Tag: Chicago

Sky Ride Tap Redux

swanksalot0 comment
Sky Ride Tap Redux
Sky Ride Tap Redux, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

not much better than the first attempt, unfortunately. Hard to get good light as the bar is under the Loop El tracks

centerstage.net/bars/sky-ride-tap.html

Today I received an email that read:


“you have a picture posted of the sky ride bar located on van buren. my husband is in that picture, and wants to be removed”

I responded:
sure, for $50,000 I’ll airbrush him off the public sidewalk.

As far as I know, photographs of people on sidewalks don’t require model releases, especially if there is more than one person in the shot. The email writer didn’t specify which one was her husband – 33.33 percent chance of guessing correctly. Maybe he was supposed to be at work at the time? (If my EXIF data is correct, I took the photo at 2:40 in the afternoon.)

If she pays me $10,000 I’ll put a black line over one of the guy’s face, $25,000 special for all three – and the pigeon included no extra charge.

Got a good laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

Court challenge could jeopardize Chicago’s landmark ordinance

Seth Anderson0 comment

Blood in Our Eyes
[Louis Sullivan’s Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store, now vacant]

Blue was the color of my true loves hair
[Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina Towers]

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) … urged protected status last year for the iconic riverfront complex designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg. “When you look at any snow globe they sell at O’Hare or Midway, there’s Mr. Goldberg’s beautiful towers,” Reilly said.

Yet the effort to safeguard this mid-1960s classic is grinding forward rather than speeding ahead. That is a consequence, some preservation advocates contend, of a court challenge that could jeopardize Chicago’s 41-year-old landmark ordinance — and the 281 individual landmarks and 51 districts it safeguards, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Crown Hall, Louis Sullivan’s former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store on State Street, and Wrigley Field.

In January, the Illinois Appellate Court deemed the law to be unconstitutionally vague. When the Illinois Supreme Court denied the city’s appeal of that ruling last Thursday, it sent the case back to the Cook County Circuit Court, where a judge is thought to have little choice but to strike down the law.

[Click to continue reading Blair Kamin’s Landmark ordinance: Court challenge could jeopardize Chicago’s 41-year-old landmark ordinance and affect U.S. preservation efforts — chicagotribune.com]

Rookery

[stairway of The Rookery, Lobby designed by Frank Lloyd Wright]

Personally, landmarks are what makes a city interesting, what gives a city an identity, what makes a city great (or by contrast, generic). Haphazardly demolishing and “reconfiguring” landmarks to make sterile condo buildings and office parks is a travesty. I sincerely hope, after what will probably be years of litigation, the City of Chicago and other metropolitan authorities come to their senses and write a stronger landmark preservation bill, protecting our shared architectural heritage.

Jonathan Fine, executive director of Preservation Chicago, an advocacy group, argues that Chicago’s landmark law is inherently political and that it represents a fine-grained application of zoning power, which allows the city to decide what uses go on what properties — and how dense those uses can be.

“It’s a land-use planning tool,” Fine said of the landmarks law. “It’s not a wrench. It’s a needle-nosed plier. It fits in there with every tool that this city has to guide and direct responsible planning.”

Harry Weese Cottages

[Harry Weese Cottages]

Reading Around on May 30th through May 31st

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 30th through May 31st:

  • Our Man In Chicago: Alderman Carothers, allow me to educate you on James Brown lyrics – “Now, I’m not well-versed in matters of fraud and bribery – or no moreso than most people in Chicago and Illinois, which is to say “more than most of us would like to be” – but I do consider myself one of the top 20 experts on James Brown (Caucasian division). And I’m here to tell Alderman Carothers that, no, there is no “prominent” song by James Brown called “You’ve Got To Deal With It” (or even “You Got To Deal With It” as he was quoted by the Sun-Times).”Amused me as well – I’m only a top 50 expert in James Brown related matters, but was befuddled at this reference as well…

  • Should You Put Oil in Pasta Water? : Only if you want slimy spaghetti – CHOW – Despite a popular belief that adding oil to pasta water keeps the noodles from sticking together, Laura Schenone, author of The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, says that adding oil does nothing to prevent pasta from clumping.
  • Confessions of a Non–Serial Killer – Michael O’Hare – “he mail was from an amateur sleuth in California named Gareth Penn, who had been trying for some time to interest the police in the idea that I was the Zodiac killer. Perhaps he was trying to alarm me into confessing or doing something incriminating. Who knows. Even today, I know little about the man, beyond the odd detail I’ve picked up here and there—like the fact that he is a librarian and surveyor by trade, that he has (or had) a wonderful Jesus beard, and that he is a member of Mensa.”

