The 300 S. Wacker Map

Last week in downtown Chicago, I also got a look at the 300 S. Wacker map, which was unveiled late last year and is easily visible from the west side of the Chicago River near Union Station. That’s because it’s a map as tall as a skyscraper, and who couldn’t like that?
300 S. Wacker 2015A close up.
300 S. Wacker 2015The giant map depicts the Chicago River and nearby streets, from Cermak to Chicago and LaSalle to Jefferson. The 300 S. Wacker building itself appears on the map as a three-dimensional red block.

Previously, 300 S. Wacker had little to distinguish it as a building, and little to catch the eye. Beacon Capital bought it last year and commissioned Elmhurst, Ill.-based South Water Signs to do the work. I’ve read that there are more art maps in the building’s lobby, backlit by LED lights; I’ll have to take a look sometime.

Two Chicago River Bridgehouses

More rain over the weekend and again today. Are we turning into Seattle? Except that Seattle really isn’t the rainiest place in the nation, according to various sources. It turns out most cities in the Southeast U.S. get more rain every year.

But who would understand you if you said, it sure has been rainy lately. Are we turning into Mobile? Information age, my foot. Even easily available data has a hard time killing received notions.

That reminds me of something else I encountered in the Pacific Northwest all those years ago: Slug Death. Or, to be more exactly, Corry’s Slug & Snail Death in the bright yellow box. (It seems to be Corry’s Slug & Snail Killer these days, as if that matters to dying gastropods.) I think we were visiting people on Bainbridge Is., and that’s what they had in their garden. I’d never heard of such a thing. It was one of those ordinary details of a new place that stick with you.

En route to Union Station to catch my train to the suburbs last week, I spent a few minutes looking at some of the bridgehouses on the South Branch of the Chicago River. There’s a museum in one of the bridgehouses of the Michigan Ave. bridge that opened only last month — the McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum — but I didn’t have time for that.

Here’s the Monroe St. bridgehouse on the east side of the structure. The bridge dates from 1919 and was built by the Ketler Elliott Co., a name I’ve encountered before.
Monroe St. bridge 2015Looks like it’s been cleaned lately, maybe even since the bridge’s 2000s rehabilitation. The site HistoricBridges.org tells me that “the bridge’s operating and control panels inside the bridgetender buildings were reportedly the first in the United States to have completely enclosed circuitry so that no exposed copper connections were available for bridgetenders to mistakenly electrocute themselves on.”

This is the bridgehouse on the west side of the Adams St. bridge, which was built a little later, 1927, but still during a time when aesthetics was a consideration in a public building project (it might be again, but for quite a spell in the last century, the idea seems to have been on hold).
Adams St. bridge house, 2015The bridge was rehabbed in the mid-1990s. The bridgehouse is dingy, so I guess that’s 20 years of urban air at work. More about the Adams St. bridge is here.

Pre-Victory Parade Chicago

Business took me downtown today. The Blackhawks victory parade is tomorrow, I hear, and I’m glad I’m going to miss that mess. Braving a crowd like that might be worth it to see the first astronauts to return from Mars, but other than that, no.

According to a parking lot sign on W. Madison St., today was very hot.

Chicago, June 17, 2015Or maybe that’s reporting a cold snap on Venus, as long as we’re talking about other planets.

No parade today, but Metra — the commuter rail I took into town — is getting ready.

Chicago, June 17, 2015A wise precaution, even if it’s going to be ignored by some riders. Or technically honored by riders who’re loaded when they get on board. I always disliked riding trains the night of a Cubs or Sox game; the later the train, the louder the drunks.

Also, just outside Union Station, I spied one of those post-championship souvenir vendors that pop up like toadstools after a rain. They were doing a brisk business in t-shirts, hats and maybe other gewgaws and gimcracks. It was too crowded to get a close look.

Chicago, June 17, 2015I didn’t see any Hawks banners hanging from lampposts — maybe I wasn’t looking on the right streets — but I did see other team totems. It seemed like more people than usual were wearing team shirts, for one thing, and then there was this:

Chicago, June 17, 2015The good tourist ship Lila plying the Chicago River, flying a Hawks flag.

Heavy Rain, Then Sudden Fireworks

After posting yesterday, we had more fierce rain, until it finally petered out around 9 pm. At about 9:50, I started hearing pop-pop-pop-BOOM-pop-crackle-bang-pop-pop. As in, fireworks. Private fireworks, not a large public display, as people shoot off on the Fourth of July or New Year’s, neither of which was yesterday. Is that really fireworks, I wondered, or some kind of bizarre thunder? What’s going here?

