Company man

Calbert Wright

     When Calbert Wright began work at the Ford Motor Company's Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights in 1963, the factory was a noisy, smelly, smoky hellscape with a leaky roof. Working one shift imbued your clothes with what one veteran called "the Ford smell" causing wives to demand they strip down at the door when they got home.
     And it was hot: 100 degrees on the production line.
     "Ooh," Wright said. "No fans. Water fountains were rare, very rare."
     Plus Black workers such as himself were given the hardest duties.
     "The first month, I didn't like it," remembers Wright, 85, "I said, 'I'm not going to stay here'. They had us stacking steel. We couldn't touch no presses. All we could do is stack stock. They were trying to work us like Hebrew slaves."
     But stay he did.
     When Wright began work at the age of 23 at Ford, John F. Kennedy was president. Henry Ford still ran the business — albeit Henry Ford II, grandson of the man who founded the automobile manufacturer in 1903.
     That means Meaning that Wright, who still prowls prowling the floor today checking that workers on the line have enough parts to keep the robots busy — and takes taking their place when they go on bathroom breaks — has worked for Ford a little more than half the 123 years since the company sold its first car, a two-cylinder, two-passenger Model A, in red, the only color available, for $850 to Ernest Pfennig, a dentist on Clybourn Avenue.
     Wright had come up from Mississippi when he was 11, and his voice is rich with Southern drawl. He had an uncle at Ford's Torrence Avenue assembly plant, and got a job at Chicago Stamping.
     Why did he stay? 

     "There weren't jobs paying like this," he said, laughing: $1.40 an hour. "Big money."
     He had a wife, Thelma — now married 65 years — and an infant son to consider. And things were changing.
     "[Martin Luther] King, plus the union, made everybody be classified," Wright said. Conditions improved. He moved up from stacking steel. "That's why I stayed so long."
     Wright's 63-year tenure isn't even the longest of Ford's 177,000 workers — that would be Art Porter, 86, who joined Chicago Stamping in 1961.
     Their longevity is especially amazing when you realize how frequently workers change employers. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average worker at a private factory like Ford works 4.9 years before leaving.
     Wright has put in a dozen times that, and seen many changes.
     One of the biggest is automation. When robots were first introduced, in the 1970s, it wasn't clear whether they'd be a benefit.
     "They were throwing parts all over," Wright said. "They were dangerous. They couldn't control it. They were putting welds in the wrong place, blowing holes."

Better with robot help

     Gradually, the machines improved.
     "They got it right now," Wright said. "They come out better with the robots. They put the welds in the same place. When they manpower with a gun, they put one here, one there."
     Walking through the plant with Wright now, it's cool and almost quiet, except for the faint panoply of clanks and hisses. Only occasionally do you spy a person, shielded by machinery., evoking the quip attributed to Henry Ford: "Machines don't buy cars."
     "Them robots came in and knocked all those people out," Wright said. "Each line would have 18 people, Now they got three. When I hired in, they had 6,500 people in this plant."
     Now Chicago Stamping employs 1,100.

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Work in progress: Jack Clark on the No. 93 bus

     Not living in the city, I probably like buses more than Chicago residents do — familiar enough to grab one when convenient; not familiar enough to be thoroughly schooled in their shortcomings. Like them enough to show up toward midnight at the Kedzie Avenue garage once, near midnight, to watch one being cleaned. 

     Thus I'm happy to present the latest contribution by Jack Clark, a deep dive into a particular bus route. My guess is this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but that some will appreciate it, if only for its granular look at part of a city we all love.