Reading Around on May 28th through May 30th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 28th through May 30th:

  • Transportation: Dark and moody ways we get around. | Today's Photos: Today's best Chicago photos, handpicked by our editors. in Chicago – Traffic

    by: swanksalot

    two versions of I-90/94, southbound.

  • Photo Essay: 20 of the Freakiest Custom Bikes on the Road – "“No idea about who this is riding the chopper, just happened to snap it on Wells Street. I think he is part of the Chicago Critical Mass group.”
    Photographer: swanksalot"
  • Bill Simmons: Blowing the whistle on the NBA's flaws – ESPN – "Danny Biasone, who owned the Syracuse Nationals at the time. An Italian immigrant who arrived on Ellis Island and made his money by owning a bowling alley — no, really, a single bowling alley — Biasone wore long, double-breasted coats, smoked filtered cigarettes and wore Borsalino hats. (Note: I don't know what Borsalino hats are, but they sound fantastic.) For three full years preceding the catastrophic 1954 playoffs, Biasone had been unsuccessfully trying to sell the other owners on a 24-second shot clock that would speed up games.

    How did he arrive at 24? Biasone studied games he remembered enjoying and realized that, in each of those games, both teams took around 60 shots. Well, 60+60=120. He settled on 120 shots as the minimum combined total that would be acceptable from a "I'd rather kill myself than watch another NBA game like this" standpoint. And if you shoot every 24 seconds over the course of a 48-minute game, that comes out to .. wait for it … 120 shots! "

Tesla Dealership on Grand west of Morgan

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I’d test drive a Tesla: sounds like a fun car. However, way (way way) beyond my budget: $120,000 is steep for any item, much less an automobile.

Arlbor

[closest photo of mine I could find-this is 800 W Grand Ave, or nearby.]

Car companies have tinkered with all-electric cars for years — but have run into problems, particularly high price and limited range. The 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” told of the 1990s Saturn EV1 electric car — which General Motors recalled and destroyed.

The California-based Tesla claims to sell the only highway- capable all-electric car in North America or Europe, but it won’t be alone for long. Americans will be seeing more alternative-engine cars — all-electric, plug-in electric hybrid (like the planned Chevy Volt), conventional hybrid, and hydrogen-fuel cell — as car makers compete to offer more fuel-efficient models. Revving up the contest is last-week’s federal mandate that all new cars and trucks average 35.5 mpg by 2016.

Wisniewski’s Tesla isn’t exactly middle-market — it’s a two-seat sports car that cost him $120,000. The California company is working on a family sedan, which it hopes to start producing in late 2011, at a base cost of $49,900 after government rebate.

Tesla expects to open its first Chicago dealership next month at 1053 W. Grand.

“It’s definitely a conversation piece,” said Kevin Daly, Tesla’s Midwest regional sales manager, of his own Roadster. “It really has changed the script on what people’s thoughts are for electric cars.”

The car charges overnight, like a cell phone, using either a 110-volt or 220-volt charger. It claims to run 220 miles on a charge. Daly says the car runs well in extreme cold or heat (though he admits a sports car isn’t great in heavy snow).

The cost for the electricity is about 1 or 2 cents per mile. To get ready for guests with electric cars, Hyatt Hotels and Lake Point Tower in Chicago are offering charging stations, according to Daly.

[From Testing out the Tesla :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Transportation]


View Larger Map

Live to Ride
[Ogden and Grand – slightly west of 1053 Grand.]

