Chicago Riverside Stroll

Posted on April 2, 2024 by admin

Intense periods of rain marked the day and into the night, with snow ahead. A nonsticking April sort of snow, but still carried by stiff unpleasant winds. A rearguard winter wind, and winter winds blow only in one direction. In your face.

It was merely chilly Saturday before last when we strolled down Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in the evening in downtown Chicago, partly along the Chicago River. Some old favorites rise in that area, such as Marina City.

Idly curious, I looked up some listings for condos in the building. For less than $300,000, one can buy a 500-square foot unit, listed as zero beds, one bath. I wonder what that means in context: a Murphy bed? Not like some utilitarian job you might have found in the Kramdens’ apartment, but maybe something a little more upmarket. Are there upscale Murphy beds? Of course there are.

At more than 60 years old, Marina City doesn’t count as the newest and poshest, but it has historic appeal, and has any other residential complex seen a fast-moving auto pitched out of its parking garage into a river? Such happened for The Hunter (1980), the last Steve McQueen movie. A bad guy’s fate, if I remember right.

The Wrigley Building, legacy of a chewing gum fortune. What more to say about the masterpiece on the Chicago, open now these last 100 years?

The courtyard north of the building is formally the Plaza of the Americas, which I’m sure only tour guides call it. On windy days the flags of the OAS fly over the plaza. Does the actual flag of the OAS also? Its design: Let’s wheel all the national flags together. It’s a recognized way to organize flags, but on a flag?

At the west end of the plaza is a bronze Benito Juárez, a gift of Mexico to the city of Chicago in 1999, with one Julian Martinez listed as the artist (not this artist). At night, Juárez doesn’t catch the light very well.

These golden wings are a newer addition to the plaza, 2022, and supposedly temporary. Another of the pairs of wings that have sprouted worldwide, though these are sculpted, not painted.

“Wings of Mexico” by Jorge Marin. A little digging around, and I see that he did “El Ángel de la Seguridad Social,” which we spotted in Mexico City.

Gilligan!

Posted on March 27, 2024 by admin

The video that captured the ramming and collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge has a morbid fascination, and you don’t even have to rubberneck to see it. I watched it a few times this morning, marveling at how what looked like a tap – but of course was tons of mass colliding with the structure – could bring the whole thing down so fast.

Then again, we’ve all had similar experiences on a (fortunately) smaller scale. One time I brushed ever so lightly against a stack of dishes drying in the rack, and much of the stack lost its cohesion in a moment, with the dishes suddenly rearranging themselves in a clatter, a handful tumbling to the sink and the floor, though I don’t remember that any broke.

I was also reminded of something I’ve written about before, some comedy about a previous (1989) shipwreck.

“About a week after the [Exxon Valdez] spill, I went to the Second City comedy revue… and they did a 15-second skit about it, a to-the-point gag.

“Silhouetted on the stage was a fellow standing behind a large ship’s wheel. From offstage, an announcer said something like, ‘And now, what really happened on the Exxon Valdez…’ Pause. Then the stage lights went up, reveling a familiar red shirt and white sailor’s cap on the fellow at the wheel, who was fumbling with it. At the same instant, a familiar voice boomed from offstage, startling the fellow: ‘GILLIGAN!’ the Skipper bellowed.”

If Second City had a mind to, they could do exactly the same sketch this weekend, only changing the line to “what really happened to the Key Bridge in Baltimore.” It would be in bad taste, since it looks like six men lost their lives in the collapse, but death doesn’t always nix comedy. In fact, often not. For example in ’86, NASA = Need Another Seven Astronauts.

Would many in their audience miss the Gilligan reference due to their relatively tender age? Maybe, but Gilligan is better remembered than a lot of ’60s TV characters. As an enduring stock character, the bumbling moron, he participates in something bigger than mere TV entertainment. Something that probably goes back a lot further even than Plautus, to the most rudimentary forms of pratfall entertainment among our remote ancestors.

Thursday Cha-Chings

Posted on March 7, 2024 by admin

Ann came home for spring break today. I offered to subsidize her expenses on a romp somewhere, even a mild sort of romp like my spring breaks of yore, such as to cloudy St. Petersburg, Florida, where we stayed at the condo belonging to the grandmother of one of our party (she wasn’t there) and found one of Vaughn Meader’s Kennedy records stashed away in her record collection. But Ann preferred to come here.

