Jack, Ray & Lewis

Posted on February 20, 2024 by admin

At the corner of N. Genesee Street and W. Clayton Street in Waukegan, catercornered across the intersection from the Genesee Theatre, stands a man and his violin in bronze.

It took me a while to figure out the alligators. Nice touch.

Jack Benny, favorite son of Waukegan, has stood there waiting to regale an audience since 2002, in a work by Illinois artist Erik Blome.

People my age only caught the tail end of Benny’s career, and it was years before I realized he could actually play the violin. Or maybe my mother told me that, and I forgot. The radio clips I heard de-emphasized his skill in favor of comedy. Now, of course, it’s easy enough to find clips showing just how talented he was.

A block west of Benny is a newer work, one depicting another Waukegan favorite son: Ray Bradbury, in a work called “Fantastical Traveler” by Zachary Oxman. It’s newer than Benny, erected in front of the Waukegan Public Library only in 2019, on Bradbury’s 99th birthday (he didn’t live to see it, having died in 2012).

I’d come to town to see Lewis Black, playing at the Genesee on Sunday evening, who channels profane rants into comedy that makes me laugh, which is all I ask of comedy. A lot of people feel the same way about him. But he’s an acquired taste, and not for the easily offended: during the show, I saw at least two couples leaving. One person might just be going to the bathroom, but when two leave together in the middle of the act, I guess they feel offended.

Some of his rants are political, but you could hardly call him partisan. I saw two audience members leave soon after he had the temerity to point out that the 2020 presidential election was not, in fact, stolen. Because, he said, no one as disorganized as the Democrats could pull off such a thing.

I wonder how those people didn’t know what they were going to see. A large number of Lewis Black clips are available on YouTube and, indeed, that’s how I heard of him at all. Even better, they’re old man rants, which he has aged into (he’s 75). Seeing him rant as a younger man – a few of those are on YouTube as well – just isn’t the same.

Before the show, and before sunset, I got a look at the Genesee, another former movie palace, dating from 1927, that survived the perils of the later 20th century and is now live theater.

Many nostalgia acts come there. Peter Frampton, for instance, is scheduled to play the Genesee on March 30. I know that because he was prominently advertised in the lobby. Man, he’s lost almost all of his hair since 1976.

Some years ago, I saw Al Stewart at the theater, as the opening act – the only time I’ve ever seen him as an opener – for the band America. That time I spoke with Al’s sometime sideman Dave Nachmanoff, who was in the lobby, and told him that America was fine, but I’d come to see Al. I hope he relayed that to Al.

After Lewis Black, I was able to look around the interior.

Not as unbelievably posh as the Rialto Square – few are – but a fine space.

Waukegan Ramble

Posted on February 19, 2024 by admin

I spent part of Sunday afternoon in Waukegan, a sizable far north Chicago suburb and in fact county seat of Lake County, Illinois. Not my first visit, but a bit out my usual orbit, halfway through that county on the way to Wisconsin and along the shore of Lake Michigan. The day was chilly, but not bad for February, so I set out on foot downtown for a few minutes.

The Lake County Courthouse & Administrative Building isn’t from the classic period of courthouse development, which would be more than 100 years ago now. It’s from the classic period of brutalism (1969), at least in this country.

The Civil War memorial in front (?) is an echo from an earlier time.

I took a drive too, looking for steeples. I knew most any church would be closed already, so I went looking for beautiful or interesting exteriors, and I found one tucked away in a neighborhood not far from downtown. While beauty isn’t quite the word for it, it certainly caught and held my attention.

Completed in 1964 as St. Anastasia Church, since 2020 the building has been home to St. Anastasia and St. Dismas Church, which combined are known as Little Flower Catholic Parish – part of the wave of ecclesiastical consolidation in our time.

The unusual design – at least, I’d never see the likes of it – was by mid-century modernist I.W. Colburn (d. 1992).

“This church… is a simple brick rectangle with arch motifs embracing in a succession of domed tiers on the corners and sides of the building,” reported the Chicago Tribune in 2016. “There are two larger versions of this form extended above the flat roof, which appear as towers. The rear domed tier rises over the main alter and carries an enormous cross on its crown.

“The walls of the building have a patterned surface due to the fact that some of the bricks protrude one half of their length from the flat wall. A portion of the wall is constructed of multicolored glass bricks and is most noticeable from the interior when the sun’s light shines through them filling the church with radiant color. The light thus becomes part of the service.”

Closed, as I thought, but maybe during a future Waukegan Tour of Homes, it will be open. Here’s a picture of the interior, decked out for Christmas.

“The interior repeats the motif of the exterior arches,” according to the Tribune. “The red brick, slate floor, glass and wood, mosaics representing the Stations of the Cross, illuminating skylight, and bronze crucifix over the altar give the worshipper the feeling of having entered a medieval monastery.”

My wanderings took me to a few other Waukegan churches, such as an older Catholic church on the edge of downtown. It says Church of the Immaculate Conception, carved over the entrance in stone, but these days it’s Most Blessed Trinity Catholic Church, the creation of a consolidation of six historic parishes.

Christ Episcopal Church, completed in 1888 and designed by Willoughby Edbrooke and Franklin Burnham of Chicago, who also did the Georgia State Capitol and the Milwaukee Federal Building.

Redeemer Lutheran Church.

The was enough churches for the day. The sun was going down, for one thing, but also once you’ve seen the Alpha and Omega, that’s enough for any day.

Mallard Lake on a Mild February Sunday

Posted on February 13, 2024 by admin

An unusual run of warmish days for February so far, and by that I mean above freezing every day and a completely melted snow cover. Local plants aren’t fooled, keeping their earth colors for now.

The scene Sunday at Mallard Lake. A few other people were around, walking the trail around the lake. Not everyone was at a pregame gathering.

There are islands in Lake Mallard, and where there are islands, there are bridges.

The stroll was a touch melancholic, since we couldn’t bring the dog, who is too frail for this kind of walk any more. Just a touch, since she’s still with us, just slow moving.

Valentine’s Day Helium

Posted on February 8, 2024 by admin

A slice of late March slipped into early February today, not quite warm but certainly not cold, windy and a scattering of rain. The atmosphere was charged enough to set of the waaah-waaah lightning warning gizmo installed in the park within sight of my back yard. Hadn’t heard its bleat in months. Didn’t see any actual lightning.

Went to a local chain grocery store this evening after work, a place I go maybe once a month, though it’s only about a five-minute drive. The local grocery market is saturated. Whatever the opposite of a food desert is, the northwestern suburbs are that.

The store isn’t really local, having been owned by Big Grocery for some years now. But it keeps its legacy name, known to Chicagoans far and wide. The aisles are, of course, fully ready for the next occasion on the North American calendar.

Wait – isn’t there a helium shortage? That’s one of those things I’ve half heard about, but never looked into much. Yes and no is the answer, at least according to an article, restricted to about four paragraphs for us non-subscribers of Gas World, about the prospects for the far-flung international helium market in 2024.

“Intelligas’ assessment of the worldwide supply of helium is about 5.9 billion cubic feet (Bcf) for 2023, up from about 5.7 Bcf in 2022 – back where we were in 2021.

“We forecast that worldwide supply will be short of demand until late 2024 if the large new sources of helium come onstream. The shortage that began in early 2022 when Amur suffered explosions at its first two LNG trains is still having an impact. And history has taught those of us in the helium business that large plants typically incur delays due to unexpected technical issues. Plenty of uncertainty remains.”

Amur explosions?

Again from Gas World, about two years ago: “New information about the explosion and fire that took place at Gazprom’s Amur natural gas processing facility on 5th January [2022] indicates that helium production will remain offline for at least the next six months.”

Maybe I heard about that at the time, but other news from Russia soon eclipsed anything as pedestrian as an industrial accident.

Good ol’ Gazprom. Its name, I believe, goes back to the late Soviet era. Say what you want about the commies, they came up with some boss names sometimes.

Joong Boo

Posted on February 7, 2024 by admin

When Toys R Us went under, I remember fans came out of the woodwork to tell the world how wonderful the chain was, and how it would live forever in a nostalgic corner of their hearts. Maybe you had to be a former child visitor to the stores to feel that way. Big places seem even bigger at that age, and big places stuffed with toys – what could be better?

The toy stores of my youth were standalones or in-line shops – small presences on long streets or in large malls. The closest I remember to a warehouse toy store was chain of mall toy stores whose name I’ve long forgotten, but which seemed to stack its merchandise floor to ceiling. Occasionally I bought model airplanes there. Forward 30 years and a Toys R Us location might hold 10 of those mall stores I remember from childhood. So I can see they might have been wowsers to the crop of children that came of age when Toys R Us was open.

First encountering Toys R Us as a parent of young children is another matter. When I wasn’t myself marveling at the profusion of entertainment options for small fry, because the stock was always an impressive array, I understood that visiting was a contest to hold spending to some reasonable level. Hold the line on spending like you might hold a squirming animal. A greased pig, maybe. It wasn’t easy.

So I didn’t mourn Toys R Us particularly. The location we visited closed with all the rest and the building stood vacant for a good many years afterward, which was unusual on this busy main thoroughfare in the northwest suburbs. Last year, a sign appeared in front of the former toy store explaining that a grocery store was coming soon.

Here it is.

Not just any grocery store, but Joong Boo, a Korean store. We visited last Friday, during the store’s first week of operation. The fourth location of a Chicago-based chain, it’s clearly a rising competitor to the larger Korean chain, H-Mart, which not long ago expanded its store within a mile or so of the new Joong Boo. So new that the location isn’t, as of today, listed on the Joong Boo web site.

Nice redesign inside, not a hint of its former use. Artful light bars overhead. Hope they’re energy efficient.

The place was crowded. In its first week anyway, it’s a hit.

One thing that H-Mart taught me is about the endless variety (I exaggerate: the impressive variety) of fresh seafood offered by a Korean supermarket, at least here in North America. Three samples from a much larger selection:

Something I didn’t expect.

I bought one. Not because I’m going to eat it soon, though I might sometime, but to help keep the Spam Museum open (which, I see, is in a newish location). Yuriko bought more healthful items to prepare for our table. For her, the store represents economy: many of the same or similar items than at the local Japanese supermarket, but at a better price. That doesn’t keep her away from the Japanese store completely – it is, after all, the Japanese store — just sometimes.

Another reason to wander a Korean grocery store – or any store, really – is to be on the lookout for brands that aren’t creatures of the U.S. food industry, but maybe some other country’s food conglomerates. Or just third-string or otherwise unusual brands, such as Argentine frosted flakes.

A South Korean beer, Terra.

That counts as the creature of the South Korean food industry, since it’s an export made by Hite Brewery Co., the largest beer maker in that country. Look at the bottle and you learn it’s a Czech-style Korean lager using Australian malt.

Speaking of creatures.

He seems to be the mascot of Jinro, which, as a unit of Hite since 2006, is the world’s largest maker of soju. In English, anyway, he’s referred to as a toad, and man, you can get a lot of Jinro merch.

Pretty Sure It Will Be Dry February As Well

Posted on February 1, 2024 by admin

Not only are we rid of January today, it was the most pleasant weather I can ever remember on a February 1 in northern Illinois: sun out sometimes, temps touching about 50 F.

YouTube algorithms are getting better at their game. Or so it seems. Today they suggested a Mexican ska band, Mexican Nutty Stompers, who have just released an album. The song, “Souvenir.” I was the 83rd listener.

Never mind the delight in finding Mexican ska when you didn’t such a thing existed, whoever the lead singer is, she’s got some voice. I might look into finding out her name, but for now the voice is more than enough.