Dempster Bike Ride

Seth Anderson0 comment

Took the opportunity to get dropped off at a forest preserve on Dempster near Lehigh Road. From there, biked home. The most challenging part was getting from Devon (where the park ended) to the lakefront park. There really isn’t a good route, especially on a busy Saturday afternoon. There were some streets with bike lanes, but Chicago drivers only begrudgingly acknowledge bike lanes, and bikes, so resorted to pedalling on the sidewalks sometimes to avoid being run over. Not ideal; for all of Chicago’s self-proclaimed bike friendliness, there are lots of areas of the city that are downright bike-unfriendly.

Also make the mistake of trying to go east on Devon: ended up on a 4 lane bridge just east of Milwaukee Avenue that had absolutely no shoulder, no sidewalk, and no mercy. Made it about halfway across before chickening out, and limping back to reverse course. Scary.

Beautiful along the lakefront of course, and surprisingly not that crowded. Must have been fortuitous timing. Not so good timing, though, when I ended up on the Michigan Avenue bridge (one side closed, making it even more of a cluster), merged in with the million shoppers on the Million Dollar Mile. Yikes, bad planning on my part. There really isn’t that good of a route from the lakefront bike path to the West Loop: next time perhaps I’ll try zipping over to Wells Street sooner.

Dempster back to West Loop

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging [click to embiggen the map and gawk at the photos]
Home to a stint in our personal sauna, shower, and glass of wine. Wish I had time to take this long of a bike ride every day…

Reading Around on May 17th through May 19th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 17th through May 19th:

  • New York State Aims for 100 MW of Rooftop Solar Power by 2015 : TreeHugger – photo: Seth Anderson via flickr.

    And thanks to TreeHugger staff for learning from their little mistake – proper credit to photographers is not difficult, makes everyone happier, fitter.

  • The 1871 fires – Disarranging Mine – Did you know that on the night the Great Chicago Fire started, October 8, 1871, there were many more fires across the Upper Midwest?
  • Gabriel Villa’s Mural Destroyed « mediating the medium – "I recently received a disturbing e-mail from the artist Gabriel Villa that began with “The city white washed my mural.” In it Villa explained how the mural he began in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood at Kaplan’s Liquors 960 W 31st St, as a part of Version>09 was destroyed by the city only days before its completion. I had been documenting Villa’s progress as a part of this year’s festival and I am sadden by the news of its destruction. He was granted permission by the owner of the building to paint the mural and this forces me to ask, what was the real reason for this censorship?"

    Despicable. Censorship at its most heavy handed. Welcome to Daley's Chicago

Reading Around on May 15th through May 17th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 15th through May 17th:

  • A Mattress Here, A Mattress There….Why are they everywhere? | Today's Photos: Today's best Chicago photos, handpicked by our editors. in Chicago – Carryout on 17 East Ohio

    by: swanksalot

  • Chicago for the Architecture Buff – my photo of the Rookery stair used here:

    "Rookery Building

    Photo: swanksalot
    209 S. Lasalle St.
    Mon-Fri: 9am-8pm
    Sat: 9am-4pm

    Named for the giant flocks of pigeons that once roosted onsite, the Rookery is really two buildings in one."

  • City Room – Metro – Alderman Destroys Public Art – "BALCER: You know I don't know if there was hidden gang meaning behind it with the cross, with the skull, with the deer, with the police camera's. Was there something anti-police about it? I don't know what's in his mind.

    MARSZEWSKI: It's really too bad that he didn't know that was art.

    Ed Marszewski is the art festival organizer who asked Villa to paint the mural. And it's his mom that owns the building that Villa painted on.

    MARSZEWSKI: We didn't realize that you need to get a permit to paint your own wall. Do you know if that is in fact a law?

    A spokesman for Chicago's buildings department says section 13 25 50 of the City Code requires building owners to have a permit for painted signage or to alter or repair painted signage on a building. But a spokesperson for the city's law department says there's no permit necessary for a mural on the side of a private building as long as it's not an advertisement and as long as the property owner has given their permission. "

A New Route to Ease Plane Congestion

Seth Anderson0 comment

A glimmer of hope for frequent fliers in the US, if the FDA can get off their asses and dance with the new technology

U.S. airlines and the FAA are phasing in a new navigation system that has already proved it can reduce weather delays, shave minutes off flight times and reduce noise pollution on the ground.