Remarkably, the fellow who produced The First Family in 1962, one Bob Booker, is still alive at 92, at least according to Wiki. Of course, he was only 31 then.

Saw this phrase at a supermarket recently, on banners hanging from the ceiling. Cha- ching!

The point in this case was to persuade shoppers that the store offers low, low prices. Save some cha-ching here or some such. I think most people understand that the phrase refers to cash register noise, and thus hard cold cash in one way or another, but it made me wonder how many people any more have even heard a cash register make a sound like that?

Because I am of a certain age, I have. I’m pretty sure the dime store I patronized ca. 1970 still had mechanical registers. But that was long ago, and even then the sound was a little old-timey. Now even the smallest stores in the nation’s remote backwaters use electronic registers, whose signature sound is a muffed beep-beep-beep that’s weak tea when it comes up to conjuring up images of drawers full of money. And yet cha-ching! lives on. Just another shiny bit in the jewel cave of English.

One more pic from Devon Ave. in Chicago on Sunday.

The mural is just outside the entrance to Cary’s, the bar I went to. As far as I saw, this was the only reference to Alice in Wonderland around. Why is it there? Why not?

Street View tells me that this small mural is a recent addition, too. It wasn’t there the last time the All-Seeing Eye passed by in November 2022. The bar’s wonderful neon sign has been there longer, appearing sometime between August 2007 (the first image available) and May 2009. That was a period of economic disruption, so maybe the bar did well enough to spring for the sign.

This from the NYT today: “President Biden has selected his education secretary, Miguel Cardona, to be the so-called designated survivor during Thursday night’s State of the Union address, a grim moniker meant to ensure at least one decision maker survives if a calamity were to wipe out the nation’s leadership assembled at the Capitol for the speech.”

Grim moniker, huh? Journalism might be a sickly industry, but journalese turns of phrase live on. Hard to imagine anyone actually saying that.

As for the office, the Secretary of Education is 15th in line to become president (vice president being first), which means that “designated survivor” is probably the only ghost of a chance of succeeding to the top spot, without the usual rarefied politicking of a presidential run, that the Secretary of Education has.

How long has that been a cabinet-level position? Right, the first one was during the Carter administration. Carving Education out of Health, Education and Welfare was, in fact, a campaign promise that he was able to keep, for what that was worth.

Wendy at Cary’s

Posted on March 5, 2024 by admin

Heavy rain and thunder last night, big puddles today and cool air, though no freeze. The first crocus is out. It actually bloomed just ahead of the rain.

My goal on Sunday was to make it to Cary’s, a bar on Devon Avenue on the northwest side of Chicago. I made it. As bar neon goes, this one’s the top, put it in the Cole Porter song.

Mask décor inside. Pixar: there’s a movie in bar masks that talk while the bar is empty.

Mostly, though, it’s a Chicago bar.

The bar stands out in the area, because much of the surrounding neighborhood is South Asian in character and it isn’t. Nearby establishments include Lahore Food & Grill, Hyderabad House, Pak Sweets, New Bombay Hair & Beauty Salon, Devon Gurdwara Sahib of Chicago, Musk & Oud (gift shop), Amar Carpet, Chandni Exclusive (bridal shop), Mehrab Supermarket, and many more.

Back when we lived in Chicago, in both the late ’80s and mid-90s, we’d seek out Indian food in the area, but I hadn’t been there recently. Not much seems different these days, despite the sizable expansion of the South Asian population here in the suburbs: on an unusually warm March evening, Devon and the nearby streets were alive, a constant churn in and out of the shops, along the sidewalks and out into the streets, where cars had a tight fit. I’d have wandered around Devon on foot more on Sunday, but I arrived only in time for the beginning of the show at Cary’s, because of the aforementioned detour en route, and the fact that parking is near impossible on Devon, and almost so on the streets around it, whose spaces are restricted mostly to residents.

I went not because I go to bars that much, but to see my old friend Wendy (even when this picture was taken in ’87, I’d already known her about five years), who was slated to play guitar and sing. On stage, she’s Jenn. I also got to see the opening act. He and his band — a bass player and a drummer — were also quite good, though Dylanesque isn’t quite how I’d describe him musically, though he’s got that the Dylan in Greenwich Village look on the poster, at least.