Soon I figured out that the Blackhawks must have won the Stanley Cup. Pull up Google News and sure enough, they had. Then I heard some yelling in the street by some happy knuckleheads, something that almost never happens in the suburbs. I don’t remember that happening the last time Hawks won, or the time before, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I do remember fireworks and — possibly — distant gunshots when the Bulls won one of their championships in 1997. I figured it was a good time to stay home, which we did. Anyway, it’s been a long time since I got news via fireworks. Odd how things come to one’s attention sometimes.

Or not. I didn’t hear until yesterday that Ronnie Gilbert had died. Time to look at the Weavers’ 1951 videos, made for Snader Telescriptions. Been a while since I’d seen them, and before the age of YouTube, I never had.

Oddly enough, I found out that Blaze Starr — a different sort of entertainer — had died almost as soon as the news was out, by a mention in an email, of all things. That was a case of, she was still alive? (But I knew Ronnie Gilbert was; now there’s only one original Weaver left.)

Maybe I need to pay more attention to this constantly updated Roll of Death, which could also be called the Death Never Takes a Holiday List. If I had, I’d have known about not only Ronnie Gilbert, but also Tiffany Two.

Parade on the 606

On our way back to Humboldt Ave., where we got on the spanking-new 606 linear park on the Northwest Side of Chicago, and where we planned to get off, we encountered a little parade. Looked like an impromptu to-do.

Parade on the 606, 06-06 Parade on the 606, 06-06Whatever uniforms and instruments you got, bring ’em!

Parade on the 606, 06-06Cheerleaders are OK, but flag girls are where it’s at. That’s how I felt in high school, anyway, and some opinions never quite go away. Incidentally, the flag the woman in red is carrying said “FLAG” (as seen in the previous picture). Her shirt said “I ♥ a Scientist.” And note the Chicago flag wristband; nice touch.

And speaking of flags, this is a variation of the Chicago flag I hadn’t seen before.

Chicago flag variationJust happy chance that we got to see the little parade go by. That, and we showed up at the 606 on opening day.

Eastbound on the 606

The 606 is east-west trail with a few kinks and smooth curves here and there, but mostly conforming to the direction of Bloomingdale Ave. below, which itself is part of the Chicago grid. So when we arrived at the Humboldt Blvd. entrance on Saturday, we had the choice of east or west. Humboldt Blvd. is roughly two-thirds of the way toward the west terminus. We decided to go east. Lots of other people were doing the same.

606As you can see, the landscaping still isn’t up to bourgeois standards, but I figure as the years go by, planting will be done, and the trailside will be greener in future Junes. In some places, small trees will become larger trees. Various sources tell me there are 200 species of plant along the trail.

Where the trail passes over Washtenaw St., there’s an “environmental sentinel.”

The 606It’s also apparently the mid-point of the trail, 1.35 miles in either direction. Nice to know. Also nice that the planners resisted Lincoln Chafee’s call for metrification of the trail. (Well, I made that up.) But why “2015 2115”? Is there a time capsule we don’t know about planted here, waiting for the 22nd century?

Volunteers in yellow shirts stood near the entrance ramps, ready to give out information. I got a map from one of them.

606 on 6-06The trail passes under the El — the line that goes to O’Hare from downtown — near Milwaukee Ave.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMighty steel holds up the El. Just what you want if you’re on a train flying overhead. Or underneath the train, for that matter.
Blue LineJust east of that point is the trail’s bridge over Milwaukee Ave., which a major northwesterly spoke road, as opposed to the grid roads. Spoke roads in Chicago were often Indian traces in earlier times.

Milwaukee Ave Bridge“At Milwaukee Avenue, where an arched bridge has served as the public centerpiece to the park during its construction, that story is told horizontally instead of vertically,” Chicago magazine says. “Dolomitic limestone boulders — from the formation that underlies Chicago, the limestone that architects Walter Netsch and Bruce Graham used as an anchor for their Inland Steel Building in one of the city’s herculean efforts to rise above the swamp — lead up towards the trail.”

The majority of the $95 million cost to build the 606 came from a $50 million Federal Congestion Air Mitigation Quality grant. Another $20 million was raised through private fundraising and $5 million came from local government, with ongoing fundraising for further improvements.

I’ve seen people grousing about the cost, especially the fact that the federal government paid so much of it (and I get what I deserve for reading comments sections). Sure, it’s an outrage that the government devoted roughly (very roughly) 0.00016 percent of its annual budget on an investment that’s going to generate large amounts of new value, in a measurable way for private property owners in the area, and in a less tangible but still important way for anyone who uses the trail. You know, spending for the common good.

