FuzzyCo

A couple of days ago, Erica and I were driving down Granville to get some coffee at Metropolis and we saw two people with paint rollers painting over Mental's mural. Oh well, we thought, that's a shame, but it's been up for over a year, which in streetart terms is pretty much an eternity. I assumed the next time we saw that wall we'd see just a blank brown wall.

Instead, yesterday we saw this:

Erica commented that it reminded her of a documentary we'd seen where an artist in New Orleans had put up stickers on abandoned buildings where people could fill in the sentence "I wish this was…". And in fact, when I took a closer look at the descriptive text next to the piece, it was the same artist: Candy Chang.

By the time I was there on Thursday, the chalk was already missing from all little holders, I couldn't add my contribution, but it was pretty full anyway:

Playboy Rabbit Head Coming Down from Fuzzy Gerdes on Vimeo.

I know from emails and texts I've received over the last few weeks that it's not big news to most of you that the Chicago office of Playboy Enterprises will be closing on April 30, 2012. And yes, to answer the question a lot of you have been asking in those messages, it will definitely affect my job in some way. But that's not what I'm writing about today.

One of the great things about working at Playboy over the years has been the great art collection that the magazine had amassed over the years, and the excellent work of the curatorial staff in displaying and educating about that art in the office. For example, there were several Ed Paschke pieces within a stone's throw of my office, and that was pretty damn cool.

There's a bronze Rabbit Head sculpture by Richard Hunt that has hung in the lobby of the 680 North Lake Shore office since this office was opened in 1990. On January 30 and February 2, 2012, the sculpture was taken down. I snapped a few photos throughout those days, just in the course of going back and forth across the office. I happened to swing by the lobby right as the bunny actually descended and got this video.

It's so interesting how scoring can really make a film. Without any sound, even sped-up this video is rather boring. I thought about putting Yakety Sax or some sort of ragtime under it to give it that comedy flare, but then I found this delightfully somber piece by Kevin MacLeod that sets an appropriate melancholy tone, I think.

When winter hits as hard as it does in Chicago, you really have to do one thing. Well, drink and one other thing. You've got to get out into it and make it fun. So when the first big snow of the winter hit last week, Erica, our friend Megan, and I all headed out for Cricket Hill to do some sledding.

I've tried to explain to people from outside the Chicago just what kind of "hills" we're stuck using in this flat, flat land to do our sledding. I think the picture above says it all. But we still managed to wear ourselves out and get the snowy part of the winter off to a good start:

And speaking of actual Chicago-style refreshment, here's the upstairs bar at Mörso, a new restaurant from Matt Maroni (of our fave Gaztro-Wagon). The bar is presided over by "Librations Wizard" Matt ‘Choo’ Lipsky. And out of all these fancy liquors, my eye of course was immediately drawn to that distinctive yellow-and-red bottle in the upper right: Malort. Chicago indeed.

One of my pet-peeves is advertising that makes it really obvious that some production artist somewhere had 40 copies of the same ad and spent the afternoon copy-and-pasting city names into the same text field. I mean, if you’re going to say that something is “Chicago-style”, of course it would be awesome if you were actually relating to the city, but at the very least throw us a bone and throw a “windy city” pun in there or a reference to the lake or a picture of hot dog or something. But c’mon, a mountain? I mean, the city had to make Cricket Hill.

So you're driving back to Chicago* from Northwest Indiana (or anywhere farther south or east) and so you're coming up 65. First off, to me it's well-worth the $3.50 for the Skyway** to not have to rub bumpers with all the trucks on 80***. And then, right after you've paid the toll, Google Maps, et al, would have you stay on 90 and then take 55 to Lake Shore Drive. Boo. Take the second exit to Stony Island Ave and take that to the Drive. It's the Chicago equivalent of taking a scenic byway instead of the highway. You're immediately in the city. Oh, my wonderful Chicago. You get the grand thoroughfare that is Stony Island, then wind your way through Jackson Park, pass the majestic Museum of Science and Industry, and then approach downtown with Lake Michigan just to your right. What could be better? And Google Maps agrees that it only adds five minutes to your trip. Earlier today we went an hour out of our way in Kentucky to take a scenic byway (and visit a distillery). This little bit of tourism in your own city will only cost you five minutes (and $4.30 or so).

* And you live on the northside reasonably near the lake. Like me. Look, this is all about me, anyway, so don't worry if this is a terrible route to your house, just share your awesome tip in the comments.
** Plus the 80¢ or whatever for the Indiana Toll Road part of 90.
*** Yes, even with all the weird construction on the Indiana Toll Road. Still better than trucks.

This is my new favorite Chicago streetart. The first piece I saw was this (above) at street level and I thought it might have been commissioned by the neighborhood organization or something (the empty building right next door is sporting a paint job that has the exact vibe). And the next piece I saw (below) at a playground on Lawrence Ave fed into that notion. The canvas for these pieces is the dour brown paint favored by the Chicago Graffiti Blasters and I even wonder if it might be the Blasters themselves trying to leave something more cheerful in their wake than their normal acres of dull brown.

The Lawrence Ave piece has the only thing like a signature or tag I've seen on these pieces -- a big 312 at the end of the piece, so that's how I'm refering to these (since 'blue liney things' sounds a little vague).

The next two pieces I saw, however, laid to rest the idea that this was anything authorized or official, as they were on classically graffitied roof-top walls within sight of the Brwn Mawr and, more recently, Sheridan El stops:

(detail from this piece)

Update: Andrew Huff has let me know that the artist's tag is "Mental" -- 312 is a crew affiliation.

Back in December the Brandenberger Schützen Verein (the German pellet-gun shooting club I'm a member of), held our annual King and Queen shoot where we choose our club's royalty for the next year by the rather random method of shooting at a plywood eagle. But the coronation of our King and Queen didn't happen until this weekend. This was the club's 20th coronation, but my first and it was quite a thrill to experience all the pageantry (and weirdness) of a German-American banquet and ceremony.

We invited all the other Schützen Vereins in the region and Peoria Sport Verein (Peoria, IL), Deutsch-Amerikanischer Schützenverein (Auburn Hills, MI), and Schützenverein St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) all came out for the event.

In the morning was a shooting competition at the DANK Haus with teams from each club vying for the Brandenberger Traveling Cup (spoiler: it's still traveling). The last time I mentioned the BSV I noted that I was not being a great club member in terms of meetings and other such club duties. Well, this time I showed up at 7 am to help set up and make dozens of open-faced sandwiches to feed all our guests.

And then last night we had a grand banquet out in Buffalo Grove at the Schwaben Center. The uniforms! The food! The music! The royalty!

Related:
Photos by me.
Zulkey's post about the evening

So, we've got a snowstorm bearing down on us here in Chicago. Being Chicagoans, we sort of collectively oscillate between "oh no, the whole city must shut down" and "eh, I'll believe it when I see it"*. Nicely, my work has already closed the office for tomorrow, so we're planning out a day of being snowed in. I ran outside just now for a couple quick videos and photos.

There's not a lot of accumulation yet, but it's blowing pretty hard:

Hard enough to rip awnings off of buildings:

Driving seems to be pretty hairy. People are hesitant to go even when the light turns green:

My friend Bryan tweeted the following photo and said:

No zombies yet, & I refuse to say "snowpocalypse" till I see zombies

Happy now, Bryan?

Update: Erica and I actually made it around the block on the next day and took some photos.

* Erica calls this latter attitude "crying sheep".

I was at the Old Navy on State Street yesterday—Erica had alerted me that the post-Holiday clearance was in full swing. I went over after work and went up to the second floor and kind of went crazy. Western Shirts for $15! Clearance flannel shirts for $4.50 or so! After I'd been there a while, a store employee was walking around the second floor and said that the store was closing. I hadn't realized I had been there so long. When I went downstairs to pay, there was a bunch of conversation going on and my checkout clerk seemed visibly shaken. "Did something just happen?" I asked. "Somebody just tried to rob the store. That's why we're closing and why all those cops are in the store."

Ooooohh… look over there, cops!

Pepper spray used in downtown store robbery attempt
William Lee
January 11, 2011 9:26 PM
One of three men pepper sprayed at least three patrons at downtown's Old Navy store in an apparent attempted robbery, Chicago police said.

The three would-be robbers fled the store at 35 N. State St. without taking anything, authorities said. Police at the Central police district confirmed that the incident occurred at the Old Navy store.

At about 7 p.m., the three men, described as being between 18 and 21, entered the store and attempted to rob several patrons, police spokesman Veejay Zala said. One of the three men then sprayed three patrons and all three men ran from the store.

No arrests were made Tuesday night. It was not immediately clear whether store cameras captured images of the men.

I guess I was lucky I got so wrapped up in khakis vs. cords.

A pleasure that Erica and I share is Chicago's Christkindlmarket, a German-style open air food and gift market. There's something so cheery about a warm pork sandwich and even warmer mulled wine, standing outside in the cold of a Chicago winter. Usually we get downtown sometime in December, grab some food, glance at the stalls with German trinkets and Guatemalan and scarves, and head out. This year, we were about to leave when an ornament on the outside of one of the bigger stalls caught our eyes: a witch holding a cat (or seal—there's some debate in the Gerdes house).

We ended up inside the massive Frank's Ornament House and were overwhelmed by the variety of ornaments available. There were delicate, completely traditionally crafted glass ornaments of every interest a person might have. We went, in current Gerdes parlance, hog-wild.

Erica's photo tour of the ornaments, with commentary

So, I'm in this shooting club with a bunch of old German people.

This spring, I read this an article in Time Out Chicago about a shooting range in the DANK Haus, the German-American cultural center over in Lincoln Square. It sounded crazy and fun and I traded some emails with Shaun along the lines of "we should do this some time" but went no farther than that. But then a few months later, Steve sent an email to me and some other friends throwing down the challenge and setting a date. In the end, only Mark Geary and I showed up to join Steve at the DANK Haus (our friends Monte and Anne have more recently been joining us).

My first misapprehension that needed to be corrected was that I thought this was something like bowling, as in that you could just show up, pay a fee, shoot and leave. In fact, the Brandenberger Schützen Verein is a club, so you have to become a club member if you want to shoot repeatedly (they do let people try it out once, though, to see if it's for you). And there are certain club responsibilities—meetings that involve no shooting and so on. I have been, it's fairly safe to say, the worst club member this year, in terms of meeting those other responsibilities, and yet everyone is still pretty nice to me.

The guns we shoot with are just pellet guns, powered by compressed air or springs. Injuries are very rare—I managed to cut my face on a gun sight this year and no one could remember anyone else ever being hurt that way before—and are kept low by the club rule of "shoot first, then drink". But we do drink—it's a German club after all. The DANK Haus has three different bars in the building, but on Wednesday nights, when the ciub meets, the one in our meeting room/shooting range is the only one that's open, so in addition to club members we also have German language class students and other visitors drinking cheap German beer and partaking of the plentiful German snacks.

A few weeks ago we had one of our year-end events: the King and Queen shoot. A plywood eagle was mounted at the end of the range and everyone took turns shooting at the extremities of the eagle. We shot off the wings and then the claws (Steve was the winner of one of the claws). And then men shot at the head and women at the tail to determine who would be the King and Queen of the club for the next year. It's all very random, but good fun. I finally brought along a couple of cameras (including a film camera—I'm trying to clean out the crisper of all this old film I have) and shot a bunch of photos.

I had Korean BBQ for the first time last week at San Soo Gap San (5247 N Western) and I'm an instant convert. When you order any of the main meat dishes, a glowing brazier of real charcoal coals in placed in the middle of your table and your meat comes delightfully marinated, but raw. So you grill the meat yourself, which means that the entire meal is accompanied by the sounds and smells of grilling meat. It also, of neccessity, spaces out the meat through the meal, giving you plenty of time to enjoy the copious banchan -- the cornucopia of small dishes that accompany the meal. There were, seriously, 15 or so small dishes. We had very little idea what anything was, but that was half the fun. It all makes for a very social meal I'd recommend for 3 to 6.

