Tag: West_Loop

Yats Cajun Creole

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Was walking east on Randolph, and glanced at a soon-to open restaurant called Yats Cajun Creole. The owner, Joe Vuskovich, a gregarious fellow, recently of New Orleans, came out and chatted for a minute or two. He said the restaurant will be be opening mid-July, or early August, if all goes as planned. I forgot to get a photo of Joe, but I did snap a shot of the storefront (forgive the poor exposure).

Joe mentioned he used to work in a factory over on Fulton1, so it was a homecoming of sorts for him. Also, his dad had been an oyster farmer, so the smells and sounds2 of Fulton Market brought back fond memories.

I am a great lover of all things New Orleans (mostly the music, but the food too), so am eager to have my first meal at Yats Cajun Creole.

Yats Cajun Creole

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update, now open!

Footnotes:
  1. from his webpage: Most recently, Joe has owned and operated a wholesale business, (a) blending, grinding, packaging, and selling spices to the restaurant trade, as well as (b) offering his spicy native cuisine to restaurants in a pre-prepared fashion. After a few big clients went out of business about two years ago, Joe decided to launch a no-frills, back-to-the-basics, neighborhood restaurant. Thus, Yats was reborn. [↩]
  2. diesel, and food, and other less pleasant items too. I grew up on the edge of Toronto’s Chinatown, and we had a poultry market several buildings down the street, sharing an alley with us, so I know of what Joe is referring. Smells are such powerful unlockers of the dusty corridors of memory. [↩]

Maria Pinto and Michelle Obama

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Love Fashion

The West Loop – fashion capital of the Midwest! Not really, but worth noting anyway

CHICAGO — Election-year pundits have analyzed everything about Michelle Obama, from the size of her pearls to her newly hired chief of staff. But few have taken much note of the person responsible for one of her most formidable campaign tools: her wardrobe.

The designer behind much of Mrs. Obama’s public attire is an effusive 51-year-old Chicago native, Maria Pinto. A clothing resource to prominent local women including Oprah Winfrey, she was relatively unknown outside Chicago until 16 months ago, when Mrs. Obama began appearing on the campaign trail in Ms. Pinto’s streamlined pieces.

Ms. Pinto created the red silk-crepe dress and jacket Mrs. Obama wore on Super Tuesday and the white-cotton top and khakis she donned to stump with Caroline Kennedy. On June 3, Mrs. Obama sported a $900 Pinto-designed purple silk shift as she fist-bumped her husband before his Democratic primary victory speech in St. Paul, Minn.

The Obama buzz has helped lift Ms. Pinto’s brand. “It’s a huge compliment,” she says. Orders for her designs are up 35% over the past 12 months, and potential investors and employees are cold-calling, she says. Ms. Pinto and her staff of 18 will soon be vacating their modest industrial studio for larger quarters in Chicago’s West Loop, with a 2,200-square-foot boutique, Ms. Pinto’s first. The space is now being outfitted with bamboo floors and soaring, Italian-tiled columns for a July opening.

[From Fashion Campaign – WSJ.com]

I’ll have to pop over to the new boutique one of these days, and see what’s to be seen.

[Digg-enabled full access to article via this link, including several photos of Ms. Pinto’s fashion designs.]

Maria Pinto Coming Soon

Maria Pinto Permit

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update, now the store is open.

Maria Pinto's boutique

Big Bottom (Lounge)

swanksalot0 comment

Lake Street El to somewhere else
[Lake Street El to Somewhere Else – probably taken at 1100 West Lake, give or take]

Big Bottoms drive me out of my mind! – [Spinal Tap, if you forgot.] Anyway, of special interest as 1375 W. Lake is stumbling distance from me (or one El stop away if the weather is crappy).

Bottom Lounge (1375 W Lake St.) just opened. No, seriously, I’ve friggin’ been there man. And golly, is it big—well, bigger than I imagined. So impressively large is this new live music venue that ‘lounge’ seems totally inappropriate as a part of the name. Lounges just aren’t of this size, even in truth-stretching clubspeak. Though it’s not quite as deep in the live room, it reminds me of Washington D.C.’s Black Cat (the newer one), in that the bar feels like a rocker hangout that thrives regardless of what is happening in the live room.