New residential properties have already been developed in anticipation of the trail, and more are coming. Some examples are in the background here, east of Milwaukee Ave.

606 pix OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIf the High Line’s any indication, existing retailers will also benefit, and there will be new ones sprouting near the trail.

We made it as far east as Damen Ave., within sight of the dome of St. Mary of the Angels, which I want to see the inside of sometime, then we went back the way we came. So we walked about half of the trail. That leaves the rest for another time.

The 606 on 6-06

What a weekend in the wider world: the first Triple Crown winner since the Carter Administration, a daring prison break by dangerous inmates, and a solar sail unfurls in space. I didn’t know Bill Nye was CEO of the Planetary Society, but I suppose it helps fundraising to have a Science Guy at the top spot.

Here in metro Chicago on June 6, 2015, the 606 opened to the public, and we were there. Usually I don’t bother with opening nights or premieres or the like, but somehow I wanted to be on the 606 on the very first day. Call me a sucker for quality-of-life urban infrastructure.

606The 606, also known at the Bloomingdale Trail, is a new linear park fashioned from 2.7 miles of an abandoned elevated rail line on the near Northwest Side of Chicago, linking the easterly neighborhoods of Wicker Park and Bucktown with Humboldt Park and Logan Square to the west. The line handled freight for decades, serving the factories that used to be in these parts of town. Even before most of the factories closed, trucks had usurped the role the freight line used to play.

As Edward Keegan writes in Crain’s Chicago Business, “Completed in 1913, the 606’s underlying structure elevated the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway freight trains above Bloomingdale Avenue to prevent the frightfully frequent pedestrian deaths of the time. Railroad use dwindled through the 1980s and 1990s, and these four neighborhoods were left with a daunting bit of early-20th-century infrastructure that defied easy demolition. Massive, parallel concrete walls, 7 to 10 feet thick at their base — held earth between them to lift double railroad tracks a full story above surrounding streets. It was a great engineering feat, but the east-west wall separated neighborhoods.”

The thing to do in the early 21st century, then, was to give it the High Line treatment, that is, redevelop it into a linear park, though the end result isn’t exactly the same. “The overall design is remarkably matter of fact,” Keegan notes, and I agree. “A concrete path — 10 feet wide with 2-foot-wide, soft-edged borders on each side for runners — winds the 2.7-mile length of the park. While the bounding walls of the old superstructure are mostly parallel, the designers deftly move the path from side to side and up and down to the extent possible to provide as interesting a path as possible for its users.

“Brooklyn-based landscape architect Michael van Valkenburgh chose more than 200 species of plantings that appear within the park. Due to its east-west configuration and length, Chicago’s lake effect will be evident each spring as certain species, including serviceberries [what?], will take as much as five days to bloom progressively from west to east. But don’t head out to the 606… and expect too much from the landscaping. Plantings are generally quite young, spare and even scraggly in places.”

Some of the benches weren’t finished either. In short, there’s still work to be done on the trail, but even so the warm, sunny day on Saturday make for a good walk, despite the intense crowd of other walkers and bicyclists. The crowd seemed to be in a good mood, which always helps.

In the early afternoon, we drove into town and parked near Humboldt Blvd., which passes under the 606. At the time there was a street festival on Humboldt Blvd. on either side of the 606 featuring music, food, booths of various sorts, and free 606 souvenir buttons.

Ann & Lilly on the 606, June 6, 2015Soon we made our way to the long ramp just east of the boulevard and walked up it to the trail. Then we headed east, occasionally posing for pictures along the way.

Busy June Weekend 1989

Cubs89I have evidence that I went to a Major League Baseball game 26 years ago, and the next day saw a famed Broadway musical on tour in Chicago, at a famed venue. But I can’t really drag much of either experience out of the twisty byways of memory when I think about them now. I can make some logical reconstructions, though.

I went to one or maybe two Cubs games a year in the late 1980s at Wrigley Field, and one Sox game at the old Comiskey Park. Each time I went with some PR people that I knew. Enjoyable, and I’m glad that I got to go, especially to Comiskey, since it was demolished in 1991.

Still, I have no particular memory of the June 10, 1989 game. Data about the game is easy enough to look up, though. The Cardinals took it 6-0 and the game lasted about two and a half hours starting at 3:05 pm (night games, played at Wrigley since August 8, 1988, were still pretty rare). The temp at the start time was 62 F. and it was windy. One of those annoying early June days in Chicago when it isn’t quite as warm as June should be. We had a few of those last week.

