A Poster, A Sign & A Lot of Bumper Stickers

Posted on March 30, 2017 by admin

Persistent rain starting last night and on through most of today. Mud season has started. But it also looks like the grass is greening.

Spotted on a telephone pole on Randolph St. on the near West Side of Chicago late last week. Looks like someone added the toothbrush mustache.

Spotted in Itasca, Ill., also last week, sometime after the presumed wedding. Glad that “Bubba” isn’t dead as a name.

Spotted at a rest stop on I-57 between Champaign and Chicago.

I can’t quite make out all of the stickers, and there are more on the non-visible side of the van, but included in the destinations are the Kennedy Space Center, California, Nevada, Laughlin, NV, Key West, Roswell, NM, Wyoming, Mackinac Island (two), Naples, FL, Ventura, CA, Texas, the UP (more than one, including the 906 sticker), North Dakota, Piggly Wiggly, the Full Throttle Saloon (Sturgis), Route 66, Mississippi, Montana, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, and a sticker that says, “There’s a place for all God’s creatures. Right next to the mashed potatoes.”

Al Stewart at City Winery

Posted on March 27, 2017 by admin

Considering his longstanding love of wine, it seemed fitting that Al Stewart appeared at City Winery in Chicago last Thursday. I don’t share his oenophilia — I like the idea of wine more than wine itself — but I can appreciate an enthusiasm like that. Still, it didn’t matter to me exactly where he was playing. Some time ago, I decided to catch his shows whenever they were convenient to where I happened to be, and anywhere in the Chicago area is close enough.

City Winery is a relatively new place, taking its current form on the near West Side of Chicago only in 2012, and as such, it was a pioneering venue in that part of the city. Just before the music started, an announcer said, “City Winery’s not just a kitschy name. We actually make wine here. All those barrels in the back are filled with our wine, aging for your consumption.”

Carefully stowed barrels dominate the back of City Winery’s music room. The place also has a number of other rooms, including a large restaurant space forming the front of the building. All together, it’s a handsome interior space, characterized by brick walls and barrels and bottles, and the acoustics are good.

I’ve seen Stewart with a band, with sidemen, and by himself. This time, he had a band backing him, the young but talented Empty Pockets. They did a set before Stewart came out, including a fine version of “Fever.” The band’s relative youth caused Stewart to marvel at one point that he was being backed by musicians who weren’t born when the music they were playing came out, but who had the jam down pat anyway. That wouldn’t be quite so remarkable in a classical or jazz context, but I suppose it still is in popular music.

Though not a member of Empty Pockets, sax man (and flautist) Marc Macisso joined Stewart and the band for the concert too. He blew his sax like a man possessed, and did a fine job on the flute as well. On a number of Al Stewart songs, the sax is a defining sound, so it was good Macisso was on hand. He reminded me of the saxophonist who killed it with Stewart during his 1989 Park West concert, who might have been Phil Kenzie (who played on the record Stewart was promoting at the time), though I’m not sure.

The set list for the City Winery concert was different than any other of his that I’ve seen. After a handful of songs — “Sirens of Titan,” “Antarctica,” “Time Passages” — Stewart and the band played all of the songs from the album Year of the Cat in order.

The bonus was Stewart’s usual entertaining patter between the songs. “This brings me to Year of the Cat,” he said by way of introducing the songs. “It was a shock for me. I was an English folk singer playing in coffee bars, and all of the sudden people bought this thing, and I wasn’t sure why. I did begin on a very commercial note by writing a song about an English seafarer from 1591, Richard Grenville. This is a subject that most disco artists at the time were embracing.”

Stewart was being coy. If ever he did a polished commercial record, it was Year of the Cat (except maybe Last Days of the Century, which wasn’t as good). Alan Parsons produced Year, after all. The first song, “Lord Grenville,” does indeed mention Richard Grenville. He of “Out-gunned, out-fought, and out-numbered fifty-three to one.” I believe listening to the song in 1976 was the first time I’d ever heard of him.

About the next song — “On the Border,” a favorite of mine since I acquired the record 40 years ago — he said, “I thought we’d continue with mass popular appeal by doing a song about the Basque separatist movement, the crisis in Rhodesia and the fall of the British Empire, and amazingly this one actually made the top 40. I have no idea how that was possible. I can only assume the disk jockeys didn’t listen to the lyrics.”