     I’d write to the CTA if I could figure out a concise way to express my thoughts, which aren’t about important issues like crime on the system or whether Donald Trump will figure out some way to cut funding. Mine are closer to home: the route of the CTA’s 93 North California/Dodge bus, which comes out of Evanston and was recently rerouted so it now connects the Purple Line in Evanston, the Brown Line at Kedzie Avenue, and the Blue Line at Logan Square.
     Now before I go on, I should tell you that I can see Kedzie Avenue out my kitchen window. (I just looked. It’s still there.) And, at first, I assumed that my desire to have the extension of the 93 go straight down Kedzie on its way to Logan Square was nothing more than typical selfishness. I did a bit of research and changed my mind.
     There are two California buses, the 93, which I mentioned above, and the 94 California bus, which goes south from Addison Street all the way to 74th and Damen. Until recently, the two buses did not meet. Most of this can probably be attributed to the blockade put up by Ravenswood Manor, where California becomes a narrow side street and only runs for a single block in the half mile between Lawrence and Montrose Avenues.
     The old 93 didn’t try to get around this gap. It just gave up on California, took Foster to Kimball, went down to the Brown Line terminal at Lawrence, and started back north for Evanston.
     The new route takes Foster only as far as Kedzie where it turns south and connects with the Brown Line. A few blocks later, at Montrose Avenue, the bus makes a wrong turn. The CTA could have sent the bus the direct and logical way, straight down Kedzie, (past my kitchen window) a little over two miles, to the new end of the line at Logan Square. Instead, they decided to add a mile to the trip and go east, back to California.
     Now this makes sense on paper. It’s the California bus after all. Shouldn’t it be on California? Confusion starts as soon as the bus makes that turn. Montrose Avenue already has a bus. People have been taking it for decades without having to check to see if it’s the right one. If a CTA bus came along it was the Montrose bus. So now, of course, you have people getting on the wrong bus only to discover their mistake once the bus turns south.
     South of Montrose, California is a quiet street. There’s an ordinary residential neighborhood on the right. On the left, is first Horner and then California Park. Mostly what you see from the bus are parking lots. Beyond those, there are playgrounds, baseball diamonds, a nature walk along the river, a dog run, a swimming pool, and a bike, walking, and running path that goes under the Irving Park bridge, over the river and into Clark Park, and all the way to Belmont Avenue. There’s also an indoor sports center with tennis courts and an ice rink.
     In my several fact-finding trips, I haven’t seen anybody getting on or off the bus who looks like a park patron. I haven’t seen many riders at all. It’s a pleasant trip during daylight when you can actually see what you’re passing. At night, with the tinted windows, what you mostly see is your own reflection.
     The parks end just north of Addison where DePaul College Prep--the recently renamed Gordon Tech High School — sits, and this is also where the 94 California bus turns the corner from Addison and begins its long, 13-mile journey, south to 74th Street. The two buses, the 93 and the 94, now run together for a mile, both with California in their name, which must cause a bit of confusion. At Diversey, the 93 turns west, causing even more confusion as it drives a half mile down a street which already has a bus, and goes right back to Kedzie where it turns south for a block or so, to the end of the line at Logan Square.
     So the bus went a mile out of its way on two streets that already have buses, just so it could go two miles down another street, a mile of which is already covered by another CTA bus with a very similar name. Mass transit turns to mass confusion.
     The CTA apparently wanted to connect those two California buses, probably so passengers could transfer from one to the other. This makes sense, of course, but believe me, there are better ways to do this.
     Here’s what the 93 missed by not staying on Kedzie all the way to Logan Square. The Auto Zone auto parts store at Cullom, which is right next door to the Easy Clean laundromat. The Cermak Produce grocery store at Berteau, which is right across the street from Sanabel Bakery and Grocery, which is full of Middle-Eastern baked goods and other products.
     The next block, Belle Plaine, is where you would get off for the Village Discount, a huge thrift store. At Irving Park, there’s a currency exchange, a full-service Chase Bank, a Walgreens, and Fuller’s Pub which has live music many nights of the week and is not a bad place to watch the Bears.
     At Byron there’s another laundromat with a dry cleaners attached, and at Grace there is the Daniel J. Doffyn Post Office, which is the main post office for zip code 60618. This appears to be the only post office in the entire city that is not serviced by the CTA. Yes, you can walk two blocks from the Irving, Kimball, or the Addison bus, or four blocks from California, where nothing at all is still going on.
     I’m sure there are plenty of people who would appreciate a bus that would take them right to the front door. Of course, this would lead to even longer lines inside the post office. Well, I don’t really mind the lines. In this busy world, it’s sometimes nice to have nothing to do but think about CTA buses ambling down that orderly grid of Chicago streets. Orderly Grids. That sounds like some boring, generic breakfast cereal. What’s really needed here is a bit of sex, some drugs, and rock and roll. 