The entryway is bigger than some condos I’ve been in, and there’s a spacious high-ceilinged bar there with vinyl booths. The live room (with its own absinthe-serving bar) is well proportioned. The generously-scaled stage looks made to accommodate multiple Mucca Pazzas simultaneously (a scary thought), and the sound system runs through a pro-size (Midas Verona 40×8) mixing board in the front of house. I haven’t heard a band, only DJs, through the system—I was at the final night of the Our Way of Thinking mod festival with Tony the Tyger and The Dust Junkies spinning obscure mod rock and Northern soul. The sound wasn’t overly loud, and it was clear enough to get the mini-dress-and-tight-suit set out on the dance floor and close to the Nexo Alpha speakers.

[Click to see a photograph and more info at Time Out Chicago: The TOC Blog Big Bottom (Lounge)]

Probably not quite as cool as the Lounge Ax (which was also stumbling distance from me, back in the 90s), but still good to note. I can’t say I recognize any of the acts currently listed, but that doesn’t even matter. Just happy something interesting landed at that spot and not another freaking condo building.

Bottom Lounge

Death at Blommer Chocolate

Seth Anderson5 Comments

The ABCs of Chocolate
[The ABCs of Chocolate-across from Blommer Chocolate Company]

First off, I have great sympathy for Gerardo Castillo’s family, that’s got to be a hard way to die.

Chicago officials and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration hunted Monday for the cause of a fatal gas release that killed a North Side man and hospitalized two others at a chocolate factory on the Near West Side over the weekend. Gerardo Castillo, 30, was killed Sunday in the second fatal accident since 2001 at Blommer Chocolate Co., 600 W. Kinzie St.

Castillo of the 1700 block of West Olive Avenue was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after a release of ammonialike fumes at the factory. A substance mixed into the chocolate somehow triggered a gaseous chemical reaction, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman said.

[snip]

OSHA last inspected the facility in 1994, said federal compliance officer Tricia Railton, who was reading from a report. Those safety investigations had to do with workers who were cleaning a piece of equipment that either had not been disconnected or was not marked as being potentially dangerous to the cleaners if turned on. It was not immediately clear if an injury prompted that inspection, Railton said. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sent an inspector to check the factory after a neighbor complained about the aroma of burnt chocolate. The unidentified complainant also noted a powder-filled plume churning out of a roof duct.

Based on what the inspector saw two mornings in early September, the EPA cited Blommer for violating limits on opacity, or the amount of light blocked by the factory’s grinder dust.

[From U.S., city probing death at chocolate factory — chicagotribune.com]

But this EPA thing has been ongoing for a while. In fact, we mentioned it to Alderman Reilly when we met him in his office just prior to Reilly being sworn in, and his staff was going to look into it. Pollution and particulates are pollution and particulates, even if they smell like chocolate, and shouldn’t be allowed to permeate the lungs of local residents (like myself, ahem). I am curious as to what the details of this September investigation actually were.

Previous coverage of Blommer on my old blog

Blommer Continue reading “Death at Blommer Chocolate”

Sepia Sucked

Seth Anderson1 Comment

*repost

We had the worst meal in years at a newcomer to the West Loop called Sepia.

[From S E P I A Chicago Restaurant ~ 312.441.1920 123 N. Jefferson, Chicago, IL 60661] – warning: one of those annoying flash websites that take forever to load, and worse, one that autoplays music. You can turn the music off, but the toggle doesn’t appear until after 8 warbled bars by a Billy Holiday imitator. I should have canceled my reservation once I visited the web site. Though some of the sepia-toned photos are nice.

Sepia Interior

This is the only photo I managed to take as before we were served any food or drink, four different people visited our table to ask who we were (I think they wanted to know if we were food critics or not) before a manager came and told me that “Photos were not allowed”.

I am certainly not a food critic (read below if you want proof), just a typical consumer. Perhaps if we had said we were writing a review, we might have been treated better.

Here were my scribbled notes from later that evening.

•The service was ok, once we let the waiter rattle off his spiel without interruption. He was initially ‘annoyed‘ at us for daring to ask questions, but eventually he warmed up, and was ok. I’ve waited tables, so I know how sometimes customers can be irritating for no particular reason. The bus buy in charge of our table hovered nearby, refilling our water every 2 or 3 minutes. Perhaps they get a bonus if they sell more than one bottle of water? Grade: B.