A snippet from a press release that came a few weeks ago:

Embrace the spirit of Dry January with Hotel ZaZa Memorial City. Dine in at Hotel ZAZA’s Tipping Point Restaurant and Terrace and indulge in exclusive mocktail specials, crafted to make your taste buds dance without the spirits. Throughout the month of January, enjoy a selection of zero-proof concoctions, each priced at just $8.

Closer to my wheelhouse, but not quite in it. Still, I learned a couple of things from the release. One, Hotel ZaZa Memorial City is in Houston. Zaza is a collection of boutique hotels in Texas, in fact, with locations in Austin and Dallas too. I wasn’t familiar with the brand, but it looks posh all right. Also, this is the essence of the luxury hotel business: serving drinks at what would be a very reasonable price, if they contained any alcohol.

Dry January. I had to look around for more information on that, and it turned out to be a thing. Not sure if it’s just a thing of the chattering classes, or has stronger purchase on the steep slopes of American culture, but anyway you can find mainstream articles about it. Never heard of any of that. I’m late to the party, as usual. Or the non-party, considering no alcohol is served. As we all know, alcohol is essential to any fun party. That’s true in song and story.

The concept is simple enough to be a thing: Dry January just means not drinking alcohol during January, presumably timed to come after personal bacchanals in December. The hotel is using the concept to sell mocktails, but people do seem to use the idea to improve their lives. Good for them. I found it a little hard to imagine, though. Every January is Dry January for me.

I did order, and drink, an Old Fashioned at the bar of the Nashville Italian restaurant where we had dinner on the last full night with my friends in November. We were waiting for a table, so we all sat at the bar, enjoying some lively conversation with each other.

We also spent a few minutes watching the bartender, a nattily dressed slip of an African-American young man, maybe 30, who seemed to be everywhere behind the bar doing everything all the time, but mostly assembling the various liquors for his cocktail creations. With an economy and grace to his movements that spoke of years of practice. He was an artist.

So I wanted to order something from him. But what? As I later explained to my friends, a little part of every man wants to be Don Draper, so the drink in front of me was my homage to the character, and a vehicle to provide a nice tip for the bartender.

A little more than 12 years before ordering the Old Fashioned in Nashville, I ordered one in Appleton, Wisconsin on a press trip because I recently heard of the drink on Mad Men and was curious.

But mixed drinks haven’t been how I’ve usually spent my money over the years. All those years later in Nashville, I nursed my Old Fashioned a while – I’m not a hard-drinking TV character, after all – and concluded that I hadn’t had a bar cocktail between those two times, only occasional beer and wine, most of which wasn’t at bars anyway. What’s the term for that? Not teetotaler. Quasi-totaler?

Summertime in W.A. ’92

Posted on January 28, 2024 by admin

Rumor has it that a glowing orb might appear in the sky tomorrow. If so, almost the first time in this odd-weather start of the year. Still, whatever else has happened, overcast skies have been the norm. Last Thursday, according to the NWS, it was fog from here to the Gulf Coast.

Australia Day has come and gone. For the occasion, I wanted to scan a 1989 uncirculated set of Australian coins, but the coins themselves, encased in plastic, don’t lend themselves to it. Details are indistinct and the lighting of coins seems weird no matter what angle, though not when you’re looking at them with your eyes. In that case, they have the shiny look of uncirculated coins.

Pretty to look at, but not especially valuable. That’s what you should expect, since there’s not a lick of silver in the whole set. I bought it a few years ago, as a kind of retroactive souvenir, since those were the kinds of coins in circulation when I was there.

The envelope theme: ‘roos in the hot sun.

In early January 1992, I sent a card to my brother Jim and mother from Perth.

“Plenty of strange plants & birds to see,” I wrote, becoming the nth person in history to notice that about Australia, a very high number. Still, that’s a marvel of the place. All you have to do is look around. The flora gets weirder the longer you look at it, and helps you appreciate just how far you’ve come to see their oddities. Damn, I’m at the other end of the Earth, you think.

