was begun in 1980 when the huge Eversharp Pencil Factory at Ravenswood and Roscoe was converted to residential condos, the largest industrial transformation of its kind in Chicago at the time, galvanizing re-development of the area. The Pencil Factory Lofts is an anomaly in our neighborhood of relatively low-density single-family homes, but I'm a little prouder of it each time I walk by now that I know its story.
In 1913 a chap from Bloomington, Illinois named Charles Keeran came up with the idea of fitting a metal stylus with replaceable lead inserts. This became the Eversharp mechanical pencil. He allied himself with Wahl Adding Machine Company (of Wahl clipper fame today -- apparently someone else took the adding machine market around this time). In 1917 this partnership turned ugly when Wahl forced Keeran out and began marketing the pencils as Eversharp, a brand which continues to this day. Nearly all of these Pencils of the Future were churned out of the factory at Ravenswood and Roscoe.
In homage to the former life of the factory the developers of the loft painted giant pencils on the side of the water tank atop its roof. Actually they painted regular #2 pencils up there, presumably because mechanical pencils look a lot like pens and that would, you know, defeat the homage. But the tank isn't there anymore. I went out to take a picture of it yesterday and I could not see it. Either I'm snowblind or it has been removed.
So, next time you use a mechanical pencil please pause to thank my humble neighborhood. Actually, does anyone use mechanical pencils anymore?
* It would have changed the world, too, if not for corrective paper fluid. Curse you Wite-Out!
Posted at 8:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 8, 2007
How not to run a marathon
And I don't mean the kind of running that takes two legs and an iron will. Yesterday the Chicago Marathon fell apart.
Among people who submit their bodies to long-distance running, the Chicago Marathon is consistently a favorite. Flat as a pancake, super-scenic, lined with cheering throngs, and great weather ... well, usually. Yesterday the thermometer topped 88°F and it was disgustingly humid. A terrible day to run a marathon. An even worse day to run a marathon filled with first-timers and novices.
My wife ran about ten miles of the 26.2 as a unregistered supporter for a friend. Those ten miles were not continuous as she, like thousands of others, had to bow out at various points because the conditions were so brutal. People were dropping like flies. The omnipresent cheering that makes this race so much fun was accompanied almost the entire route by the sound of ambulance sirens.
The race organizers had a number of tough decisions to make yesterday. Run the race at all? When is enough enough? And, hardest of all, what to do for the runners who could clearly make it to the end?
They let the race go off. The heat climbed fast. Discussion forums are alight with charges of empty water stations along the route* (and just as many saying they were stocked just fine). But clearly it was dangerous to let the race go on. At the halfway distance at about 11:30 (3.5 hours after the race started) runners were told to stop and were re-routed back to the start. Huge bummer for the participants, I'm sure, but if you've only run 13 miles in 3.5 hours something is clearly wrong so I don't have a huge problem with this decision.
But then, shortly thereafter, around mile 20 police got on bullhorns: “Attention runners, the marathon has been canceled. You can stop running, now.” Can you imagine? If you've made it this far you're going to want to finish. And can they really make you stop? They could close the course, but they can't make you get off the sidewalks.
The organizers say this was done because of fear of the runners' safety. Others are claiming that it is because the city was out of emergency service vehicles (402 people were hospitalized as of last night) -- which of course is the same thing with a twist.
Either way, this is hugely disappointing to anyone who cares about a Chicago Olympics bid. If I were Mayor Daley I'd be livid. Every sporting event this city hosts from now until 2009 needs to be organized and run with laser-precision. We need to show the world that we can run a massive event and protect our athletes.
[*] And before you ask, no, my wife was not contributing to the water shortage. She was a bandit, but a bandit with her own refreshment.
Tags: chicago, heat, marathon, olympics
Posted at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 5, 2007
Pothole-in-one
On my stroll home with coffee today I was greeted by a paving truck and steamroller right in front of our house. I figured the city had finally sent a crew out to fix the gaping sinkhole in the street whose maw was slowly enlarging from Vespa-sized to VW Bug-sized. But no. They were there to pave over a small correction to a manhole.
All three of my kids (in pajamas) ran out to see Men Working With Construction Equipment and we had ourselves a little morning entertainment. Over the clamor, I gestured towards the sinkhole to the crew in the international sign language of “Um, you aren't going to repair that obvious hazard?” They ignored me. So we brought them some bottles of Propel. The foremen yelled back “You didn't see nothin' here” and proceeded to back the dumptruck up to the hole and fill it in. Now, of course, there's a structural problem under the street. The hole will simply degrade over time and suck in the new asphalt. But, hey, it is fixed for now with no extra bitching to the city to get it done.
This is how things are done in this city. Not saying it is right, just how it is. But I can imagine worse ways of getting things done.
This episode reminded me of a similar, though much more exciting, street scene from a few years back. I blogged it on another, private site, but copy it here for your pleasure.
Boys like trucks. Especially when it is a garbage truck on fire that is being doused by a fire truck right in front of our house. Oh the joy! My son and I were returning from breakfast and saw a garbage truck -- in fact our garbage truck with our garbage men on it -- with smoke pouring out of the back. A fire engine had just pulled up and the crew was unravelling the water hoses. Luckily this was right at the bar three houses down from us so we perched on the sidewalk bench and got a front row seat to a spectacle way cooler than anything we could have Tivo'ed.
But it got better. They started hosing down the truck, but seemingly could not find the source of the fire. What to do? Dump the entire load of trash on the street of course! YES! My son's eyes were platter-sized as it all came crashing onto our street in a soaking, stanky, smouldering heap. This necessitated opening the fire hydrants. I think we might have applauded. You just can't describe the feeling of watching smoking refuse wash down the gutter of your own street. They really started hosing the pile off and it seemed to work.
The best part was the coming together of such a fine group of Chicago Guyz. Firemen, Policemen, Garbagemen, and other city officials with no real role congregated and shot the breeze like this was an everyday occurence which, perhaps, it is. You just wanted to grab your crotch and say “fuck” watching these guys do their jobs.
To top it all off, one of the firemen beckoned my son to approach the Engine. Nevermind that there was still a fire in the middle of our street. Engineer Joe plopped hime in the driver's seat of the truck. I was as happy as my boy was. Driving a fire truck is simply cool.