“Required Navigation Performance,” or RNP, is already in use in parts of China, Australia, Canada and Alaska. U.S. airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration are working to expand it to major U.S. airports. Southwest Airlines, for example, will have all its planes and pilots ready next year. Washington’s Reagan National Airport already has an RNP procedure in place.

The plan in the U.S. is to attack the most congested cities first, starting with New York and Chicago. “We’ll apply it where the need is greatest to start,” said Victoria Cox, FAA senior vice president for “NextGen” air-traffic modernization.

Think of RNP as precision navigation. Using two different kinds of standard navigation equipment, the newest generation of Boeing and Airbus jets have the ability to fly an exact path with deviation of no more than the wingspan of the airplane. RNP routes take advantage of that equipment by creating very precise flight paths that require computers on board to alert pilots if the plane strays. No ground-based equipment like radar and instrument landing systems is needed. The plane’s autopilot can put the aircraft at an exact position within seconds of an assigned time.

[Click to continue reading A New Route to Ease Plane Congestion – WSJ.com]

Circumstances Beyond Our Control - oil paint

[not related, but hey, my blog, my rules…]

Reading Around on May 14th through May 15th

swanksalot0 comment

A few interesting links collected May 14th through May 15th:

  • Alderman says he had this mural destroyed | Chicago Public Radio Blog – Man, that sucks, especially since the owner of the building gave the artist permission

    "This week artist Gabriel Villa was putting finishing touches on this mural in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Now someone has brown-washed the work. Ald. James Balcer (Ward 11) told WBEZ this morning that he called the city’s Streets and Sanitation Department to have it destroyed."

  • Liquid Dilemma: Godzilla vs. Ralph Records – I stumbled upon a collection of LPs from San Francisco based label Ralph Records, mostly recorded in the 80s and now out of print. They blew my mind. The record dealer claimed that he got them directly from the keyboardist of weirdo experimentalist band, The Residents.
  • Shaquille O'Neal's Secret Performance Enhancement Recipe – TrueHoop By Henry Abbott – ESPN – Shaquille O'Neal was on Atlanta's 790 The Zone and was asked if he had ever taken performance enhancing drugs. He proceeded to described his recipe as follows:

    Frosted Flakes Athletic Performance Enhancement Cereal.

    They ain't even out yet…

    For all the little kids, the Performance Enhancement Cereal is you take the Frosted Flakes, and you take the Froot Loops, and you mix them together, and then you get some of them sliced bananas and you put them on that thing, and then you get a big old bowl. The kind of bowl if you pull out out your mother say, "Boy, you better put that bowl back!" And, then you pour that milk … "You better get a job eating all that milk."

New Whole Foods Market in Chicago

Seth Anderson0 comment

Judy Hevrdejs visits the new Whole Foods on Kingsbury:

New Whole Foods under construction

[my photo of the Whole Foods construction from March, 2009]

By the time the shiny new Whole Foods Market in Lincoln Park opens May 20, the shelves will be fully stocked, the produce bins piled high and the wine-sampling machines filled with assorted bottles of vino.
That wasn’t the state of affairs when I checked out the store at 1550 N. Kingsbury St. during a hard-hat tour May 13. But I did get a fine aerobic workout hoofing it from the store’s main entrance to the in-house bakery that’s destined to perfume its corner of the 75,000-square-foot store with baked-fresh-daily breads. (Don’t believe me? I counted 200 strides.)

The Lincoln Park site’s vast space makes it the third largest Whole Foods Market in the world, just behind London’s Kensington store (at more than 100,000 square feet) and the Austin, Texas flagship store/HQ. “It’s a Whole Foods Market on soy protein powder,” says Rich Howley, the store team leader

…

And if Howley’s discussions pan out, they may hold yoga and tai chi classes on the building’s roof.

