Chicago Avenue Stroll: Buildings & Murals

Posted on March 31, 2022 by admin

No chance to see the aurora borealis here in northern Illinois last night, even if it was there to be seen. Yesterday was overcast all day, producing light but steady rain late in the evening and throughout the night, as far as I could tell.

Today was overcast as well, with light snow in the morning and again in the evening. So much for March going out like a lamb.

On Sunday, which was chilly but sunny, I took a stroll down Chicago Avenue for a few blocks. Chicago is a major east-west street, crossing the city and into the suburbs and running more than 12 miles, according to a Google Maps estimate. The eastern terminus is at Lake Shore Drive, but not before you pass such notable places as Michigan Avenue, the Chicago Water Tower and the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Where I walked, roughly 2300 W. to 2000 W. Chicago — about four miles west of Lake Michigan — the street is the commercial hub of Ukrainian Village, though not everything on the street has anything to do with Ukraine or its diaspora. Such as Fatso’s Last Stand. That’s very Chicago; it could be just about anywhere in the city.

One of two locations of this name in Chicago, owned by an entity that has other restaurants and bars in the city, but also in New York and Charleston. I ought to try it sometime. I like a hot dog stand that has its own mural.

It’s on the wall facing Oakley Blvd., which crosses Chicago Avenue at that point. The artist, one Felipe Solorzano, has some images on Instagram. It didn’t occur to me until I looked at them that people pose in front of the wings. I’ve seen that before, but not in Chicago.

The wings form the center panel in a triptych of paintings, if that term is correct for murals. Anyway, there are three distinct paintings on the Fatso’s wall. I didn’t take a picture of all of them, but Google did.

The new mural is dated 2019. That synchs with the always-useful Street View, which tells me that the current mural appeared between June 2018 and August 2019. Before that, there was a different mural.

How to describe that? A Ukrainian-Custer-hot dog stand vibe. Perhaps the owners felt obliged to cancel Custer, though I doubt most passersby gave it much thought. In any case, the earlier mural appeared some time after October 2015. Before that, just a red wall.

Across Chicago Avenue from Fatso’s is another mural. I don’t have any information about its creator, but he or she has some talent.

This one appeared between August 2019 and July 2021. I believe the mural vogue that seems to be under way in Chicago is a good thing. Spices up the city.

Elsewhere on the street, I took a look at some smaller commercial buildings, which are sinews of an urban neighborhood like Ukrainian Village: a shop on the first floor, an apartment or two or more above, perhaps where a shopkeeper used to live, and might still live in some cases. These buildings usually don’t command much attention, and maybe they don’t need to, but they can actually be fairly aesthetic.

I like that small one, tucked in the middle.

Another mural. Little information on this one either, but that’s hardy necessary to enjoy it.

I see on Street View that the mural appeared between August 2019 and August 2021, the same span when the first floor of the building went from being occupied by a hair salon — knocked off by the pandemic, probably — to being a vintage clothing store called the Stoop.

Not on Chicago Avenue, but a block to the north on Rice St. I wandered by it as well.

This is home to St. Nicholas School of the Arts, which is affiliated with the St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. A cornerstone gives the building date as 1935, but that’s all I know. Handsome structure, though.

The Ukrainian National Museum, Chicago

Posted on March 30, 2022 by admin

Tucked away in an unassuming brick building, across a small street from Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in Chicago, is the Ukrainian National Museum.

High time for a visit, I thought on Sunday. It isn’t a large museum, but it’s home to a fair number of artifacts and a good amount of text and photos illustrating the history and culture of Ukraine. More than 10,000 items, according to the museum.

One of the museum’s rooms is devoted to Ukrainian Cossacks. Or, to use the Ukrainian transliteration, Kosaks. I have to admit I scarcely knew much about the difference among the various Cossacks, and even now I only know a little more, byzantine as the centuries-long subject is.

Here’s a small snippet from the — shall we say, complicated nature of Cossack history — lifted directly from the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine. It’s only a very small part of the whole picture.

With the permission of the Polish government Cossack regiments were formed in Korsun (Korsun regiment), Bratslav (Bratslav regiment), Fastiv (Fastiv regiment), and Bohuslav (Bohuslav regiment) under the command of Cossack colonels, headed by an acting hetman, Col Samiilo Samus from Bohuslav. But the actual head of the Right-Bank Cossacks was Semen Palii, colonel of Fastiv and Bila Tserkva; he led the Right-Bank Cossacks in their fight against Polish rule and oppression by the nobility and for the unification of Right-Bank Ukraine and Left-Bank Ukraine under the rule of Hetman Ivan Mazepa (the uprising of 1702). This unification was realized in 1704.

