Chicago!
My friend Rad always gets some weird and interesting jobs. He isn't like the rest of us regular folks. He always works for a couple of months a year, saves up some cash and leaves for some distant corner of the earth. Travels around for a few months till his cash runs dry, comes back to NYC and repeats the whole process over again.
Anyway, this weekend he got a job to transport some Tropicana Display Cases for some promotional events in Chicago. He rented a big truck and asked me and my friend Kabir if we wanted to come along, and well, hell yeah we did!
Now we will take our picture tour from NYC to Chicago...that crazy windy cit...town! Since I'm a true New Yorker...and Chicago is big and fancy and all, to me it's a nice town, it will always be a town...it ain't no city, and it certainly ain't NYC.
We will begin our trip by looking at, "The Truck". She is a 15 footer, automatic. We slept for two nights in our truck. We are poor, and jobless. And, we have no shame.
The Truckers: Me, Kabir and Rad.
The cargo.
Sleeping arrangements. We had a hammock, and we laid down comforters on the floor of the trailer. One person slept on the hammock and two on the floor of the trailer.
"If you steal gas, we will take your license." Uh, ok, freaky mannequin lady.
I thought this sign was funny.
Sky Way Bridge leading to Chicago...it's very high...
We got to Chicago in Saturday afternoon, dropped off our cargo, parked the ca...err truck in a parking lot and went to the International Youth Hostel. The Youth Hostel was too expensive (go figure) so we just freshened up there and walked around the city.
First we ended up in the river side park that runs along the shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago is such a pretty and clean town that it surprised me. It's too clean, and picturesque. These pictures are all from that area.
Lake Michigan water.
Love & marriage, love & marriage...
Sears Tower, as seen from the park.
Yacht on the horizon.
Eery, creepy TV graveyard sculpture/flower garden in the park. Fantastic!
The park leads to the Navy Pier.
From the park we walked through downtown to reach the "cool" neighborhood (equivalent to NYC's west village/SoHo area. Tiki's note: It wishes to be the equivalent of SoHo/West Village). We walked on and on for 2 miles through downtown. It was dead. Cold. Sterile. No one was around, just eery, tall, quiet skyscrapers. Of course it was Kabir's idea to walk towards the hip neighborhood, he is the kind of dude who thinks he could find anything by looking at a map...same guy who gets lost in his own hometown of Hudson, NY.
These are the pictures taken amongst the lonely, creepy inhabitants of the concrete jungle.
Finally, after wandering around aimlessly for hours, Kabir said we had only half a mile more to go. But I hailed a cab (like a true New Yorker) and told the driver where we wanted to go. He drove miles and miles to the lively, hip, urban, yuppie part of the town filled with bars and clubs. After getting out of the cab, I gave Kabir a look of utter disgust. Were he an honorable japanese samurai, he would have killed himself instantly.
Instead he just said:
"What! man! half a mile...5 miles...it's all the same man! Let's all gather around and hug some trees...you know, smoke some ganja and watch the stars."
In an Irish pub.
The pub was more of a drinking place than a Bar and Grill, and we were hungry as all hell. We ordered some buffalo wings but that didn't hold us. There were lot's of choices of restaurants to go to, but it was getting way late...and they were closing. Only the Bars and Clubs were starting to heat up. So we walked into a Mexican Taco place and had some of the best burritos ever. Only 5 bucks! The place had a huge line...usually you could tell if the food is gonna be good or not from the line. Still, the burritos were not as good as the place we have on 34th st and 8 ave in NYC.
Good try Chicago, but not good enough...
After the food we walked around, already quite drunk at that point. Checked out the good looking chics and all sorts of yuppies and freaks and finally decided to rest in a bus stand. Cars and cabs were passing buy. One such car stopped and this is the conversation that followed,
gay male voice: So like, you guys are waiting for the bus or like you know...
rad: just sitting around smoking.
gay male voice: oh, ok. well, have fun!
*drives away*
me: fag.