(Originally posted on Chicago Metblog: San Soo Gap San)

The Chicago Reader has come our with their Best Of 2010 edition and we and our friends have done well.

Impress These Apes (running now - Mondays at ComedySportz!) which both Erica and I help produce was named "Best Variety Show".

The Belmont Burlesque Revue, whom Erica has choreographed for and I comedied, was named "Best Burlesque Troupe".

And our friends Eric Reda* and Philip Dawkins' Chicago Opera Vanguard was named "Best Effort to Keep Opera a Living Art".

* Eric Reda is, of course, Erica Reid's vowel-shift-twin.

My blogging home-away-from-home since 2004 has been the Chicago Metblog and it's just been announced that the whole network of 57 cities is closing down at the end of the month. Personally it's all a little weird—if you go check out the posts over there, you'll see that it's been effectively dormant since last summer. As the "city captain" for Chicago, that's my responsibility and it's been at the back of my head for months that I needed to find someone with time and energy who wanted to revive the Chicago site to hand off my captaincy to. But I've been stymied from even starting that search by the thought of how many great group blogs there already are in Chicago. Maybe Chicago doesn't need the Metblogs. Some of those other 56 cities do, though, so I'm really sad about the network going away. And maybe, bad thoughts whisper in the back of my head, it's my fault the whole thing is going down the tubes since I didn't keep Chicago (6th most active site in the network, even with a year off) running smoothly. I'm guessing it's not just me, but it stings nonetheless.

I've got a post up over on the site for reminisces and so on, though of course it'll only be up for a week.

Fuerza Bruta is a crazy dance/music/performance piece. It's an amazing spectacle and Erica and I loved seeing it in New York. The show is coming to Chicago starting May 21 and I heartily recommend seeing it if you have the spare $50.

Claire asked "chicago eaters: what are your favorite BYOBs in Andersonville/Edgewater/Uptown?" and my answer was just a bit longer than 140 characters.

I didn't realize how few of the places we usually eat are BYOB; I guess we like alcohol provided with our meal. But a few selections:

Tanoshii (5547 N Clark) - a sushi place run by the inventive "Sushi Mike". The thing to do here is not to order off the menu, but just to tell your server your general likes and dislikes (and allergies, I suppose) and how much you want to spend and let the sushi chef go to town. They rarely disappoint.

Hama Matsu (5143 North Clark) - just a regular sushi place, but nice.

Icosium Kafe (5200 N Clark) - great Moroccan crepes, both savory and sweet. If you're trying to Google it, note that they seem to randomly interchange Cs and Ks (Ikosium Cafe, etc).

Pho Xe Tang - Tank Restaurant (4953 N Broadway) - big noisy Vietnamese.

Apart Pizza (5624 N Broadway) - This is a bit of a fudge. I suppose, technically, you could eat in and BYOB at Apart, but the atomosphere is nil. But I put it on the list because it's really good pizza and you could order in and drink whatever you want. I suppose under that criteria, Ras Dashen and Indie Cafe are both great fancy-order-in-and-drink-your-own (FOIADYO?) options.

Our friend Beth makes fun and funny pillows under the name Diffraction Fiber (you may have seen her ctrl-alt-delete pillow set on your favorite nerd blog) and we've given her state pillows as wedding presents before. So when we trying to come up with a wedding present for our friends Ben and Emily, we thinking about getting them an Illinois pillow, because they both love Chicago (they even had their Chicago-themed apartment featured in a Time Out article). Brainstorm—why not pillows of the Chicago flag? They came out great—we gave two to Ben and Emily and kept two for ourselves (I'm justifying it by telling myself that 4 pillows would be awkward on a couch). Beth says she's adding them to her repertoire, so if you love Chicago as much as we do, order a set today.

These were sitting on our front steps this morning. You'd think the bottom one would be more upset about being thrown up on.

I read about Rick Bayless' brand new Mexican streetfood(ish) place Xoco yesterday in the Trib and the Decider and my first thought was to wait a few weeks for the lines to die down. But then work got all busy and I didn't get out of the building to get some lunch until 2:30 and I took the chance that the lunch rush would be over.

I was correct. At 3:00 pm there was practically no wait at all -- there were just a few people ahead of me in line (two places ahead of me in line was restaurant PRer Ellen Malloy and Rick Bayless came running over to take a picture of her with his iPhone).

Rick Bayless was very much a presence in the open kitchen of Xoco -- snapping photos, clanging around with pots and pans, and doing an interview with a Spanish-language television host (above). I try not to get starstruck, but yeah, he's a handsome man.

For lunch I got a churo, a limonada, and the Torta Cubana. I had meant to save the churo for dessert, but my sandwich took a little while to come (I'll let it slide—it's the first week) and so I ate the churo to tide me over. The churo was delightful—sweet, cinnamony, warm, and just the right ratio of crispy and doughy. The limonada was similarly delightful -- thick with lime flavors and fairly tart.

The Cubana sandwich was good, but not the best Cuban sandwich I've ever had. Notably, there was no pickle, which I would consider a component that really makes a Cuban sandwich. Not to rag on it too much -- it was a good sandwich and the bacon on it was incredible. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have gotten a Cuban sandwich at a Mexican joint. I'll definitely be back to try some of the other offerings.

Xoco is only open for lunch and dinner right now, and they're not offering takeout (which is a wise choice, given the time it took for my eat-in order). The breakfast offerings already on the menu look incredible and I can't wait for them to open earlier.

Novelty Golf and Games* in Lincolnwood (3650 West Devon Ave) has everything you'd want from a miniature golf setup: big random sculptures, mechanical rotate-y things (including a windmill), and oddly difficult holes. The Bunny Hutch is right next door and there's an Oberweis across the street for pre-game hot dogs or post-game ice cream, respectively. There are two 18 hole courses and there's a second game discount if you just can't get enough miniature golf.

* the "and Games" is batting cages and an arcade.

You know, Sardines. (I don't think I knew what Sardines was until I worked it out from context in a British novel.)

Most people believe, just because the novels and movies tell them so, that Sam Spade (and his late partner Miles Archer) lived and worked in San Francisco. But here's photographic proof that their offices were in Chicago, on Wells Street in Old Town.

(Originally posted at the Chicago Metblog)

I've gone long stretches in Chicago without a car, so when I'm in a borrowed vehicle I always have an impulse to go do some errands. Even when, as this evening, the errand I'm on is to get parts for my own car so that I can fix it and then drive it anywhere I please. Even then, behind the wheel of a friend's minivan, I had a moment where I wondered if there was anything else I needed to do while I had this mobile power.

Yippee!

I know nobody asked, but here's my positions on a couple candidates and referendii in this fast-upcoming election. As always, I encourage you to research the issues that matter to you. And then, you know, vote the way I tell you.

National

Obama-Biden. Please? I mean, really, do I need to go through all the reasons why I support the Irish nerd?

Illinois

The Illinois Constitution requires that every 20 years we have to vote whether to have a constitutional convention to revise our state constitution, and 2008 is one of those years. This is a tricky issue -- is there enough benefit to possibly be had to justify the risk of the changes that could occur? At this time in Illinois' history, I'm going to go with the League of Women Voters of Illinois and vote No to a constitutional convention.

Every election in Illinois we get to vote whether to retain our judges. You can educate yourself about all the judges and there are certainly a few judges that I would recommend you vote No on. But just between you and me I'm going for simplicity and voting No on all the judges. I'm not worried that my vote, nor even yours if you follow my example, are going to vote out a good judge. The stats show that judges are overwhelming retained, by large margins. And I have this odd idea that even a good judge can benefit from noticing that a few people voted not to retain them. The job they do is so crazy-important that a moment of soul-searching every couple years is certainly not too much to ask.

And heck, since I'm on a roll, why not talk about some places I don't even live:

California

Californians, please vote No on Proposition 8. I love being married to the person I love, and I think everyone should have the right to marry the person they love, no matter the gender of that person. If you'd like the perspective of someone who actually lives in your state, I refer you to the earnestness of Jesse Thorn.

Ottawa County, Michigan

Somehow I ended up on the New Holland Brewing mailing list and this week they sent me an email about an election proposal to allow the sale of beer of Sundays. We can already buy all the liquor we want (and more!) in Illinois on Sundays, so it took me a moment of research to discover that they were referring to an issue in Ottawa County, Michigan. So, New Holland needs to work on targeting their mailings a little better. But sure, heck, the citizens of Ottawa County deserve the right to purchase a refreshing beverage any day of the week as much as the rest of us. Please note that this one of those confusingly worded ballots -- if you want to vote Yes to Sundays then you need to vote No on the ballot.

The short letter I just wrote my Alderman:

As one of your constituents, I'm asking you to vote against the "Event Promoters" ordinance on Wednesday. Part of what drew me to Chicago so many years ago was the vibrant artistic culture that pervades our city -- and that culture starts from the ground up. This ordinance would salt the earth of our culture, to labor a metaphor.

Update: the ordinance has been tabled. Which doesn't mean it's gone, just that there's going to be "further research".

I'm feeding Shaun and Kristen's cats, and as I was leaving their place this morning, I glanced out the window to look at the top of the awning next door (I have an affection for an upside-down plastic alligator that's been there for 2 years) and there was a hawk sitting there, with a torn up pigeon in its claws. Because of the arrangement of the buildings, it was about 8 feet away from me. I tried to get my camera out, but I guess the movement spooked it, so it flew away. I went outside and I could see the hawk up in a tree in the backyard:

I went back up into Shaun's place and out on the back porch and I was able to get a couple of shots there. If you look closely, you can see the pigeon:

(Hawk? Falcon? Eagle? I invite correction or specific identification from my bird-watching friends.)

A few months ago, there was a link on Gapers Block to scans at the Library of Congress of a 1917 pamphlet by the Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago titled "The Public Dance Halls of Chicago". The short pamphlet is a treasure trove of glimpses into Chicago Life of a century ago, turn-of-the-century-moralizing, and the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same. In one of my fits of... OCD? mania? civic enthusiasm? I OCRed the whole thing and present it after the jump.

(I also made a PDF, if you want to download the whole thing, but don't want to download 13 individual TIFFs from the LOC.)

Tony Sam heads off to LA real soon now and tonight was his last night at Chicago Underground Comedy. ChUC will soldier on under Elizabeth and Dan's terrible rule, but we'll miss Tony.

Andrea, Jin, and I acccepted the city's challenge this weekend and rode down (and back) the entire length of the lakefront path. I got a little sunburnt and nearly got in two accidents, but otherwise we had a grand time.

(If you're thinking of doing the trip, I wrote up some more detailed suggestions for the Chicago Metblog.)

Chic-a-go-go is an awesome Chicago cable access show -- a crazy fusion of Soul Train and a puppet show, with plenty of corny jokes and punk DIY sensibility. A few weeks ago I got their periodic newsletter and Jake mentioned that they were taping the 500th episode and needed a photographer. I had to miss out on auditing the latest Don't Spit the Water auditions, but it was totally not to be missed. How great was it? DJ Casper was there and taught us the Cha-Cha Slide. Andre Williams ("Shake a Tail Feather") was there just being snazzy. People danced. We did the El Line and the Fantasy Dance. I took over 600 pictures. (Here's a smallish selection.) Yay!