     Now Kedzie Avenue is not much on that first diversion. To my eyes, it’s one of the least erotic streets in town. You want rock and roll? Go right back to Fuller’s Pub at Irving Park. Drugs? Straight ahead on the left just past Addison. That’s where you’ll find the BLOC Dispensary. According to Google “it is a Latino- and woman-owned social equity dispensary…” They also sell marijuana and related paraphernalia. You have to go around the back to get in. I think this is to remind you how much fun you used to have sneaking around when drugs were illegal and much, much cheaper.
     Wait a minute, can you get a contact high just writing about reefer? I missed the White Castle which is kitty-corner on the other side of Addison, and the big Jewel/Osco, which anchors a big shopping center across Elston Avenue with a bunch of other stores including, believe it or not, another currency exchange and another Chase Bank. Kedzie Avenue, the financial center of the North Side. Who knew?
     From here on out, Kedzie is just about as boring as California. So, dear CTA, if you really think these two buses must meet on California itself, you could send the 93 down Elston. The two buses could kiss when they meet at Belmont, and then proceed south a half mile to Diversey where the 93 could wave goodbye and turn back to Kedzie to get to Logan Square.
     But this brings up another issue, one which I’m sure the CTA in its insular way has never even considered. The California exit from the inbound Kennedy Expressway is one of the worst exits in the entire city. It frequently backs up onto the highway. This happens because cars wanting to go east on Diversey must make an immediate left turn when they come off the exit ramp. If more than a couple of cars are attempting this, it generally blocks everybody else trying to get off and the exit backs up. I’m sure there have been plenty of accidents on the ramp and on the expressway itself because of this backup. Adding a second CTA bus to the confusion cannot help matters.
     But I have a simple solution. Let’s just send the 93 straight down Kedzie Avenue (and by my kitchen window) to Logan Square. This was how it went until the route was cut back to Lawrence Avenue in 1982, which in my mind is still sort of the recent past.
     Now the other California bus, the 94, is going all the way to 74th Street. That’s so far away it sounds like another galaxy (and let’s face facts, if the numbered streets didn’t make the South Side layout so easily understood, for most of us on the North Side, it might as well be). The bus already has to make a detour at Chicago Avenue to get around the Metra yards, which cuts off California between Grand Avenue and Fulton Street. So one more diversion on the way out of the Milky Way is hardly going to matter.
     My suggestion — after 1500 words — send the 94 down Logan Boulevard to Logan Square? It’s only a half mile. The two buses could do their little kiss, people could transfer from one to another, and then the 94 could go right back out the boulevard to California and continue on its way.
     Of course, now it’s the 94 that’s going a mile out of its’ way. But Logan Boulevard is a wide street without much traffic, so this diversion will take much less time than the one currently in place. There hasn’t been a bus on Logan since the early 1950s when the old boulevard bus system was taken over by the CTA. So there won’t be any confusion with other buses as there is on Montrose, California and Diversey.
     And the last time I looked, there was even an old sidewalk-to-nowhere left over from one of the old boulevard bus stops. So the CTA could bring back a bit of transit history too.
     Before I finish, I should tell you that I rarely take the CTA. I usually get around by bicycle, unless it happens to be really cold or it’s raining or snowing, like it’s been for the last several months.
     Now how ironic is that?

 

 

JustFoodForDogs

  

    No column in the paper today. I was on assignment for the Sunday editor, and wrote a larger piece that's running this weekend.

     "I wonder if they have any food for cats," I mused, as my wife and I drove to Highland Park. "Maybe I'll ask them."
     We don't have a cat, not anymore, having lost our Natasha last June. So no need for cat food. But my odd comment becomes less mysterious when you understand our destination: a shop called "JustFoodForDogs" in Highland Park. I guess I was trying to be funny, and failing.             
     Our Kitty, who is a dog, for new readers, or longtime readers slow on the uptake, is pushing 16 years old this summer and has been suffering from what we call a wanky stomach. As have we. I will spare you the details. Let's just say instead of taking her out three times a day, I've been taking her out five or six. This morning, my wife took her out at 1 a.m. And I went at 2:30 a.m. We know to do so because she starts crying. It's like having a newborn.  This also necessitated several visits to the vet — three, maybe four — a variety of tests, including x-rays. An expenditure, I estimate, of some $500. At least.

     We'd given her medications. We'd mixed canned pumpkin into her food. Now the vet's suggestion was to go to this JustFoodForDogs — not sure what happened to the spaces between the words, but that's how they present themselves — and secure some balanced remedy food. No problem. Had Dr. Jones suggested we go to Lourdes and wash her in the water at the Grotto of Massabielle, well, that's what we would do. We love her that much.

     I must admit, I was taken aback by the store, particularly its sparseness. The place reminded me of the Parachute boutique on Oak Street in the 1980s, when "you're going to pay a fortune on this rags" was conveyed by having just a few exquisite garments hanging from a hook or two. Or the Richart chocolate shop in Paris. Swanky dog food.