The only thing that would have made it even better is if a “scoop” -- those of you with children who watch Bob the Builder will know what this is -- arrived to clean up the crud. In fact after we took my son to camp, a scoop did arrive. Thelovelywife noted at the time that given the number of Union-mandated coffee and cig breaks for the city workers he might well make it home in time to see the scooping.
Ah, city life.
Tags: dumptruck, fire, paving, street
Posted at 10:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 13, 2007
“A cross between horseshoes and sodomy”
Summer in Chicago is technically over, but winter seems not to have gotten the memo and the The Greatest Ninety Days in any city seems to be rolling on.
As such, the sidewalks are alive with a simple game. It is called baggo, or bags, or bag toss, or as it is most unfortunately known around these parts: cornhole. (The bags are filled with corn kernels, you see.) Any game that enables you to play it while holding a beer in one hand and making endless sodomy jokes is bound to be good fun, no?
All it takes are two boards with holes, placed about 25 feet apart (the standard width of lots in the city -- handy), and a couple of bags. Oh, and beer. See I believe this game was made specifically so that you could engage in a competition without putting your beer down. Which makes it perfect for tailgating and frat boys. But damn is it fun. The rules are simple: three points in the hole, one for on the board, you can knock others off, first one to 21. (There is a cancel-out variant of the rules where you have to do better than your opponent per turn to score at all, but that's just, you know, complicated.)
But the real reason I like it is that it is an engine of social interaction for passersby. You're blocking the sidewalk and the game makes a natural conversation point. I have met more neighbors in the past months playing baggo than I have in the past five years. Recently one evening when I was playing with my father-in-law (there's a streetlamp right in front of our house) two drunkards spilled from the corner bar and slapped $5 on the far board. They managed to say something near “sink it in one throw.” I did. Not sure how I did, but I did.
Of course if you play on a weekend night you're going to encounter idiots. One of the tactics in baggo involves deliberately trying to get your opponent's bag off the board with no hope of scoring yourself. This involves an overhand throw, pitching-style. Of course, if you miss, the bag sails down the sidewalk.
This is precisely what happened a few weeks ago when, as our annual neighborhood party let out for the night, a few inebriated revelers strolled by. Can you piece together what happened next? The fellows thought we were trying to hit them. Took the bag and walked. Luckily I had a gigantic brit friend in town and he was right behind me as I negotiated the return of my precious corn-bag. Friend stared and grunted menacingly behind me, like a thug from a Guy Ritchie film. Bag returned, all OK. The magic of cornhole.
As with anything simple, it can be made less so with gadgets. Wife has not allowed me to purchase the LED tubing to light the hole at night, but damn it is tempting. And where is pimpmycornhole.com? That is money on the table, people!
You ask, all good fun, but is there a governing body of this nascent sport? But of course there is.
Post title from Stephen Colbert. Here's the (w)hole truthiness.
Tags: baggo, cornhole, game, sidewalk
Posted at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 4, 2007
“Sometimes the spaghetti likes to be alone.”
If you've seen the movie Big Night you'll recognize that quote from the irascible chef Primo as he deals with 1950's American restaurant-goers who think Italian food is spaghetti with red sauce and meatballs and nothing more.
Today of course Italian eateries are big business -- from gourmet to fast food to just sucky (I worked there in college, trust me). In such a crowded space often the simplicity of homemade Italian food can be hard to find.
Anna Maria Pasteria, a small trattoria in Wrigleyville, serves uncomplicated, traditional Italian dishes. No fusion, nothing exotic. Just amazing homemade pasta, veggies, and meats. Two sisters, Maria Spinelli and Anna Picciolini, run the place and pervade it with a warmth that really is the closest thing I've found to the way restaurants feel in Italy. Close, comfortable, happy. And the service matches the food. Not showy, but ample.
Anna and Maria are originally from Ripacandida, Italy a small, hill-topping down about 15 minutes from Barile, my destination on Friday. Though the menu runs the gamut of Italian dishes that just about anyone would recognize, the sisters do make southern fare. These plates are invariably simple: pasta, a light sauce with herbs, and a meat. (Try the Pollo ai pignoli or the Capellini carrettiera.) Anna Maria Pasteria also serves a heavenly Tiramisu. Lighter than air.
A great send-off dinner before we embark for Italy. Highly recommended.
Tags: dinner, food, italian, restaurant
Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 28, 2007
Urban oasis
A few years after the Wacker Drive demolition and rebuild the little Vietnam Memorial plaza on the Chicago River is open for passersby. Between State and Wabash on the south side. It isn't exactly a full-on riverwalk, but it does make the waterway seem less like a gulch. Really quite nice.
This is right across from the former location of IBM in Chicago. Makes me miss the area all the more. What a great place it would have been to get away from the office hubbub. Might have even been able to rig a Wifi repeater to shoot across the river. Oh well. I'll just sulk in the skyscraper canyon we're now in.
For Chicago River fans out there, here's a video of me taking the water taxi east on the main branch to the Michigan Avenue quay.
Sluicing through the blog archives I am struck at my obsession with this river. Go with the flow:
Brita City (re-engineering the river)
Escher streetscape (watching the drawbridges let sailboats in)
A unique phone call (floating past a bridge on fire)
Tipping Point (the Eastland disaster)
Available: loft apartment w/ lake and river view (man who lived in the Michigan Ave. bridge)
Man vs. sailboat (outrunning the drawbridges)
Tags: chicago, park, vietnam, river
Posted at 2:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 23, 2007
Beauty in the breakdown
Not sure why it has taken me to so long to upload this, but here's a great time-lapse video from the winter of 2004-2005 of the deconstruction of the Sun-Times building from the IBM building. A monument to the pre-Trump era.
Thanks to Jack Blanchard and Jeff Berg.
Man, I miss that view.
Tags: deconstruction, demolition, ibm, suntimes
Posted at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
May 31, 2007
Roof, raised
Continuing down the checklist of things I'd like to see/do at Wrigley Field (lounge in the outfield, check; witness drubbing of Sox in crosstown match, check), Tuesday night was my first game viewed from a building rooftop outside the park. Those of you who don't follow baseball may not know that Wrigley, being a 93-year-old urban ballpark, is tightly surrounded by a residential neighborhood. Three-flats line left and right field and, except two that display advertising, each of these buildings have for years hosted private groups on their rooftops. It is a unique vantage, this outsiders' view inside.
