Monthly Archives: August 2016

A Lot of Tall Ships

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Last Saturday, Navy Pier, Chicago: Pay your money, get your wristband, and pretty soon you can board the likes of this.
Brig Niagara 2016Even better, this.
El Galeon Andalucia 2016The first ship is brig Niagara out of Erie, Pa., while the next one is El Galeón Andalucía, out of Cadiz, Spain.

Every three or four years, Chicago hosts a tall ships festival. The formal name of this year’s event was the Pepsi® Tall Ships® Chicago 2016, complete with registered trademarks symbols flying like pennants. I’m sure PepsiCo paid big bucks for the naming rights, but I can’t help feeling that the drink of choice among seafarers on tall ships should be rum. Bacardi ought to look into it.

Pepsi® Tall Ships® Chicago 2016 is part of a larger movement of sailing ships through the Great Lakes this year, known as the Tall Ships Challenge®. (There’s that trademark again, but I refuse to use all caps.) The event is organized by the Tall Ships Foundation  and includes visits to Great Lake ports this summer, as well as races between the participants.

Even now, the ships are on their way to Green Bay and then Duluth. Next year, other ships will visit Atlantic ports, and presumably after that Pacific ports, and so on. Guess the visits count not only as seafaring — an end unto itself — but are also for publicity and fundraising. The tall ships probably cost a lot to maintain, now that the supply of cheap Jack Tar labor isn’t what it used to be.

The participating ships were docked at Navy Pier. All were available to board and look around, while some offered rides on the lake for an extra (and fairly high) fee. All together, we boarded eight of the ships, or more than half: the Niagara and the Andalucía, but also the Pride of Baltimore II, Denis Sullivan, Madeline, Mist of Avalon, Playfair, and the Draken Harald Hårfagre.

Coolest of all was the galleon. Everybody seemed to feel that way, since that ship had the longest line to board. It was worth the wait of about 30 minutes. How often do you have the chance to board a Spanish galleon and look around? Not often.

El Galeon Andalucía, Chicago 2016El Galeon Andalucía, Chicago 2016El Galeon Andalucía, Chicago 2016The vessel, completed only in 2010, is a 170-foot, 495-ton wooden replica of a galleon that was part of Spain’s West Indies fleet, or, as Wiki puts it: “El Galeón Andalucía es la reproducción de un galeón español del siglo XVII.”

The other ships had their interests as well, including the Niagara and the Pride of Baltimore II —
Pride of Baltimore II, Chicago 2016— and especially the Draken Harald Hårfagre, a re-creation of a Viking ship. The light was wrong for me to get a good side image of the vessel, but there are plenty of pictures of her.

Apparently there was some kind of kerfuffle about the Draken Harald Hårfagre in U.S. Great Lakes waters. Something about leaving behind a swath of destruction, pillaging as they went by — Cleveland, Detroit, Mackinaw City, Green Bay… No, that wasn’t it.

The ship’s problems are more pedestrian than that: not being able to pay a pilotage fee. The Sun-Times reported before the tall ships event: “While docked in Bay City, Michigan, the crew of a 115-foot vessel found out last week that they were required by law to have a pricey navigational pilot on board while traveling the Great Lakes in U.S. waters.”

Maybe that’s an onerous requirement. I’m not competent to say. But you’d think that the owners of the ship might have known about it before entering U.S. waters. Anyway, apparently they raised enough scratch to get to Chicago, and I’m glad. It was another cool ship to tour.

In fact, we got a guided tour by one of the crew, the only ship to provide that.
Draken Harald Hårfagre, Chicago 2016As a 21st-century replica, certain things about the ship would have been unfamiliar to, say, Erik the Red. Such as the hidden diesel engine, or the hidden stove and toilet aboard. Modern safety regs don’t allow as many crew as the ship would need to actually row it, so the oars are mostly for show, though the crew uses the sails as propulsion if it all possible. Also, in the spirit of modern Scandinavian egalitarianism, the crew’s half men and half women.

Navy Pier 2016

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One of the new things this season at Chicago’s Navy Pier is the Ferris wheel.
Navy Pier Ferris Wheel 2016“The new attraction, dubbed the Centennial Wheel in honor of the Lake Michigan landmark’s 100th anniversary this July, offers a higher and longer but also higher-speed hoop ride than the one provided by its predecessor,” noted the Chicago Tribune in May. The ride is also significantly more expensive.”

But of course. Can’t let any opportunity pass to grab more of that tourist dollar.

“At 196 feet tall, 48 feet taller than the structure it replaces, the Centennial Wheel is present on the pier but not dominant, occupying roughly the same footprint as the old one, which began offering rides in 1995 and gave its last one here in September.

“The old wheel — expected to start offering rides from its new home on Branson, Mo.’s Highway 76 next month — served up about 760,000 rides in 2014, just under 10 percent of all Navy Pier visitors (both figures were down from pier peaks). That was at $8 for an adult ticket.” The new basic price is $15, with (naturally) other options that cost more, to make those buying the base ticket feel like cheapskates.

Good to know that the old wheel, like so many aging entertainers, is finding a new audience in Branson. I remember that the cars were red and sported the Golden Arches, denoting its sponsor. I only rode the old one once, ca. 2002, on a company outing one summer day. Worth $8 (probably less then) for the views of the city and the lake.

Even so, there are plenty of views from Navy Pier, from the pier itself. Such as of the East Loop.
Navy Pier 2016And sailing craft on Lake Michigan.
Lake Michigan from Navy Pier 2016Lake Michigan from Navy Pier 2016It had been a while since we’d been to Navy Pier. Not sure how long. A few years. Saturday was a good day for it, especially since temps weren’t expected to be in the 90s, as they had been the weekend before. While crowded, the expanse of the space — about 50 acres — holds a crowd pretty well, except for the food court.

