Seven Red

So I taught my first classes in downtown Chicago (the Loop, for those of you who don’t know the town) this morning, and it was a weird feeling. It wasn’t strange being in the middle of a major financial district, since I worked almost exclusively in major financial districts (in New York, and in San Francisco) for all my non-academic jobs, with the exception of a stint in various places in Albany. But it was strange to have an academic job and walk out of your classroom into the middle of Jackson and Wabash, with the El running overhead and all the bustle. I guess I’ve attached a feeling of place to those two parts of my working life: the academic being associated with some isolated Giant University Town, and the financial being associated with the urban center. Up until this quarter, all my classes have been located at the slightly more urban campus, but that one is still somewhat divided from the city space simply through concentration; it’s still a campus, in other words. But in the Loop, you’re right in the middle of the city, and nothing divides you from any other worker in that city. (Needless to say, this mirrors the classic division of practical and theoretical knowledge that has reigned more or less since Aristotle, so it probably wasn’t too hard to simply transpose such a dominant set of categories on to geographical coordinates, even unconsciously). But these came crashing together in a strange and pleasant way today.

By the way, does anybody else out there get “First Day of Class Sore Throat?” I guess I don’t really project-talk so much in the off-season, and then two classes of syllabus/policies/assignments which involves mostly me yapping always leaves my throat sore. Ouchies.

I’m still amazed by the transportation infrastructure. I hate to say this, knowing that so many experience problems traveling this time of year, but our trip was very smooth. We did the usual bus-train-plane exit from Chicago, and this time the plane actually left right on time, and actually got into LaGuardia early. Then, miraculously, there was no traffic at all on the BQE (not even at the Kozciusko Bridge!), and we were in Cobble Hill in about 15 minutes. Pretty remarkable, all things considered. It may just be the humantities background, but this whole thing continues to amaze and mystify me. I think of all the back-end behind the surface appearance of the transportation system – all the many people and blueprints and schedules and logistics that contribute to getting me from a corner in Chicago to the exact address in Brooklyn all in about 6 hours. It’s the proverbial system that seems so total that one can only begin to contemplate it. The old fascist justification of the “trains running on time” is of course reduced to a joke, but it’s when you’re traveling during the holidays that you start to see the fundamental attractiveness of the fascist trade-off. Some people worry about trading liberty for security, but the much better argument – as Mussolini seems to have understood – is trading liberty for a predictable ETA. The struggle between chaos and order is fought in the Gates of O’Hare.

Brooklyn: Stoop-sitting with the best of ‘em…

Here are some famous last words, from a previous post: “The Atlanta-Athens-Atlanta-Seattle trip went off without a hitch. I have yet to be really annoyed by the airlines.”

This was, perhaps, the dumbest thing I ever posted. It’s like those people who say something like “Oh, I haven’t been sick in a really long time.” Needless to say, that person will be hit with the flu inside of two weeks after uttering that kind of challenge to the universe. And so it is with the airlines. I really went through about two years of fairly frequent flights without one single problem. Oh, I had very minor twenty minute delays here and there, but I don’t consider that serious enough to even bother with. The volume of horror stories I was hearing from all sides seemed, by comparison, overblown. This is especially true about the sucking pit of O’Hare, which hasn’t given me problem one in eight or so roundtrip flights. On time, on point, luggage there. Great. Not today.

We did our trip to NY today (Albany), and everything was going smoothly. We walked to the corner and caught the bus:

WE even timed it using the trusty CTA bus tracker, as reported. That got us to Stage 2, the Blue Line to O’Hare:

Once again, no problem. The train came, on we got, and to O’Hare. The sucking pit of O’Hare: Stage 3. Our flight was supposed to leave at 1:36. But the flight before us was still sitting there, and it was scheduled for an 11:30 departure. It was at this point 12:45. Ah well, we’ll be delayed. It finally boards at 1:20, and we see that our flight was delayed until 2:05. Score. That ain’t bad. Within five minutes we see a new listing: Albany, Departure: 5:05. Huh? That’s right, five-oh-five, as in four friggin’ hours from now. Not happy:

We finally get on the plane, which has been moved up to 4:30, only to discover that the pilots who were supposed to fly us to Albany are “fatigued” (no doubt a labor action) , so we sit in the hot plane at the gate for an hour, waiting for new pilots to arrive. We arrived at O’Hare at around 11:30, and finally took off around 5:45. The flight to Albany takes less than two hours. Oh well. I’m not really complaining. It wasn’t that bad. We finally got to Albany and made the only stage of  journey that required a private vehicle. Stage 4:

One of the great things about where we live is the transportation infrastructure. Today we will walk about a block to the corner, jump on a public bus, then take the CTA to O’Hare, then take a plane to Albany. Mass transit from door-to-door. OK, not really, since we’ll take a car out to she‘s Mom’s place once we get to Albany, but still. babygirl has been promised train ride AND plane ride, so she’s excited. “First we gotta get way way way up in the sky,” she says.