Wendy only plays in public occasionally, and I’d never heard her more than noodle on the guitar. I’m glad to report she plays guitar very well, and has a fine singing voice, though her lyrics were sometimes hard to hear over bar noise. Still, she was especially lilting in holding long notes seasoned by her Nashville background: that cut through the noise.

I told her these things afterward. I was glad I didn’t feel compelled to politely lie to her about her talent because, fortunately, she had some.

Years ago, in the summer of ’82 in fact, other friends and I went to a Nashville bar, I forget which one, to see a fellow one of us knew slightly, an aspiring musician, who had invited us for an open mike night. He was, I think, a waiter or bartender, but of course, every other waiter or bartender in Nashville aspires to musical success.

He must have aspired more specifically to be like Glenn Fry or Don Henley, but was a failure. Just didn’t have enough in the way of musical chops; even we could hear that. We were polite about it, though. I wonder whether that was doing him a disservice, but I expect in the fullness of time, he found out.

Queen of All Saints Basilica

Posted on March 4, 2024 by admin

The latest run of warm days is now ending, with rain moving through northern Illinois. In its wake, more seasonable temps for early March. Sunday wasn’t seasonable at all, with the air heated to a pleasant low 70s F.

On Sunday afternoon I headed for the the northwest side of Chicago. You’d think that would be straightforward, considering that I was coming from the northwest suburbs, but no: O’Hare takes up a sizable chunk of real estate between those two areas, and there’s no going under it like in Los Angeles. One goes around.

I was sure I didn’t need to consult a map, either. Go more-or-less east on a major road (Irving Park) that curls along the southern edge of the airport; go north on another major road that is just east of the airport (Mannheim); and then connect with the east-west road (Devon) that would take me to the part of the city I wanted to visit.

Easy, especially since I knew the first part of the route well. I often take those first two roads to the airport entrance. True, I had to go a little further north on Mannheim into less familiar territory to connect with Devon, but all I’d have to do is watch for Devon. So I did.

No, that wasn’t it, but it’ll be soon. No, that’s not it either, maybe the next major light. No, not that one. Maybe one more. No. We’ve all done this: expect something while driving, sure that it will come up soon, and it doesn’t. So I pulled over to check my map, finally, and I was some distance north of where I want to be. Mannheim doesn’t actually connect to Devon. The next major north-south street east of Mannheim, which is River Road, does. Oops.

Use the GPS, you say. I still say no. I wasn’t going to be late for anything that needed my punctuality, for one thing, but more important, I passed through a stretch of relatively unfamiliar and interesting territory as I navigated my way southeast to Devon. Metro Chicago is so large that that’s possible even after living here for decades.

Had I not been “lost” I would never have noticed this along the road.

I’d happened across Queen of All Saints Basilica in the Sauganash neighborhood of Chicago, one of the three minor basilicas in the city. I might have seen it on a list of local Catholic sights some time, but I didn’t remember it and didn’t set out to see it. But see it I did, though it was already closed. The exterior had to do.

Completed in 1960, so I’m surprised it isn’t more modernist. But I suppose the diocese wanted neo-Gothic, and that’s what architects Meyer & Cook provided. That firm seems to be better known for the art deco Laramie State Bank Building, also on the western edge of Chicago. While Queen of All Saints is certainly impressive, what if the diocese had asked for an art deco church?

Billy Goat Tavern & Grill ’23

Posted on December 7, 2023 by admin

I can’t say whether Billy Goat Tavern & Grill looks exactly the same as it did in the ’80s, but it sure felt the same on Monday night. The walls of photos, neon, beer taps, rows of bottles, knickknacks and basic restaurant tables and chairs, and plenty of worn red bar stools. The vibe is Chicago tavern clutter, comfortable as an old shirt.

Now that I think about it, I had the most Greek experience I’ve ever had at the Billy Goat, having never yet made it to Greece. Shortly before the 1988 presidential election, the Dukakis campaign staged a campaign parade on Michigan Avenue, and after work I went to watch, on a spontaneous quasi-date with a fetching Greek-American woman I knew. Was it a torchlight parade? In my memory, there were torches, but probably no: that seems like a 19th-century thing.