I remember watching a game with my grandfather in the late 70's when Bill Buckner hit a home run out of the park and shattered a window in one of the buildings. I thought, wow, someone is going to come home from work and find a great surprise. Of course, these days very few come “home” to these buildings. The homes have been almost completely taken over by the “clubs” which perch atop them. Many are owned by local bars, nearly all are managed by the same company. (After a nasty battle involving the erection of screens to partially obscure the view from the roofs most of the clubs agreed to give the Cubs 17% of their revenue annually.) There's one private club too. A few years ago my wife tried to get tickets for me up on a roof for my birthday. It was next to impossible because the roofs are really for groups, corporate outings, and the like. Sorta like a skybox, except across the street.
I was invited by a friend who was in with some Chicago society of CPAs. Yes, I was on a Wrigleyville rooftop with a bunch of accountants: good times! I tried to keep out of conversations -- which was easy given the free beer and food and the fact that I was there to watch a baseball game. And that's the thing about the rooftops. Many people hardly notice what's going on in the ballpark. (It is, in that way, very much like a skybox.) Most are corporate types, many are not Cubs fans or even baseball fans. Of course, you get this in the park too, but on a rooftop quarters are tight -- tighter than I imagined -- and you're kinda stuck with these folks.
The rooftops all have high-def TV's sprinkled around, but the broadcast delay makes it almost useless for anything but replays. I was grabbing a beer in an area where I could not see the park and I heard a cheer go up. I looked up at the screen and the camera was on the pitcher, scratching himself. To make matters worse the audio is off and they are playing the radio coverage of the game, which has no delay.
The view is great though. Not that much worse than some of the cheap seats in the upper deck. The only thing you can't see is activity on the track near the ivy. But you use the cheers or sighs from the bleacher bums to determine what happened there. And of course it is just fun conceptually: I'm watching a live baseball game and I'm not in the park.
In the end I suppose the idea is a bit better than the experience. Of course, I didn't pay for the ticket (which was at least $90) -- and perhaps it would have been more fun with a roof full of friends -- so I can't complain really. It just wasn't the raucous time that the park delivers. I think I'd rather be inside.
Tags: chicago, cubs, baseball, rooftop, sheffield
Posted at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
May 13, 2007
Wrigleyvillage
When it comes to Wrigley Field lots of people talk about how great it is to see a ballgame smack in the middle of a vibrant neighborhood. Not as many talk about what this means for the neighbors. It is of course a boon to the merchants and businesses in very close proximity to the field, but the neighborhood also serves as the stadium's parking lot (the only one, really) and as a mile-square urinal for the ocean of over-served fans who spill out at game's end.
The Cubs have in recent years made a special effort to win the good will of the people who live in the community, specifically the area known as Lakeview. This includes spiffing up local parks, appearances of hall of fame players in the area, and free bike lock-up for games. But the coolest perk has to be Wrigleyville Neighbors Day. Each year the Cubs hold a lottery for residents in Lakeview to come to the park for 90 minutes of free food and drinks (alcohol too) and to play catch, picnic, or just lounge on the field. We've lost out the last two years but got it this year. One person per address plus guest. I took my son.
We were close to the front of the line of about 100 people so when we entered the field from the service door in the outfield it was like the park was ours alone. We ran out onto the grass with our mitts, one five-year-old boy and his five-year-old father. At first we just ran around because we could. We played catch. We ran the bases (four times) and just lounged in the outfield. It was extraordinary. A wonderful, memorable way to spend an afternoon. Thanks, Cubs. Well done.
Tags: chicago, cubs, neighborhood, summer, wrigley
Posted at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
May 3, 2007
Calling him out
This is classic.
From ChicagoSports.com:
The Lilly-Piniella incident was one for the books. Lilly [the pitcher] had slipped on a bunt attempt for the second time when Piniella [the coach] gave him some unsolicited advice.[Lilly recalls the walk to the mound.] “I suggested to him, almost like football, 'You better change your spikes,' ” Piniella said. “Then I went out there and he said, 'Skip, your zipper is down.' ”
A quick check by Piniella revealed Lilly was correct.
If you're gonna get yanked from the game for sucking you might as well needle the man in charge, no?
And if you're wondering where all the posts have gone of late, fear not. The Italy adventure is consuming much of my time ... and soon will yours.
Tags: chicago, cubs, dialogue, funny
Posted at 7:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
April 7, 2007
Brita city
Bioswales, blackwater, and benthic nets. Microbial fuel cells, hydroponic disinfection, and pervious pavement.
Were you thinking about these things when you were in college? I certainly wasn't. Perhaps I should have been, because the student teams in the History Channel's City of the Future Engineering Challenge sure seem like they have bright futures ahead.
Picking up on the popularity of their “Engineering an Empire” series, the History Channel last year held a design competition in LA, Chicago, and NYC. Professional design teams had one week to design a vision of their city 100 years in the future in such a way that would be sustainable much beyond.
The winner in Chicago was Urban Lab, a small outfit on the south side whose Growing Water submission presented a Chicago infrastructure that recycles 100% of the water it needs by un-reversing the flow of the Chicago River back into Lake Michigan, resurrecting the (currently) century-old idea of an Urbs in Horto “Emerald Necklace” of parks ringing the city proper, and carving latitudinal waterways alongside “eco-boulevards” to make the whole city-sized water filter work.
That was sorta the easy part. The heavy lifting was left for the students in the second phase who actually had to present the engineering behind it all. As a sponsor of the event (with a keen interest in promoting engineering, math, and science) IBM was asked to provide a judge for the second phase. This was me. I was elated. I wasn't at all qualified, but I have been writing about the subcontinental divide, reversed river, and future Chicago here for a long time. The blog as street cred.
Undergraduate engineering student teams were fielded by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Purdue University, U of I Urbana-Champaign, two from U of I Chicago, and Northwestern University. The presentations were simply remarkable. These kids -- and they were kids to be sure -- had put an amazing amount of time and thought into the tricky real-world problems of re-architecting a city at its most basic level. None of this was done for course credit.
Prior to the presentations the judges received ample supporting documentation for each solution: dozens of pages of equations backing up claims, diagrams, 3D renderings, and a bounty of specialized words to make the verbophile delight for hours. Advective. Biomimicry. Turbidity. Effluent. I loved it all.