Joe Magrane pitched for the Cardinals and Greg Maddux and others pitched for the Cubs. I was one of more than 38,000 in attendance. I probably ate a hot dog and drank a beer, but not even the most insanely complete compilation of baseball stats can tell me for sure.

The ticket, Terrace Aisle 235, Row 13, Seat 101, cost all of $7. In current money, that’s $13.36, according to the handy BLS CPI inflation calculator. So I checked the official ticketing site of the Cubs today to look up an equivalent game and its ticket prices — June 13, 2015, when the Cubs are playing the Reds. It’s too much trouble to pin down the exact current price for that specific seat, but no need to anyway. All of the Terrace Reserved seats range from $41 to $59. What’s your excuse, MLB?

The next day I went to the splendid Auditorium Theatre for a matinee of Les Miserables. My girlfriend at the time wanted to go, so I took her. I remember bits and pieces of some remarkable stagecraft — barricades, seems like — but not much else besides a feeling of not caring for it all that much. Tickets were $30, which is the equivalent of $57.24 now, up in the balcony.

LesMes89It’s a little harder to make a direct comparison to today’s prices, since Les Miserables isn’t playing at the Auditorium Theatre in 2015. Currently the Royal Ballet is doing Don Quixote there; tickets range from about $36 to $146 for the matinee on the 14th. The cheap seats are of course in the balcony, and at a discount to 1989, but then again, I suspect a big-deal Broadway show like Les Mis would command the same, and probably more, than back then. Just a hunch.

Over the years I’ve discovered that big-deal Broadway musicals aren’t really to my taste. Les Mis was probably part of that discovery. I’d rather see a regular play in a small theater. I’m pretty much in agreement with the reviewer Tom Boeker, who wrote in The Reader in 1989: “At last, two years after it opened in New York, it’s come to Chicago. It’s an event, a spectacle, a dress occasion, an opera, and a musical. It’s Les Miserables!

“I don’t know. I don’t get it… So you can see Les Miserables has everything: sentiment, revolution, and romance with a capital R for Romanticism. If you were going to see only one musical in your life, you might as well see this one and get the bloody thing over with. To inflate a quote from the film short Hardware Wars, ‘You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll kiss 40 bucks good-bye.’ “

People of the Bean

As tourists pro tem in Chicago on Sunday, it seemed inevitable that we’d end up at the Bean, and so we did, just ahead of rain. “Cloud Gate” hasn’t lost its appeal since our last look-see in ’11. A lot of other people were there too.

This was the first time I’d ever seen anyone actually using a selfie stick. DSCN7876
Just a guess, but it looked like members of a quinceañera showed up, probably by limo, to be in the presence of the Bean.
The Bean 2 - May 2015
About this fellow: 1981 called, and wants that hairstyle back.
The Bean 3 - May 2015

I wonder about the longevity of the style. I don’t ever remember having the urge to style my hair in a way that was popular a decade or two before I was born. Guess he wanted to express his non-conformity in the same way that so many others have over the years.

The Last Days of Ed Debevic’s

Word is that Ed Debevic’s, at least at its current location, is going to disappear later this year. I can see why: the land at the corner of Wells and Ontario in River North is much too valuable in 2015 to be home to a single-story eatery, regardless of how popular it is. In 1984, when the restaurant was founded by famed Chicago restaurant idea-man Rich Melman, that wasn’t the case. An apartment tower will soon rise on the site, like the one near it.
Ed Debevic's, May 2015
Ten years ago, I described Ed Debevic’s as “a faux diner that serves decent food, intense milkshakes, and entertainment in the form of the wait staff dancing on one of the counters.” That was the last time I went there. The description still holds. This time, four of the wait staff danced on the counter to “Car Wash,” a song older than any of them.

Clearly the place is hated by food snobs, such as this vitriolic fellow. That by itself doesn’t add to the quality of a place, but it does make me more favorably disposed to like it. (Ah, so much wisdom in de gustibus non est disputandum. The Japanese have a maxim along the same lines: 十人十色, juu-nin to-iro. Literally, ten people, ten colors. More figuratively, to each his own.)

I’d put Ed’s squarely in the middle of restaurant experiences. It wasn’t even my first choice on Sunday, or second, but a lot of places downtown are closed on Sundays. Yuika, who had never been to such a place, seemed to enjoy it, and the burger I had — one with blue cheese — was tasty indeed. So I’ll put in a kind word for the Ed’s, even if it doesn’t serve burgers made from fair-traded, sustainably raised cattle who were allowed to roam and graze in Alpine pastureland, prepared sous-vide for 72 hours and served with boletus mushrooms and heirloom chioggias.