•As mentioned, was told firmly there would be no photographs allowed, per ‘policy‘. Not sure what that’s about. Perhaps afraid of proof of bad reviews? Grade: F.

•Atmosphere, not quite to the level of the home of a tribe of serial killers, but still kind of freaky. I wonder how many folks ever return to have another meal? I could easily visualize ritual sacrifices occurring in the basement. The tables are crammed up against each other, you can borrow napkins from adjoining tables without even turning your torso. We ate early, so most of our meal enjoyed a buffer, in three dimensions, but the staff constantly bumped against our chairs, or stumbled over our feet. Sepia’s layout obviously was not approved by a Feng Shui master.

Food:
•Flat breads: sauteed mushrooms on a homemade cracker. Profit margin of 99%. I calculate the ingredients as 1 mushroom diced (perhaps 2, of different varieties, but hard to tell), some butter, some oil, about .05 of a garlic clove, and a bit of flour and water. $7. If I made this, even if I was more generous with the amount of mushrooms, and if I didn’t have the benefit of economy of scale, still would be hard to spend $0.25 on the dish. After the 300 word buildup mouthed by our waiter (and probably written by the owner), I expected more. Grade: D-.

•Salad – a handful of moldy lettuce, or perhaps a sour vinegar dressing. Served with cold, marinated grilled carrot strips, of there must have been a surfeit, as these same carrots appeared in all our other dishes too. Grade: F.

•Fish – a nice chunk of sturgeon, cooked to the consistency of leather. Yummm, chewy! Served on a bed of watercress, with mold- marinated carrots. $26 dollars. Grade: C-.

•Grilled vegetables. Actually not bad, the only thing we completely finished, though again, 20 dollars for a couple ounces of grilled/baked vegetables (squash, carrots, brussels sprouts, red cabbage) seems a little steep, especially since nothing was organic or locally grown. Sysco vegetables are pretty damn cheap. Perhaps the kitchen staff has a very competitive pay scale, or perhaps there are too many of them, or perhaps the rent is not favorable. Or something. We were hungry about an hour after leaving Sepia, and had to have a second dinner.

•Goat cheese cake, cloyingly sweet, but not bad. Served with a bitter, insanely dry cookie, and one lonely pistachio nut, crumbled, and spread out across an over-large plate. Actually, I think it was less than one pistachio nut, perhaps 1/4 of a whole nut. Whatever. We left most of it uneaten, lonely on the vast plate. Allegedly the desert chef is going to be featured in some food magazine, but that is no guarantee of quality, just evidence of payola in the corporate media. Grade: D+.
Final Grade – are you kidding? We didn’t even drink wine (contrary to my habit), and our bill was still over $100. If I want a special, delicious, romantic meal, and am willing to spend more than $100, there are several options to choose from in Chicago. Sepia is not one.

Richard Linklater – Haymarket Riot

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Yowsa! I’ve got to call in some chips from my Austex connections, and get a consultant job for the Haymarket Riot film. I’d love to work on it in some capacity. The LBJ movie might be interesting too: I did my senior paper on LBJ and the Rise of the Surveillance State (working with original documents at the LBJ library). But the Haymarket movie needs to be made.

Haymarket Touchup

Exclusive: Filmmaker Richard Linklater – ComingSoon.net : … [Interviewer] I would think that being from Austin, Texas would lend itself to an interesting movie, that being a very liberal city in the middle of a conservative state.

Linklater: Yeah, Texas politics itself is very fascinating. I’d love to do a film about LBJ’s early days. There’s some cases when he was Senator where he was extremely political, just to show a really crafty politician who really cares about the people. You can take a moment in time politically. I’d like to make a film about the Haymarket Riot, a political action moment in our country’s history. You just basically execute a bunch of people because you don’t like what they believe even if they didn’t do anything wrong.

I’d even be happy to sell a few photos of the memorial to Mr. Linklater…

such as from here, or Haymarket Riot memorial, or here, or this fave of the old memorial, yadda yadda.

