Some Things About Chicago
I picked a fight a bit with Charlie on Thursday, saying that I thought this whole Give George Lucas A Chunk of the Lakefront For a Stupid Museum thing was bullshit, and I do think it's bullshit, but part of why I don't like it is that every time the landscape of the city changes it becomes something different from the thing I knew. Every photo I took while walking between State and Michigan along the river has the new Trump tower carefully cropped out of it for that reason and also because fuck that guy. Nelson told me that the tastefully hidden sign-less retail spaces on the lower levels of the tower have been empty since it opened. I have to remind myself, in those snotty moments, that Millennium Park is new! All that bike infrastructure is new! Change can be good! But really, fuck Donald Trump, and fuck George Lucas and his "collection" too.
Wednesday night I took the El with a bunch of Cubs fans up to Lakeview, where I had dinner at a French place on Halsted and watched a late Brew and View movie at the Vic. On the way back down into the Loop, I took the slower, elevated Brown Line instead of the Red so that I could stake out the seat just below the forward-facing window in the lead car of the train. You can see a big chunk of the downtown skyline, including the Sears Tower from that window when the train jogs over to Wells. It was after dark, so I couldn't see very well out the window, but I could see a reflection of everything going on behind me in the train car, including the guy who watched me looking out the window, and craned his neck a little to see what I was seeing. He may have seen an involuntary grin on my face as the train made that last turn onto Wells. I'd never been to Brew and View before - I moved to Boston only a few weeks after turning 18. There was time for one 18-plus late show at the Metro and a lot of packing.
Saturday, when I realized the loaner bicycle I was using was a perfect fit (my cousin is taller than me, but not by a lot), I changed my plan for the day to maximize time spent biking between locations. Seven-ish miles from Logan Square to Oak Park, where the only real difference I noticed was the brand new library building. Ten-ish more miles from there straight East into the Loop, more-or-less underneath the Green Line tracks. The squeeze is on from both sides, shrinking the length of Washington Street where the apartment buildings have security cameras that face the street, and there's a new Target not far from Whitney Young. That leg deposited me on South Michigan avenue, a block from the Art Institute. They've got a new(ish) wing off the back of the building for Modern works now, and all my favorites are back on display. The summer I was 19 years old I worked a few days a week on Michigan and spent my lunch breaks at the Art Institute, unintentionally memorizing a slice of the collection. I decided that summer that my favorite is a tiny canvas by a surrealist named Yves Tanguy with a sculpted wood frame that extends forward ahead of the painting. I confirmed on Saturday that it is still my favorite. I also eavesdropped on a very tiny wedding party conducting an impromptu ceremony in an atrium and got laughed at by a security guard when I walked into a gallery showing a 60-minute video piece called Clown Torture and then walked back out again less than a minute later. Then I biked another six-ish miles back to Logan Square by way of a ramen place in Wicker Park and Reckless Records and a cocktail at Longman and Eagle and a patch of grass half a mile from Jenna and Nelson's house.
This is the longest trip I've taken to Chicago in years, and I can't remember the last time I had so much time to myself in the city. Most trips there trigger some rose-colored nostalgia (never visiting in winter helps) but this time through it was particularly acute. I had a trip in October planned already when this work thing came up, which is really helpful.
It was a nice week.*
* It got a lot worse when I started catching up on news from Marin and Missouri on Wednesday and Thursday. Then even worse when I came back to Boston and had a 5-hour release consume my entire weekend whole. But the part before. That was really nice.
Wednesday night I took the El with a bunch of Cubs fans up to Lakeview, where I had dinner at a French place on Halsted and watched a late Brew and View movie at the Vic. On the way back down into the Loop, I took the slower, elevated Brown Line instead of the Red so that I could stake out the seat just below the forward-facing window in the lead car of the train. You can see a big chunk of the downtown skyline, including the Sears Tower from that window when the train jogs over to Wells. It was after dark, so I couldn't see very well out the window, but I could see a reflection of everything going on behind me in the train car, including the guy who watched me looking out the window, and craned his neck a little to see what I was seeing. He may have seen an involuntary grin on my face as the train made that last turn onto Wells. I'd never been to Brew and View before - I moved to Boston only a few weeks after turning 18. There was time for one 18-plus late show at the Metro and a lot of packing.
Saturday, when I realized the loaner bicycle I was using was a perfect fit (my cousin is taller than me, but not by a lot), I changed my plan for the day to maximize time spent biking between locations. Seven-ish miles from Logan Square to Oak Park, where the only real difference I noticed was the brand new library building. Ten-ish more miles from there straight East into the Loop, more-or-less underneath the Green Line tracks. The squeeze is on from both sides, shrinking the length of Washington Street where the apartment buildings have security cameras that face the street, and there's a new Target not far from Whitney Young. That leg deposited me on South Michigan avenue, a block from the Art Institute. They've got a new(ish) wing off the back of the building for Modern works now, and all my favorites are back on display. The summer I was 19 years old I worked a few days a week on Michigan and spent my lunch breaks at the Art Institute, unintentionally memorizing a slice of the collection. I decided that summer that my favorite is a tiny canvas by a surrealist named Yves Tanguy with a sculpted wood frame that extends forward ahead of the painting. I confirmed on Saturday that it is still my favorite. I also eavesdropped on a very tiny wedding party conducting an impromptu ceremony in an atrium and got laughed at by a security guard when I walked into a gallery showing a 60-minute video piece called Clown Torture and then walked back out again less than a minute later. Then I biked another six-ish miles back to Logan Square by way of a ramen place in Wicker Park and Reckless Records and a cocktail at Longman and Eagle and a patch of grass half a mile from Jenna and Nelson's house.
This is the longest trip I've taken to Chicago in years, and I can't remember the last time I had so much time to myself in the city. Most trips there trigger some rose-colored nostalgia (never visiting in winter helps) but this time through it was particularly acute. I had a trip in October planned already when this work thing came up, which is really helpful.
It was a nice week.*
* It got a lot worse when I started catching up on news from Marin and Missouri on Wednesday and Thursday. Then even worse when I came back to Boston and had a 5-hour release consume my entire weekend whole. But the part before. That was really nice.