Then we hailed a cab and went back to our parking lot, sneaked into the truck and went to sleep. The first night we slept into the truck was in Ohio on our way to Chicago, in freezing cold weather...constantly getting up at night due to the cold, teeth chattering and body rustling like dry leaves in the wind.
This night was much better.
Next morning we got up, went straight to the Youth Hostel and freshened up. Had some coffee and went to the fabled Sears Tower. Fantastic coffee for a regular joint. props to the Youth Hostel, you ain't cheap but you sure make some good coffee.
Sears Tower.
The exit to the Skyview and a tribute bust, named after famous Structural Engineer Fazlur R. Khan, the chief structural engineer of the Sears Tower and the man responsible for the design of most of the buildings that decorate Chicago's famous skyline and most of the conventional designs of modern skyscrapers.
If you couldn't figure out already, he was Bangladeshi, so, for sheer Bengali Pride, I took these pictures, and also to show them to my parents.
Pictures from the top of the tower.
After the tour of the Tower, we again started walking around aimlessly through the city.
Interesting theme, for a restaurant.
A romanesque house, built smack dab in the middle of downtown right next to huge skyscrapers. Owned by some filthy rich dude.
Um. I don't know this guy.
After having a late lunch, visiting another part of the Park that we didn't go to earlier and relaxing there for a while, we decided to drive back to NYC.
After two days of wandering and unrest, we deserved a good night's rest. On the way back to NYC, we stopped at Cedar point, Ohio and rented a motel room.
Luckily, our room was quite cheap, as far as motels go...and we had a Jacuzzi!!!
So we inhaled some food, took steaming hot showers. Whipped out the vodka and coke, some ice and just chilled...
Bring on the bitches and hoes, because, we are gonna parteeey!
After a good night's rest, we resumed our drive back to NYC and finally reached home monday night.
In all, we drove 1700 miles and for 34 hours, round-trip.
I conclude our journey with this sweeping panorama, taken from the top of the Sears Tower.
PS: you will notice some shimmering/distortions in some of the pictures, which is due to the resizing of the images. Photobucket doesn't allow images larger than 200KB, and I take shots at very high resolutions which leads to huge file sizes, so I always have to resize them for uploading purposes. Not my camera's fault. Also, if you want any of the high res shots, contact me, and I will provide it for you.
Anyway, this weekend he got a job to transport some Tropicana Display Cases for some promotional events in Chicago. He rented a big truck and asked me and my friend Kabir if we wanted to come along, and well, hell yeah we did!
Now we will take our picture tour from NYC to Chicago...that crazy windy cit...town! Since I'm a true New Yorker...and Chicago is big and fancy and all, to me it's a nice town, it will always be a town...it ain't no city, and it certainly ain't NYC.
We will begin our trip by looking at, "The Truck". She is a 15 footer, automatic. We slept for two nights in our truck. We are poor, and jobless. And, we have no shame.
The Truckers: Me, Kabir and Rad.
The cargo.
Sleeping arrangements. We had a hammock, and we laid down comforters on the floor of the trailer. One person slept on the hammock and two on the floor of the trailer.
"If you steal gas, we will take your license." Uh, ok, freaky mannequin lady.
I thought this sign was funny.
Sky Way Bridge leading to Chicago...it's very high...
We got to Chicago in Saturday afternoon, dropped off our cargo, parked the ca...err truck in a parking lot and went to the International Youth Hostel. The Youth Hostel was too expensive (go figure) so we just freshened up there and walked around the city.
First we ended up in the river side park that runs along the shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago is such a pretty and clean town that it surprised me. It's too clean, and picturesque. These pictures are all from that area.
Lake Michigan water.
Love & marriage, love & marriage...
Sears Tower, as seen from the park.
Yacht on the horizon.
Eery, creepy TV graveyard sculpture/flower garden in the park. Fantastic!
The park leads to the Navy Pier.
From the park we walked through downtown to reach the "cool" neighborhood (equivalent to NYC's west village/SoHo area. Tiki's note: It wishes to be the equivalent of SoHo/West Village). We walked on and on for 2 miles through downtown. It was dead. Cold. Sterile. No one was around, just eery, tall, quiet skyscrapers. Of course it was Kabir's idea to walk towards the hip neighborhood, he is the kind of dude who thinks he could find anything by looking at a map...same guy who gets lost in his own hometown of Hudson, NY.