[Click to continue reading New Whole Foods Market an homage to Chicago | The Stew – A taste of Chicago’s food, wine and dining scene]

Perhaps it is because I moved to Austin the same year that Whole Foods opened its first store, or perhaps because I’ve shopped at the (old) Lincoln Park location for nearly as long as I’ve lived in Chicago, but I want Whole Foods to do well, to survive and thrive, selling quality food that wasn’t created in a Monsanto laboratory. However, I do wonder if having such a monstrous location is really a good thing. I hate going to shopping malls, have avoided stepping foot in a Wal-Mart so far in my life, so why would I want to go to a grocery mall? The new Whole Foods mega-store has 42 checkout lanes, and 400 parking spaces!

First Bike Trip of 2009

swanksalot0 comment

I realized I hadn’t been on my bicycle since last year’s accident. Last weekend, we went to an art opening that was near the outrageously large pothole that caused last year’s spill: consequently I was determined to jump on at least a quick ride as soon as possible. Prove to myself I had no residual fear of biking in the city. Turned into an 8 mile excursion – I didn’t go very fast because I am woefully out-of-shape1, but no matter. Utter bliss. Didn’t bring my iPod, wore a helmet, still was delightful to cruise through alleys and streets. Sunday is a good day to bike in the city, traffic is significantly reduced, at least in my neighborhood.

Here is the route as reported by EveryTrail’s iPhone application:

(click to embiggen, natch)

First bike trip of 2009

Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging
I took some photos with my D80, will post those later at Flickr.

Footnotes:
  1. wine belly especially [↩]

Aleksandar Hemon On Chicago Places That Inspired Love and Obstacles

Seth Anderson0 comment

Note: I lived in Ukrainian Village from 1994-19961, and Rainbo Room was one of my hang-outs as well.


“Love and Obstacles” (Aleksandar Hemon)

Nelson Algren Avenue

Aleksandar Hemon was visiting a friend in the Ukrainian Village section of Chicago in 1992 when war broke out in his hometown of Sarajevo. He extended his visit, eventually settling into an apartment nearby. “The area was completely devoid of glamour, and that suited me at the time,” the 45-year-old author says. “There was a war going on at home and my life was as far from glamorous as can be.” It was in Chicago that Mr. Hemon learned how to write in English, and he still lives there (in the Edgewater area). His 2008 novel “The Lazarus Project” was nominated for a National Book Award. His new collection of short stories “Love and Obstacles” centers on an unnamed narrator who moved from Sarajevo to Chicago in 1992. Mr. Hemon annotated a map of key places in his adopted city that influenced or inspired his fiction.

…

4. Rainbo Club at Damen and Division

In “Szmura’s Room,” Szmura and Bogdan go for a drink to this cult bar, which is perpetually going in and out of hipness. In the early ’90s it was one of those cool semidumps, before the neighborhood was despoiled by sushi bars and boutiques where falsely damaged clothes are sold, before studied negligence became fashionable. Nelson Algren used to drink there and brought along Simone de Beauvoir with whom he was having a famous affair. The locals fondly remembered her as Simon the Beaver.

[Click to continue reading Aleksandar Hemon On Places That Inspired ‘Love and Obstacles’ – WSJ.com]

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link]

Rainbo Club

The book looks like a worthy addition to one’s library:

Aleksandar Hemon earned his reputation— and his MacArthur “genius grant”—for his short stories, and he returns to the form with a powerful collection of linked stories that stands with The Lazarus Project as the best work of his celebrated career. A few of the stories have never been published before; the others have appeared in The New Yorker, and several of those have also been included in The Best American Short Stories. All are infused with the dazzling, astonishingly creative prose and the remarkable, haunting autobiographical elements that have distinguished Hemon as one of the most original and illustrious voices of our time.

What links the stories in Love and Obstacles is the narrator, a young man who—like Hemon himself—was raised in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States. The stories of Love and Obstacles are about that coming of age and the complications—the obstacles—of growing up in a Communist but cosmopolitan country, and the disintegration of that country and the consequent uprooting and move to America in young adulthood. But because it’s Aleksandar Hemon, the stories extend far beyond the immigrant experience; each one is punctuated with unexpected humor and spins out in fabulist, exhilarating directions, ultimately building to an insightful, often heartbreaking conclusion. Woven together, these stories comprise a book that is, genuinely, as cohesive and powerful as any fiction— achingly human, charming, and inviting.

Footnotes:
  1. give or take [↩]