We were within feet of the candidate as he walked by, his expression a little stiff and discouraged. Later we repaired to the Billy Goat, which was wall-to-wall packed, including many Greek Americans – wearing the colors of the Greek flag, some of them — with everybody feasting on cheeseburgers and beer, the place alive with talk, and the clank of spatulas on the grill, and the hissing burgers and onion air, and the clouds of cigarette smoke still common in bars and restaurants.

I’m pretty sure the workers called out Cheezborger! Cheezborger! in those days, which might be an example of life imitating art, or more likely, life and art reinforcing either other.

Rumor was that Dukakis himself would make an appearance, and well he should have, but he never did. He should have shown up in his tank helmet, shaking hands and mugging for cameras. Rather than be embarrassed by it, he should have leaned into it, but no.

Back here in the 21st century, there are reminders of goats at Billy Goat. How could it be otherwise?

You can see a wall of bylines at Billy Goat. Once upon a time, both major Chicago newspaper buildings were within easy walking distance, even in winter, so newspapermen hung out there.

Best known was Royko, who worked the place into his column from time to time. From there, the place went on to wider notice, sort of.

I expect the number of journalists is fairly low these days, outnumbered by other kinds of downtown residents and workers, plus tourists. On Monday night at least, no one called out when you ordered your cheeseburgers; they just went to work at it.

Except for the vegan in our group – she was a good sport about it — we had cheeseburgers and chips and beer. What else? In theory, a few other things are on the menu, but we didn’t test it. No fries, either.

We also sipped from a single glass of Malört. It’s a Chicago thing to do.

Around the corner from the entrance of the Billy Goat, directly facing Lower Michigan Ave. and just north of the Chicago River., is a mural and a tavern sign.

The mural is a work by Andy Bellomo, “a self-taught artist who began her creative interest as a young teen studying the color, light, shapes, and lines of traditional stained glass in churches,” according to the the Magnificent Mile Association, as part of a number of murals known as Undercurrent (at least to the Mag Mile Assn.).

It’s been there about a year, which would account for me never noticing it before. Haven’t been down to Lower Michigan Ave. in a some years, but I can assure the world that it’s still the hard urban space it’s always been.

There’s more of the Undercurrent mural on the other side of the tavern’s entrance, not captured in the below image.

But I did capture, without realizing it, part of a different mural, one that’s been there for decades, by an artist mostly lost to time in Chicago, even though his heyday was only about 50 years ago. It’s on the extreme right edge of the image: a rainbow goat.

“Many people ask about the rainbow goats painted on the walls outside of The Goat,” notes the tavern web site. “They were painted in 1970 by Sachio Yamashita, known as Sachi… Billy [Sianis, original owner of the tavern] made a deal with Sachi. Every day after Sachi and his helpers finish their work, beer and borgers are free! Unfortunately Billy Goat Sianis passed away on October 22, 1970 just days before the paintings were complete.”

I might have noticed the goats before, but didn’t give them much thought. I didn’t notice them this time, or I’d have taken a full image, since how many rainbow goats could there be in the world? On walls, that is.

Chicago Christkindlmarket ’23

Posted on December 6, 2023 by admin

I made a point of watching the tribute to Norman Lear that was simulcast – now that’s a aging concept – on several networks this evening, at 8 Eastern/7 Central. Mostly, I was curious to see what they would do. Turned out to be about 15 seconds of a picture of him (maybe taken in the late 20th century), his name and birth and death year, indicating quite a lifespan. That was it. I wonder how many people who saw the spot knew who he was. Network audiences skew old, but even that demographic is more likely to remember his shows than him.

But he was well enough known to inspire a torrent of virtual print, so I won’t add to it, except to say too bad Hot L Baltimore didn’t last, while Good Times did. Nobody’s perfect. RIP, Mr. Lear.

Extremely crowded Chicago Christkindlmarkets of years past – mob city, as my mother used to say, not referring to gangsters – must have pushed any notion of visiting it on Monday right out of my head. But when I ambled over to the Thompson Center, I saw the market. Might as well drop in, see if the crowd was thinner. It was. A more manageable Monday in mob city. Just enough to be lively.