For a long time I thought the song was about the Spanish Civil War, but I’ll defer to the songwriter. But it doesn’t really have to be about anything so specific.

Regarding “If It Doesn’t Come Naturally, Leave It” — my least favorite cut on the record — he said, “It has far too many words. If I’d known when I was 30 that I’d be singing it when I was 70, I’d have written half as many words.”

Stewart said that his favorite song on the album is “Flying Sorcery,” which was not top 40, but a fine tune all the same. “It concerns two lovers. I turned them into airplanes. They take off from the same airport but they get caught up in a fog bank and land at separate airports. Obviously that means they’re breaking up.”

I never quite took that from the song, but no matter. It has some wonderful lyrics, including, “You were taking off in Tiger Moths/Your wings against the brush-strokes of the day.” The brush-strokes of the day. What a way to describe the sky. It occurs to me that he’s done other songs with aeronautic images (not on Year), such as “The Immelman Turn” and “Fields of France.” (“When Lindy Comes to Town” talks about flight, too, but it’s a particular historic event.)

He mentioned some alternate lyrics to the song “Year of the Cat,” though not in as much detail as recorded on this Songfacts page, based on a 2015 performance. I think everyone was pretty glad that the final lyrics came out the way they did, including Stewart.

On the whole, Al Stewart was in fine fettle on Thursday. His voice is still clear and his guitar playing is impressively energetic for a man of 71. He also seems to enjoy himself thoroughly on stage, which must be why he still tours. Hope he’s got more years yet.

The Fulton Market District, Chicago

Posted on March 26, 2017 by admin

Last Thursday, late in the afternoon but before dark — Daytime Saving Time is good for something — I took a walk through parts of the the Fulton Market District. Like most urban neighborhoods, it’s a little fuzzy in definition, but roughly speaking the area is on the near West Side of Chicago, west of the Kennedy Expressway and a few blocks to the north and south of Randolph St., until you get to Ogden Ave.

The district is in the midst of a boom. Here are a few headlines about it just from 2017 in Curbed Chicago:

Bright two-bedroom Fulton Market timber loft lists for $475K

Fulton Market office project changes design, again

West Loop residents say five-story proposal looks ‘prison-like’

Ace Hotel in Fulton Market to open in the autumn

Rehab work begins on two older Fulton Market buildings

Another Fulton Market food distributer looks to sell-out to developers

Demolition to clear path for 170-room Fulton Market hotel

The area, formerly a distribution — food wholesalers, mainly — and light industrial district, is giving way to apartments, hotels, restaurants and entertainment. The pattern is a familiar one in Chicago and elsewhere.

West Randolph, looking east, back toward the Loop.
Umami Burger looked intriguing, but I didn’t stop there.

The corner of Randolph and Carpenter St. is home to a particularly striking building, the former Richters Food Products building, which dates from the early 1930s.
The exterior has been immaculately preserved. Forgotten Chicago says that “the architect was H. Peter Henschien, a noted and prolific Chicago-based designer of meat packing plants. The Tribune described the new building at the time of construction as being ‘of pleasing design.’ Bruno Richter had started the firm about ten years earlier in Jefferson Park, with the idea of ‘marketing sausage through extensive advertising.’ ”

Remarkably, Mr. Henschien’s Tribune obit from 1959 is online. A remarkable line from it: “He and his firm designed more than 300 packing plants in the United States and in Russia, Pakistan, Cairo, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Canada.” People have their niches, mostly unknown, or in his case, forgotten.

An update on the Forgotten Chicago post: the Richters Food Products is now occupied by Venue One, which “offers 25,000 square feet of customizable event and meeting space.” The construction crane in the picture doesn’t have anything to do with Venue One, except being nearby. It was merely one of the cranes rising over a number of other projects in the area.

My destination for the evening: City Winery, at Racine Ave. and Randolph.
A cool venue indeed, though it’s a little hard to tell from this picture. More about it tomorrow.

The Courtyards of Plaka, 1987

Posted on March 19, 2017 by admin

Ah, Greek food. A fine thing. I’ve had it in a number of places, including Sydney, but unfortunately not Greece. There was none to be found in San Antonio of the 1970s, nor Nashville of the early ’80s, or at least I made no effort to find it.