History of the Riot in engravings

Harp Maker to the World

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Interesting history of an instrument that I’m mostly indifferent to: the harp. However, Harpo Marx was a maestro, and Joanna Newsom’s new album is pretty good too (and she name checks Lyon and Healy on the liner notes). One of the few mass produced items assembled in America strictly by hand. I’d love to tour the factory.

Lyon Healy Harp

City shoulders the load as harpmaker for world | Chicago Tribune

In a dim warehouse on the city’s West Side, ragged bundles of German beech and splintery Midwestern maple quietly await their metamorphosis.

The hunks of raw wood are ugly now. But months in the hands of master builders will mold them into instruments of musical elegance.

Chicago, the city of heavy industry, is also, as it turns out, the world capital of harpmaking.

Lyon & Healy Harps, on Ogden Avenue, is the foremost producer of concert harps. It is also where the modern harp was invented in 1889 and the hub from where it has spread in the last century to concert halls from Taipei to Topeka, Cape Town to Cleveland.

… The worst of them are flawless, say the company’s marketers. Beginning pedal harps start at $9,950. For a concert grand, add $10,000 more. The Prince William used by the Chicago Symphony’s Sarah Bullen is worth the price of a nicer BMW coupe.

For $179,000, one could buy a one-bedroom pied-a-terre on North Lake Shore Drive with a view of Belmont Harbor. For the same price, it could be furnished with a Lyon & Healy Louis XV Special, and nothing else.

 

slightly more:

The pedal harp was born in France and patented by Sebastian Erard in 1810. It was embraced by European romanticism and surged over the Atlantic only to suffer in the American cultural wilderness.

 

The ocean crossing was bad enough, but North America’s weather extremes posed a still harsher challenge for the harps.

So many were repaired by Patrick J. Healy and George W. Lyon–young Boston instrument dealers who had come to Chicago in 1864–that they decided to build their own. The first took 10 years and was finished in 1889.

Lyon and Healy replaced fragile French plaster parts with rugged wood construction–a decided advantage–and Chicago harps quickly supplanted their dainty European cousins. From then on, their evolution came largely at the hands of Chicago harpmakers.

Because harpists wanted to travel, materials grew sturdier. As people grew taller, harps grew larger. While concert halls grew, harps grew louder. City noise intruded on the halls, the harps grew louder still in a co-evolution still proceeding, said Steve Fritzmann, a master harpmaker and Lyon & Healy’s national sales manager.

..It is wood chosen for strength and resonance, and perfection supplied by human hands. A modern harp’s 1,400 moving pieces are glued, clamped, spun, trimmed, bent, rasped, sanded, fit, finished, gilded, assembled, strung and tuned–all by hand.

At Lyon & Healy, 129 people do this. They tried using machines to assemble parts once, Fritzmann said. The process failed.

It is easy to imagine why they tried. Harps hide far more moving parts than meet the eye. … For 18 years, Maria Valadez has worked assembling the harps’ invisible metal musculature, fitting long strings of moving joints into the harp’s neck, each built by dozens of workers to smoothly convert a harpist’s pedal movements into a command for a harp to switch keys.

Sandwiching the workings between curving brass plates one day this week, Valadez tightened dozens of tiny black screws to finish one assembly–only to find a scratch on one brass plate. It had taken a day to assemble this single package of moving parts.

She reversed direction, taking it apart just as slowly. A tiny wrench to loosen each screw, a screwdriver to continue the work. A day to build. A day to undo. The complexity is hidden, but demanding. It is everywhere, even in the sturdiest pieces.

The entire body of a harp wants to implode. When tightened, the 47 strings of a concert harp create 2,000 pounds of tension between the neck and body, the 80-pound instrument straining against a ton of potential energy eager to destroy it.

To resist the forces as it was improved, the body of the modern harp underwent a vivid evolution. It had to grow a skeleton.

Upstairs from the drama playing out on Valadez’s desk, another worker picks up a block, measures and marks it into a thin, 4-inch piece, then sands it to size on a motorized belt. When the worker finishes, he has created the backing for a rib.

The four aluminum ribs hidden inside each harp make it exceptionally strong. They permit a thinner spruce body, which reverberates more, and thus is louder.

When finished, workers hang the bodies like sides of beef from overhead hooks. Others bring feminine curves out of blocky columns turning on lathes. On the third floor, master woodcarvers peck like birds at the designs on columns and bases.