     I let out a mental slow whistle.

     Our entrance tripped some secret signal, in the back, and a young man hurried out and curated our high end dog food needs. He was a handsome young man, tall, with his face obscured by a mass of hair, and I considered taking his photograph, then thought better of it.

     We bought two forms of the food, a frozen slab and a small box of what was, in essence, cooked turkey and rice with a bunch of oils and vitamins in it , and took it home.

     Kitty zupped the stuff up. And while the unmentionable problems got only a little better, if that, we were encouraged enough to return. This time I bought three frozen slabs, each weighing 18 ounces, for a little over $30, and took them away in a little white bag, the sort of thing you'd expect at a jewelry store or expensive boutique, which I guess this is.

     Yes, it occurred to me we could whip up some turkey and rice and mash it up and save ourselves about 90 percent. But we could also make our brooms out of sorghum. "We cook our dog's food ourselves," is not a sentence that I ever want to utter. 

     JustFoodForDogs was founded in 2010 to offer "human-grade food" to canines without all the filler, sawdust and ground up horses and whatnot that must be in commercial dog food.  In addition to the stand-alone stores, they're available in PetSmart — also no space; I'm beginning to see a trend here,. Maybe the pets eat the spaces between the words.

     When I made the cat joke at the beginning of today's post, I immediately realized that I was re-working a joke David Letterman made when he visited a store called "Just Bulbs" for his show. Doing my due diligence, I dug up the sketch, and was a little shocked to see the bit was aired in 1982. 

     "Do you have any sandwiches here, do ya?" a shockingly young Letterman asks the proprietor. "So besides bulbs, what do you have here? How about shades here? Can you get shades?" She suggests he go to a store called "Just shades." And he does. "Do you sell bulbs?" he asks her, earnestly.

     That's the thing with these jokes. A good one can stick in mind for a long, long time.

     

     

Flashback 2011: 'You get a little heartbroken'

      A central hazard of aging is the risk of beginning to notice what isn't there more than you notice what is. I pondered  this last week, when I was downtown (and wrote a post about thinking the Harlan J. Berk coin and antiquity store had vanished). It wasn't just that. My general mood was, I felt like I was walking through a Ghost City of places now gone. Such as this blank storefront on Madison Street, which I had written about a couple of times when it was a tiny but scrappy cupcake shop. I have sympathy for small fry flogging their dying dreams, particularly if they are battling behemoths. The original headline was "Corporate cupcake giant moves in on 2 tough cookies." If you make it to the end, I provide an update.

     People come into the Cupcake Counter all day long, looking for cupcakes. Some even buy them at the tiny shop on Madison Street.
     Others are just asking for directions to Crumbs Bake Shop, a New York cupcake chain that opened in Chicago at the end of December. 

     They haven’t far to go; it’s right across the street from the Cupcake Counter — just turn around and walk out the door, having bought nothing, leave the little bakery that Samantha Wood and her mother, Holly Sjo, began in 2009 and keep afloat by working grueling 16-hour days, turn left, go 60 paces, crossing Franklin Street, and there you are at the 34th Crumbs branch nationwide.
     “Your spirit ...” says Wood. “You get a little heartbroken.”
     The Cupcake Counter, 229 W. Madison, is perhaps the smallest retail establishment downtown. The storefront is 9 feet wide, the total space, including the kitchen in back, is 290 square feet. For Valentine’s Day it is decorated like a kindergarten, with big red hearts cut out of construction paper.
     Crumbs is more than twice the size, a difference also reflected in its products. It’s decorated with a lovely golden graphic of a jester juggling cupcakes.