Portraits of Ukrainian Cossack hetmans hang on the museum’s walls, with detailed text about their deeds. In nearby cases are weapons, clothes, coins and other cool Cossack stuff. As interesting or admirable as the museum’s other items were, these were my favorites.

Another major room contains somewhat newer artifacts, including displays of ornate Ukrainian clothing and very many Easter eggs (pysanky) done up in that famed, colorful and intricate Ukrainian style. (Singular, pysanka.)

Again from the encyclopedia: “The pysanka (literally, ‘written egg’) is produced by a complex technique. An initial design on the egg is done in beeswax, which is applied to the surface with a special instrument called a kystka (a small, metal, conic tube attached to a wooden handle).

“The egg is then dipped in yellow dye. Then those elements of the design that are to be yellow are covered with wax and the egg is dipped in a red dye (sometimes two shades of red are used). After the surfaces that are to be red are covered with wax, the egg is dipped in an intense, dark dye (violet or black).

“So that the color will adhere well, the egg is sometimes washed with vinegar or alum before being dyed. When the design is completed, the egg is heated to melt off the wax.”

Other rooms featured more recent history. That of course means the awful history of Ukraine in the 20th century, most especially the Holodomor, which merits its own room, full of harrowing photos, testimony and statistics, and not forgetting where to lay the blame: Stalin and his henchmen.

I wasn’t alone in the room. A man and a woman, maybe a few years older than I am, expressed their surprise to a docent, who was also in the room, that such a thing had happened. They’d never heard of it. If I didn’t have some interest in the history of the Soviet Union — one of those places where the history was entirely too interesting for the well-being of its inhabitants — I might not have either, so I won’t judge them too harshly (though it’s easier to be a bit peeved at the apathy toward history education in this country).

But there’s always more to know. I didn’t know much about the subject of another room: Ukrainian immigration to other places after WWII. Most striking in that room was an enormous map, nearly from floor to ceiling, locating all of the Ukrainian Displaced Persons camps in the western zones of occupied Germany in the late ’40s.

There were more than 100 of them. Something worth knowing now that millions of Ukrainians have been displaced again.

“The Allies intended to repatriate all these victims of Nazi Germany and therefore organized them by nationality,” Jan-Hinnerk Antons wrote in Harvard Ukrainian Studies. “However, two misconceptions in their approach to the problem soon proved troublesome.

“First, the number of people refusing repatriation was much higher than anyone had expected. Second, nationality was by no means congruent with citizenship — and it was the latter that was assumed as the basis for repatriation.

“The very existence of more than one hundred Ukrainian Displaced Persons camps in the western zones of occupied Germany was testament to the Ukrainian DPs’ resistance to forced repatriation and their struggle for recognition of their nationality.”

Many of them eventually came to the United States. Including the family of the docent, a resident of Ukrainian Village who had been born in a DP camp. She told us her immediate family had survived the war, but many other relatives had not. Growing up, she said she heard about members of an extended family she never knew.

Finally, a much smaller room in the Ukrainian National Museum tells a less troubling tale: the story of the Ukrainian pavilion at the 1933 Century of Progress world’s fair in Chicago, the lesser-known cousin of the 1893 world’s fair. Remarkably, the structure was a project of Ukrainian immigrants in Chicago, and not sponsored by any government. Least of all the Soviet Union, which was busy murdering Ukrainians wholesale at that very moment in history.

St. Helen Roman Catholic Church & St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral

Posted on March 29, 2022 by admin

During my walk around Chicago’s Ukrainian Village on Sunday, I also visited four churches, two of which I’d been to before: Sts. Volodymyr & Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral. Both have “stunning” and “striking” interiors, to quote myself from 2014, and were certainly worth another look.

A few blocks north of those two is St. Helen Roman Catholic Church, which has masses in Polish, Spanish and English.

“This Polish parish was formed in 1913, and in the early 1960s commissioned the present structure, which blends Art Deco, Modernism and tradition — with a Biblical fish motif,” Open House Chicago says, noting that the architects were Pirola & Erbach, who seem to have done a number of mid-century churches in Chicago.

When I arrived, a Polish mass was in progress. I made myself as unobtrusive as possible at the just inside the door, and admired the handsome interior.