Vast, empty spaces were indeed ahead on the road from Perth to Adelaide to Sydney. My only regret on that bus epic across the continent was that it was dark when we crossed the Nullarbor Plain.

Then again, aside from the species that make up the scrub brush, a ride across Nullarbor doesn’t look that different from a ride across West Texas, and I’ve done that in the daylight.

Getting Through Various Januaries

Posted on January 21, 2024 by admin

The near-zero and subzero days eased off late last week, enough that I completed the task that no one else wants, storing Christmas decorations in the garage. Also, moving snow out of the way on our sidewalks and driveway, though Yuriko did some of that as well. Deep chill was back on Saturday and some today, or at least it felt that way when I rolled the garbage cans out to the curb this evening.

Overcast skies meant there wasn’t even the consolation of constellations, bright in the clear winter night. Some other time, Orion.

Haven’t bothered taking many pictures lately. The bleak mid-winter doesn’t inspire camera-in-hand forays near or far. The back yard pretty much looks like this image from January 2015, except the dog isn’t nearly as vigorous in crossing the powdery flats as she used to be. In fact, just getting her out the door is a process that can take a few minutes, as is getting her back in.

Back even further, she romps through the snow of January 2014. As if there were that much difference.

On Saturday especially we cleaned house, especially in the kitchen the adjacent spaces – the food handling zones of the house. Always needs some attention. January has a way of pressing in on the walls of the house, focusing one’s attention on immediate surroundings. At least, that’s how I feel it.

I did such a January cleaning in 2014 – does that year really correspond to 10 years ago? There goes time, flying again, flapping its wings just a little louder every year. Ten years ago, ours was a house with children. Who spent a fair amount of time on the living room couch.

One day I moved the couch to clean behind it.

For some reason I decided to document it. Was I mad at my daughters? I don’t think I was, but I did show it to them. What with prying the couch from its position, this was a job for Dad.

In January 2006, we visited a showing of snow sculptures in the northwest suburbs.

Nice, but I don’t think I’ve had the urge to seek out any more snow sculpture events since then.

Mega Cavern

Posted on January 18, 2024 by admin

A message we saw in Louisville recently.

Not something you see that much, not put quite that way. Maybe that’s an unconscious acknowledgment that nowhere in Scripture is Jesus’ exact birthday ever mentioned. It reminded me of a scene from Full Metal Jacket.

The message was in lights, and there was a good reason for that. It was part of Lights Under Louisville, an annual display of Christmas lights by Mega Cavern. A lot of lights: at 7 million, said to be the largest such light display in the world.

Mega Cavern is an attraction south of downtown Louisville, and a fairly recent one at that, opening for tourists only in 2009. In the mid-20th century, miners extracted limestone from under the area’s hills, eventually creating 4 million square feet of space. In comparison, the Sears Tower totals 4.4 million square feet, so nearly a Sears Tower worth of space was excavated under a section of I-264 and the Louisville Zoo and a major city park. By the early ’90s, mining had ceased, and the voids were developed into warehouse space.

In that, the place naturally reminded me of SubTropolis in Kansas City, Mo., which I visited in ’99. Unlike that man-made cave, which is still all business, Mega Cavern started adding activities for visitors, at first tours through the cave. There is still underground warehouse space, and tenants for it.

But now the facility also has underground zip lines, an aerial ropes course, and walking and tram tours most of the year. Mega Cavern used to have an enormous dirt bike course, at 320,000 square feet said to the the world’s largest underground off-road bike facility, but that didn’t last (I suspect insurance issues).

Around Christmas, you can either drive through Mega Cavern to see the millions of lights, or pay a little more and ride on a wagon pulled by a Jeep, which is what we did on December 30. It was the only activity on this trip that I had to book in advance.

The public entrance to the cave doesn’t even hint at what’s below.

At the end of a short hall is a large room used to turn vehicles around, and as a waiting area for those riding trams.