It's almost election day, and so time for me to harrange all my friends to a) vote and b) vote out some judges. In Cook County we get to vote whether to retain our judges, but it's a reasonably obscure process and there are a lot of judges (70, this year) and so it's very, very rare for a judge to be voted out. But there are a couple of really terrible judges on the ballot this year, so if you live in Cook County please check VoteForJudges.org, read my Metblog post on the subject, and vote No to Cynthia Brim, Robert Kowalski, and Amanda Toney. (Or just do what I do and stick it to The Man and vote No on all the judges.)

I finally did my first Chicago Critical Mass ride, and I'm kicking myself that I've been in Chicago this long and never done one. It was soooo much fun.

Critical Mass is advertised as being officially without organization and I got to see that in action as two different routes were proposed, one to Humboldt Park and the other to Oak Park and the mass deciding by a quick vote-by-cheer. Also, I think on average the more committed riders show up earlier, so when it's time to actually start moving, they're stuck in the middle of a mass of riders who don't quite seem to know what to do.

But it all just worked out -- the Critical Mass ride seemed to be an example of the wonderful things possible when unorganized but well-intentioned people get together for a common purpose.

I have to admit I was a little surprised at how polite and cheerful the whole thing was. I mean, the ride itself is an aggressive thing -- we do stop traffic and hog the road. But everyone was unfailing nice. When a driver stuck in a long line of cars tried to lurch out into bike traffic (one of the, also surprisingly, few openly upset drivers) a young man riding near me called out, "Ma'am, please slow down." When she replied with a hearty, "Fuck you," his only response was a repeated, "Please, ma'am, just slow down, please."

Also, I took a lot of pictures of the freak bikes and the (cough) unusual folks, but what was really impressive was the hundreds (thousands?) of just folks who were out for a nice bike ride.

So, see you at the Daley Plaza the last Friday of the month on your bike. Let's go for a bike ride!

(Originally posted on the Chicago Metroblog)

For the first time in over a decade, I'm living in a place where I don't have free laundry. It's not terrible -- there are only three units in the building, so I've only been trying to do laundry the same time as someone else once in seven months, and it's a $1.50 (six quarters) a load for both the washer and the dryer, but the dryer gets a load done in one cycle (which is better than the (free) dryer at the last place I lived).

But what is terrible is that I've become a quarter-hoarder.

The normal thing, the smart thing to do (what my fiancee does) would be to stop at the bank every so often and change a twenty for two rolls of quarters. That is not what I do. What I do is try to keep the quarters I get in change for laundry. What I do is to try and maximize the amount of quarters I get in change. What I do is to buy little things I don't need, just to get the change. What I do is use dollar bills, even when I have exact change.

It's a problem.

Who suffers? I suffer, because I've constantly got a back pocket full of jangly change. Every cashier I deal with suffers, because they're counting out all these coins. My barista suffers, because a large iced coffee at the place downstairs is $2.25 and in the past that 75¢ would have gone straight into the tip jar, but now it's three. shiny. QUARTERS!

I promise I'm not going to spend all summer showing you pictures of me holding a GPS, but lookee that Moving Avg and Max Speed! Early in the trip this guy passed me and I decided to use him as a pacer and, hey, it worked. It does bring up some questions, I suppose. But watch me zip!

Originally posted at the Chicago Metroblog.

A couple of weeks ago my friend Ben stopped by with a maniacal gleam in his eyes.

"Performing Cats!" he proclaimed.

"What?"

"Performing Cats! At a gallery over in Humboldt Park every couple of weeks. Are you in?"

Hell yes.

So this Thursday night we found ourselves watching Samantha Martin's Amazing Acro-cats as part of the Reversible Eye's Loto's Ball variety show (1103 N California Ave).

It was kind of a madhouse. It's a fairly small gallery to begin with, and a good chunk of the floor space was taken up by the cats' props and climbing apparatus. At one point near the beginning of the evening, the band had decided to play a song before the cats performed, Samantha was still warming up the cats, a Spanish-language television show was trying to tape the intro to a piece about the cats, and no one had turned off the background music. I turned to Ben and said, "this could be an incredible train wreck."

But, it wasn't. The band finished, the film crew finished, the background music got shut off, and Samantha launched in to an obviously well-practiced routine with her seven (or so -- I lost track of all their names) cats. The cats knew a variety of tricks and performed them... most of the time. "A trained cat act is a great way to learn humility," Samantha said during the show. She capped off the show by bringing out a serval kitten, which, she admitted, was largely for the "awww" factor. Mission accomplished. And then we faded for the exit as the human performers began taking the stage.

The reactions of our little group varied. I thought the show was definitely worth seeing once. Erica was entranced. "Smart kitties, doing tricks! I felt like I was seven years old," she said.

A gallery of photos from the evening.

Some of you have seen the pictures and asked "what's up with the performing cats"? Well, your questions are now answered in a post at the Chicago Metroblog.

The Columbia Chronicle has an article on the March First army men project - ‘Men’ of war: Plastic army men blur line between protest, public art.

This is a little odd, since I just did the making-the-regular-rounds one of these, but I saw that Sean had morphed it for LA, so I wanted to do the same for my little town.

4 Things About Chicago

Four Jobs I've Had In My Life in Chicago:
Consultant
Event Photographer
Network Analyst and Graphics Technology Specialist
Video Editing Assistant

Four Movies About Chicago I Could Watch Over And Over:
Adventures in Babysitting
Blues Brothers
Bound
Ferris Beuller's Day Off

Four Places I've Lived All Over Chicago:
Kenmore and Winona (Uptown)
Damen and Cornelia (Roscoe Village)
Winthrop and Ardmore (Edgewater)
Winthrop and Ardmore (Edgewater) (yes, this is a different place)

Four Chicago-Themed Shows I Love(d) To Watch:
Cupid (it had promise)
ER (the first two seasons I was addicted)
Good Times
Talkin' Funny

Four Places I Would Vacation At In Chicago:
The Art Institute
In a hotel, downtown
The lakefront
Wisconsin

Four Chicago-Based Websites I Visit Daily:
Chicago Metblog
Chicagoist
Gapers Block
tinyluckygenius

Four Of My Favorite Foods Found In Chicago:
late night pork tacos (Burrito Mexicana)
rib eye sandwich (Harrigan's)
sausages (Hot Doug's)
scrambled eggs, pork chop, grits, raisin toast - buttered (Little Corner Restaurant)

Four Places In Chicago I Would Rather Be Right Now:
at home, on the couch, with my baby
on stage at the Playground
sitting in Metropolis, reading

Four Chicago Bloggers Tagged:
Adam Witt
Bilal Dardai [done]
Don Hall [done]
Lauren Liss [done]

If you haven't been reading the Chicago Metroblog, recently I've posted a couple of "Separated at Birth?" photos, a rant about punctuation, and a picture of a dog in a backpack.

I've posted a set of photos of R. Buzzy and The Ladies and Gentlemen from their show last weekend at the Kinetic Playground.

The Kinetic Playground is a) very dark, even by rock club standards, so I was playing around with long exposures, and b) interesting, design-wise. That is, I'm given to understand that the Kinetic Playground is a revival of an old (60s and 70s-old) rock club (or at least of the name) where Led Zeppelin, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Zappa all played. The design of the club's logo and the outside of the place reflects that sort of heritage -- all psychedelic and hippy-trippy.

The inside, however, is all steel mesh and industrial and Ikea benches. I'm sure most people will be coming to see bands, but it's still odd -- someone who would be attracted to the design of the outside of the place would likely be put off by the coldness of the interior. And someone who was looking for a stylish club like the interior would like pass right by the hippy vibe given off by the exterior.

And anyone who actually wants to see the musicians in a band will be turned off by how freakin' dark the stage is! For reals.

Photo by Martha Williams for Time Out

The historic Goldblatt Building (1613 W Chicago), originally the first store in the Goldblatt Brothers Department Store chain, is now a City of Chicago office building. The Department of Cultural Affairs commissioned 12 artists to create works of art for the building.

Weeks ago, before I knew all this (and before there was any signage), I ran across the only one of these pieces visible from the street -- Tony Tasset's Snow Sculpture for Chicago. It's a note-perfect pile of dirty Chicago snow, complete with embedded trash, on display in a display window. It's awesome. It's startling when there's no snow on the ground, and it's verisimilitude when there is snow is striking.

Two weeks ago, I drug a friend over to West Town to see the sculpture again and there was now a sign up identifying the artist and describing the work. There was also a photographer inside the case taking a picture of a man I assumed was the artist. While I was animatedly exclaiming about the sculpture, the photographer motioned me and my friend forward. And now, in this week's Time Out, there we are... me observing Tony Tasset on display beside his artwork that's about observation and display. Or something.

Time Out Chicago: Art avalanche

I tried (and failed) to go to Santarchy. I took some pictures of icicles. And I drank hot wine.

We agree wholeheartedly with Chicagoist's Chuck Sudo, Glögg is the way to make it through the winter. But let's be serious -- are we going to make our own Glögg? No, we are lazy. That is why we are drinking spiced, spiked wine instead of doing laundry.

So for your benefit, Erica and went to Binny's this weekend and said, "give us one of each Glögg you have. We're gonna have an old-fashioned Glögg-off!"

We decided to drink samples of each bottle in order of ascending alcohol content, under some theory that that would let us better retain our taste buds through the process. To clear our palate between Glöggs we had some slices of Manchego (an incredible Spanish cheese) that we had also picked up at Binny's after being enticed by an in-store tasting with actual Spanish people. And for times' sake, we didn't use a double-boiler or anything fancy to heat the Glöggs -- we microwaved them in demitasse cups for 20 seconds. (Cf. "lazy" above. Also, that's how we drank Mr. Hans' all last winter.)

So we started with St. Christopher Glühwein at 8.5% alcohol by volume. Now, St. Christopher is a) from Germany, not Scandinavia and b) not actually a Glögg because there's no distilled liquor added to the wine. But you know what, it's pretty tasty. The back of the bottle says it contains red table wine, sugar and aromatic spices (cinnamon and clove). And that seems to be enough -- subtle but tasty, and it would be pretty easy to add a shot of vodka or brandy to punch it up if you felt you needed that (I think mixing two liquids doesn't violate my laziness rules). And it's $5.99 for a 1 liter bottle.

Next up was Vin Glögg, "A Winter Wine," from Glunz Family Winery & Cellars, at 13.5% alc/vol. We had high-hopes for Vin Glögg -- it's local (-ish. Glunz are in Greyslake, but the Glögg is made with California port and red wine), in a very attractive bottle, and is flavored with blended oils of citrus fruits, nuts, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, "and a couple of secret ingredients." And is it ever flavored! As soon as we opened the bottle we exclaimed, "citrus-time!" Vin Glögg is almost over-poweringly citrused and spiced. Erica says it was like drinking a fruity drink, rather than wine. A tag on the bottle suggests that "some folks like to add a cinnamon stick or a couple of cloves or a twist of lemon or orange rind" but I can't imagine doing so -- the resulting flavor explosion might kill you. $9.99 for a 1 liter bottle.

And last, but not least, our old friend Mr. Hans' Andersonville Glögg, "A Taste of Scandinavia". As far as I know, this is the Glögg served at both Hopleaf and Simon's. We first encountered Glögg at the Hopleaf last winter. At the Hopleaf most drinks come in a specific glass and the special glass for Glögg, it turns out, is an old-fashioned punch glass, which always makes me feel like I'm getting drunk with my aunt. And getting drunk you will be -- Mr. Hans' is a stiff 19% alc/vol. At our tasting, we struggled hard to discern what might be the spices making up the "fine wines, brandies, and select spices" that go into Mr. Hans', but the best we could come up with was "rocket fuel." But if you come in from the cold and want something to warm your toes, Mr. Hans' Rocket Fuel may be just the ticket. $9.99 for a 750 ml bottle.