“The spacious interior and ceiling are decorated to draw all eyes to the altar, which is illuminated by light coming through slits in the walls,” says Open House. “The stained glass contains mostly geometric patterns in small fragments of bright, unfiltered colors.”

Outside on a high pedestal, Jesus greets passersby on Augusta Boulevard.

Somewhat lower, but also on a pedestal outside the church, stands a bronze Pope St. John Paul II.

A little further north is St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral.

Again I stood at the back, taking it all in. Not just the marvelous beauty of the interior, but also the exoticism (to my ears) of an Orthodox service in Ukrainian. The priest’s voice, from behind the iconostasis, carried vividly all the way to the back of the nave.

“The cathedral is a remodeled German Lutheran church that exhibits the Medieval-Gothic style of ecclesiastical architecture, including pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses,” Open House says. “The cathedral brings an Eastern-Byzantine interior design into a German-Gothic temple.”

Indeed, an iconostasis and pews. I’ve run across that before.

Noteworthy on either side of the main entrance.

The older inscription, presumably put there when the Ukrainians moved into the Worthmann & Steinbach-designed former Lutheran church (1945), uses the transliteration Vladimir. The newer plaque, put there in 1988 to mark 1,000 years of Christianity in Ukraine, uses Volodymyr.

I expect Vladimir is going to be out of favor among Ukrainians for a long, long time. But in any case, it’s also an example of recontextualizing, rather than tearing a thing down.

Ukrainian Village Walkabout

Posted on March 28, 2022 by admin

On Sunday, I drove into the city with Yuriko, who attended her cake class in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and made some delightful orange pastries.

While she did that, I had a few hours to kick around. Temps were only a little above freezing, but the sun was out and there wasn’t much wind, so it turned out to be a good day for a walk. So I went to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood to see, and document, signs of solidarity with the beleaguered people of that nation. There were flags.

Many flags.

Banners and signs.

Ribbons and bows.

And more.

The neighborhood is reportedly the home of 15,000 or so Ukrainians and the outpouring is highly visible. I could have spent all day taking pictures of blue-yellow bicolor displays.

Heaven on Seven No More

Posted on March 27, 2022 by admin

I learned over the weekend that the restaurant Heaven on Seven, closed since early 2020, has closed permanently. I will miss it. Before the pandemic, I went there once a year or so, even after I quit working downtown.

The joint had much to recommend it, but especially its first-rate Louisiana cuisine. Over the years I had the jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, gumbo, red beans and rice, fried oysters, crab cakes, various po’ boys and pies, and more. The New Orleans decor charmed without being overwhelming, and its seventh floor location at 111 N. Wabash in Chicago’s Loop (the storied Garland Building) had little signage to guide you there. You either knew where it was or you didn’t, especially in the days before the Internet. I can’t remember who introduced me to it, but it was sometime in the late ’80s.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, the dishes at Heaven on Seven weren’t the creation of some big-deal chef who “curated” some “artisanal” cuisine using “local” ingredients “cooked to perfection” to reach some height of “authenticity.” All of that adds up to an overpriced place that people praise because a restaurant can’t really be good if you pay modest prices, can it?

No. At Heaven on Seven, talented cooks created wonderful dishes to remind you of those days and nights in New Orleans or even Lafayette, without inflicting high prices on its patrons.

Just as important, it was never a place to go alone.

Pictured are old friends Kevin and Wendy, whom I met there a number of times for enjoyable lunches. That time was in 2013.

Poplar Creek Forest Preserve on the Equinox

Posted on March 24, 2022 by admin

Sunday and Monday were warmish and mostly pleasant. In typical March style, at least in Northern climes, the rest of the week has been chilly and damp. The persistent drizzle, I suppose, will be a factor in the greening of April. But for now it merely inspires muddy paw prints whenever the dog comes back in.

On Sunday, we took a walk in a section of the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve — officially Arthur L. Janura Forest Preserve, but I’ve never thought of it as that — that we hadn’t been to before, despite having lived in these parts nearly two decades. It’s just off Shoe Factory Road, a name I’ve always liked.

That day might have been the vernal equinox, but the flora knew it wasn’t quite spring yet.

Near the intersection of Shoe Factory and Sutton Road (Illinois 59) is a place called the Great Egret Family Picnic Area, at least according to Google Maps.

The sign in situ makes no such naming claims.