   Cupcake Counter cupcakes weigh about 2¾ ounces and look exactly like the cupcakes your mother would bake and bring to your first-grade classroom in a tinfoil-lined shoebox to celebrate your birthday. The icing can be spare — sometimes it doesn’t even cover the cupcake top, but leaves a gap of bare cake rimming the crinkly paper wrapping.
      Decoration might be a single tiny red candy heart, set directly in the center. I would describe Cupcake Counter cupcakes as simple, classic cupcakes with a certain quiet dignity; solemn cupcakes, maybe even a little sorrowful; cupcakes as Wayne Thiebaud would paint them.
     Sometimes only a handful are on display.
     Across the street at Crumbs is a different story altogether. The display case is jammed with cupcakes, ranging from 1-ounce minis to the “Colossal Crumb” intended to feed eight people. The “signature” cupcakes are 7-ounce, 500-calorie behemoths the size and shape of grapefruits, domed high with icing, studded with candy, drenched in chocolate, crusted with sprinkles. Circus-like cupcakes. Mardi Gras cupcakes.
      “Most people don’t eat them by themselves,” said Crumbs district manager Sara Fina. “They share them, because you want to try everything.”
     Its “library of varieties” are produced at an outside bakery. “We give them the recipes,” said Fina, adding that Crumbs plans to open four more outposts in the Chicago area, the latest squalls in a cupcake downpour.
      “Cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes,” said Sarah Levy, founder of Sarah’s Pastries & Candies, a Chicago bakery. “We are definitely being bombarded. You think it’s going to be gone but it’s still going.”
      Levy said high-end cupcake boutiques first got recognition with New York’s Magnolia Bakery in “Sex and the City” and Sprinkles in Beverly Hills.
      “Lines out the door,” Levy said.
      Sprinkles opened its first shop in Chicago last July. Magnolia is planning to open here this spring.
     Cupcake Counter cupcakes are $3 apiece; Crumbs’ signature cupcakes are $3.75. I bought a few from each store to take home, taste-test and compare, and here my David-and-Goliath story falls apart.
      Though Cupcake Counter chocolate icing has a delicate cocoa note I savored, there was no night-and-day difference. The made-from-scratch-by-mom cake and the made-by-some-faceless-contractor cake tasted pretty much the same, and my family preferred Crumbs, which does give 250 percent more cupcake for 25 percent more in price.
     Not that there aren’t reasons beyond cupcakes to patronize the Cupcake Counter.
     “It was always a dream to do a business together,” said Wood. “Mom went to culinary school; I worked in advertising. That was our dream, to do something little and have it be real. We never had the interest to have 10 locations.”
      They have a tough enough time running one.
     “Food retail is so laborious,” she said, noting they arrive at 3 or 4 a.m. and stay until 7:30 p.m..
     “That’s a day,” she said.
     As for Crumbs.
     “You want to believe that people can see through it,” she said.
     Wood looked tired. What are the chances that she and her mother will hold up against a national chain?
     “Mom and I are fighters, we will never not survive,” she said. “Someone else in our shoes, I would really be concerned. We will not compromise our integrity.”
     Her mother has not stepped foot in Crumbs since it opened.
     “Why would I?” said Holly Sjo. “It’s of no concern. I’ve been to them in Beverly Hills and in New York and they’re all the same.”
     Is she concerned because they’re across the street?
     “Concerned?” she said. “A little disappointed. We have completely different products. We make everything by scratch, by hand. We do it just like your mother would do for your birthday. Every single thing we sell goes through my hands. It’s a very long day, but for me, I have no interest to do it any other way.
     “I think our recipes are different, our visual appeal, our personal commitment, you will sense that, if you were actually lucky enough to have a mom or grandma who did that. That’s what a baker is supposed to do.”
     — Originally published Feb. 13, 2011

     

    Update: The Cupcake Counter won. All 65 Crumbs stores went out of business in 2014. Sprinkles closed its Chicago operations last year. Magnolia Bakery still has a State Street location, as well as outlets in New York, California, India, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey and the Philippines. 

     But what giant cupcakes could not kill, COVID did, and the Cupcake Counter went out of business in April, 2020. Samantha Wood moved to Florida where she formed the Sjo Agency — named for her mother — which does support work for UHNW, or "ultra high net worth" individuals.

Judge comes out swinging in nude women's spa case

Judge Lawrence VanDyke of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (YouTube)

     I wrote this assuming that the paper would dash out the word "dicks." To their credit, they did not. Score one for candor.