The essence of the challenge in engineering Urban Lab's design was how to design the filtration of the water in the terminal parks and along the eco-boulevards east of the subcontinental divide. Most of the teams focused on how this filtration would happen. Others also stressed the challenge of separating graywater (wastewater with everything but poop), blackwater (poop), and potable water while being able to accommodate the “100-year-storm” (Chicago, though above sea level, is essentially a swamp). Still others focused on the Urban Lab sidenote that existing santitation tunnels (not needed in their design) could be used for expanded mass transit. One team went into great detail about a Chicago Maglev train. This might be a great next project for the CTA as their current Brown Line expansion will likely finish up around 2106.
The team from UIUC won the competition with their notion of EcoTowers -- residences at the terminus of eco-boulevards that pass graywater through a “biomimetic forward osmosis membrane bioreactor.” Duh. Of course they do. The towers themselves provide further filtration by running a curtain of nearly-clean water down the windows of the highrises for UV disinfection. Like living under a waterfall or inside the Beijing Olympic natatorium. Brilliant.
Chicago has a very long way to go to approach anything like this design, of course. Green roofs are a start, I suppose. Just glad people are working the problem. Even more glad that career-minded students are taking it so seriously. Bravo to all the teams.
See also on Ascent Stage: City of the Future and 10 Visions, an exhibition from the Art Institute
Posted at 6:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 25, 2007
Move it, sugar!
Remember the Urban scar tissue post? No, of course you don't.
Well, it was about the way cities have of slowly assimilating unused infrastructure and how this becomes visible when you scale out, looking at the city macroscopically. The earlier post showed the way the buildings have been shaped by the tracks that are no longer there, a ghost-limb of transportation past.
But the very southern edge of the line is still in use. Twice weekly. It is called the Sugar Train and it delivers sugar to a confectionary. The tracks, embedded nearly flush with the pavement sans sleepers, slice through private backyards and parking lots. My gym prohibits parking on the tracks tuesdays and thursdays because of the delivery. Up until last week I had never seen this mythical train.
Turns out this delivery route is a fantastic pain in the ass for everyone involved. There's a small army of engineers that walks with the engine and single car as it creeps through the north side. Gates have to be unlocked, backyard equipment pushed aside, and -- in the case of my gym -- owners of cars have to be found. Seems that twice a week the train comes to a stop at the club while the management goes elliptical-to-elliptical asking people if they parked on the tracks.
I stood outside with clearly-irritated trainmen as the massive engine belched and growled, mere inches from a car parked directly across its path. I struck up a conversation and urged them to exercise right-of-way, crushing the pathetic vehicles like matchbox cars. They declined. In fact, they eventually gave up and backed the train down the tracks to who-knows-where.
I love that this throwback train exists, but you have to wonder: wouldn't it be easier to deliver the sugar by truck at this point? The train basically spends a full day inching through roadblocks that the city inadvertently lays across its way. I'd love to know what the actual story is. Why the train is still a better option for the candy factory.
Posted at 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 24, 2007
Extreme meteorology
Sounds so evil. Here's a bit of background.
FYI, the snow that is coming down is perfectly spherical. Like small hail but with the consistency of snow rather than ice.
Posted at 6:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 5, 2007
Now this is winter!
How cold is it in Chicago?
- The midday, sunny high still has a minus sign in front of it.
- I thought my son was bleeding yesterday morning after I kissed him good morning. Only then did I realize that I cracked my freeze-dried lip open and bled on him in doing so.
- The city has a Blade Runner-esque look with every manhole and sewer drain belching steam. So noir!
- Loaning our shower to a friend whose hot water pipes -- but not cold, huh? -- froze solid.
- My son's new favorite word is “negative.”
- It is too cold to snow.
- Shit-filled diapers freeze solid on the back deck instantly.
- The Bears have sucked all warmth from our hearts.
That's how cold it is.
Tags: weather
Posted at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 3, 2007
The (pāt'n) that matters
You know he's watching. Go Bears!
Posted at 8:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 2, 2007
Stirring the gene pool with a cello bow
There are days where my job is not much fun. Tuesday last week was not one of those days.
I spent the morning with Yo-Yo Ma and his Silk Road Ensemble paired with Dr. Spencer Wells of the Genographic Project. Actually, so did the student body of the Prosser Career Academy, a Chicago public high school on the west side. And this was all part of the Sister Cities Schools program.
Confused? It was a bit of a you-put-your-chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter event, but it actually worked. Sister Cities is a program that encourages multicultural exchange between the planet's urban centers. Their new schools program extends this by putting students in contact from around the world. The Silk Road Project is a really interesting endeavor by Yo-Yo Ma to demonstrate the interplay of cultures via music, taking the ancient trans-Eurasia trade route as a metaphor for this journey. The Genographic Project in some ways has the same goals -- a greater understanding of human diversity -- but comes at it by seeking to more fully understand the patterns of human migration out of Africa by mapping genetic markers from people around the world. IBM's life science group is providing the computational firepower for the massive amount of data that Wells and his team are collecting from the field.
Yo-Yo Ma is a huge fan of the Genographic project. In fact, I think he has a man-crush on Spencer Wells. Together they spoke to an AP History class and explained the goals of each project. The students were given genography kits to plot their own lineage on the world map and Ma played a short piece for the class, explaining the multiple cultural influences that coalesce in classical music. His specific example was how an African dance was incorporated in a piece he played by J.S. Bach.
The full Silk Road Ensemble then entertained an all-school assembly in between video clips of Spencer Wells traveling to crazy remote places to obtain information and blood samples from indigenes. At times the yoking-together of genetics and music seemed a bit forced, but it clearly can be done and does make some sense conceptually. Genetic proliferation and lingustic variation, for example, are tightly coupled; one offers insight where the other falls short. Will be interesting to see if Ma and Wells can uncover other points of intersection between the projects.
The students loved it all, actually. A teacher remarked that she's never heard a full school assembly so oddly silent. I suppose everyone wonders where they come from, ultimately. One of life's meta-questions.
See also: Macro-genealogy and A long walk out of Africa
Tags: chicago, diversity, genographic, mancrush, silkroad, yoyoma
Posted at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
January 14, 2007
Monsters and Saints
Well, this is an interesting turn of events.