So I never had any until sometime in the mid-80s, probably in Chicago. One of the things to do during visits to the city in those days was seek out various kinds of food you couldn’t find at home, relying on word-of-mouth or luck in those pre-look-it-up-on-your-electronic-box days, to get commentary from a crowd of strangers. Will future generations believe people used to live like that?

Based on online evidence, the Courtyards of Plaka seems to be closed, but I’m not entirely sure, and don’t feel like calling them unless I’m going there. In any case, 30 years ago was long enough ago that a lot of restaurants still gave away matches, rather than cards. Now I sometimes can’t find either.

I picked up some matches when I went with my friends Neal and Michele, who lived in Chicago at the time. I just had moved there the month before. I don’t usually write anything on the matches or cards I find at restaurants, but for some reason I did that time. Maybe I should have more often.

Can’t say that I remember much about that evening, though I’m sure we had a fine time. A short 1993 description of the restaurant in the Tribune said: “A lively place, especially once the live piano music gets underway. A handsome bar overlooks the stage-perfect for those who just stop in for a drink. The pretty, two-level dining room is awash in shades of terra cotta, with dark green accents; a series of white wooden slats suspended from the ceiling creates a canopy effect that makes you feel as though you’re eating outdoors.

“The menu lists a fair number of mezedes, the tapas-like tasting portions that lend themselves to grazing. There are also solid, sizable entrees: a pair of double lamb chops, a bit too chewy but quite tasty, and pair of expertly grilled, gently seasoned quail.”

Iolanthe

Posted on March 13, 2017 by admin

Snow last night, first time it’s stuck in quite a while. But only a few inches, not like the East Coast.

This year the Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Co., a nonprofit based in Hyde Park that does performances one weekend of the year at the University of Chicago’s handsome Mandell Hall, produced Iolanthe. I have fond memories of the company’s Yeomen of the Guard, which Lilly and I saw two years ago, so we all went on Friday (except Lilly, whose spring break hasn’t started yet).

Like last time, we ate at Salonica’s first. The face on the telephone pole is still down the street, on the way to the theater.

The show was just as much fun as Yeomen. More, since I knew some of the songs better, including everyone’s favorite lord-marching-trumpets-braying number, which saw a mellifluous chorus of lords spill out from the stage and into the aisles and back, and the renowned patter song about insomnia and the weird dreams of shallow and disturbed sleep.

According to The Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan by Ian C. Bradley, parts of which are online, “[Gilbert] had, in fact, experimented with the metre later used for the nightmare song in a poem entitled ‘Sixty-Three and Sixty-Four,’ which appeared in Fun in 1864 and which began:

Oh, you who complain that the drawing’s insane, or too much for your noodles have found it.
But listen a minute, I’ll tell you what’s in it — completely explain and expound it.

An earlier poem by Gilbert, ‘The Return from My Berth,’ which appeared in Punch in October 1864, gives a more lurid account of a Channel crossing:

The big Channel steamer is rolling,
Frenchmen around me are bilious and fat
And prone on the floor are behaving unheedingly,
It’s a ‘sick transit,’ but never mind that!

Matthan Ring Black was in fine form with the patter, and the rest of his Lord Chancellor part. Everyone else did very well, but I was especially taken with Claire DiVizio, who did the Fairy Queen, and David Govertsen, who not only amused everyone with Private Willis’ single song, but stood perfectly still in the lobby in his bright red guard uniform as the audience filed in. Perhaps that’s a G&S tradition I don’t know about, but in any case he was there.

Private Willis also got the biggest laugh of the evening:

That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!

Of course, there’s Victorian context to that, but a modern one as well.

Yuriko liked it, and Ann, who’s developing a taste for musical theater, said she enjoyed the show a lot. I never had such a taste as a teenager, though I did (mostly) enjoy the successive senior plays put on at my high school toward the end of each school year, all of which happened to be musicals: Bye Bye Birdie, The Mikado, Fiddler on the Roof, and West Side Story.

One more thing, which if I knew, I’d forgotten: Iolanthe apparently inspired Chief Justice William Rehnquist to add gold stripes to his robe in 1995. Guess he decided that a powdered wig as well would be a bit much.

Recent Wind Incidents

Posted on March 7, 2017 by admin

During most of the day yesterday, and especially late into the evening, brisk winds blew around here. I fell asleep listening to the strong wind, and while that can be a soothing sound, it’s much better if you’re in rental property.