Without going into the complicated rating system we used, we give the Glögg-off Gold Medal to the not-a-Glögg-at all St. Christopher Glühwein, the Silver to Mr. Hans', and the Bronze to Vin Glögg.

As we invite some friends over to help us finish off the 2.75 liters of Glögg we have in our kitchen, we may try some of the suggested additions to Glögg drinking, like adding a raisins and a blanched almond to each cup. But that might be too much like work.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of hot alcoholic beverages, I'll mention our other favorite no-work-but-heating-it beverage, also a Hopleaf discovery: Quelque Chose. A tart cherry beer, I'm willing to go the extra mile and get out a pan of water to gently heat a bottle of Quelque Chose.

(Originally posted on the Chicago Metblog: Glögg Off!)

(Originally posted on the Chicago Metblog)

For me, anyway. I read about Santarchy early in the month (I guess it was in the Red Eye, too) and RSVPed right away. A chance to dress like a fool and drink, and subvert the sanitized image of Christmas at the same time? Sign me up!

I ordered a $24.95 Santa suit from Oriental Trading Company -- an excellent value, except for the belt, which was useless. Fortunately, a "pirate belt" works just fine for Santa, and I just happen to have one of those lying around (doesn't everyone?). Also fortunately, as it turned out, I got some use out of the Santa suit last weekend at the Belmont Burlesque Revue.

I never got a reply email, but Saturday Erica dressed up as Ms. Claus and I as Santa and off we went.

Man, if you are ever starved for attention, dress up as Santa and just walk around the city. I got honked at, waved at, kids and adults alike yelled "Hey Santa" (and one dipshit yelled across Diversey that "Santa gives great blowjobs!" Coal in your stocking for sure, my friend).

We were headed out a little early, so we stopped in at Harrigan's for their incredible rib-eye sandwich. The manager there said that he had received calls from two different women with the same name, who had each said they would be showing up at Harrigan's at 9 pm with 50 Santas (he had wondered if someone was playing a joke on him). Emboldened, we finished up and headed over Durkin's at 3 pm. Where we were the only Santas and the doorman greeted us with, "Are you the organizer?" Turns out they had read the RedEye article themselves, but had never been contacted. We waited an hour, at the end of which one other guy showed up. We might have stayed but a) I was starting to remember that I don't actually like hanging out with strangers, especially ones who are weird enough to dress up in Santa suits and b) the guy who showed up kept referring to himself in the third-person ("Santa wonders what you have on tap. Santa hopes he didn't dress up like a fool."). We blew, as they say, that popsicle stand.

I'd love to know if Santarchy (or even better, dueling Santarchies) actually happened in Chicago. But not enough to get back out of my toasty house at 9 pm.

(Originally posted on the Chicago Metblog.)

A little secret, that I'll share with just you, dear Internet, is that I like shoveling snow. Something about working hard out in the cold, and the quiet, and the creak of the snow, and, let's be honest, my OCD about tidying up applied to the whole, outside world. (Now if I could just get those damn squirrels to wipe their feet before they come onto the porch...)

One of the things I like about shoveling snow is that it gives you time to think, and last night I was thinking about... shoveling snow:

I've tried a lot of different "ergonomic" shovels, blade sizes, etc., and I keep coming back to a simple, square, lightly curved metal shovel.

I always used to argue with a roommate about it, but I'd rather shovel 2" twice than 4" once. And the earlier you get out, the less time for passersby to turn light fluffy snow into hard-packed, bonded-with-the-sidewalk ice. (Turns out that's also good don't-have-a-heart-attack advice.)

We shovel snow for our own convenience, but it's also part of the whole social compact thing -- I shovel my walk well because I want to walk on well-shoveled walks. So, c'mon people, enough with the one shovel-width wide trail down the middle of the sidewalk. It's inevitable that when you run into someone coming the other way down the sidewalk, it'll be when you're both on one of those teeny trails and one of you of you is going to have to step off into the snow. Be a mensch and shovel your whole sidewalk. And don't be that guy who stops shoveling at the surveyor-accurate border of their property. If you're out before your neighbor, dig into their sidewalk a ways. Maybe they'll do the same for you next time. And if they don't, well then that smug sense of superiority you'll feel is more warming than any cup of cocoa :-)

Note to self, Fuzzy, chill out on the OCD -- no need to "edge" the shoveled walk. Look, it's already snowing again. Let this serve as a reminder of man's eternal struggle against the chaotic forces of nature. Get inside and get that mug of cocoa. There'll plenty to shovel tomorrow.

I posted some thoughts on Shoveling Snow over at the Chicago Metblog.

My Veterans Day post is over at the Chicago Metblog.

Over at the Chicago Metroblog, recent posts by moi have included: a plug for Neutrino Project, some photos from a Metblog meetup, a "Sun-Times thing," a roundup of our favorite desserts (with a special guest contribution by Erica), a list of my tattoo parlor* recommendations, a lamentation on the demise of the Lakeview Lounge, and resources for finding Chicago dive bars.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

We just got back from a sad event -- the last night of the Lakeview Lounge. The Lakeview Lounge was my favorite dive bar, a dark long room in Uptown ("there ain't no lake and there ain't no view," Joe would say) lit mainly by strings of holiday lights. The distinguishing quality (other than its proximity to my old house) of the Lakeview Lounge was Nightwatch, the three-man band who played Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, and had been doing so for 18 years. The place was so small that Nightwatch were on a small platform behind the bar, and when drunk ladies wanted to dance with the band they had to come behind the bar to do so.

Evidently, the Lakeview has fallen victim to the same-old-same-old -- rising rents (and no public outcry to save them). Despite rumors of a new location down on Lawrence, the bartender tonight told me that there was no plans to move anywhere. My roommate had heard it was going to be a big party tonight, but it was pretty quiet when I was there*. Maybe most people were feeling like I was -- I stayed for an hour and had a free drink and took a bunch of pictures, but eventually I had to leave because I was getting too sad. I loved that place -- the wood paneling, and the handwritten signs, and Nightwatch's Johnny Cash covers (and the way they'd never finish a Hendrix song), and the old lady bartenders, and the Syrian food on Joe's birthday every year. Oh, and the dart board -- I played the best game of darts in my life on that dart board.

Damn, I'm getting all misty-eyed again.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I had just put this list together for a friend who asked where to get a tattoo and I was going to put this all in the comments of Officer Gleason's post, but then I remembered that I can just post it! Bwa-haha!

Other tattoo places I would recommend:

I have a tattoo by Patrick Cornolo and my roommate has one from Kim Saigh, who together are Cherry Bomb Tattoo. We recommend them both, respectively.

Cherry Bomb Tattoo
1579 N Milwaukee
773-645-1703

James Kern at No Hope No Fear is awesome. And he's moved to Oregon. But the website says he's often in Chicago, so it's worth a shot seeing if you can make an appointment.

No Hope No Fear
1917 W Division St
773-772-1960

Erica and I had a good experience at Tatu Tattoo.

Tatu Tattoo
1754 W North Ave
773-772-8288

Someday I want to get a tattoo from Hannah Aitchison at Deluxe Tattoo

Deluxe Tattoo
1459 W Irving Park
773-549-1594

My roommate has a tattoo from the Tattoo Factory and would recommend them.

Tattoo Factory
4408 North Broadway
773-989-4077

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I think Daley might be getting ready to run. He certainly looks scared being held in that person's hand. And such big eyes he has...

In serious (well...) news, the Sun-Times has added a Sudoku puzzle. No cute lil' ninja, but it's about 35% bigger (by area) than the RedEye one, which could be useful if you're a notes-in-the-box Sudoku solver, like me. Of course, it's 50¢ instead of (effectively) free.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

What with guests in from out of town, we had a low-key meetup down at Skylark. Scott from Chicagoist showed up, too, I ate some pie, and we took advantage of Skylark's photobooth.

I couldn't any info on the web about Burrito Mexicano, and for symmetry I really needed somewhere to link the words "pork taco" so I'll have to write something. (It might make more sense if you read this.)

I know there are finer Mexican restaurants in the city -- make sure you try Riques sometime -- but Burrito Mexicano (936 W Addison) has a number of things going for it: it's very convenient - just steps from the Addison Red Line stop, it's open very late so I can stop by on my way home from a show (or drinking), the staff is friendly, the food is good, and the Horchata Grande is big and cheap and refreshing - especially after a hard show (or a lot of drinking).

I'm posting often over the Chicago Metroblog. If you're not reading over there you've missed my roundups of our favorite local bands and vegetarian foods in Chicago, public illiteracy, me learning what a vaulted sidewalk is, a picture of a window, beer, riding the CTA, me not reading the paper, and my advice for driving into the city.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Coming back to Chicago from Indiana your MapQuest* may tell you to take 94 to 55 or some nonsense. Do not. The Skyway is totally worth the extra $2.50. And then get off at Stony Island. It's good for the soul to get off the highway and know that you are back in the city. And then you're on Lake Shore Drive, which is all good. And if you're really lucky, the stoplights downtown will make you stop right beside Buckingham Fountain and the city will turn it on full blast just for you.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Aww... she might be foul-mouthed, but she's so cute.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

As usual, I'm nowhere-near as sore as I'd think I'd be from the LATE Ride. This year, far from resting up ahead of time, I made it out to see KOKO and Don't Spit the Water at The Playground before heading downtown.

I'm no LATE Ride veteran or anything -- this was the 17th ride and only my 3rd time out -- but I'm pretty sure of the simple key to my enjoyment of the ride: start out in front and stay in front. Stuck in the middle of a pack of 10,000 people, bicycle traffic is what stalls you, not car traffic, and there's more chances for accidents. And there's a difference in the reactions of car drivers and pedestrians -- when you're in the midst of the pack it's obvious to onlookers that some sort of organized event is in progress. Riding up at the front of the wave, there's just a general sense of puzzlement from bystanders -- 60 or 70 bicyclists riding by is unusual. My friends and I are, of course, the epitome of maturity and we decided that correct answer whenever a drunk asked where we were all going was, "your girlfriend's house!"

This year, a new sponsor of the ride was McDonald's -- part, I suppose, of their new "Hey, Mickey D's isn't just for lard asses, you could, you know, skateboard, or something" campaign. So Ronald McDonald started the ride just a few bike-lengths ahead of us and we were riding pretty much the same pace as him most of the ride. When we were on the home stretch, right at the Lake Path and Grand, Ronald headed north along lower Lake Shore and Shaun turned left towards Navy Pier.

"What are you doing?" I yelled, "Follow Ronald -- he knows where he's going."

When we got turned around and back on track, Ronald McDonald was about 50 yards ahead of us.

"I know this is 'not a race,'" I said, "but if we finish this behind a man wearing clown shoes, I am going to be pissed."

So we hauled ass for the last mile and were able to get in to the breakfast line (for our sample-size Fruit & Walnut Salad) before the clown. Who winked at me as he rode in. Creep-town!

LATE Ride in numbers:

Trip Odom: 22.1 m
Max Speed: 22.7 m/h
Moving Avg: 14.6 m/h
Time Moving: 1:31:10

LATE Ride in pictures:

Click Ronald!

LATE Ride in words:

My Chicago Metblog post on the LATE Ride.

Over at the Chicago Metroblog I've recently posted about Kate O'Leary's art at the LPZ, fireworks, and an ad on the El.

A couple of recent Chicago Metroblog posts (by me!) soduko puzzles, Wired NextFest (with pictures), a group post about our favorite places to take kids, and musings on a report of odd parking tickets with an odd little illustration.

Some recent posts I've posted at the Chicago Metroblog: Kickball, our One Year Anniversary, a picture of a toilet, and a round-up of our Favorite Things Made in Chicago.

Over on the Chicago Metroblog I just posted a round-up of our favorite french fries (yay - alliteration).