One very cool feature of the CTA: the CTA bus tracker, a step up from the old bus timetable we used to gripe about in NYC. This engine allows you to better estimate when to go to the bus stop by providing a GPS-based estimated time of arrival for buses that are currently en route. It also maps them on to a Google Map so you can see precisely where they are. It is, of course, the same technology that’s been in cars through the Garman and in planes for quite some time: the trip tracker stuff. But it’s genius to put it in a bus, since the worst thing about mass transit is the waiting, and the lack of information associated with waiting. This technology at least gives you an information stream that makes waiting more predictable. Thumbs up to the CTA.

So, after one year in Chicago, I am just a boss parallel parker. I mean, I’m fantastic. I squeeze into impossible spots at the perfect angle, and end up arrow-straight three inches from the curb. Let me reinforce this point: I’m friggin awesome at it. It took some work, since I didn’t do a whole lot of parallel parking in Massive State University College Town, where we had a giant parking lot at our apartment complex. And what really did it here was this past Hell-Winter, a trial by fire (some say by ice), which involved inhuman parking maneuvers through snow-plow walls and over hard-pack – a nightmare. Ah, but it honed my skills, Grasshopper. Sometimes adversity is the best teacher.

So, like, anyway, a few weeks ago, I asked she if I could consider myself a parallel parking guru. Y’know, since I’m so goddamn good at it? she informed me – rather unceremoniously, to my mind – that in order to be a guru, I would need actual followers and, since it didn’t appear likely that I would gain any actual followers for my fucking incredible parallel parking abilities, that I could not be a parallel parking guru, and would have to settle for being a delusional self-congratulator RE: my pizzarking skillz. I thought her assessment ungenerous.  Today I determined that it was also false.

I was coming back from The Target (as babygirl calls it) because yesterday I promised her that she could watch Diego on the computer if only she would cease whatever unbearable tantrum that she was then conducting. Yes, it was a bribe, and one that would require procurement of an actual Diego DVD at some point, but it made sense at the time, largely because it didn’t commit me to any immediate activity. Damned if she didn’t remember it in its exact phrasing this morning, so off I went to The Target, looking for Diego. When I arrive back at The Block, I notice a spot right in front of our place. It’s tight, people. Maybe two feet bigger than the car, maybe less. In other words, it’s perfect. The question is not whether I’ll get into it. That’s obvious. I’m awesome. The question is how many moves will it take? Can I shave some off? I survey the space, check the distance of the two bordering cars from the curb, and pull into place. I check my angle one more time, cut the wheel, reverse. Perfect. Cut the wheel, pull up. Perfect. One last reverse for fine-tuning, and I’m in.  The whole operation takes less than ten seconds. I brush the dust off my shoulders Obama-style, knowing that the small space directly in front of my door couldn’t defeat me, and I exit the car.

Standing there next to the door is Some Guy Hanging Around on the Street, a typical sight. What’s he doing? I don’t know, and I don’t care. But I notice that he’s looking down at the wheels of my car. He looks up at me, and back down at the wheels. He checks my distance from the car behind, and the car in front. Ten inches on either side, maybe. And he says:

“Hey man. That was great parking.”

No lie, G.I.

I nod knowingly, like I know it was great parking, son. You ain’t gah tell me. And I head inside.

But the conclusion here is simple. I appear to have a follower, so that would make me a parallel parking guru, after all. Score: topspun 1, she 0 (if scoring begins today; otherwise: topspun 3, she 2,791).

It’s getting kinda heavy around here, what with all the variable capital and whatnot. Let’s draw it back a bit with what we really do on Saturdays. Today we took a trip down to Millenium and Grant Parks for the Taste of Chicago Festival, a giant, week-long food and entertainment party courtesy of Richard Daley. Yum yums.

The day started with some quiet time on the back deck. Actually, it started with babygirl waking our asses up at 5:45, but you wouldn’t want to see pictures of that even if we had them.

Been down so long it looks like up to me…

We finally got it together and jumped on the Brown Line, arriving in time to catch a Wiggleworms set at the Child Pavilion, or whatever. babygirl did some dancing, some gettin’ down to the flo’, and some dual-instrumentation with maraca and tambourine. Roll, yo.

Because we were downtown, we had to pretend we were tourists and take all the standard tourist pics, again. In this picture of the bean, you might even catch sight of the whole Seven Red family if you look closely enough. Spladow.