In the morning, when calm air had returned, there was no visible damage. Some items outside on the deck had been moved around, and a few small branches had fallen. It all made me wonder: if the rotation of the Earth ultimately moves the atmosphere, how is it that the wind isn’t always like that? Or worse, like it is on the gas giants, with their perma-storms? What makes a calm day on any part of the Earth?

When returning from Texas Sunday before last, the wind was up as the plane came in for its landing at Midway, making one of the bumpier approaches I’ve experienced lately. About two minutes before touchdown, when even the flight attendants had buckled down, suddenly one of them got up, wetted a towel, and dashed past me — I was on row six or seven — and helped clean up a few rows back, where a woman had thrown up. Then the flight attendant, navigating her way as the plane bumped around, made it back to her seat for the landing. Expert moves, clearly.

On Sunday, February 19, a few days before we arrived in the city, a handful of tornados hit San Antonio. According to the Express-News on the 21st: “The National Weather Service confirmed late Monday morning an EF-1 strength tornado with 105 mph and a path length of 4.5 miles touched down on Linda Drive near the Quarry shopping center.”
That’s a few blocks from my mother’s house.

Fortunately, an EF-1 is a weak tornado, or I’d be writing a very different post. As it was, she lost power for a while, and it looked like a neighbor’s fence had been damaged, though it’s possible the fence had already partly fallen through neglect. Otherwise my mother’s house wasn’t damaged.

A few days after the hit, we noticed some damage to a small shopping center a few blocks north of her house — bits of missing signage, broken tree limbs and roof problems, mostly. Also, some workmen were taking down a damaged ornamental brick wall at a nearby apartment complex. Better to have no tornadoes, but if you have to have one, a weak one is what you want.

Winterlude ’17

Posted on February 15, 2017 by admin

Time for a winter hiatus. Back on about February 26, when it will still be winter, but at least with the prospect of a less winterish March to look forward to. Winter around here fades like it’s being tuned out by a dimmer switch — in the hands of a three-year-old, so the transition isn’t very smooth.

Before we saw the parade in Chinatown earlier this month, we walked by the Chicago Public Library Chinatown Branch. It’s fairly new and I didn’t remember seeing it before.
It’s a nice piece of work. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the building won a Library Building Award from the American Institute of Architects and the American Library Association about a year ago. Being Sunday, it was closed, so we didn’t have a chance to go inside and look around.

Here’s something I saw not long ago when I happened to have a camera in my hand.
It was a drink machine. That it takes credit and debt cards isn’t so strange. Apple Pay, on the other hand, is a new one for me on a vending machine. But maybe I don’t see enough vending machines to notice. At least regular cash is still an option. What’s next, Bitcoin?

The 2017 Chicago Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade

Posted on February 6, 2017 by admin

I ought to go to more parades. As long as the crowds aren’t impossible, they can be worth a few hours, and at a parade you’re participating in something that must be as old as urban civilization. Parades of some kind were surely features of life in Ur.

I’ve been to parades on the occasion of First Night, St. Patrick’s Day, Patriots Day (the Massachusetts holiday), San Jacinto Day, July 4, Halloween, and Veterans Day. I’ve seen them in honor of Puerto Rican Day, Indian Independence Day, and the first day of the MacKenzie, ND, County Fair. I took in a Democratic Party torchlight parade at which I saw candidate Michael Dukakis walk by. I’ve seen them in Japan, Indonesia and Disney World, or was it Land? I even saw one including dwarfs.

But never a parade for Chinese New Year. I had that in mind when I decided a while ago to go to Chicago’s Chinatown for its parade, provided it wasn’t bitterly cold, as it was last year. The parade this year was Sunday, February 5. A little late after the Chinese lunar new year, but close enough. Temps were above freezing.

The event drew a crowd.
That image is looking south down S. Wentworth Ave., from across W. Cermak Rd., through the Chinatown Gate. The crowd that way was very thick, too thick for comfort. So we found a spot on the south side of Cermak, just west of Wentworth. If we’d thought about it more, we would have stayed on the other side of Cermak, which was the sunny side of the street, but things weren’t too bad at our spot. Eventually we were able to stand right next to the barricade.

These are the kinds of things you want to see at a Chinese New Year parade. Dragons on sticks and bright colors.

And the likes of these guys.

And colorful flags.
What’s a Chinese New Year parade without the the Irish pipe band Shannon Rovers?
Much of the procession included ordinary parade stuff, which a distinct Chinese-American aspect. I suspect Shannon Rovers, for their part, seldom miss an opportunity to be in a Chicago parade. I’ve seen them before, but not in a parade.

Among other groups that wandered by the viewing stand, and then our position to the west of it, were the Chicago Police — not the cops doing crowd control — and Fire departments, the American Legion, the FBI Chicago Division (?), the PRC Consulate General, Hyatt, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, the Taiwanese Benevolent Association, the Taiwanese American Chamber of Commerce, Duen Feng Midwest High School Association, the Chinese Entrepreneur Organization, Chiu Quon Bakery, the Chinese-American Service League, and the Indianapolis Chinese Community Center, who brought their own dragons on sticks.
Politicos were on hand, mostly offering pablum from the viewing stand. Schools were well represented, including some by their bands.
Then there was this fellow.
Wonder how many parades a year that shoe is in.

The Move Up North, 1987

Posted on January 22, 2017 by admin

Thirty years ago, I packed up and moved to Chicago. Nothing like moving in late January to make you lose your taste for long-distance moving, but that didn’t stop me from packing up again three years later to move even further, again in the winter. And twice again in the 1990s.

Instead of writing in any detail about the move, I did a schematic in a notebook I used at the time as a diary. I did that occasionally.
The move was fairly straightforward. Load up a rental truck in Nashville, unload at my new apartment in Andersonville in Chicago, take the truck back to Nashville, drive my car and whatever I hadn’t loaded back to Chicago. About 500 miles each way. I guess it was tiresome, but I was young.

Weather wasn’t a factor, except for one incident. While driving the empty truck back to Nashville — and in fact just inside Davidson County — I hit a patch of black ice. For a flash of a terrifying moment, the truck was swaying wildly. But I stayed on the road.

Lull-Time Entertainment

Posted on January 2, 2017 by admin

We opened our presents early on the morning of December 22, since Yuriko and Ann were off to Japan later that day. Christmas itself passed quietly, though we did prepare a nice dinner. As for New Year’s Eve, Lilly went out with friends — as you should do at 19 — while I stayed home with the dog, a more fitting evening for middle age.

In between those moments, work slacked off, and I enjoyed the lull. Among other things, Lilly and I watched various TV shows when she was home, such as episodes of Frasier (it holds up well) and the newer and considerably different, but also very funny Louie. I also had her watch the “Turkeys Away” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

We saw an episode of Bob’s Burgers that involved a gingerbread house contest. Could those really exist? I asked myself later. Yes indeed. Just Google “gingerbread contest” or the like and you get many hits about various events, such as the 2016 National Gingerbread House Competition at the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC, held just before Thanksgiving.

“It all began with a small group of gingerbread houses built by community members in 1992 as another way to celebrate the holiday season with no plans to continue the following year,” says the competition’s web site. “There was no possible way to know that more than two decades later The Omni Grove Park Inn National Gingerbread House Competition™ would be one of the nation’s most celebrated and competitive holiday events.”

We’ve tried to build those things before. We aren’t dedicated much to the task, so it usually ends up more like a gingerbread trailer park after a tornado.

On the evening before New Year’s Eve, Lilly and I went into the city to see The Christmas Schooner on stage at the Mercury Theater, a mid-sized Chicago venue on the North Side not affiliated with Orson Welles that I know of.

The play is a musical set in the 1880s, involving a German-immigrant ship captain in Manistique, Mich., who hits on the idea of shipping Christmas trees to Germans in Chicago. The trouble is, sailing on Lake Michigan in late November/early December is dangerous, especially in the days of small wooden vessels and no weather reports. Eventually the captain goes down with his ship but his widow and son figure out a way to keep the trade going. The story is a fictionalized account of the real Christmas tree trade between the UP and Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which claimed a number of ships and men, notably the Rouse Simmons, which went down with all hands in Lake Michigan in late 1912.

I’ve long been impressed by the level of talent involved in the Chicago theater, and The Christmas Schooner was no exception. The acting, singing and dancing — or rather, motions on the stage, not a lot of formal dancing — were all first rate. It reminded me that I need to see more live theater in the city, now that the logistics of parenthood isn’t quite as complicated as it used to be.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Chicago