First, pass by the eternal flame on Daley Plaza. Dedicated since 1972 to all U.S. veterans of any kind.

Still there. Well, it is eternal. That’s not meant in a literal sense, of course, on past the heat death of the Universe, but as long as humanly possible. The upshot for the flame is that people will maintain it until its honorees have disappeared from common memory. I hope that’s some centuries at least, but who knows.

As I said, lively. It isn’t really crowded unless it’s tricky to navigate through people.

The stalls are more crowded.

Everything in that lower pic is eccentric shapes of chocolate, and pretty much the only place I was tempted to buy anything. The economic model at the market is the same as I described a few years ago: “priced in euros at a lousy exchange rate, with an extra 50 percent tacked on for good measure.”

Paper stars.

Locally themed ornaments, and pickles. Who doesn’t like Christmas pickles?

Eats.

And Paul.

His sign says, “Hi, everyone! I am Paul, the Hamburg sailor! Take a picture with me!’

Paul, huh? Are the Hamburgers having a spot of fun with that? St. Pauli is a red light district in Hamburg, after all, and while Paul here might look clean-cut, on leave I bet he’s out for beir and bumsen. Or maybe he’s a more modern sailor, and while visiting Chicago slips off to North Halsted Street sometimes.

Chicago Loop Glass Shell

Posted on December 5, 2023 by admin

Years ago, in the late ’80s, Chicago radio station WXRT – I think – made brief fun of Helmut Jahn, telling listeners that famed Chicago architect “Helmut Helmut” had designed a giant glass football as a downtown building. The station joker wasn’t really making fun of the starchitect as much as the Jahn-designed State of Illinois Center, a vast, roundish glass structure that opened in 1985 in the Central Loop, joining other major government buildings in the area.

For about three decades, the glass 3D roundel housed state offices, acquiring a new name at some point — the Thompson Center — and a reputation as a money pit in terms of maintenance and a source of discomfort for the workers.

The state of Illinois bugged out during the 2010s, and the structure still stands, but is empty. I encountered it on my evening walk yesterday.

Inside is well lighted, but the building is still a ghost of its former self. I took an image through the window near the former main entrance. These days, otherwise, access denied.

Google bought the building last year, and tapped Jahn’s successor firm (he died in 2021) to do the redevelopment design, or, as other sources have put it, demolition of the exterior and the sweeping atrium. I’m not sure what the plan is exactly. Still pending, I guess.

I used to visit often, especially when I worked downtown, but also afterward, and the building, which I didn’t care for that much when I first visited – 1986? – grew on me, especially that sweeping atrium. I’d hate to see it altered beyond recognition.

Marquee Monday

Posted on December 4, 2023 by admin

I went downtown for a meeting with colleagues today, and after that, took a stroll. Temps were fairly chilly, but still above freezing. I wandered over to State Street, near the storied Chicago Theatre.

“The Chicago Theatre was the first large, lavish movie palace in America and was the prototype for all others,” asserts the theater web site, though I know there are other claimants dating from the decade before. Still, there’s no doubt that the Chicago was a palace among palaces.

“This beautiful movie palace was constructed for $4 million by theatre owners Barney and Abe Balaban and Sam and Morris Katz and designed by Cornelius and George Rapp,” the site continues. “It was the flagship of the Balaban and Katz theatre chain.”

I’m assuming that means $4 million in hefty soon-to-be Coolidge dollars (Harding dollars?), since the palace was completed in 1921. I ran that through an inflation calculator and came up with the modern equivalent: $68.7 million.

After reading the following paragraph, I decided I need to take a closer look at the theater sometime, even though I’ve seen it many times. That’s because I never knew about the French connection and especially the stained glass.

“Built in French Baroque style, The Chicago Theatre’s exterior features a miniature replica of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, sculpted above its State Street marquee. Faced in a glazed, off-white terra cotta, the triumphal arch is sixty feet wide and six stories high. Within the arch is a grand window in which is set a large circular stained-glass panel bearing the coat-of-arms of the Balaban and Katz chain — two horses holding ribbons of 35-mm film in their mouths.”

That’s not quite what photos of the stained glass depict, at least not “film in their mouths,” but never mind. Note also the Municipal Device — the Chicago Y — just over the marquee.

Boop!