Like most anyone who came of age in Chicago in the 80's I've been a Bears fan since their Super Bowl season under Ditka. I'm a fan. Not a die-hard who attends games shirtless in December, but a fan nonetheless.
Which is nothing compared to my wife's family. Born and mostly raised in New Orleans, they are living caricatures of all-for-the-team dedication. The day I met the men who were to become my father- and brother-in-law -- December 28, 1991 -- was a Saints playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons -- the result of the Saints' first Division title ever. New Orleans came out strong but ended up blowing it.
I sat in wide-eyed horror as my girlfriend's brother swore, stomped, threw things, and beseeched God to smite Jerry Glanville (then Atlanta's coach) with a slow and painful death from cancer. My girlfriend's father also was disconsolate and enraged, switching from cursing the TV to reprimanding his son not to wish death on anyone. It was a surreal event and one that would repeat itself in style if not in substance during innumerable other football games on which serious money rather than lifelong passion were wagered.
As a long-time Cubs fan I know the perverse pleasure that comes from loving a loser, so I have always respected -- if not fully understood -- my in-laws' devotion to the Saints. I have in fact become something of a Saints fan vicariously. But as anyone who knows me or this blog, my heart is with Chicago always. I even mustered some pride when the White Sox won the World Series, I hesitate to type.
So, as Chicago barely squeaked into next week's confrontation with New Orleans today I received a hug from my son who said “congratulations, Daddy.” I looked at him, looked at my wife shaking her head in anticipation of the inevitable, and said “son, you have one week to make a very serious decision about who you will cheer for next weekend.”
“Oh that's easy,” he said. “Who dat!?”
Tags: bears, football, playoff, saints
Posted at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
January 7, 2007
City of the Future
Urban Labs' “Growing Water” design for a future Chicago wins The History Channel's City of the Future design challenge. It is a really smart concept.
Let me summarize:
- Start with the turn-of-last-century “Emerald Necklace” of parks and boulevards meant to create a green orbital around the city. (It sorta works and makes a great bike route.) Use this as a lush anchor for what's to come.
- Return to a respect for the subcontintental divide that splits water flowing to the Mississippi from water flowing to Lake Michigan (the solution to this Ascent Stage quiz of yore) and the fact that the Chicago River now disregards this natural phenom based on human engineering. (Or does it?)
- Repurpose the current labyrinth of water and sewage tunnels to house the much-desired expansion of the L. (Urban Labs meet Craig Berman, discuss.)
Tags: chicago, future, urban, water
Posted at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
October 8, 2006
Autumnal
Ash, track, apple, and pigskin. This is how I know it is fall in Chicago.
Though fall is by far the most pleasant season in Chicago, by late September there's a bite in the wind at times that reminds you that winter is lurking close, ready to slice through your jacket with the meteorological equivalent of spite. And this is why I associate fall with placing my annual order for a cord of wood. That's a lot of wood, actually, but we'll use it all by winter's end. One-half birch, one-half mixed. I look forward to the first fire of the season with something approaching primitive desire. The delivery of the wood also marks the annual conversation with my wife about saving on gas bills this year by heating the homestead from the hearth only. Having a newborn in the house doesn't really bolster my argument, but we'll see.
Posted at 6:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 29, 2006
Shooting on the L train
Wednesday I was the subject of a photo shoot for a magazine that took as its setting the L train system here in Chicago. (More soon on why. For now, you can let your imagination run wild, except to say that it wasn't for GQ or Model Railroader. Duh.)
Anyway, I spent four hours on various platforms and trains as the subject of what would amount to over 20 GB of photos. I could no longer smile when it was over. In fact, I couldn't make any countenance except what you'd associate with one who's lost complete muscular control of his face.
A photo shoot on an L platform is an odd thing indeed. As the subject of the lens you're a static target on a plane of constant motion. Occasionally my position right at the edge of the platform (which I could not budge from for matters of lighting) would align perfectly with where the train doors would open. Commuters would spill from the train right into me as I stood staring far in the distance at the photographer. I was jostled and shoved, a clear obstruction to exit from the train car -- but I was smiling broadly, yessir! I looked like an escapee from a sanitarium I am quite sure. Oh, the muttered obscenity. Move you stupid fuck. Is that guy famous or something? Hmph, no!
At one point a CTA official told us that they were receiving reports that the flash canopy was blinding the drivers as they pulled into the station. It is true that the photographer hit the Gatling gun just as trains arrived (it was a good shot), but c'mon, it isn't like the train would run off the tracks. It was basically stopped at the station.
Even funnier were the shots actually on the trains. There are many unwritten rules of decorum on the L, most of which are violated frequently to the delight of train-bloggers. Eye contact, loud talking, overt acts of sexual penetration ... these are a few of the rules to which I will add having your photo taken by a crew. Commuters did not know what to do. At one point the photographer was getting so many crazy looks that he just stopped it all and declaimed to the car "We're from ....* . He's not famous. Nothing to see here." Or something like that.
It was a grueling day, actually. And I know I sound like a spoiled actor or something saying that. The crew said none of the photos they took for this feature (a-ha, a hint!) was as difficult as balancing the lighting, incoming trains, and crowds that were integral to this shoot. But it could have been worse. It could have been the next day when the L system had a serious breakdown: power outage, suicide, and track gap -- all in the same day. Ouch!
[*] Thought I'd trip up, eh? Gotcha!
Posted at 5:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
August 9, 2006
Shoehack, day one: criminal apprehended
So I'm running with my newly-technologized shoes yesterday. As I cross a busy street I see a cab going way too fast in the center turn lane.* It suddenly turns hard right, slams full speed into a Jeep Cherokee headed the other way, and throws it up onto the sidewalk and a parking meter. Me and another guy running on the opposite side of the street immediately sprint for the collision. As we get to the cab the driver's door opens and out falls a little kid, maybe 10 years old. He hits the deck, bleeding from his mouth, and then gets up and runs. So we run after him. I don't exactly know why, but it seemed like he shouldn't just run off. It was only when we had tackled him back to the pavement that it occured to us that this kid had just stolen a cab and taken it for a joyride.