     Context is important.
     For instance, before we dive into today's topic, I would ask you to consider the respectable business establishment, Dick's Sporting Goods, which I patronize and recommend for its wide selection and affordable prices.
     Now, imagine a roomful of detectives, hunting for clues. We could refer to them colloquially as "dicks."
     Have I softened you up for the opening line of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence VanDyke's dissent in "Olympus Spa v. Andretti," which dropped last week, setting the legal world abuzz? Let's see.
     "This is a case about swinging dicks," VanDyke began. "The Christian owners of Olympus Spa — a traditional, Korean, women-only, nude spa — understandably don't want them in their spa. Their female employees and female clients don't want them in their spa either. But Washington State insists on them. And now so does the 9th Circuit."
     The case is relevant in our world where a basic fact of nature — some people born male want to live as women, and vice versa — has become a political hobbyhorse that will only see more use as the mid-term elections approach and the Republicans seek to light a fire under their base, chilled by the skein of jaw-dropping disasters their policies have wrought.
     Back to VanDyke, who recognizes the shock value of his language. He continues:
     "You may think that swinging dicks shouldn’t appear in a judicial opinion. You’re not wrong. But as much as you might understandably be shocked and displeased to merely encounter that phrase in this opinion, I hope we all can agree that it is far more jarring for the unsuspecting and exposed women at Olympus Spa — some as young as thirteen — to be visually assaulted by the real thing."
     Shock is a funny thing. While it seems natural, to those shocked, it also is very specific to certain times and places. White Southerners in the 1950s were shocked at the thought of Black people sharing their swimming pools. Meanwhile, in Japan, men and women bathe naked together in public baths without batting an eye. It's cultural, not natural.
     Conservatives, remember, are capable of amazing feats of imagination, when the spirit moves. They have no trouble confabulating a fetus the size of a grain of rice into a full grown "baby," nor any hesitation dictating the most intimate decisions of biological women based on that feat of fantasy. Considering trans women as women should be a piece of cake.
     Instead, we have VanDyke deploying words like "woke" and "man" with barely concealed contempt — to me, that is the shocking part. There is no question there are slivers of life where the existence of trans people pose challenges to be sorted out. Girls high school athletics come to mind. It's that sense of angry grievance that is sad and puzzling. Why must MAGA always be the victims?

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Restaurant field notes: Mariscos San Pedro

     The rain raised a question: should we stay home?
      Actually, it was my wife who posed it, as dinnertime approached Sunday night and the rain pelted down. She asked twice, in fact: once before we got in the car, a second time as we drove along Shermer, toward Dundee and the expressway, the wipers swishing furiously.
     Though I am a committed fan of staying home, I also like to get out, now and then. True, we'd met friends for dinner the night before, to soak up the St. Patrick's Day fun at Hackney's on Lake. 
      But our younger son and daughter-in-law had suggested dinner at a new seafood place, Mariscos San Pedro, 1227 W. 18th St., in Pilsen. New to us; they'd been there several times, always a good sign. The twin lure of their company, plus experiencing a new restaurant, drove me forward. Plus I really like to go to Pilsen, and pondered whether Panaderia Nuevo Leon might be open so late on a Sunday and, if so, could we make a pit stop to load up on ginger pigs.

     Well, all that, and not becoming the sort of old boot deterred by rain. "We'd love to actually do what we said we'd do, but it was wet out..." My wife had edited herself out of the equation. Had she asked, "Should we go?" I might have given it more careful consideration. "Do you feel up to it?" was a challenge, and must be answered with a Teddy Roosevelt like thump of the fist on the steering wheel. "By jove yes! Capital day! Onward into the maelstrom!" I have my pride.

     "If April showers bring May flowers," I asked, "what do March showers bring?" To which my wife answered something along the effect of, "March monsoons bring doom and gloom."
     Prior to the rain question, she had asked, "Do we need to dress up?" A charming thought that, now that I set it down, seems plucked from a fairy tale. I called up the Mariscos San Pedro web site on my phone and showed her a video of the place. A guy in a baseball cap and half-zip. 
     "You'll be fine," I said. "It's just expensive. Expensive doesn't mean 'fancy' anymore."
      What does "expensive" even signify nowadays, particularly in regard to restaurants? During the traditional scope-out-the-menu session we'd held earlier in the day — part of the fun of going out is strategizing dinner ahead of time — I'd settled on the "Whole Dorade with Red & Green Adobo" for $48, which is $31 more than I'd spent on my Hackney Burger with cheese the night before.

Ceviche and tuna tostadas.

      So out of the comfort zone. But I'm shifting from a careful-conservation-of-resources approach  toward a fuck-it-we're-all-gonna-die-someday attitude toward life, which, after all, is to be lived.
     Though like most well-laid plans, that got scrapped in the restaurant. My son and daughter-in-law have not only been to Mariscos San Pedro before, but honeymooned in Mexico City with the express purpose of chowing down at Michelin star restaurants on a budget. So they know.
     "We'll put ourselves in your hands," I told my son. Sharing adds to the fun. He ordered.
     We started off with a snapper ceviche, served on crispy rounds, and a pair of tuna tostadas that were bright and refreshing, the serviche sprinkled with toasted coconut, the tostadas emboldened by chunks of orange.