I posted on the Chicago Metroblog about an ad downtown with Jay Ryan artwork on it.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

There's a hoooge Jay Ryan downtown at Ohio and Wabash. As with most Jay Ryans, it makes me happy just to look at it. It's an ad for ConverseGallery.com and I went there to see if there were more Jay Ryan images, but there were none -- it's all some sort of short film competition. But the good news is that it reminded me to check out The Bird Machine, which was great news because it turns out that all the liner art Jay Ryan did for Andrew Bird's latest album is now available as a set of 14 posters. And now I'm sad, because it's a limited edition set of posters and now that I've told you about them, you're going to go buy them all before I have an extra $200 to get a set.

I rhapsodize a little about Chicago-style hot dogs on the Chicago Metroblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
In the comments to a different post, our own Alana asks "What is an authentic Chicago hot dog and where do you get it?"

A Chicago-style hot dog is:

• a beef hot dog
• a poppy seed bun
• yellow mustard
• sweet relish
• chopped raw onion
• a kosher dill pickle spear
• tomato slices
• sport peppers
• celery salt
• no ketchup

Dear god, it's 1:00 AM and I was headed for bed, but as I'm writing this my mouth is watering and I'm tempted to go out and get a dog. A Chicago hot dog is such a perfect little meal -- a little meat, plenty of vegetables, spicy from the peppers and cooled down with the tomato and the zing of the celery salt... damn! And get a milkshake with it and you've even got all four food groups (if they still did that).

And the great thing about a Chicago-style hot dog is that it really is the Chicago-style hot dog. That is, nearly anywhere in the city that serves a hot dog (which is a lot of places) serves it Chicago-style. And it's hard to mess up a hot dog and some vegetables. You can surround it with kitschy ambiance or late-night vulgarity or an incredible variety of other sausages, but the best hot dog I've had in Chicago hasn't been that much better than the worst. (But I stress that the reverse is also true -- the worst hot dog I've had wasn't that bad.) So, just head down to the place on your corner that has gyros and burgers and pizza puffs and dogs... and get yourself a Chicago-style hot dog.

But if I have to suggest some places, I've had some stand-out dogs at:

Cubby Dog
3550 N Clark

Fluky's
Three locations

Hot Diggity Dog
251 E Ohio St

Hot Doug's
3324 N California

I just posted a round-up of the Chicago Metrobloggers' favorite places to dance in Chicago. And I realized I never mentioned here that I did a similar group post a few weeks ago of the CMBers' fave Places We're Going Again Now That It's Warm(ish)

I just ranted a little on the Chicago Metblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

... from restaurant suggestions and theater recommendations for a good old-fashioned rant at a stranger online instead of yelling at them on the street because it's not worth getting into a fight over. Also, I quote and use strong language.

Last night my friend Dan gave Erica and I a ride home from a rehearsal in his big ol' SUV. He dropped us off at the corner and while Erica was getting her bags out of the passenger side of the car, a man came walking along, stopped when he realized that he couldn't fit between the car door and the parked cars on the right side of the SUV, sort of doubled-back and came around the left side of the car and muttered half-under-his-breath as he walked past me, "...stop in the middle of the fucking street..."

I felt just a little bad that we had inconvenienced him... until it struck me that he was walking in the street! "That's what the fucking sidewalk is for!" I wanted to shout at him, "It's very unusual for a car to block your way when you walk on the sidewalk!"

But then I thought about becoming a statistic on one of Lauren's crime maps -- "Man stabbed for suggesting that imbecile walk on sidewalk" -- and contented myself with staring pointedly at the back of his head as he turned the corner and continued walking down the middle of the (fucking) street.

I posted about The House Theatre's new show over at the Chicago Metroblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I've raved about The House Theatre before, and we just got back from the opening night of their latest show, Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe. It's a very House show -- it's a crazy time-travel adventure with a mad scientist and the crew of an (imaginary) spaceship, but it's also a brave and sad story of parents attempting to deal (or not) with their teenage daughter's suicide. It's a great show.

The House Theatre is also jumping headfirst into Internet technologies: of course they have a website, but they also a blog where they've been experimenting with podcasts, and a Flickr account.

I posted a post on Dessa Kirk sculptures over at the Chicago Metroblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Sunday, out for the Y-Me Walk (that's those 30,000 people in the background of this photo) we came across a sculpture in the median at corner of Congress and Michigan and then a group of three similar sculptures in Grant Park near Roosevelt and Michigan. "Why, these look brand new," I thought.

As usual, I was wrong.

Thanks to the helpful folks at the Chicago Public Art Program, I have learned that they're all by Dessa Kirk and that Daphne Garden will eventually make way for a large sculptural installation by a Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. (Magdalene will be on Michigan until the winter.) It's all part of the Art in the Garden project.

I posted Turtle Racing over at the Chicago Metroblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

The Mighty Athletes

My roommate is a fan of bars in general, but especially of bars with activities -- karaoke, goldfish racing, pub quizzes -- if you can win a t-shirt with a bar logo on it, he's there. So Friday afternoon when he called and asked, "Do you and Erica want to come to turtle racing tonight?" I was not very surprised, even though I had no idea what turtle racing might be. Would we be squirting turtles with squirt guns? Would that make a turtle move?

Turns out the first rule of Turtle Racing at Big Joe's 2 and 6 Pub (1818 W Foster) is "don't touch the turtles". (They don't mention this, but it's not just for the turtles' sake.) And there are no squirtguns. Buying drinks gets you tickets, a randomly-drawn ticket makes you an honorary Turtle Jockey for a race, the turtles run out from the middle of a table towards the edges, and a winning turtle wins you a t-shirt. The loseriest turtle gets its jockey a free drink.

It was DumbFun enough to distract us from the Bulls' HorribleStupid loss to the Wizards, so there you go.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Things to do in Chicago between 12:30 AM and 6:00 AM Monday morning:

Take a cab from Midway to your home. If you share the cab with my friend Starce you can discuss marketing or computers or Publishing Workflow Management Systems on the way.

Check your stack of mail to see if your girlfriend's birthday present (already late) has arrived.

Kiss your sleeping girlfriend.

Take dirty clothes out of your bag, put clean clothes in.

Sleep -- this is very popular in Chicago between these hours. Many people do nothing else on Monday mornings.

Wake up -- this is not very popular in Chicago. Or anywhere.

Kiss your sleeping girlfriend good-bye.

Take a cab from your home to O'Hare. If you ride in the cab by yourself you can fiddle with your phone so you don't fall asleep in the cab.

If you pass up the McDonald's between gates K & H, be warned that the Cinnabon down by K-15 is not open at 5 AM.

posted on the Chicago Metblog: A very specialized night-life guide

posted on the Chicago Metblog: A good meal: Rudy's Taste

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Ever have the problem where the first thing you try at a restaurant is so great that you don't want to try anything else on the menu because it might be good, but maybe it won't be as great as that first thing? That's where I am with the jibarito at Rudy's Taste. The jibarito is a Puerto Rican sandwich with steak, pork (my choice), ham or chicken, lettuce, tomato, and American cheese and, and this is the kicker, instead of bread it's served on flattened, fried plantains. Soooo good.

I was sitting in Rudy's Taste this weekend, waiting for my takeout jibaritos and people eating in were getting served some great looking grilled things ("Rudy's Taste -- Guatemalan, Caribbean & Mexican Food, Grilled Specialties") but would they be as superior as a jibarito? I decided not to risk it. And the trying-something-else stakes are already high since Rudy's is not in my neighborhood at all and once I am down at Division and Ashland I'm giving up a chance to have one of my other favorite foods in Chicago, a steak burrito at La Pasadita (I like the one at 1140).

Rudy's Taste
1024 N Ashland
773-252-3666
Closed Wednesdays (that's bit me in the ass before)

Posted on the Chicago Metblog: Guru

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

If nothing else, you'll know who Del Close is when I say he was the Alderman in The Untouchables who says, "I will pay you the courtesy of being frank."

But of course he was so much more than that. He was a fire-eater and stand-up comedian who became one of the first members of the first modern improvisational theater company, The Compass, and went on to devote his life to exploring the possibilities of improv as an art form. Along the way he was a teacher and inspiration to a laundry list of actors and comedians: from the Second City and original cast of Saturday Night Live, to the cast of SCTV, and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and hundreds of students at the ImprovOlympic.

For the last two years of Del's life an improv actor named Jeff Griggs helped him with his weekly errands. Now Jeff has written a newly-published memoir, Guru: My Days with Del Close.

Guru covers Del's entire life and career in interspersed chapters, but focuses on the time Jeff spent with Del. So we get a very personal portrait of a larger-than-life character that many people only knew as an intimidating teacher and director. Del was brilliant but Jeff is not afraid to show us that he was also a little crazy, sometimes smelly, a mysoganist, and a child-hater. (That's one of my Del Stories(tm) -- at a festival in Austin, TX I overheard Del demanding that his driver be replaced because she was pregnant and he didn't want to be that close to a potential child.)

The improv website YesAnd.com has posted an excerpt from Guru.

(Full Disclosure: Jeff Griggs is a friend of mine and Del Close yelled at me one time in a workshop in Kansas City.)

Posted on the Chicago Metroblog: Will Prevail

Posted on the Chicago Metroblog: I supply your office humor

In address some reader (well, Shaun) response, I'll now post a quick link here whenever I post something over at the Chicago Metroblog -- today I posted A good meal: Tanoshii.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Last year my not-very-adventurous-eating roommate came home and said, "it's worth getting to know the sushi chef at Hama Matsu." "But you don't even like sushi," I said. "Well, I guess I do now."

Erica and I did eat at Hama Matsu (5143 N Clark) a couple of times and the sushi was alright, but we didn't really heed the advice to get to know the chef. That, it turns out, was our mistake as I've been reading articles and reviews about how Mike Ham (that chef) is really at his best when his customers let him run wild with improvisational sushi.

Mike has his own place now -- Tanoshii at 5547 N Clark -- and Erica and I went over this week. It's BYOB, so we picked up a six-pack of Dead Guy Ale on the way and hiked up through Andersonville to Mike's tidy little restaurant. Mike, wearing a green kimono-tunic (it was the night before St. Patrick's day -- the other two chefs wore tunics with shamrock trims), stopped by our table and opened our first beers.

Armed with our knowledge about the way to eat at Tanoshii, we just glanced at the menu and ordered some miso and goma-ae and asked the waitress to "just have Mike feed us." She quizzed us about spiciness, raw vs. cooked fish, portion size and put in our order.

I will say that after our soup and appetizer came out right away, the sushi took forever to come. That night we were in no hurry to go anywhere, so it just gave us time to get through a couple beers and be cutesy with each other. But I could imagine that if you were on any sort of schedule, it would drive you crazy.

But the sushi that came -- kawowza! It was a sort of sushi-salsa, a tight cylinder of spicy tuna, cucumbers, onion, and avocado, with fried chips to scoop it up with. Delicious. I could have eaten 7 or 8 more orders of it, but just to get some variety, we asked for a second order of something more like a traditional roll. What came out was six pieces of a tuna-onion mix on rice on a piece of lettuce. At first I thought the lettuce was a garnish, but when one of the chefs saw me picking up the first piece he told me, "No, no, the whole thing." I don't usually think of lettuce as a strong flavor, but with subtlety of the fish and rice, the whole thing had a very fresh, vegetabley flavor.

And that was that. And it wasn't that pricey. And Mike is nice.

Another sushi place worth mentioning, with similarly adventurous combinations of flavors, but in a more upscale environment and with, you know, a menu, is Kaze Sushi (2032 W. Roscoe). Their menu changes seasonally, but when we were last there we had a lobster/strawberry roll that blew our minds.