He lay on the sidewalk, spitting blood, and moaning not to turn him in. I guess I've watched too many Cops episodes because the first thing I asked was "Do you have any weapons or needles on you?" He didn't respond. I asked him if his face hit the steering wheel and he said yes. The police came, quickly. The elderly driver of the Cherokee was pinned in and covered in glass, but he seemed to be OK. It is amazing to me that pedestrians were not hit. That section of the street has very broad sidewalks that are heavily trafficked. The cab would have thrown pedestrians straight through the plate glass of the bank building there.
Clearly my robo-shoes have transformed me into a crime-fighting superhero. This is the only explanation. Who knows what dastardly deeds I will foil on my next run.
[*] Ashland Ave. just north of Belmont for Chicagoans wanting coords.
Posted at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
June 25, 2006
Last week's ignored posts*
Sub-titled: I didn't intend a treatise on diversity, but here you go.
Today the newest CTA train line, called The Pink Line, begins service, bringing more folks from the west side into the swirling mix of commuters known as The Loop. Chicago is a diverse city of course with hundreds of neighborhoods and ethnicities, but the truth is that the white collar bustle of the Loop doesn't really convey that sense. Even the L trains offer only a glimpse: tubes of demographic diversity snaking through relatively homogeneous neighborhoods on their way to the business district. The best way to get a sense of the diverse makeup of the city is to visit the beach on a warm summer day. The urban beach is the ultimate public space. It isn't owned by anyone; it overlaps community boundaries (enforced by the street grid which obviously has no relevance on the beach); it is basically a blank slate with no dilapidated buildings to convey a sense of blight or McMansions to convey the other sense of blight. But most of all, everyone loves the beach. It's just human. When you're frolicking in the water it is hard to care about which block someone else is from. I've never seen such a harmonious amalgam of nationalities, languages, and habits.
Last week Team USA lost to Ghana in the World Cup. This didn't occasion much soul-searching among regular Americans beyond the "hey world this is what you're going to have to do to make us care about this sport" silliness. Luckily I had a unique window into fans who really do care. Our former nanny and many of her friends who've babysitted for us are all first-generation Ghanaians. During the match her husband called me a few times. You'd have thought every Ghanaian in the city was in a single room, shouting deliriously. It was infectious. I won't say I was rooting against my countrymen, but I know I cared a lot less (than not much at all, admittedly) about who won. The better team should always win, of course, but sometimes it just feels right when the team with more devoted fans wins. Onward Black Stars!
We live near Boystown, a section of the Lakeview neighborhood that today hosts the flamboyant Gay Pride Parade (and will be ground zero for the Gay Games that come to Chicago in a few weeks). Boystown is festooned with rainbow flags of course so as we were driving through (home from the beach in fact) my four-year-old son asked my wife and I what the the flags meant. We stammered a bit, started to explain, rewound, then just sat there thinking of all the ways this conversation could spiral out of control. Finally I said "The flag means that in this part of town there are no rules on who you can love." As soon as I said it I realized the fatal flaw in the line. If he asked me what the rules were we'd have a thornier conversation on our hands. He didn't ask, thankfully. It was the best I could do no the spur of the moment. Ah parenting.
[*] Cleverly sprinkled with references to today's events to seem more timely.
Posted at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
May 20, 2006
Crosstown classless
"Say there, A.J., how are ya? Congrats on the World Series and all that. I was wondering, do you wear the championship right on this finger or this finger?" [Whack.]
Posted at 9:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
May 19, 2006
Urban scar tissue
[Update: Before you send me a nastygram about being a suburban-bound latte-swilling cretin, maybe read a little more closely. I'm a huge fan of the train and urban transportation in general. Scar tissue is a metaphor, not a value judgment.]
A little over a decade ago I helped build six single-family homes in Chicago on Melrose St. just east of Lakewood Ave. We were driving posts into the dirt for a fence on an irregular diagonal property border when we hit something solid that turned out to be a railroad tie. We later learned that the screwy lot line was the result of surface train tracks that once cut through the area, the remains of which we had dug up.
I was reminded of this today by this great satellite image of the urban tissue of San Francsico reassimilating land once used by railroad tracks. Sure enough when you scale back a bit you see the same evidence of "healing" from the area around where I worked on the homes in Chicago. Roads, parking lots, buildings, row houses and, ultimately, the front door of Wrigley Field all conform to the serpentine crawl of the former track. [Full map.]
Most interesting is that this urban scar tissue is actually part of what you might call a festering wound: a four-block portion of the line (south of this image) is still in operation serving a single customer. The path follows the route of the old Chicago & Evanston Railroad line and the functioning spur is called the Lakewood Branch. The only thing that runs on it is the Sugarland Express, a train that delivers sugar and corn syrup to the Peerless Confection Company twice weekly. Even so, the city is trying to heal over it. When the sugar train comes through residents must move their cars off portions of the tracks that serve as parking lots most of the rest of the week.
Posted at 9:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
April 5, 2006
Everyone stand back, I'm a chef
This morning on the L train a woman collapsed at my feet. In my iPod-cocoon I admit I only realized this as I saw commuters' faces looking at the floor near me. I've seen other people faint on the train before (must have something to do with the motion), but this time I was impressed by the reaction of the bystanders. Almost immediately and without a leader to delegate, individual tasks were assumed by the commuters in the immediate vicinity. An off-duty CTA worker jumped on his cell to contact the line operator, the person nearest the intercom alerted the conductor, the woman next to me stooped down to hold the woman's hand and comfort her, and a doctor knelt down to figure out what was going on.
At least, we thought he was a doctor. I mean, he had a white coat and a badge and looked very authoritative. As I looked closer I saw that the white coat was the double-breasted kind that chefs wear. (He had it unbuttoned which made it look more like a lab coat.) His profession was confirmed by the kooky pants chefs (and bodybuilders and MC Hammer) sometimes wear. What was I going to do, interject "Hey wait a minute this guy's a chef! And probably a line chef too! Back off, pal!" Would he take her vital signs with his meat thermometer? Dab her sweat with his toque? I just stood back, mentally blogging (hey, I needed a role too) and thought about how both wonderful and somewhat frightening it is that initiative counts for more than expertise in matters of leadership.
We transferred the woman, who we learned was pregnant and probably suffering a blood sugar dip, to trained medical personnel at the next platform.
