Chicago

This week’s letter from Bonn comes from Chicago. After a fairly extensive week of travel, it’s been nice to spend some downtime here in Chicago; especially when the weather is warm and sunny.
The only drawback is that this weekend happens to be the NATO meeting here in the Windy City so half of the city is shut down and the other half has police and homeland security lurking in every corner.
Saturday saw me heading off on 2 self guided walking tours; one through the old town and another downtown checking out the amazing architecture.
The Old Town begins near Lincoln Park, named for the assassinated president and inspiration for the band Linkin Park, The walk from downtown does provide a beautiful look back to the city itself.

The tour begins in Wells Street and kicks off with a recommended visit to the Chicago History Museum. It’s not too bad a place; especially if you enjoy 1930’s dioramas. Actually, that’s a little patronising as the dioramas are beautifully crafted and pick out a series of key events in Chicago’s history. The early fur trapper huts, early development of the town, the fire and the re-building that followed and concludes with the Exhibition of 1893.
How neat is that some of the 3,000 one room shanties built as accommodation straight after the fire are still in place in Menomonee Street.

As well, St. Michael’s is a beautiful church; it’s amazing how many people were sneaking in to take a look.

As you can see, who can blame them? The windows imported from Munich in the late 1800’s. The story goes if you can hear the bells of St. Michaels then you must be in the Old Town.

I liked this statue on the right. The whole thing is made of chains and has a feeling of such hardship and exhaustion just flowing from every single link.

It just seems to capture my imagination. Who would have thought?

I grabbed a sandwich and headed back downtown for the architecture walking tour. Sadly, it was defeated by the security services and my inability to walk anywhere downtown and not see some reference to the ‘Blues Brothers’ movie.
But as hopeless as my artistic side is, it was very interesting to have some direction on buildings to look at and what specific aspects to check out.
Sorry but few of the pictures actually came out well but the Carbide & Carbon Building (built in the late 1920’s) is just the classic Art Deco skyscraper, with its black facings (in granite and marble) with green and gold trim. The necked in top part of the building has classic cornices and arches, just to really capture that Art Deco look.
For pure size, it’s hard to go past the Merchandise Mart; it was the world’s largest building (with 4 million square feet) until they built the Pentagon, but again the facades and design are still considerations. It’s like all of the buildings have some artistic and/or design merit. As you walk the streets, you can even see the effort that has gone into houses and small apartment buildings. It may be the facades or the design of the banisters on the walk-ups or the window frames but so much effort and expense has been added to so many buildings; all simply to make them look beautiful. You have to appreciate that.
But then we make it to the Richard J. Daley Center and suddenly all I can see is the Blues mobile finally dying as Jake and Elwood rush in to the Cook Country Assessor’s office with these
statues looking on. And here they are!

Cool. Its like the roads under the elevated railway or ‘L’; sorry this image is a little blurry but again I can easily imagine the Blues Brothers tearing along this sort of street as part of their final scenes in that movie.

The structure for the 'L' seems so old; the supports are thin but very close together. It too feels like a throw back to another age.

One thing that still pervades is the last vestiges of the fire of 1871. It is hard to imagine a fire burning a city to destruction but this is pretty much what happened. The conditions were hot and dry, the buildings predominantly wooden and the fire burned virtually uncontrolled for more than 48 hours until the rain finally came. But by this time most of the combustible material had burned and 300 people had perished.

As such, consider the fire escape here.

It seems almost anachronistic today but I guess it remains functional.

But my favourite is this old water tower.

Making out the details in this picture is tough but trust me, that is a wooden water tank sitting at the top of that building; a genuine throw back to another era. Speaking of another era, away to the left there is some writing on the wall referring to ‘Ferris Wheel Restaurant’. When the Exhibition of 1893’s committee met in their planning stages, they were looking for a statement landmark as per Paris’s Eiffel Tower. The story goes that one George Washington Gale Ferris (an engineer usually focused on building bridges) had an idea for a massive wheel that would allow patrons to spend 50 minutes riding up and around and getting a wonderful view of the fairgrounds and Chicago in general. The design was accepted and, in spite of the massive depression of the early 1890’s, the Ferris Wheel Company raised the money necessary and a new form of entertainment was born.

Sunday dawned just as warm and, after doing a little work in the morning, I decided to walk to Wrigley Field and see what all the fuss was about. I did make it to Wrigley Field but I didn’t make it into the game. I walked around the stadium and, for those who remember the VFL in Melbourne, it has a real suburban feel like Carlton’s Princes Park or Collingwood’s Victoria Park. Basically, the stadium just seems to materialise at the side of the road, seemingly to emerge out of the shops and houses in the area.

Pre-game vibe is amazing; this might be driven by this game being a cross town derby between the two Chicago teams; the Cubs and the White Sox. I have to be honest that I do have an affinity for the Sox. Like my Aussie Rules team (Sydney Swans), the Sox went through an extended drought before winning their most recent World Series. The Sox waited 88 years while the Swans endured 72 years of agony but they both won their pennants in 2005. Today’s game concludes a triple-header played over Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I’m happy to report the Sox won all 3 games and managed to keep the Cubs to 0 runs in today’s game. Yay!
But prior to the game, the Cubs fans were out in huge numbers; the surrounding bars were over flowing and there was a real feeling of carnival or celebration.

Ticket touts were everywhere and they had special deals for everyone. Score card and program vendors were yelling their wares (and at $1 for this special souvenir program, they were providing good value compared to the Footy Record). Plus there were stall holders selling shirts, caps, pennants and the like. The place was humming!
The neatest part for me was walking around the back of the stadium and finding these boys (may be 12-13 years old). About 8 of them were standing and staring at the top of the stands, their gloves ready and waiting. This is pre-game and the boys are waiting for practice pop flys to come out and over the back of the stadium. But it is the intensity of their watching that is captivating; they are expecting a ball at any second; at any millisecond. Their focus is palpable and it is easy to imagine that they will fight and kick to capture that one fly ball. So intense and I get a feeling that this has been going on for many, many years.

I left the stadium and began a pseudo bar crawl back to the city; a chance to get a beer or two on this terribly warm day, simultaneously keeping tabs on the score. By the 7^th inning it became clear that the Sox were likely to win so I headed off the main drag and down to the lake. So many people! And all of them out and busy whether it be sun bathing, biking, walking, running and roller blading. They talk about the obese Americans but I didn’t see too many at the lakeshore today. I was more concerned about folks running and exercising in this heat.
Anyway, I eventually found my way back to the hotel and have to pack and get ready for the early flight tomorrow. This hotel’s location is great and Chicago was a lot of fun. I didn’t even talk about last night’s visit to the House of Blues; just amazing but would be better to share with someone. The music was wonderful.

See you next week when I’m back in Bonn.