Other opinions:

Gapers Block - Fork it over - Tanoshii

Chicago Reader - Restaurant detail - Tanoshii

EatChicago - Tanoshii's sushi (and green tea)

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Chicagoist has already reported on the latest in the Burger Delights "story" -- the Burger King restaurants that morphed into Burger Delightses are now becoming Chicken Delights. I just wanted to point out that these changes are rather obviously not being done in any sort of organized fashion. It was just a week ago that the Burger Delights at Broadway and Foster replaced their Burger Delights tarp-over-the-still-visible-Burger-King-sign with a real sign. And now... you can see that big line across the middle of this sign -- someone had to cut the sign in half and replace the top half. And why a new font? It's just sad. (Though the 'leet speek in the sign below is a nice touch.)

Previously:
Chicagoist: Burger .. King .. Delights?
Chicagoist: BurgerGate 2005: The Saga Continues

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

First off, have you noticed the Chicago Metroblog's spiffy new photo header? Instead of a single shot of the city, it's randomly built each day from pictures in the Metroblogging Chicago Group Photo Pool at Flickr. Whee!

So when I was going through my 2004 Chicago pictures to upload some into the group, one I picked was this photo of a sad pile of belongings on top of a mattress out on the sidewalk of Addison just west of Lincoln:

I didn't pick it because I thought it was typical of Chicago, but rather because it was, to someone, a significant moment. In Chicago we have alleys, so a pile of anything out on the sidewalk means something is out of the ordinary. This pile is someone's story of an eviction or a breakup gone wrong or something.

Last week I was in New York all week. New York does not have alleys. So in the middle of a fancy-pants shopping/business district (5th Avenue and 56th Street) at lunch time there was this pile on a sidewalk:

In New York, this is not a story. It's just trash.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

We went to Sweet Charity Tuesday night at Broadway in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. (Mini-review: Christina Applegate dances pretty good for a former sitcom star. Northwestern grad and former Chicago actor Denis O'Hare seems to have wandered in from a different looser, and funnier, play. Save yourself the $82 ticket and buy a copy of the 1969 movie with Shirley MacLaine. And it's only in Chicago for another two days, anyway.)

Anyway, in the middle of the first act, Vittorio orders a gran-something tequila. It sailed right on by until intermission when I was flipping through the program, as one does, and there was a full page ad for Gran Centenario tequila. I'd been product placed! In the script of a 35-year old musical! What's next? Willy Loman casually hoisting a Pepsi? Falstaff ordering a Budweiser Select?

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's "Short Cut" in front of the MCA

Gapers Block wrote about it. The Tribune wrote about it. But neither of them gave you a picture. Ta Da.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

To you, a perfectly ordinary sidewalk.

To me... a radical transformation of my personal geography.

My office is tucked into a corner of the downtown Northwestern campus and this building has been under construction for four of the last five years I've worked there. For four years I had to walk on the other side of the street whenever (a lot) I headed southeast from my office. The sidewalk has been open for a couple of months now and still every time I find myself on it it BLOWS. MY. MIND.

(Of course, you can see the crane in the distance -- Northwestern has two other buildings under construction in the same area -- more sidewalks blocked for another four years).

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Lately, I seem to get nothing in the mail except notices that "Bank One is now Chase". And the last time I was in New York, I used a Chase ATM which cheerfully told me "Hello, Bank One customer -- you're now part of Chase! Have (your own) money for free!"

So... I made an assumption. And you know what happens when you assume, don't you?* That's right -- you're often wrong.

Last night I mailed out the mortgage check and this morning I got on a plane for New York with my roommate's check for his half of the mortgage in my pocket. Over lunch I walked over to my convenient Chase Banking Location and cheerfully presented that check and was cheerfully told that Bank One "still has their own databases" and that the check was, to Chase, so much scrap paper.

Boo.

(And when they replace my Bank One ATM card with a Chase one, it'd better still have the Chicago skyline on it, like it did when they made the switch from 1st Chicago to Bank One five years ago.)

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

The convenience store near Erica's house identifies itself in three languages ("First Foods", "La Primera", and something in Polish(?) I don't remember) so we made a dinner from the snack foods of three or four cultures:

• two frozen Stouffer's dinners (me - turkey and mashed, Erica - Salisbury steak and corn mac and cheese)
• Cockta - a soft drink imported from Slovenia ("caffiene and phosphoric acid free"). It was flat and the taste makes Erica gag (I thought it just tasted like flat Pepsi).
• Plantain chips from Miami
• Sabritones - "Authentic Mexican Chile and Lime Flavor". (Frito-Lay's Mexican brand Sabritas controls 81% of the snack food market there.) Tangy!

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

That's OK Pope, Bush and Putin scare me, too.

Metroblogs hooked up with Flickr, the first effect of which is that the photos across the top of the, for example, Chicago Metroblog page are drawn from the photos in a Chicago Metroblog Group on Flickr. So... I went through my 2004 photos and uploaded twenty-something photos of my Chicago. You can check them out on the group page or on my photostream.

(Free registration required to use Flickr. Lemme know if that sort of thing bugs you enough that I should put those photos here on FuzzyCo.)

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I did, in fact, "remove this notice off from here," though I tried not to tear it (the letters in the lower corner said "77x7!" -- it was taped on pretty good). I guess I'll face the judge for it.

A weird thing is that this sign wasn't really close to any theaters. I took it off a utility box at the corner of Sheridan and Bryn Mawr. I guess the Actor's Workshop Theater is down the street on Bryn Mawr, but they're certainly not who comes to mind when I think of controversial theater. The other weird thing, for this kind of sign, is the lack of scriptural justification.

Huh, on a re-read, I realized, too, that this is really targeted at the office that hands out PPAs, so it should really be down in the Loop, to hit its target audience.

Oh, and it's loopy as a french horn.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

The Sun-Times is doing that thing again. That thing that I never had to come up with a name for because I'd just talk to my friends and say, "Did you see the Sun-Times this morning? They did that thing again."

The thing is where they have a BIG headline with hardly any text from the accompanying story ("see Page 3") and then a BIG picture that has nothing to do with the headline story, but they're both so big and jammed so close together that when you're glancing at the cover as you pass by a vending machine you assume that the picture goes with the story. With, dare I say it, often humorous juxtaposition.

What is that smoking clown so adamant that she did not do?

Today's is not an award-winner (my all-time favorite was a big headline about "Study links pollution to rising estrogen levels" and a big picture of Bozo the Clown) but it's just notable because after their redesign in November 2003 instances of the thing really dropped -- the big picture almost always accompanied the headline. (Check out this gallery of covers from 2004 from Sun-Times news designer Robb Montgomery. There are a couple good thingy ones, Bono in sticker shock and the excited swimmer terrorists, but most of them are, you know, well-designed.) Here's hoping this marks a return to terrible design for the Sun-Times.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I took my little crew out into the blizzard to see the Harlem Globetrotters at the United Center Saturday. My roommate, foolishly, bet me $5 on the New York Nationals (I even gave him 12 points -- the Globetrotters won by 20 or so points). They didn't do any of their super-crazy stunts (no ladders or trampolines this tour) but tons of antics and Kenyan dancers and high school drum and choral groups at half-time.

When I got back to the office on Monday one of my co-workers asked, "aren't the Globetrotters from Chicago?" What? Duh -- they're from Harlem.

Well, actually, the Globetrotters are from Chicago. The team was founded in Chicago in 1926 (by a short Jewish guy from the North Side) and was based here until 1976 (now they're headquartered in Arizona). (And WTTW has a history-geek-fascinating account of discovering a minor inaccuracy in the official Globetrotter history.)

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Well, sometimes it doesn't pay to actually do research, because your delightful blog-fancies turn out to have no basis in, you know, fact.

For years I've sort of had this impression that Chicago was covered with a huge variety and selection of Golden [XXXX] pancake/dinery places, with dozens of values for [XXXX]. Last night I had a dinner-meeting at the Golden Apple (Wellington and Lincoln) and I thought I should check the white pages and see just how many Golden Whatevers there really were. Just six. Angel, Apple, Heart, House, Nugget (times seven -- the 600 lb. gorilla of the Golden world!), and Waffle. I always thought there was a Golden Horseshoe, too, but I'm probably mixing up the Golden Nugget's logo and Las Vegas casinos.

Some related notions:

• Campbell McGrath's Spring Comes to Chicago contains the poem "The Golden Angel Pancake House," which is one of my favorite poems.
• This American Life spent 24 hours at the Golden Apple
• Several Chicago Burger Kings become "Burger Delights"
• Slightly farther afield, knockoffs of KFC knockoffs in NYC

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I was parking my roommate's pick-up truck tonight and the only spots free were meter spots. But is tomorrow (MLK Day) a meter holiday? Hey, I remember all those bus-side ads for 311 -- the city-wide phone information service -- I can sit here in the warm truck and find out.

Hello, City of Chicago information, how may I help you?

Hi, are parking meters enforced tomorrow?

Huh. I don't know. Let me put you on hold for a second.

(Silence... have I been disconnected?)

Sir? I'm going to transfer you.

(Ring. Ring. Ring.)

City of Chicago parking enforcement. How may I help you?

Hi, are parking meters enforced tomorrow?

Huh. I don't know. Gerald, is tomorrow a parking holiday? [distant mumble] OK. Listen to the news tomorrow, they'll tell you. (Click)

Ah! Listen to the news tomorrow! Because the news knows Chicago better than Chicago does.

(P.S. Tomorrow, it appears, is not a parking meter holiday.)

Whooray! A snow day! Look, it's snowing outside! It's everywhere! Woo-oo!

What do you mean I don't get the day off just because it's snowing? I'm an "adult" and still have to go to "work"? Crap. And I have to go shovel the sidewalk because I own 13.25% of my building and we decided (in the summer) that it made sense not to hire lawn work or snow removal services, but to do it ourselves instead. Double-crap.

(Partly I present this picture to prove to my condo-mates that I did shovel -- by the time I got done in the front of the house there was already a good 1/4" on the freshly-shoveled section in the back.)

Over at the Chicago Metblog, I just posted a short piece with a couple of photos I took of the Illinois monument at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

For Christmas Erica and I went down to Vicksburg, Mississippi to visit her family. I was glad to be getting out of slashing-winds-off-the-lake Chicago for a week in the balmy south. Of course, a cold front blew across the south minutes (literally) after our plane landed so it was in the 30�s and overcast the whole time we were there (until the afternoon we were leaving, when it was sunny and 50�. Shake-fist-at-Southern-sky.)

No trip to Vicksburg would be complete with a trip to the Vicksburg Military Park. In the summer of 1863 one of the decisive battles of the Civil War was fought for control of Vicksburg and in turn the Mississippi River. The land the battle was fought on became a cemetery for the 17,000 Union casualties and, in 1899, a national park. The legislation creating the park allowed any State that had troops in the battle to erect monuments in honor of those troops. Many States took advantage of this and the park is one of the most monumented battlefields in the world (1,324!).

Many of the monuments are this size. This one is the first monument you encounter as you drive through the gates of the park and the words "Chicago Mercantile" fairly leapt out at me. The Chicago Mercantile Battery was an artillery unit organizied by a group of prominent Chicago merchants.

In addition to the dozens of monuments to individual units from Illinois, there's a prominent monument in honor of all 36,325 Illinois soldiers who fought in the battle.