In fact, so weathered is it that it barely makes any naming claims, though I can make out FAMILY PICNIC AREA. The sign is the only way we’d know that, since there is no evidence of tables or any other picnic infrastructure. Just a place to toss your picnic blanket, it seems.

A Short Stop in Pontiac

Posted on March 23, 2022 by admin

We took Ann back to school Sunday before last, the first day of Daylight Saving Time, and since the day was tolerably warm, I insisted on a short stop in Pontiac, Illinois.

Despite Pontiac being on I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis, a route I’ve driven countless times, I’d never stopped there before, unlike such places as Coal City, Dwight, Lincoln, Atlanta, Litchfield and Mount Olive, just to name some of the smaller burgs along the way.

We didn’t spend that much time there. But time enough for us to walk all the way around the Livingston County Courthouse, which is impressive indeed.

It’s the county’s third courthouse; the first was a small wood-frame structure replaced by the second, which burned down in 1874 (pics of the two are here). Architect John C. Cochrane of Chicago, who also designed the Illinois and Iowa state capitols, designed the current Second Empire structure, which was finished in 1875 and restored recently. Technically, it isn’t a courthouse anymore, since the county’s judicial operations relocated to a new building nearby in 2011, but the county still has offices in the older building.

It wouldn’t be an Illinois town of any size without Lincoln acknowledged somewhere, and in the case of Pontiac, it’s a bronze resting on a bronze split-rail fence. It depicts young lawyer Lincoln, who visited the second courthouse periodically.

An Illinois sculptor named Rick Harney completed the work in 2006. Looking at his portfolio, I wonder if it’s easy to access his bronze of Adlai Stevenson in the Central Illinois Regional Airport. Lincoln is fine, but there aren’t that many Stevesons around, even in Illinois.

Looking around the courthouse square, there’s also a less conventional Lincoln.

The inevitable Route 66 mural.

Some handsome buildings from a time when handsome buildings were built in small towns. Before the Depression at the latest, and more likely before WWI.

And a time capsule underfoot.

Looking a little further into that today, I learned that the International Time Capsule Society is a real thing. I knew I got out of bed for a reason.

Savannah Bits

Posted on March 22, 2022 by admin

By the time we got to Factors Walk in downtown Savannah on March 7, it was already dark. Daytime pictures of the area, which used to be home to the sizable business of selling and shipping cotton, are available here.

The ground floor of the Factors Walk buildings facing the Savannah River are mostly oriented to tourists these days, including restaurants and small shops. I bought some postcards at a souvenir store, and when I told the clerk where I lived (he asked), he further asked whether Illinois has mandatory auto emissions tests. I said it does.

He said, as a life-long resident of Savannah, he only recently found out that some states do that. He looked to be in his 30s. It seemed to be a subject of some fascination for him.

Later I checked, and I was only partly correct. Only some counties in Illinois test auto emissions — Cook and Du Page among them, the only counties I’ve ever lived in here. Some Georgia counties do too, but not Chatham, where Savannah is located.

Some of the tourist attractions at Factors Walk are more mobile than the stores, such as the good tourist ship Georgia Queen, apparently docked for the evening.

Another thing I heard from a resident: St. Patrick’s Day is a big to-do in Savannah, probably even bigger this year after two years of cancelation. We came to town nearly two weeks ahead of all that, and so were able to find a room. Closer to the event and we’d have been out of luck, even booking as I did in January.

Some houses were already ready for the festivities, such as along Jones St.

Other places had more topical colors flying.

Savannah is easily as picturesque as Charleston, maybe more so, but it needs more stylish cast-iron covers.

The first evening we were in town, I took a walk near the Isseta Inn. I chanced by the Gingerbread House. I knew it was called that because of the sign out front.

“Built in 1899 by Cord Asendorf, this magnificent house is considered among the finest examples of Steamboat Gothic architecture in America,” the house web site asserts. These days it hosts weddings and other events.

Even closer to the Isetta Inn — on the next block — evidence that the neighborhood continues to gentrify.

Though a little clogged with traffic, Victory Drive is a good drive, among the palms that line it. There is some commercial development, including this sign — which has its own Atlas Obscura page. We weren’t inspired to buy anything there.

The town of Tybee Island has very little free parking. I understand the reasons: lots of visitors, infrastructure needs to be maintained, etc. Still, that grated, especially since it applied even on a Sunday, which is when we drove through.