Posted at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
March 29, 2006
I heard a rumor
Last night the house on our part of the block one street over burnt down. As I've come to expect from our city's first responders, the number of emergency vehicles might have caused you to think that an entire block had been napalmed. Dozens of fire engines and even more squad cars clogged every part of Damen Ave. from Belmont to Roscoe. Curious, of course, I sidled up to a group of bystanders listening to a cop. Here's the gist.
Cop: "... firecracker."
Me: "Hey, I live one block over. Is everyone OK? Did you just say this was caused by a firecracker?"
Cop: "Yeah, everyone's fine. No, firecracker is what we call people who flip us the bird from the window like that woman over there." Points.
Me: "How did this happen?"
Bystander: "I don't want to start any rumors, but she had a lot of cats. Lots of cats."
Me: "Cats don't start fires."
Bystander: "Look, that's all I'm gonna say. I don't like rumors. But she has a lot of cats and she's been in the news. If you know what I mean."
Me: Pause. "My house got a little wet from the fire hoses. Could have been worse I guess."
Same Bystander: "Oh yeah? Any water damage? Here's my card. I'm an adjuster."
Me: "My god, you're like an ambulance chaser for fires."
Bystander: "Hey, I live in the neighborhood."
Posted at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
January 26, 2006
Entropy of winter
I'm of what you might call the local school of meteorology. Yes, yes, I understand that butterflies cause nasty weather halfway around the globe and that my Right Guard has carved a hole in Earth's jacket of O3. And I understand that tornados do not actually chase people nor hurricanes punish communities for being un-Christian. Yet, I can't shake the sense that weather behaves locally.
For example, consider the bizarre mid-winter temperature spike here in Chicago.
Weather, being just a manifestation of energy, obeys the first law of thermodynamics and so it follows that weather, like energy, is not created or destroyed, just moved around. A scientist would tell you that someplace else in the world is getting screwed because Chicago weather was so different in January.
But not me. I'm more local. I don't trust the balmy weather because I know the conservation of energy is local to Chicago. Why would the weather gods punish anyone but us for our high-energy month? We'll suffer a below-zero March or four feet of snow in April. Chicago weather punishes its own. We're part of a closed system. Bundle up!
Posted at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
December 9, 2005
Ultimate snowball
Last night, as the snow came down in buckets, a friend commented on how perfect it would be to start a snowball fight against the masses huddled on the opposite L train platform. As we all waited for the delayed trains and came more and more to resemble snowmen, it seemed like a great idea. Perfect distance, a perfect no-man's land -- the electrified rails -- in between the opposing armies, and in fact a perfect reason: people on the east platform were, in part, headed to the south side on the orange line. People on the west were headed to the north side on the brown. How better for Cubs fans to blow off some post-World Series steam? (Poor purple line commuters. They were going north too but were unfortunately clumped in with the orange liners. Collateral damage, I guess.) Only one problem. The snow was way too dry. You couldn't form a snowball at all.
Pity. That would have been fun. At least until someone fell into the tracks.
Posted at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
November 26, 2005
Simulating a simulated city
One treat from my recent visit to UCLA was meeting the Urban Simulation Team. This small group develops detailed, precise 3D models of cities past and present for educational use, as a tool for urban planners, and even to facilitate emergency response. Their main focus is currently a complete modelling of the Los Angeles basin, but what really piqued my interest was Prof. Lisa Snyder's "side project" to recreate the fairgrounds of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. She's creating the White City -- and doing a great job with limited resources.
While Leonardo di Caprio and Tom Cruise vie for the movie rights to Erik Larson's wonderful telling of the story of Burnham, Olmstead, and proto-serial killer H.H. Holmes, Snyder patiently slaves away at the reconstruction with surprisingly scant documentation. For instance, we think of the buildings as being white, of course, which is supported by the monochrome photography of the period. But we know from architectural plans that the buildings were not uniformly white. The devil may have been in the White City, but he's also in the details of recoloring it. Snyder has her work cut out for her.
Even in its half-finished state, the model is sublime. Viewing the fairgrounds from the gargantuan Ferris Wheel or from the elevated train or from Olmstead's electric canal boats or from the futuristic moving sidewalk that jutted into Lake Michigan are all experiences not available with the strictly controlled photographic record of the city. The sense of scale is immediate. There's a bleak majesty to it when you consider that it was all gone by the turn of the century. (Except for the refaced Fine Arts Building, now the Museum of Science and Industry -- where, incidentally, I asked my then-girlfriend to marry me.)
I ride my bike in the area of the fairgrounds a few times each summer. There's some historic signage and some replicated statuary, but the landscape itself is really the only place you'll find evidence of the Expo. A long split boulevard bordering the University of Chicago marks the fair's Midway (Snyder tells me that the concrete pads the Ferris Wheel rested on are still there, beneath the park's sod) and neglected lagoons are evidence of Olmstead's triumphant carving of the waterways throughout the fairgrounds. As the UST recreation of the White City proceeds one can dream of integrating it into the landscape itself, perhaps as a location-based service offered through the Chicago Park District or, better, as an outside-the-walls extension of the Museum of Science and Industry. Mapping the virtual structures onto the shadows of the fair embedded in the landscape would be a moving experience indeed.
Posted at 7:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
Black Sox no longer
Last night I had the crazy notion that, with a world champion team to call their own, White Sox fans would lose the massive chip on their shoulders about the Cubs. You'd not know it these days, but Cubs fans greatly outnumber Sox fans in the city and throughout the country (thanks to years of national coverage by WGN). Wrigley Field is a tourist destination by itself and while the new new Comiskey -- pardon me, The Cell -- is a great park, it still doesn't hold a candle to Cubs field and Wrigleyville. This has nothing to do with the quality of the respective sports teams, of course. It is all about the perceived sense of importance to the city. (And perhaps lingering guilt over the team's scandalous collusion with gamblers in 1919?)
Will the inferiority complex dissipate now that the Sox are the champs?
Posted at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 23, 2005
Reluctant cheerleader
The World Series has me in a real dilemma.
Fact #1: I greatly dislike the White Sox. Or rather, I'm no fan of their fans who, you can be sure, would not be cheering on the Cubs if by some cosmic anomaly they made it to the World Series.
Fact #2: I love Chicago and I love that any of our sports teams is so dominant.
Fact #3: I am married to a woman with a great deal of family in Houston (more since Katrina) and so must deal with a large pro-Houston lobby.