Posted on November 28, 2023 by admin

Boop! = much fun. I know that because I remember enjoying myself during the new musical of that name, despite my uncomfortable seat there in the dress circle at the theater formerly known as the Sam Shubert, now named for a bank, in downtown Chicago. We popped in for the show on Friday evening.

Even now, only four days after the performance, whatever detail I took in about the jazzy score or entertaining lyrics or the vivacious dance moves or the intensely colorful costumes – which were sometimes monochromatic yet colorful somehow – or the peppy dialogue or the remarkable sets, is all a kinetic blur.

That’s the way it should be with a musical, I figure. A little razzle, a little dazzle, something to enjoy in the moment. Still, Boop! wasn’t just a musical, it was a staged musical cartoon with a star character nearly 100 years old, singing and dancing her way through an appropriately gossamer plot.

A young woman named Jasmine Amy Rogers brought Betty to life with astonishing vitality and, often enough, a hot red dress, once Betty leaves monochrome behind. The supporting cast, up to and including a marionette dog, likewise filled the stage with song, dance and antics. The cast was first rate in every way.

Pudgy, Betty’s dog, a more-or-less life-sized marionette, did some astonishing moves himself, as guided by Phillip Huber, who once upon a time did some puppet work in the extreme oddity that was Being John Malkovich.

I am, I confess, mostly indifferent about Betty Boop. Or was, until I married a fan. Capt. Gus on KENS-TV Channel 5 didn’t show her cartoons on weekday afternoons after school; his thing was Popeye, though maybe he screened the Betty Boop short in which Popeye made his cinematic debut. In those pre-Internet, pre-You Tube days, the cartoons simply weren’t available. Betty, for me, was stuck in the amber of the 1930s, and while pop culture of the time has considerable interest, somehow she didn’t resonate.

So I grew to adulthood without giving her much thought, though I did see her brief appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

“Work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color, but I’ve still got it, Eddie!”

– Betty Boop, voiced by Mae Questel (d. 1998), who managed to live long enough to do so.

In Boop!, a monochromic-ish Betty, tired of being a cartoon celebrity, manages to transport herself to the “real world” via a machine concocted by Grampy, the inventor character from the shorts who is explicitly her grandfather in this show. She figures no one will know her in the real world, but she lands at New York Comic-Con in our time, in living color, and of course everyone knows her, especially the spunky little sister of her soon-to-be love interest, a modern jazzman. He provided the story’s shout-out to Cab Calloway, and I was glad to hear it.

Luckily, the story didn’t make too much out of Betty being a fish out of water, though that provided a little amusement. To her eventual dismay, she realizes she’s famous here, too.

Grampy, realizing that Betty needs to return to the cartoon world, comes to the real world to look for her, but also manages to spend the night with a real-world woman he had a dalliance with decades earlier. (The Hays Code doesn’t apply to this show, though it’s mostly wholesome.) There’s also a sleazeball running for mayor of real-world New York and it is he, in the fullness of time, who chases Betty around a desk, only to get clocked by her with a blunt object.

The sprinkling of serious elements – most musicals have a few – mostly involve female empowerment, though there was a dig at modern-day plutocrats. Betty is known for resisting sexual harassment and, after returning to the cartoon world, tells her director that she won’t be chased around desks by lecherous men any more in her cartoons.

I believe we saw the only the fourth performance of Boop! Not the fourth of this particular run, but the fourth ever in the history of the theater. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any big production that soon after its premiere. It was a fluke of marketing, and my experience with the character, that made that happen: a few weeks ago, a theater ticket website that sends me email once a week suggested Boop! I figured Yuriko, who has a longstanding fondness for Betty, would like it, so I got some tickets for something to do on the day after Thanksgiving. She did like it. Ann did too. We all did. Boop! is a crowd pleaser, and we were happy to be in the crowd.

Apparently the show has been in the works a long time and eventually was brought to fruition by director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who is very much a known quantity in the American theater. Its run at the Shubert serves essentially the same shakedown-cruise function as pre-Broadway runs in New England towns used to do – may still do, for all I know, but I expect Chicago offers a much larger pool of potential theatergoers.

Eventually, probably soon, Boop! will be on Broadway. As a crowd pleaser, I’ll bet it will do well there.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Chicago