But the real meat of the Taste of Chicago is the eatin’, and was there plenty. The basic set up is this: you buy tickets (12 for $8), and get either a meal size portion or a “taste” portion at one of a hundred restaurant booths. They also have multiple stages, beer and wine, cooking classes, and all manner of other activities. It’s pretty great. The meal portions’ll run you 8-10 tickets, while the taste portions are generally 3-4 tickets. A beer is 8-10 tickets, as is wine, etc. So, you expect the tasting portions to be relatively small, but they’re not. I think three tasting portions, depending on the vendor, should hold off most people as a lunch. I had a taco, a meatball sandwich, an empanada, catfish fritters, barbecue pulled turkey, lemon ice, and vanilla ice cream. In any case, here’s babygirl eating a tasting portion of ice cream.

But, finally, it was time to leave. Believe it or not, we did all this before 1:20, when we arrived back home just in time for babygirl’s nap time – really a miracle, considering.

Signs everywhere: the reign of the signifier (and the sans serif font). With the Art Institute in the background.

In one of our earliest posts, I bemoaned the fact that John Dillinger’s place in history had been “supplanted by a fucking Qdoba,” and speculated that there might be nothing worse. I meant, of course, that the location where Dillinger was gunned down, after being famously betrayed by a mysterious “woman in red” outside the Biograph Theater, was now the home of the dreaded burrito chain, and their endless warnings about the extra cost for guacamole. Lately, though, I’ve had occasion to test another theory: that it may be worse to have endless recreations of your death played out on the exact spot of your death. That’s because the new Dillinger film is ready for shooting on Lincoln Avenue, a mere 100 steps from Unnamed Employer Institution.

It’s a big budget affair, directed by Michael Mann and starring – who else – Johnny Depp as Dillinger. Needless to say, she is all excited, hoping for a sight of the star. I mentioned this to one of my female coworkers, and she did the self-fanning gesture upon hearing Depp’s name. A male coworker was there too, and he said “Yeah, I guess the ladies will be happy with that.” Ladies? I asked, and started doing the self-fanning thing myself. I mean, it’s Johnny Friggin’ Depp. That’s a good-lookin’ fuckin guy, yeah? Male co-worker then pretended that he didn’t “get the attraction,” to which I responded, “Dude, nobody’s that heterosexual.” That would be off the fucking Kinsey scale straight.

In any case, it is an interesting choice, because Depp is beautiful, of course, and Dillinger was one ugly motherfucker. So, what gives? Well, the other myth around Dillinger is that he had some incredibly giant penis (which still supposedly sits in a jar somewhere, according to the general mythology). I won’t comment on how this – ahem – feature affects attractiveness, but the rumor itself suggests that “Dillinger” – as a site of cultural interest, as a metonymy for general gangsterism of the era – was a site of powerful libidinal investment , and probably still is. In this sense, the casting of Depp is pitch perfect, even if he doesn’t “resemble” Dillinger in a physical sense. Dillinger, like Depp, had people fanning themselves, in other words (at least in the cultural imaginary) and I think Mann is right to tap into that sexuality, and the ways it both circulates and links up with criminality. But, on to the more interesting stuff: the set!

The producers for the Dillinger film really went all out on this one, setting up a set on location around the actual Biograph theater. That meant covering up the fucking Qdoba, and basically everything else on the block besides. They put in tons of 30′s era signs, and filled the store fronts with period merchandise. They even laid down fake trolley tracks, and repaved – with soft fiberglass “bricks” – the infamous alley of Dillinger’s demise. I’m talking both sides of a city block for about 100 yards completely transformed into a 1930′s street scene. It’s pretty incredible. So I thought I’d share a few flicks with you here.

Renovated to the past: the Biograph Theater sign

Cool flop house sign: Transients Welcome!

Dillinger’s Last Flick: Manhattan Melodrama (Now a Chicago Melodrama…)

Who says food prices are up?

Whole Foods be damned! It’s the National Tea Company Food Store!

Beer AND air conditioning? It’s like something from the future!

Now compare the original:

Not bad, huh?

I love the way two lines of Chicagoans alternate through the revolving exit doors at the Quincy El stop.  It’s a silent dance of order in a world of too loud ipods and bad breath.

OK, so we’ve only been here since August, and I’ll admit to not really knowing the “essential” North Side of Chicago. That said, this video about Sam Zell’s plans to sell the name of Wrigley Field comes pretty close to my image of the North Side (a North Side imaginary?), right down to the star’s goatee. she said, “Yeah, and the chick. She’s so Chicago.” She is. The great irony of selling the name of Wrigley (for $300 million) is that Wrigley Field may be the first big “corporate-named” sports arena (chew much gum lately?). Still, I’ll have to admit, after one ballgame and many times walking by the Great Red Sign, the history is palpable, and the fact that it was originally a spearmint gum schlocking kinda operation pales beside the 100 year drought, and the magical sad sack resonance of the ivy. The Times discusses the renaming issue and the Cubbies’ prospects in “As Jinx Turns 100, The Friendly Confines are Getting Fiesty.”

But, without further ado, “We’re Not Gonna Change It,” here. If you’ve never been the the North Side, this pretty much sums it up: