Here are my Chicago pictures
Pictures from my trip to Chicago....it was a working trip; a conference of international ticket / box office people. Three of us from TPAC went; Christy - the Director of Patron Services; James - the Subscriptions Manager and me the Ticketing Manager
The Chicago River, right outside our hotel (and I do mean right outside, this photo was taken from our room's window on Monday when we arrived):
We ate dinner at Shula's Steak house in the hotel. All steaks were $40 with the exception of the 64 oz steak that was $43 each. Jeez! a 4 lb steak! Then all the veggies and salad were ala cart. Luckily we were there with TicketMaster reps for Archtix (one of the 3 software packages we are looking to for upgrading our ticketing software). Then a walk to Magnificent Mile...all the store fronts lit up at night was amazing....not to mention the stores themselves one after another, Tiffany's, Sac's.... This is a CRATE&BARREL....4 stories!!!!!!
On Tuesday morning we went on a 4 theater tour: Here are a couple of ideas we brought back to Nashville for our box office and lobby We like the buzzer alert for the windows. this way we don't have to sit in the windows all day even when we don't have customers...we can do other things as long as we are with in ear shot of the buzzer!
We really liked these over the head signs. Ours are on walls and tend to be too low so when patrons stand in front of them no one else can read them!
This was one of the Goodman Brothers' theaters. I left this picture in because it references my next story. Notice the steel cage looking stuctures? THESE ARE TIER SEATING we saw another theater ( a show's sets weree in place so no pictures allowed) the theater had one of these steel caged tiers that can be removed! Problem is, it has to be done by hand as it tears up the floor to bring in any cherry picker type machinery to do it, and these are not on hydrolics! takes 10 strong men to set each sections. each section is about 4 feet by 8 feet. and it goes around all four sides! They did admit they they haven't used the 4th side in years and it isn't something they do much anyway.
These next pics are of The Oriental Theater (some call it the Ford Theater) It was orginally built as a Vaudville and then a movie house.
the brothers that built it must have thought Oriental meant everything east of the US that wasn't Europe. I say this because the decore shows Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and middle eastern cultural styles. It is very "busy" an even more so in the theater....we could take pictures there either because of the show that was in house.
This is the lobby (taken from the tier level, looking down:
This is one 3x3 panel...the detailing!
This is the orginal vaudville organ. You may note the keys are incased in glass. You would think the entire thing would be incased but the paint job is recreated and the petals are replacements so they don't incase them to show they know that it is not in original condition:
We went back the the theater that night to see the show WICKED
I am already very familiar with the music and the book. I smiled through out the 1st act and then balled my eyes out at the end...and that was even with us seating 3 rows from the back (about row 3 of our Andrew Jackson Tier).
After the show we walked out and it has started snowing! We had to walk a block to catch a cab. When we turned the corner we saw this...
I think I should note here that our tour, that morning covered a 3 block area and we saw 4 theaters...the Chicago theater is another live theater that wasn't on our tour and it was only another block away in the opposite direction....the city of CHICAGO is a mecca for live shows. there are over 200 venues that support Theater/concers and that doesn't include their sporting venues!
After Wicked, we needed to eat so we went to a bar. Do you recognize the name? ginger sings "Come and knock on our door. We've been waiting on you....."
I should say here that on Tuesday, our River went back to a free flowing river. And then On Wednesday it froze up solid (after the snow we got on Tuesday night) I have pics in my cell phone but haven't been able to download them so ...oh well.
Wednesday, we had dinner with another software company Blackbaud. We went to a great Pizza place There were 7 of us so we bought 2 pizzas. They were so deep and full of filling and cheese (not dough!) that we brought back an entire pizza and gave it to the hotel staff.
Oh, on our way there, the taxis refused to take credit cards...at conventions, you try to put everything on your company cards so you don't have to deal with the extra hassel of filing for reimbusement. We had used taxis several times since arriving and all of them had taken cash up to that point so we were all digging under our coats for cash when James (my Subscriptions Manager) opened his door and found a $100 bill in the slush! He picked it up and said to the cabby "Can you break a Hundred?" it was priceless!