As mentioned, Navy Pier is now 100 years old, built as Municipal Pier. “Navy” was an honorary title given in the 1920s, as the “Soldier” in Soldier Field, though in fact the U.S. Navy did use the pier for a while during WWII. By the time I got to know it in the late ’80s, the structure was in a state of picturesque decay.

As I wrote years ago: “For those unfamiliar with the pier, it juts into Lake Michigan from downtown Chicago a good quarter-mile or so. In the mid-90s, the City of Chicago fostered a redevelopment of the pier that transformed it from a seldom-visited, decaying relic, to the top tourist draw in the entire state of Illinois, featuring a large array of mostly family-friendly diversions, part outdoors, a good many indoors. Also, it has a relatively small amount of convention space (a gnat’s worth, compared to the elephantine McCormick Place).

“Occasionally, I miss the decaying relic, since it had some charm. I recall going there only twice in the late ’80s, once to see a live broadcast of a live radio show WBEZ no longer produces, at the ballroom at the tip of the pier; and another time to see parts of the AIDS Quilt on display under the pier’s enormous empty shed.”

As a summertime destination this year, Navy Pier wasn’t a random choice. We’d come to see the tall ships, more about which tomorrow.

Boomers 7, Miners 5

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Not long ago I realized that we hadn’t been to a minor league baseball game in a while. I wasn’t sure how long, so I checked: more than eight years. Time to go again. Same stadium, different team, since the old Flyers went under in 2011 — something about a cool million in unpaid back rent to the stadium owners, who happen to be the Village of Schaumburg and the Schaumburg Park District.

Since 2012, the Schuamburg Boomers have been the home team at the stadium, which isn’t all that far from where we live. Besides proximity, there are other advantages to attending baseball games locally, mainly cost. I’m happy to note that the price of reserved seating this year was exactly the same as it was in 2008: $11.

I can’t say the same about the Cubs. It’s a little hard to tell, since the club seems to have changed the ticket pricing scheme since eight years ago, the better maybe to put a fig leaf on their naked avarice, but I think that a ticket at a “middle distance behind home plate” — which was $66 then — no longer exists, though some far-off seats are still in the $60s. Seems that nothing behind home plate is less than $99. My opinion of MLB as a pack of gougers remains unchanged, then.

On Friday the Schaumburg Boomers of the Frontier League — whose mascot is a Prairie Chicken — played the South Illinois Miners, first of a three-game weekend series. Another thing to like about minor-league ball is that the players commit whopping blunders sometimes, and that happened almost right away, with the Miners getting two runs in the 1st inning because of a wildly misthrown ball to first base (or rather, in the direction of first base). But during the bottom of the same inning, the Boomers then got three runs because of poor play by the Miners.

After that, the quality of the fielding — but not always the hitting — improved somewhat. Both teams managed some well-executed double plays, and most of the outfielders caught the pop flies they needed to, with only one more run until the eighth inning, which began 4-2, with the Boomers leading. Around the 6th inning, it began to drizzle.

The weather had been a worry all evening, since heavy rains had fallen that day, only clearing up about two hours before the first pitch, when it was still cloudy. I didn’t want the game to be called because of rain, not because missing a few innings would have been that bad. Mainly I didn’t want to miss the fireworks after the game.

The prospect of rain might have depressed attendance that evening. I don’t know how many seats usually sell at a Friday Boomers game, but last Friday the stands were less than full, with large swatches of seats empty. As the drizzle fell, more people left. We stuck it out. We being Yuriko and I, along with Lilly and three of her friends (Ann declined to go).

I don’t remember whether the announcer was such a minimalist last time around. All this announcer could be bothered to do was tell us the name of the batter up and natter sometimes about some promotion or other at the ballpark. I don’t mind that, but I would like to hear occasional clarifications of what was going on.

At one point, with two men on base — first and second — something happened, an umpire or two suddenly went into motion, there was noise from members of the crowd who might have understood what was going on, and then the two men advanced to second and third. It took me a while to figure out that a balk must have been called on pitcher. Maybe that’s me being dense about baseball, but I got the sense that a lot of other people were mystified as well. A short sentence from the announcer would have helped. Could be interpreting the game’s above his pay grade.

By the top of the 8th, when the drizzle petered out, all the Boomers had to do was keep the Miners at bay for two more innings. No such luck. In short order, bang, bang, the Miners got two runs to tie the game, 4-4. Actually, it wasn’t that short an inning. One batter in particular had a fondness for foul balls, and he hit one again and again and again and again.

I wasn’t looking forward to extra innings. Nine’s enough, especially when it might rain. Luckily, in the bottom of the 8th, the Boomers did pretty much the same thing as in the bottom of the 1st, bouncing back with well-placed hits, and scoring three runs. The Miners got a run in the top of the 9th, but couldn’t catch up, and that was that, 7-5. I don’t care one way or the other much about the Boomers, but oddly enough I was glad to see them win. That’s crowd psychology for you.

The postgame fireworks were dessert. Not the most spectacular ever, but a nice show, everything you want in hanabi (literally fire flowers in Japanese; always have liked that word). Even better, the show was close enough that you could faintly smell the gunpowder, adding an extra layer of enjoyment — and memory. I thought of the fireworks at Tivoli all those years ago, close enough so that the ash rained down on us (and while I didn’t mention it, you could smell the fireworks too).