So besides The Crab Shack, which had a gravel parking lot shaded by tall trees, the only place we stopped was along U.S. 80 on the outskirts of town, where no meters or fee signage existed.

We took a look at a small cluster of shops on the road.

More interestingly, visited Fish Art Gallerie. It has its own Roadside America item, though not including a lot of information. “The folk art environment/gallery/store of Ralph Douglas Jones, who turns junk into fish art. Much colorful nonsense is visible from the street,” RA says.

This is a video of the founder Jones. The guy at the counter when we visited didn’t look like him, which is too bad, since meeting Ralph might be the same kind of trip as meeting Randy in Pittsburgh.

Ann bought some beads and other small items, I bought a cast-iron bottle opener in the shape of a turtle.

One more pic from Tybee Island.

Just more of the trees that helped make visiting this part of the country a delight.

The Isetta Inn

Posted on March 21, 2022 by admin

At one of the corners of Whitaker St. and W. 37th St. in Savannah stands the Isetta Inn, where we stayed three nights.

I didn’t take careful notes when I read a framed article hung on a stairway landing at the Isetta, and I can’t find it posted on line, but I do remember it said that the property was built in 1907, suffered a period of neglect much later in the 20th century (of course) and might have been torn down, but it was restored to magnificence by a dedicated renovationist in the early 21st century. Now it’s a one-of-a-kind hotel.

Its fate could have been like the lot cater-cornered across the intersection. Wonder what used to be there.

I had time to mull that question, which I don’t really need to answer, sitting in one of the red rocking chairs on the Isetta’s delightful front porch. I spent some time there, both during the day and in the evening, reading or just gazing out into the surrounding neighborhood, the Starland District. Both 37th and Whitaker are fairly busy streets, and that stretch of 37th especially is a boulevard shaded by tall southern live oaks fully decked out with Spanish moss.

“Starland” doesn’t sound like an historic name, and it isn’t. Two Savannah College of Art and Design graduates reportedly dreamed up the moniker ca. 2000 to use for an arts district for the city.

“The idea of a vanguard arts district may seem counterintuitive in this slow-paced city of courtly manners and stately architecture, but after almost two decades, an emerging area called the Starland District may finally be hitting its stride,” the New York Times reported in 2015.

“… the Starland District is a collection of art studios, small offices, galleries, cafes and retail shops loosely assembled around Bull Street south of Savannah’s historic downtown and Forsyth Park.”

The lobby of the Isetta is an artful place — actually the whole property is — and so right at home in an arts district. In fact, the lobby displays local art on a rotating basis. The sliced off BMW trunk is the reception desk.

Adjacent to the lobby is an ornate but comfortable living room. I spent a while there as well, writing postcards. Wonder how often that happens.

The entrance to the right off the living room is to the kitchen, where guests could use a table, refrigerator, sink, plates and silverware, and a microwave, but not the stove or oven. We had cereal and other breakfast food — also available to guests — two of our mornings there, and leftovers for dinner one night.

A distinctive feature of the kitchen.

Our room, Hedwig’s Perch, was on the third floor. All of the hotel’s rooms have names, also including Sacred Tower, L-Suite, Polaroid Room, Alpha Romeo, and the posh Presidential. Just before we left, we noticed that the guests in that room had left before us, leaving the door open, so we got a peak inside. Posh indeed.

As for Hedwig’s Perch, it might have been a children’s bedroom originally, or maybe a sewing room, cozy as it was. But it did have two single beds, the only room at the inn with that feature, so I booked it. Two other rooms are on the third floor, and the three share one bathroom with a shower, and one without, off a short hallway. This was never an issue.

Our room was L shaped. Open the door and you see a bed with a cast-iron frame, a rolltop desk and a tree painted on the wall, complete with Spanish moss. Ann had to tell me who Hedwig was: Harry Potter’s owl.

The walls, according to the inn, were “custom painted by famed artist Dame Darcy.” I had to look her up, but the world is full of things I don’t know. Could be I’m not in the right demographic, since she’s known for illustrating works like Vegan Love: Dating and Partnering for the Cruelty-Free Gal, with Fashion, Makeup & Wedding Tips and for Tarot decks that went viral.

Then again, demographics are limiting. After all, some young men were reportedly fond of My Little Pony, so there’s no real reason late middle age/early old age men can’t enjoy, for example, Dame Darcy’s autobiographical graphic novel, Hi Jax & Hi Jinx (Life’s a Pitch and Then You Live Forever). But odds are I won’t read it.