After dinner we separated from the Blackbaud folks and took another taxi to the Ticketmaster party. It was at a place that is much like Dave and Busters but much bigger! It was an all in one bowling alley resturant, pool hall, archad and it also had movie theaters!
Here are the three of us along with another Nashvillian and some of our new friends!
Here we are an hour later:
Christy and I thought the night was over, but James called to tell us he was signed up to sign Karioke in one of the hotel's bars so I guilted Christy into going down. Once there I hooked back up with my Blackbaud friends and before it was over, James had not gotten to sing...the dj kept taking bribes to let people further down on the list to go early! Lisa, a ticket manager I met at last year's conference, (in the below pictures to my right) got called up..her singing partner had called it a night so she drug me up there! I went! Anha, another Blackbauder (on my Left) rescued me by joining us! We were the last number of the night and actually closed the bar! Lady Marmalade will never be the same for me!!!!!
Thursday,it started snowing in earnest. 4-5 hour delays at both Midway and O'Hare, this is our Frooze River, trying to keep moving.
Christy and I had a breakfest meeting with the Blackbaud number 1 guy at the conference to see if there was anything we needed, He missed our dinner and really wanted to get feed back from us...
Christy, was not at her best....just a wee bit hung over.... You guys know that my singing was a surprise, even to me....Christy was so toasted she thought she saw me sing so she took a picture. In the morning it shocked her again to see it!
Thursday night was the Conference Gala at the House of Blues...it was loud and smelled heavily of smoke even though you can't smoke in any of the public buildings in Chicago ( hmmmm I am as of today 3 months smoke free thank you very muc but the smell is still somewhat appealing) I guess the smell is traped in the wood....I escaped with a couple of friends to go to a sports betting bar to watch multi screens of the LOST season Premiere....we even one the trivia contest..unfortunately it was gift certificates to the bar so we gave them to the 2nd place person....
I should say here that we did spend our days attending seminars, workshops, panel descussions, conference lunches, demos and of course the ever swag rich TRADE SHOW! We just didn't take any pictures of the work....just the fun!
Friday morning we woke to this:
looks a lot like Monday...but on Friday we had this too!
The finale of our trip was this Ballet of the Snow Plows at Midway....wish you could see the plumes better, it was spectacular!
The Chicago River, right outside our hotel (and I do mean right outside, this photo was taken from our room's window on Monday when we arrived):
We ate dinner at Shula's Steak house in the hotel. All steaks were $40 with the exception of the 64 oz steak that was $43 each. Jeez! a 4 lb steak! Then all the veggies and salad were ala cart. Luckily we were there with TicketMaster reps for Archtix (one of the 3 software packages we are looking to for upgrading our ticketing software). Then a walk to Magnificent Mile...all the store fronts lit up at night was amazing....not to mention the stores themselves one after another, Tiffany's, Sac's.... This is a CRATE&BARREL....4 stories!!!!!!
On Tuesday morning we went on a 4 theater tour: Here are a couple of ideas we brought back to Nashville for our box office and lobby We like the buzzer alert for the windows. this way we don't have to sit in the windows all day even when we don't have customers...we can do other things as long as we are with in ear shot of the buzzer!
We really liked these over the head signs. Ours are on walls and tend to be too low so when patrons stand in front of them no one else can read them!
This was one of the Goodman Brothers' theaters. I left this picture in because it references my next story. Notice the steel cage looking stuctures? THESE ARE TIER SEATING we saw another theater ( a show's sets weree in place so no pictures allowed) the theater had one of these steel caged tiers that can be removed! Problem is, it has to be done by hand as it tears up the floor to bring in any cherry picker type machinery to do it, and these are not on hydrolics! takes 10 strong men to set each sections. each section is about 4 feet by 8 feet. and it goes around all four sides! They did admit they they haven't used the 4th side in years and it isn't something they do much anyway.
These next pics are of The Oriental Theater (some call it the Ford Theater) It was orginally built as a Vaudville and then a movie house.
the brothers that built it must have thought Oriental meant everything east of the US that wasn't Europe. I say this because the decore shows Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and middle eastern cultural styles. It is very "busy" an even more so in the theater....we could take pictures there either because of the show that was in house.
This is the lobby (taken from the tier level, looking down:
This is one 3x3 panel...the detailing!
This is the orginal vaudville organ. You may note the keys are incased in glass. You would think the entire thing would be incased but the paint job is recreated and the petals are replacements so they don't incase them to show they know that it is not in original condition:
We went back the the theater that night to see the show WICKED
I am already very familiar with the music and the book. I smiled through out the 1st act and then balled my eyes out at the end...and that was even with us seating 3 rows from the back (about row 3 of our Andrew Jackson Tier).
After the show we walked out and it has started snowing! We had to walk a block to catch a cab. When we turned the corner we saw this...
I think I should note here that our tour, that morning covered a 3 block area and we saw 4 theaters...the Chicago theater is another live theater that wasn't on our tour and it was only another block away in the opposite direction....the city of CHICAGO is a mecca for live shows. there are over 200 venues that support Theater/concers and that doesn't include their sporting venues!
After Wicked, we needed to eat so we went to a bar. Do you recognize the name? ginger sings "Come and knock on our door. We've been waiting on you....."
I should say here that on Tuesday, our River went back to a free flowing river. And then On Wednesday it froze up solid (after the snow we got on Tuesday night) I have pics in my cell phone but haven't been able to download them so ...oh well.
Wednesday, we had dinner with another software company Blackbaud. We went to a great Pizza place There were 7 of us so we bought 2 pizzas. They were so deep and full of filling and cheese (not dough!) that we brought back an entire pizza and gave it to the hotel staff.
Oh, on our way there, the taxis refused to take credit cards...at conventions, you try to put everything on your company cards so you don't have to deal with the extra hassel of filing for reimbusement. We had used taxis several times since arriving and all of them had taken cash up to that point so we were all digging under our coats for cash when James (my Subscriptions Manager) opened his door and found a $100 bill in the slush! He picked it up and said to the cabby "Can you break a Hundred?" it was priceless!
After dinner we separated from the Blackbaud folks and took another taxi to the Ticketmaster party. It was at a place that is much like Dave and Busters but much bigger! It was an all in one bowling alley resturant, pool hall, archad and it also had movie theaters!
Here are the three of us along with another Nashvillian and some of our new friends!
Here we are an hour later:
Christy and I thought the night was over, but James called to tell us he was signed up to sign Karioke in one of the hotel's bars so I guilted Christy into going down. Once there I hooked back up with my Blackbaud friends and before it was over, James had not gotten to sing...the dj kept taking bribes to let people further down on the list to go early! Lisa, a ticket manager I met at last year's conference, (in the below pictures to my right) got called up..her singing partner had called it a night so she drug me up there! I went! Anha, another Blackbauder (on my Left) rescued me by joining us! We were the last number of the night and actually closed the bar! Lady Marmalade will never be the same for me!!!!!
Thursday,it started snowing in earnest. 4-5 hour delays at both Midway and O'Hare, this is our Frooze River, trying to keep moving.
Christy and I had a breakfest meeting with the Blackbaud number 1 guy at the conference to see if there was anything we needed, He missed our dinner and really wanted to get feed back from us...
Christy, was not at her best....just a wee bit hung over.... You guys know that my singing was a surprise, even to me....Christy was so toasted she thought she saw me sing so she took a picture. In the morning it shocked her again to see it!
Thursday night was the Conference Gala at the House of Blues...it was loud and smelled heavily of smoke even though you can't smoke in any of the public buildings in Chicago ( hmmmm I am as of today 3 months smoke free thank you very muc but the smell is still somewhat appealing) I guess the smell is traped in the wood....I escaped with a couple of friends to go to a sports betting bar to watch multi screens of the LOST season Premiere....we even one the trivia contest..unfortunately it was gift certificates to the bar so we gave them to the 2nd place person....
I should say here that we did spend our days attending seminars, workshops, panel descussions, conference lunches, demos and of course the ever swag rich TRADE SHOW! We just didn't take any pictures of the work....just the fun!
Friday morning we woke to this:
looks a lot like Monday...but on Friday we had this too!
The finale of our trip was this Ballet of the Snow Plows at Midway....wish you could see the plumes better, it was spectacular!