The monument is modeled after the Roman Pantheon and has 47 steps, one of each day of the Siege of Vicksburg. Erica tells me that it's often used for local high school choir, band, etc. photos. It amused me to think of generations of Vicksburg students with a steathly "Illinois" hiding in the back of their class photos.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I wish there was a Philadelphia Metroblog I could have been guest-posting on this week, so I could have told you about the train and driving to Maryland for dinner and snow-boarding next to city hall and Kaki King and hunting for a Nintendo DS and finding one and then not buying it and Continental and bad movies on hotel cable and cookies and having my sleep schedule get so out of wack that I'm still up at 5 AM typing this. But there isn't such a thing, so all I can tell you about is missing my girlfriend and my city and looking forward to getting back tonight.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

I just checked and I see that it's 32 and (probaby) snowing in Chicago. I'm in Austin for Thanksgiving, where it's 65 and sunny. Did I have a point? Oh yeah -- neener-neener.

There was a thunderstorm last night and my 4-year old niece came running inside, not scared but super-excited. She's a weather buff and wanted us to turn on the TV so she could watch the storm radar map in the bottom corner of the screen. We were all (well, she was) very disappointed that the main storm missed us by a few miles and that there was very little chance of a tornado.

I just posted a lil' thing about Chicago raccoons over at the Chicago Metblog.

originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago

Walking over to Erica's house this week, I ran into this raccoon in Andersonville. (I mapquested it this week -- it's 1.65 miles from my place to Erica's. Soon I will have walked 500 miles just to be the man that falls down at her door.) It's been a couple of years since I've seen a raccoon in Chicago, but according to the DNR, they are more common in the Chicago area than in any other part of the state. A word to the wise: watch out for Raccoon Roundworm Encephalitis. Oh wait, you have to eat dirt or bark that has raccoon feces on it? Never mind then (unless you eat a lot of dirt or bark).

I didn't actually go to the Pixies show last night, but that didn't stop me from assembling Josette's photos and Erica's words into a post on the Chicago Metroblog.

This plaque is set into the sidewalk in front of Swift Elementary School. Sadly, there is no tree in front of the plaque (there's a tree behind it, but I'm sure it's not 83 years old). In 1921 there wasn't yet a national Armistice Day (that came in 1926) so the children of Swift School were pretty on the ball.

Today is, of course, Veteran's Day in the States. In Commonwealth countries it's "Remembrance Day".

Today I am remembering my father (eek - that makes it sound like he's dead. He's not.) and thinking of "exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations"¹.

Update: Joey posted In Flanders Fields on his site today.
Update 2: Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's extensive Great War post from last year (she's not doing one this year).

¹ Congressional resolution, 1926

OK, so on the way to lunch I saw an ad on the side of a bus that promoted literacy and sexiness. But that's not what made lunch so great.

Pot Belly recently added "add bacon for 50¢" to their menu. (I have an entire rant about the superiority of simple menus like Pot Belly, Jimmy John's, and Chipotle to complicated "fancy" ones like Subway and Quiznos (Yes, I just called Subway fancy)). I've been getting bacon on my turkey sandwich for a couple weeks to make a club and it's been great. But today I went for it. I put bacon on a Wreck (Potbelly's one-of-each-meat sandwich). Extra meat on my meat, please. I was a vegetarian for ten years, you know. Wheee!

But it doesn't stop there. Right behind me in line was a Pot Belly employee and he ordered his sandwich and a chocolate and peanut butter shake. I didn't think that was one of the offered flavors. I looked back at the shake menu to make sure. Nope. Chocolate. Oreo. Banana. Etc. But no peanut butter and certainly no chocolate and peanut butter. I leaned back and asked the guy, "Did you just say chocolate and peanut butter?" "I sure did." "Well, then I want a chocolate and peanut butter shake, too."

I had already grabbed a Stewart's Key Lime soda from the cooler and I didn't put it back, because I could tell this was going to be a lunch of decadence.

The sandwich: good. Not earth shattering, because the Wreck is already so meaty that the bacon gets little lost.

The Stewart's: fine. A clean, refreshing taste, as always.

The shake: yuuummmmmmmm! Real peanut butter blended up in a chocolate shake. Choc and PB is one of my favorite sweet taste combinations. There were a couple of straw-clogs of peanut butter, but nothing disastrous. And I don't think I'd want it blended any finer -- I like a little peanut butter texture in the shake.

And I've got further taste sensations awiting me -- the C&PB ordering employee told me to come in some time when he was working behind the counter and ask for his "banana pudding" shake. As long as that isn't some urban slang I don't get, I can't wait.

Alan Keyes was heckled (1.8 M mp3) as he went to vote in Calumet City. (via girl in black, audio from the Roe Conn Show)

Obama wins, 70-27. It's like a Christmas present you know you're going to get, but it's still nice to actually sit down and unwrap it.

Also, in the NW suburbs, Melissa Bean beat Phil "Now, what's this?" Crane (51-48).

Out in Cicero, incumbent Rep. Frank Aguilar (R) put a woman into the race (her only support was from his PAC) and she won, 53.2 to 46.8. W, you may ask, TF?

Little bits of good news from other parts of the country. In Pennsylvania, race-baiting eye doctor Melissa Brown was defeated by Democrat Allyson Schwartz.

One big frustration here in Chicago: despite the unendorsement of every bar association, the Chicago Tribune, citizens' groups, and me, Susan McDunn was retained as a judge with 68% YESes. It's a small consolation that she received the most NOes and least YESes of any judge. It was very frustrating last night to be at an election night gathering and overhear an otherwise-politically-aware friend say, "I got confused by all the judges, so I just voted Yes on all of them." Damn, I say, it.

We voted!

In case you missed my earlier posts:
Vote! - In Case of Problems
Vote! - Where to Vote
Vote! - Judges ("McDunn is done.")
Why Vote VanVactor? (special for St. Louis County, Minnesota's First District)

The New York Times has a list of "What to Do on Election Day" that includes these items:

5. Know your rights concerning provisional ballots. No voter can be turned away in any state this year without being allowed to vote. If there is a question about your eligibility, you must be allowed to vote on a provisional ballot, the validity of which will be determined later. But if you are entitled to vote on a regular ballot, you should insist on doing so, since a provisional ballot may be disqualified later on a technicality.

6. Know where to turn for help. If you experience problems voting, or if you see anything improper at the polls, you may want to get help. There will be nonpartisan poll monitors at many polling places. (There may also be partisan poll watchers, and it's possible one of them may be the person objecting to your voting.) It is a good idea to bring a cellphone, and phone numbers of nonpartisan hotlines like the Election Protection program's 1-866-OURVOTE and Common Cause's 1-866-MYVOTE1.

7. Be prepared for long lines. In some precincts, the wait may stretch into hours. Try to get to your polling place very early in the morning, or between the before-work and after-work rushes. As long as you are in line before the polls close, you are legally entitled to vote. Do not let poll workers close the polls until you have voted.

Here in Chicago, the U.S. attorney's office will have a hot line to report voting-related complaints. The number is 312-469-6157.

Via kottke.org and the Trib

"But, Fuzzy, where do I vote?"

In Chicago, Chicago Elections will let you lookup your polling place (yeah, that "66.107.4.19" isn't very reasuring as to its officalness, but that's Chicago for you. And it's annoying that you have to figure out what your street suffix is in their database -- evidently I live on "Winthrop Av", not "Winthrop Ave").

In Suburban Cook County you can go to the Cook County Clerk's Office's VoterInfonet.

Nationally, the DNC will help you find out where to vote. (I tried to be fair and find the same info on the RNC site -- but evidently they want you to Register to Vote but don't care if you actually go and vote.)

In Illinois we get to vote for the election and retention of judges (at the end of a six-year term, judges have to get 60% "yes" votes to stay in office). The front page article in this week's Reader is about how hard it is for judges to be voted out. Even when bar associations and citizens' groups agree that a judge is terrible or incompetent, voters, most likely daunted by the list of over 80 judges to be voted on, rarely vote "No" on judges.

Do I need to go on and on about how terrible an incompetent judge is? Judges make decisions that affect individuals and their families enormously. And c'mon you rebel, you -- what's more "sticking it the man" than getting rid of a judge?

So don't be daunted! Vote for Judges consolidates the judicial evaluations from a variety of Chicago and Illinois Bar Associations and they have a sample ballot (70K PDF).

And let me point out that one judge up for retention was dinged by all nine bar groups -- Susan McDunn -- largely for her fierce and unrelenting (even after being removed from the cases from the presiding judge of her division) opposition to two no-contest adoptions that happened to be by lesbian couples. "McDunn is done" is your handy mnemonic.

So please download that sample ballot, but then read the evaulations and see if you agree with their reasons. Make your own decisions, you American, you. (And then vote "No" on McDunn. Seriously.)

The Virgin Megastore is carrying these shirts now, so I got Erica and myself ones. I had been looking for one ever since I read this article in the NewCity (it's out of date, by the way, the shirts are no longer available at the MCA).

When I read the article I was amazed that anyone could have that strong of a reaction to such an abstract design, but since I've been wearing it around, it's gotten the most comments of any t-shirt I've ever worn (and I like to think I wear interesting t-shirts).

No one has expressed distain or hatred of the shirt -- mostly they're trying to parse it into a sentence:

• I dot Chicago?
• I circle Chicago?
• Is that a Blue Man Group thing?
• Is that an IO thing?
• I go around Chicago?
• I blew Chicago?

Will telling you what I'm going to do this weekend influence what you might do this weekend? I can only hope.

Tonight (10/21) I'm headed to the opening night of the Camenae Ensemble Theatre Company's Can You Hear Their Voices? at Steep Theatre (3902 N Sheridan). Erica's in the show, so I am assured it will be amazing. The show runs Thursday to Sunday through November 21, so you'll have plenty of chances to see it.

Friday night (10/22), I'll be picking up my topic for the Fast Forward Film Festival and then heading over to see FuzzyCo's musical director Ben Taylor play with Marydee Reynolds at Martyrs' (3855 N. Lincoln Ave), opening for the Twinemen (featuring ex-members of Morphine). Ben sez "It'll be some stripped down rocking, sort of swampy, all good. Come on down, or up as the case may be."

Saturday night (10/23) is a full one. At 8 pm I'll be on stage with Chicago Comedy Co at The Playground (3209 N Halsted) (Diva, Ohio, and Malice also perform). Meanwhile, the short film that I will have made Friday night and Saturday for the Fast Forward Film Festival will be playing at Wesley Kimler's Gallery (2046 West Carroll). And at midnight it's back to The Playground for the Belmont Burlesque Revue (I'm not performing, just supporting).

Sunday night (10/24) I have a date. Go find something to do on your own.

Monday night (10/25) (OK, I realize we're not techinically in the "weekend' anymore, but work with me here) Bare will be performing at Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport) with 3 standup comedians and another improv group. We did this same show last week and I have to say that it was a little rough, mainly because there was hardly anyone there (it was game 6 of the Red Sox-Yankees series). But you can help change that. And let me entice you with a cheap $3 cover, $1 tacos, and $2 PBRs. And great wings. And I'll probably be so happy to see you at the show that I'll buy you one of those $2 PBRs.

Look at FuzzyCo getting all political. If you're not in Chicago you can just skip this one. If you do live in Chicago, I wanted to make sure y'all knew that the vote on Alderman Edward Burke's (14th) proposed helmet ordinance for the city of Chicago is coming up on November 3.

Regardless of what you think about the importance of helmets to motorcycle safety (and yes, I usually wear one) all you have to do is look at those little "helmets" they wear on American Choppers (New York State has a helmet law) to realize that all a helmet law does is make people who don't really want to wear a helmet go out and buy a $40 piece of plastic.

I've already emailed my alderman (find yours) and asked her to vote no on the helmet ordinance.

Sun-Times: Alderman proposes city helmet law

photo by Malgosia Tomassi

The (somewhat creepy) question "where do celebrities hang out in Chicago?" was asked on the Chicago Metblog last week. The answer until November 7 is "on stage at the Goodman Theatre."