I suppose it is better than a Sox-Cardinals series. That would have been too much for any Cubs fan.
Grandpa's gonna spin in his grave, but ... Go Chicago!
Posted at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 21, 2005
The steam will rise again
Perhaps catering to its larger blue collar readership, the Sun-Times scooped the Trib in covering a story of great importance to the public bathers of the city. The good news is that the Division Street Baths are closed for remodelling and will reopen next year most likely, just in time for its 100th birthday. Thank goodness, but why on earth would they do this over the winter when we need it most?
Kudos to Greer for tracking this down. And, May, if you're not demoted at the Tribune for dropping this particular lead I may ask my vast readership to start a blogging campaign highlighting your journalist negligence.
Viva fat sweaty men flagellating themselves with oak switches!
See also: Sensory deprivation
Posted at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
Gridwork
Circa 2:30pm, Oct. 18. Crossing Chicago River eastward on Lake Street.
Posted at 7:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
October 18, 2005
Out of steam
Something's up at the Division Street Baths, last of the venerable public steam and sauna houses in the city and one of my favorite wintertime retreats. The door is shuttered, the phone number is disconnected, and there's no notice of any kind about why it is closed. The baths have such a loyal following and checkered past that the complete silence seems very odd.
My pal Greer who is both a bath devotee and a novice gumshoe emailed Jesse Jackson, Jr. -- like his dad, a long-time fan of the baths -- who replied that he had no idea what had happened but that he was not pleased about it. Greer then called Alderman Flores whose office replied that the bath house building is undergoing complete renovation and should reopen in the spring.
But why no notice on the building? Why is the phone number disconnected? Something is not right here. Health code violation? Mafia?
Posted at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
October 16, 2005
Escher streetscape
Last year I wrote about running to the lake just ahead of the street-by-street drawbridge openings. I thought it'd be a fun thing to do with kids so yesterday we did the reverse. Being fall, the boats were all coming back in for winter docking and we were poised at 9AM at the Lake Shore Drive bridge. Up it went and in they came as we raced the stroller against the boats to the next bridge westward. That one -- Columbus Ave., the largest movable bridge on the river system -- was fun since you can actually stand on the shore path underneath as it heaves upwards. You'd probably not be surprised by how much crud comes raining down when you are standing right next to the base of the bridge fulcrum, though I'd wager you wouldn't think of it until the last second. We had to huddle underneath the double-stroller's sunshade to hide from the pummelling of street detritus: dirt, pebbles, cigarette butts, and other things probably left best unconsidered.
Only 18 boats at a time can be let up the river because of limited idling space between the bridges in the loop. That makes for a hectic season for the CDOT. Still, there's nothing quite as cool as the sight of three consecutive bridges going up -- except maybe watching the mix of horror and exhiliration on the face of a four-year-old who thinks the roadway is going to topple straight over on him.
Disruption to traffic? Of course! But well-heeled yacht-owners have rights too and since the the Chicago River is a federal waterway Da Mayor ain't got no say.
Posted at 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 16, 2005
Macaroni fest
This past weekend was our annual neigborhood festival. Just a few short blocks of food, bands, kid stuff, carnival games, and beer. By day relatively laid back with neighborhooders milling about; by night some 50,000 Chicagoans pack in to hear the headliners, normally just above-average tribute bands. Great fun, though.
Saturday night I was ambitiously over-served. So waking up with the kids on Sunday morning was especially painful. But it wasn't until I reported for my volunteer shift that morning and was told that I had been put in charge of the children's entertainment stage that I learned just how cruel a turn my life had taken.
So there I was, still legally intoxicated, surrounded by a few dozen sugar-addled children and their Starbucks-addled parents, chatting it up with Mary Macaroni and the Jabberwocky Marionettes. It was too surreal to be hellish. All I recall is that Mary's real name is Karen and that the Jabberwockys don't like to be called puppeteers.
Not sure I'll be invited back to volunteer next year.
Posted at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 1, 2005
If I were in to garden gnomes
This is what I'd have.
I need to start a new category called Found On The Walk To The L.
Posted at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 26, 2005
Nation's tallest building proposed
550
feet
taller
than
the
Sears
Tower.
Wow.
I like this design for three reasons.
(1) Trump hates that it would overshadow his latest homage to himself.
(2) The City of Big (Square) Shoulders needs more curve, less quadrilateral in its skyline.
(3) It shares elements of what the the now-fortified Freedom Tower once was (and still could be). Maybe this will knock some sense back into that design.
Posted at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 23, 2005
Friendly confinement
For Father's Day I received a behind-the-scenes tour of Wrigley Field with my wife and oldest son. What a gift. If an unsanctified place can be holy, Wrigley is it.
One thing that struck me is how completely devoid of advertising the park is. You sense this when watching a game, but that's the thing about a lack of in-your-face advertisement: when it isn't there you focus on what matters and don't consciously register its absence. In fact, you have to look really hard to find any advertisement. Up until a few years ago there was none, zero, zip. But now it exists on seat-back cupholders (which, if you are looking at that during a Cubs game, you got bigger problems), occasional scrolls on the three small LED boards, and -- during big games -- on the green screen in back of home plate. The green screen is particularly Wrigleyesque in that visitors to the park don't ever see the superimposed ads. Only the shleps at home.
The other thing that really strikes you is what a shit-hole Wrigley is off the field. Built in 1914, the park is just a tad younger than Fenway -- and it shows. The press rooms are like veal pens, the visiting team locker room is laughably awful -- it actually smells like mildew, and I bet the Cubs clubhouse is less spacious than many minor league locker rooms. But hey. It is a ballpark. For ballplaying. No reason to dally in the locker rooms. Just get out there and play on the best field in baseball.
Fans on the rooftops. The L clanking by. Sailboats on the lake visible from the cheap seats. Manual scoreboard. Old Style beer. Amen.
Posted at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
June 28, 2005
Algebraic soundboard
Terminus of one of the tubes that form the lattice "dome" above the great lawn at Millennium Park with the ribbon-like Gehry bandshell behind it.
Posted at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
June 11, 2005
A unique phone call
"911 emergency services."
"Yes, hello. I just passed under Montrose Ave. in a canoe and the bridge is on fire."
"In a canoe?"
"Y