Beyond that is a room with the service desk, a small snack shop, a gift shop and a view of some climbing equipment.

We’d come for the Christmas Express.

Of we went, exactly as scheduled. I was expecting the lights to be arrayed in tree-oriented abstractions. Or just to be artful strings of lights.

There was a lot of that. At the risk of sounding churlish, since we enjoyed riding through the lights thoroughly, the ride could have used more displays like these. Most of the displays had themes. Such as local themes. They were artful, too, just not quite as spectacular.

Patriotic themes. Many more than this.

Christian themes.

Movie franchises. More than pictured here, but I don’t remember all of them now. Many geared to children. I’d heard of almost all of them.

I remember a few omissions. Star Wars – more than one display, I think. But no Star Trek. Also, Barbie. Were pink Christmas trees in vogue over the holidays? Experts say yes. But what, no Oppenheimer? C’mon, they were peas in the same summer blockbuster pod.

I’m pretty sure a Manhattan Project display would have harshed everyone’s holiday buzz, so no go. But can you imagine? The centerpiece of the Oppenheimer display would, of course, be a mushroom cloud in holiday lights.

21c Hotel Museum, Louisville

Posted on January 17, 2024 by admin

Not quite the depth of cold today as the three days before. I think temps reached double digits, reckoned in Fahrenheit, and tomorrow we’ll enjoy a balmy 20 F. With a little more snow, and sliding temps for the weekend. Such is January.

One of our more interesting moments in Louisville at the end of ’23 came at the lower level of a downtown hotel. I took a moment to rest on a bench.

Soon, Yuriko joined me.

It’s a little hard to tell with still images, but the letters appeared to drift downward and then rest on your reflection. Up close, the letters looked like this.

We were looking at an art installation next to a bank of elevators.

Back in the 2000s, I wrote at least one article, already lost to time, about a new boutique hotel in Louisville, of all places. The redevelopment of a number of derelict downtown warehouses, joined for the purpose, created the 21c Hotel Museum. I brought my professional skepticism to the task. Saving warehouses is a good idea, and if the market can bear high-priced hotel rooms in downtown Louisville, fine.

But the hotel was supposed to be a contemporary art museum as well, as its founders were art collectors. I doubted that it was much of a museum, though without any evidence one way or the other. It just sounded like the sort of claim a new boutique hotel would make: put a few paintings in an empty room on the property, call yourself a museum, elevate your room rates.

That was in a time – before the panic of 2008 – of a number of boutique hotel rollouts, often smaller brands owned by very large hotel chains, each angling for something to make it stand out, at least superficially, from the sameness of the mainstream brands.

That all was in the back of my mind when, on December 30, we dropped by 21c Hotel Museum.

A gilded statue stands watch outside: “David (inspired by Michelangelo)” (2005), which is double the size of its inspiration and largely fiberglass, by Turkish artist Serkan Özkaya.

I hadn’t thought about the 21c in a number of years, so even as I entered, I wasn’t expecting much. I was wrong. As a museum, the place is fair-sized, its art in galleries on the hotel’s lower level, and it has an interesting collection.

I couldn’t find the description of the metal tornado near the ceiling, but I liked it.

Details of other works at the 21c. A series of faces.

All of the works are recent vintage, as in 21st century. Fitting the name. Though the Louisville redevelopment was the first of them, there are currently eight 21c Hotel Museums, owned by Accor, including others in Bentonville, Ark., Chicago, Cincinnati, Durham, NC, Kansas City, Mo., Lexington, Ky. and St. Louis. Each has exhibit space, collectively totaling 75,000 square feet.

Best of all, you can just wander in and look at it. No admission, no questions asked.

Down the hall from the “Text Rain” is a work tucked away in a utilitarian lower space outside a window, “Cloud Rings” by Ned Kahn (2006). Its sign says: A series of devices that continuously shoot rings of fog up into an exterior sunken courtyard space.

We spent a fair while watching it at work.

Cool. Black and white was just the thing for it.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There