I was Erica's date last night to the opening of Finishing The Picture, a new Arthur Miller play. The play is a fictionalized account of the troubled production of The Misfits, screenwritten by Miller and starring his wife at the time, Marilyn Monroe. Evidently, she was pretty.

And you want celebs? Look at this cast list: Frances Fisher (Kate Winslet's mom in Titanic), Scott Glenn (The Right Stuff), Stacy Keach (Titus' dad and Mike Hammer), Linda Lavin (Alice), Harris Yulin (Training Day) and Matthew Modine (Vision Quest). And Stacy Keach's sister-in-law, Jane Seymour, was at the opening, too.
The biggest celebs of the evening? Skrebneski supermodels Erica Reid and Vivienne Dipeolu:

We had a little Chicago Metroblog meetup last night -- Sean from Corporate and his wife Caryn were in town for a wedding, so they suggested a find-out-what-the-people-behind-all-those-words-on-the-screen-look-like meeting at Tecalitlan.

I realized as I was posting these pictures that I'm the only one of the Chicago metbloggers who has a picture in their mini-bio, so I'm gonna leave these unlabeled. But I will tell you that Susan, Lauren, Jason, Morgen, Catherine(?), Tom, Erica, and I were there.

Sean photoblogs me taking these pictures.

Hmmm... bloggers.

Erica and I are trying to look "candid" so that this picture would match the others, but I took the picture. Convincing, no? And hey, check out that skirt!

All the waitresses at Tecalitlan wear these Mexican flag skirts.

Erica shows off the delish salsa. Note that the Margarita special is good for Lime Only. Stop asking for Mango, jerks.

And then Erica and I went and got tattoos.

Update: Tom took some pictures, too.

I got off the bus at the corner of North and Stockton last night and noticed that Ben Franklin was surrounded by scaffolding and half-covered with short pieces of text. "When did that happen?" I wondered. Mid-June, it turns out (never let it be said that I'm afraid to be late to the game). The pieces of text were submitted by visitors to a website for the art work -- The Invisible Garden.

It's 2 am and I just got back from a waaaaay south side police station.

A month ago Shaun's motorcycle was stolen from out in front of his girlfriend's place down in Wrigleyville. Just this last week he had finally purchased a replacement and had gotten a check from his insurance company on Friday and then today a cop called him to tell him that his bike had been recovered along with a number of other motorcycles. (When Shaun returned the cop's voice mail they went through a laundry list of motorcycle makes -- "So you had a Honda?" No. "A Suzuki?" No. "A Yamaha?" Yes. "Black?" No. "Blue?" Yes. "OK, it's right here.")

They told him if he didn't pick it up right away it'd be transferred to a lot where they'd charge him a daily storage fee. So after I got done with my show tonight and he got back from speaking to senior business students at Purdue (yeah, Shaun was talking to the future leaders of America -- that's a whole 'nother story) we were driving his pickup truck down to the 5th District Police Station to get his motorcycle.

When we finally got there (Chicago's a long city -- it's a 25 mile drive from our house to the 5th District) I was surprised to discover that the courtyard of the police station was a homeless enclave. Seven or eight people were sleeping in the courtyard and one woman wearing a bright blue blouse and lots of jewelry was zooming around with manic energy. As we approached the door of the station, she made a beeline for Shaun and started trying to sell him (or give him -- it was unclear) her earring. "No thanks," Shaun said, "but he [pointing at me] sure would like a hug." Bastard. We provided some chuckles for the watching police inside the station as I tried to avoid the outstretched arms of CrazyLady without actually breaking into a run.

Getting the bike was surprisingly simple. Shaun produced his police report from the original theft, identified the bike ("Yup -- that's my bike. Hey, it's clean!") signed one piece of paper, and the officer left us behind the station with the bike. Shaun pointed out that he hadn't even had to show any ID.

At first glance, the bike seemed OK -- it was cleaner than it had been when it was stolen and the rims were shiny. But when Shaun went to see if he could start the bike to drive it away, we began to realize the bike was a mess. The ignition was smashed in, the bike had been laid down on both sides, a mirror was snapped off, the front brake lever was snapped in half and the rear brake pedal was torn off completely. And when we had given up on getting the bike started and started to push it, we noticed that the steering was crooked and the frame was probably bent. (Look for this bike on eBay, soon!)

If it was surprising that Shaun didn't have to show his ID to get the bike, it is not surprising that two guys in t-shirts pushing a motorcycle out of a police station back parking lot at 2 am will draw some questions. We had made it 20 feet when we were stopped by two officers who had just driven in.

"Hey. Hey! I assume you two are police officers?"

"No, sir."

"Then what are you doing?"

"My motorcycle was stolen and I just recovered it..."

"You recovered it?"

"I mean, you guys recovered it..."

They let him get the rest of his story out and he showed them an excess of ID (Shaun often carries his passport around just in case) and they let us go. We made it another 30 feet before another cop car drove into the lot and stopped us again. After Shaun told his story again, these cops shared that they had to watch out because impounded cars were often taken to this lot before they were towed to the real impound lot and that people would steal back their own cars.

When we made it back around to the front of the building where we had parked the truck, CrazyLady zoomed over to us. "My daddy had one of these. It was red. And a truck. And a boat. Would you like this mumble-mumble-dibble-bop." Shaun said he thought she was trying to sell him a piece of plastic.

One way to turn an errand into an adventure is to bring inadequate tools. Staring at the back of the truck, trying to ignore CrazyLady's attempts to bring us up to speed on the Sox game, we realized that we had forgotten to bring any sort of ramp. We tugged at the bike a bit (and noticed more things that had been damaged) and tried to think.

There's some sort of scent given off by a mechanical problem that draws guys and unsolicited advice. A guy drove up in a car with spinning rims, parked, and started offering suggestions.

"Maybe you could take the tailgate off and then get the front wheel up onto the bumper and take a rest and then get it the rest of the way up."

Sure, that's an idea.

"You guys from Lakeview?"

Yeah. More or less. Up north.

"My uncle was the guy that was shot in Wrigleyville. He had a concession stand up there. I know all about that neighborhood."

OK.

"I have to go visit some people inside but I'll help you get it up if you're still here when I come back."

Thanks.

More thinking and tugging and thinking and eek! CrazyLady is sitting on the motorcycle!

"Please get off my motorcycle!"

"All right. OK. Mumble-Dibble-Stimple."

Finally I had a brain flash. If we took the tailgate off, it could be the ramp. After that it was almost too easy. RimsGuy came out at just the right time and helped us push the cycle up the tailgate/ramp. We wedged the bike in diagonally and lashed it down with the one winch-strap we had remembered to bring (inadequate tools, people, that's the key) and then it was just an easy half-hour drive back north. CrazyLady waved goodbye to us with a Dunkin' Donuts cup and a piece of wax paper and bid the south side a fond adieu.

Hey, they fixed it.

My coworker Kyle and I were walking back to office after lunch on Thursday, a Streetwise vendor (dressed, somewhat oddly, in a baby blue-and-white basketball uniform) stuck a paper out towards me and said, "How about it, guy."

"Sorry, man."

"How about you, baby," he said to the person right behind me. Baby? I glanced to see who was behind me.

"Kyle, did that Streetwise vendor just call you baby?"

"Yes. At least it wasn't 'big guy'. I hate when they call me that."

------------

Earlier in the week, Erica and I were walking past the playground at Swift School. A car was stopped in the street. It was a big seventies muscle car with big tires and those rims that spin. (I don't know my seventies muscle cars well enough to know what it was, but Erica later said, "let's call it an Impala. You know, because of the song. 'Wanna be a -- baller, shot caller/Twenty inch blades -- on the Impala.'")

If we hadn't noticed the rims before, it was highlighted for us by a woman standing by the playground wearing a matching set of baby-blue terry-cloth hot pants and too-tight shirt. "Spin, motherfuckas, spin!" she enthused.

"Anyway," she continued, "it's 555-1212 [only she was giving some real number here and the guy in the car was putting it into his cell phone] and my name is Therese."

"Did we just witness a pick-up based on cool rims?" I asked Erica when we got a little farther down the street.

"Yup. And did you notice that she gave her name after her number? And then she pointed out her baby who was playing on the playground."

"That's the one woman in a hundred that makes guys think it's worth shouting things at every woman on the street because she's the one that'll answer back."
[I just showed this to Erica to fact-check it ("I think her name was Therese, not Crystal") and she said, "I think I saw that guy yesterday driving down the same street. I should give him my number." "What!" "Sorry, baby, it's the rims."]

The iTunes Music Store and Audible.com have the speeches from both the Democratic and Republican conventions for free (you do have to have an iTMS or Audible account) so I finally (I'm slow, I know) got to hear Barack Obama's keynote speech (iTMS link - Audible.com link)

Some other choice bits:

• Barack Obama and Alan Keyes on Fresh Air
• Alan Keyes accuses a Chicago Tribune reporter of working for the Democratic party
• Alan Keyes accuses Fox News Chicago's Walter Jacobson of working for the Democratic party

We've got it so good in Illinois -- one of our senatorial candidates is inspiring and the other one is just so loopy it's funny.

I've added my gripes about the lake path to a general gripefest that's going on right now on the Chicago MetBlog.

Andrew Bird (with Kevin O'Donnell) @ Summer on Southport, 7/25/2004

Thanks to Chicagoist pointing out that you don't have to pay the suggested donation at street fairs we got in for the $6 Erica had in her wallet. The woman at the gate told us that all the money was going to the school but the poster says that the street fair benefits the Southport Neighbors Association. Sounds like a giant scam that I'd investigate... if I cared.

Anyway, spending so little left us enough to get meat on a stick. Oddly for meat on a stick, Erica was complaining that it seemed almost too healthy.

I only know a few people in Chicago who blog and we ran into a bunch of them (well, 3) at this show: Allison and Michael of Kady Ditch and Jessa and Kenan. Kenan took a much better picture and wrote much more intelligently than I would about Andrew Bird's music.

So today's edition of NTK (a techy news & gossip newsletter from the UK) has a reference to an archive of found pictures. I'm browsing the dozens of pictures from all over the world and then I said to myself, "Hey, I know that sign... and those tattoos. That's the Town Hall Pub."

The Town Hall has four things to recommend it: plenty of Grateful Dead in the jukebox (if that's a good thing to you), friendly staff, cheap shots, and... it's close to a theater (and theater people like their drinking).

The Town Hall is just down the street from the old WNEP Theater space, so it was our usual hang-out after shows (and I believe Town Hall is still the sponsor of WNEP's Theatre League Softball team). And now that The Playground is in that space, it's become that theater's post-show spot.

And one of the Town Hall's patrons needs to be a little more careful about which directory of their harddrive they open up for P2P sharing.

At the Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin-Robbins on Clark and Belmont:

"Look, they have Pistachio ice cream. You know, the green ice cream with the little peanuts in it."

(My OCB made me check the Baskin-Robbins website: they actually have Pistachio Almond -- Pistachio-flavored ice cream with almonds. She was wrong twice.)

I've started blogging over at Chicago.Metroblogging. It is, as the name implies, Chicago-oriented writing. I'll likely cross-post everything I post there here also (though not vice versa -- there will be stuff here that's not there). But there's plenty of fine writing over there that's not by me.

Water fountain, Lincoln Park

The CTA has put these test car(s) on the Red Line. The car has more center-facing seats, which they say gives more room for standing passengers, and those iconic subway hanging straps. The car has fewer seats than a normal Red Line (54), but the same as a Brown or Orange Line train (44). Poop -- I counted while I was on the train, but now I forget. I see if the Rememberer knows.

Sidewalk art, Winnemac, west of Broadway.

This building is on the corner of Cornelia and Sheffield. The sign advertising the features of the new condos has the name spelled correctly. I wonder if they've noticed...