Dame Darcy’s arboreal theme continues along the rest of the wall. I slept in the cast-iron bed, under the 2-D tree canopy. The bed squeaked at a low pitch, even when I wasn’t moving, that would have kept me awake for hours had I not figured out to keep the bed absolutely flush with the wall.

Around the corner of the L is another bed, or a reading nook, which is where Ann slept.

For all its high-polish artistic charms, I’m glad to say Isetta wasn’t vastly expensive. I’ve paid about as much for soulless middle- and upper-middle chain hotel rooms, and somehow staying in a soulless room in a city like Savannah would have been a damned shame. I haven’t worked out exactly why the Isetta was named for the bubble car of that name, but the web site does say the following, attributed to owner Jonathan.

“I’m big believer in alternative transportation to improve quality of life for us. We have a fleet of rental bicycles available to all guests. We are perfectly located for you to see all the sites on two wheels. I also personally have a few examples of historical ‘alternative transportation’ ideas in the form of micro cars. Such as a 1950s BMW Isetta that is our namesake.”

That’s pretty cool, but I’ll bet the bubblecar that’s for hard-core enthusiasts is the Soviet SMZ cyclecar.

Tybee Island Seafood, Gators & Birds

Posted on March 20, 2022 by admin

The seaside town and island called Tybee Island isn’t far from Savannah, connected to the city by U.S. 80. In the city, that route is the palm-lined Victory Drive. Outside town, the road passes the entrance to Fort Pulaski NM along the South Channel of the Savannah River and eventually takes you to Tybee Island, with its beaches and accommodations and shops for beachgoers.

On the way, the drive takes you within sight of Captain Derek’s Dolphin Adventure and Amick’s Deep Sea Fishing (tour operators), Seaside Sisters Gift Shop, Gerald’s Pig & Shrimp, Tybee Island Wedding Chapel & Grand Ballroom and lots of other enterprises longing for sweet visitor dollars. I expect it’s been a hard few years lately, but to judge by traffic to and in Tybee Island, things have picked up.

Not visible from U.S. 80, but evident on Google Maps, is The Crab Shack, about a minute’s drive off the main road on the outskirts of town, down a street that’s otherwise residential. We went there for lunch after visiting Fort Pulaski.

The restaurant isn’t affiliated with Joe’s Crab Shack or any other chain, as far as I can tell. The place apparently evolved from a mid-century fishing camp on Chimney Creek — a place where boats docked and fishing enthusiasts bought bait and beer — into a multi-building restaurant and tourist attraction over the last four decades or so. Organic, mostly unplanned growth, and looks like it.

Try as they might, neither restaurant consultants, nor algorithms nor AI-generated consumer-facing gastrolocus experience programs, can put all the elements of a place like The Crab Shack together in as pleasing a way as individual human effort can, bit by bit over years. Good thing, too.

The tables sprawl out on a wooden deck overlooking the creek, with trees towering overhead and forming a much-needed canopy where there’s no roof (though bird droppings were a worry). The Crab Shack could easily been a tourist trap, especially if the food wasn’t up to par. But it was very good.

This is Captain Crab’s Sampler Platter (for two), featuring boiled shrimp, snow crab, mussels, crawfish, corn, potatoes and sausage. We ate a lot of it, though some mussels, shrimp and crawdads ended up in the refrigerator at the Isetta Inn for later consumption. Ann sent a picture of the platter to Lilly, to inspire envy. The platter happened to be a lot like what Lilly and I ate in New Orleans.

The pie slices we shared for dessert — coconut cream and Key lime — were much better than very good. So good I persuaded myself to eat very them slowly, bite by savored bite, something I don’t often do.

As you’d expect, eating is only part of The Crab Shack experience.

After our meal, we spent a few moments at the Gator Deck, which overlooks a pond.

A pond stocked with alligators. Quite a few, actually. Real and otherwise.

A Crab Shack employee told me the pond alligators were all juveniles, born in captivity and destined for alligator farms. Destined to be wallets and purses, she didn’t say, but I expect that’s what often happens. As far as I could see, alligator wasn’t on the menu at the restaurant, but I don’t see why not.

Elsewhere in the compound is the Bird Shack, stocked with various birds.

Damned if the two multicolored birds weren’t loud. Loud — KAHHHH! without warning. The white bird, less noisy, danced and said a few words when he was so inspired.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Monthly Archives: March 2022