Duck confit tamales, and pan de elotes.

      The next round was a pair of duck confit tamales with mole — rich and tasty — and a pan de elotes, which my wife found far too sweet to consume. 
      For the main course, we dug into that whole dorade — Spanish for sea bream — piling it on small green tacos. I can't say I was bowled over by its complicated panoply of flavors; it was good, and I ate it.
     Service was brisk and efficient — not a lot of chit chat. I wash down dinner with a lot of water, and they kept it coming. I'd have plunged in and grabbed an NA margarita, but nobody else at the table was drinking, beyond my son's Topo Chico mineral water, and plain water worked fine.

     One doesn't usually notice the table at a restaurant, but this one had these deep grooves radiating out from a center circle, and I pointed this out as an obvious design flaw. "They can never get that clean," I said, and we fell to discussing various solutions. We saw they had tried. One of the grooves had been filled in, with a kind of clear resin, which looks hideous, and explained why the rest weren't attempted. Maybe the tables were acquired cheaply second-hand from Dusek's, a beloved gastro-pub that occupied the space previously. But my heart went out to the person who thought, "Hey, cool tables, I'll get them for my restaurant."

Dorado

     The room, located in Thalia Hall, was long and festive, with cartoony paintings of seafood, laid out like a long-ago bar retrofitted into a hip new restaurant, or maybe a pair of bars, as there is a long second room off to the side, for overflow. The place wasn't crowded, but then it was Sunday night in a downpour.
     What most impressed me — and I hope this isn't damning by faint praise — is the wallpaper in the bathroom. Really fun, with crawfish. Once when the waitress swept by, I opened my mouth, ready to say, "I love the wallpaper in your bathroom." But she was not the talkative sort, as I've mentioned, and I try to tamp down embarrassing my progeny when I can all avoid it, so said nothing, shutting up being an art form I struggle to master.
    They had some small dessert bites — a $4 macaron, a petite scoop of ice cream. I was seduced by a horchata tiramisu — I have a powerful love for horchata which was eaten by the table, though without particular enthusiasm. I considered taking a picture of the pastry, but it didn't strike me as worth the effort. We later decided it didn't taste very horchata-like.
     I thanked my son for the venue selection and told him I'd go back — the highest praise I could muster, not adding the implied "...with you." Left to my own devices in Pilsen, I'm still making a beeline for 5 Rabinitas. Grilled chicken in garlic honey marinade. Now that's something worth going out in a rainstorm for. 

     

One hundred years young, Shannon Rovers are newbies in the venerable story of bagpipes

Danny Boyle (from left to right) Noreen Boyle, and Marty McAndrew. 

      The Shannon Rovers Irish Pipe Band are new to the bagpipe scene, being only 100 years old this year.
     To put that in perspective, bagpipes are mentioned in the Bible, in Daniel, and were common throughout the ancient world.
     "When Rome was burning, Nero was not fiddling," Noreen Boyle said. "He was playing the pipes."
     Boyle has a bit of history herself. She played at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, twice, and this past weekend at the Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade.
     "I've been in the band for 62 years," said Boyle, 74. "I was 12 when I started. That's where I met my husband."
     That's Danny Boyle, in the band only 58 years, whose parents hailed from Donegal. "We were born into it," he said.
     The Great Highlands pipes they play have four parts: a bag, providing a continual supply of air; a blowpipe, to puff air into the bag; a chanter, with holes to finger the melody; and three drones, providing that distinctive continuous wail, called a "skirl."
     "They'd 'send in the Irish,' hoping to scare the enemy, by having the pipes drone," said Rovers manager Marty McAndrew. "It's an unusual sound and carries in the mist. It was considered an instrument of war by the English — some people today still don't want a bagpipe in a church."
     The bagpipes were indeed viewed as weapons of war — an English judge ruled so in 1746, condemning a man to hang for wielding them. They were deployed in battle in World War I, with Scottish pipers leading charges out of the trenches, suffering terrible casualties.
     Nor can we overlook Bill Millin , who went ashore on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in kilt and bonnet, armed with his pipes and dagger, marching up and down Sword Beach, playing "Highland Laddie." German snipers later reported they had him in their sights the whole time but did not fire, out of respect for the courage of the madman.

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