These are the pictures taken amongst the lonely, creepy inhabitants of the concrete jungle.
Finally, after wandering around aimlessly for hours, Kabir said we had only half a mile more to go. But I hailed a cab (like a true New Yorker) and told the driver where we wanted to go. He drove miles and miles to the lively, hip, urban, yuppie part of the town filled with bars and clubs. After getting out of the cab, I gave Kabir a look of utter disgust. Were he an honorable japanese samurai, he would have killed himself instantly.
Instead he just said:
"What! man! half a mile...5 miles...it's all the same man! Let's all gather around and hug some trees...you know, smoke some ganja and watch the stars."
In an Irish pub.
The pub was more of a drinking place than a Bar and Grill, and we were hungry as all hell. We ordered some buffalo wings but that didn't hold us. There were lot's of choices of restaurants to go to, but it was getting way late...and they were closing. Only the Bars and Clubs were starting to heat up. So we walked into a Mexican Taco place and had some of the best burritos ever. Only 5 bucks! The place had a huge line...usually you could tell if the food is gonna be good or not from the line. Still, the burritos were not as good as the place we have on 34th st and 8 ave in NYC.
Good try Chicago, but not good enough...
After the food we walked around, already quite drunk at that point. Checked out the good looking chics and all sorts of yuppies and freaks and finally decided to rest in a bus stand. Cars and cabs were passing buy. One such car stopped and this is the conversation that followed,
gay male voice: So like, you guys are waiting for the bus or like you know...
rad: just sitting around smoking.
gay male voice: oh, ok. well, have fun!
*drives away*
me: fag.
Then we hailed a cab and went back to our parking lot, sneaked into the truck and went to sleep. The first night we slept into the truck was in Ohio on our way to Chicago, in freezing cold weather...constantly getting up at night due to the cold, teeth chattering and body rustling like dry leaves in the wind.
This night was much better.
Next morning we got up, went straight to the Youth Hostel and freshened up. Had some coffee and went to the fabled Sears Tower. Fantastic coffee for a regular joint. props to the Youth Hostel, you ain't cheap but you sure make some good coffee.
Sears Tower.
The exit to the Skyview and a tribute bust, named after famous Structural Engineer Fazlur R. Khan, the chief structural engineer of the Sears Tower and the man responsible for the design of most of the buildings that decorate Chicago's famous skyline and most of the conventional designs of modern skyscrapers.
If you couldn't figure out already, he was Bangladeshi, so, for sheer Bengali Pride, I took these pictures, and also to show them to my parents.
Pictures from the top of the tower.
After the tour of the Tower, we again started walking around aimlessly through the city.
Interesting theme, for a restaurant.
A romanesque house, built smack dab in the middle of downtown right next to huge skyscrapers. Owned by some filthy rich dude.
Um. I don't know this guy.
After having a late lunch, visiting another part of the Park that we didn't go to earlier and relaxing there for a while, we decided to drive back to NYC.
After two days of wandering and unrest, we deserved a good night's rest. On the way back to NYC, we stopped at Cedar point, Ohio and rented a motel room.
Luckily, our room was quite cheap, as far as motels go...and we had a Jacuzzi!!!
So we inhaled some food, took steaming hot showers. Whipped out the vodka and coke, some ice and just chilled...
Bring on the bitches and hoes, because, we are gonna parteeey!
After a good night's rest, we resumed our drive back to NYC and finally reached home monday night.
In all, we drove 1700 miles and for 34 hours, round-trip.
I conclude our journey with this sweeping panorama, taken from the top of the Sears Tower.
PS: you will notice some shimmering/distortions in some of the pictures, which is due to the resizing of the images. Photobucket doesn't allow images larger than 200KB, and I take shots at very high resolutions which leads to huge file sizes, so I always have to resize them for uploading purposes. Not my camera's fault. Also, if you want any of the high res shots, contact me, and I will provide it for you.