Meh: This year's Super Bowl commercial fall flat.

     The majority of sporting events viewed on television in the Steinberg household are Bulls basketball games, and usually we start watching 15 minutes or so after the game begins, which means that, through the miracle of DVR, my younger son, who jockeys the remote, can fast-forward through the commercials.  

      At first, I would argue that we should watch them —I don't watch much TV, and am interested in what advertisers are ballyooing and how they are doing it. Commercial are  fun, or can be. But I lost that argument, and now just sort of gaze wistfully at the images flashing past. Though to be honest, since a significant percentage of all commercials on TV are those horrendous AT&T "In my day" ads, I don't feel that bad, since every one of those missed is a minute added to your life. The only time I make him stop and back up is when Illinois Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner has another commercial claiming the multi-millionaire is a normal person, and that government is the one area in life where having no experience whatsoever helps you succeed. Those I want to see.
     The Super Bowl was an exception — here are where the costliest, most seen commercials on TV make their debut, and since I do think advertising is an art form, or can be, I wanted to watch them. So I saw them all.
     Meh.
     Few even reached the level of "good." Radio Shack had a cute spot on the theme, "The 80s called, they want their store back" that featured 1980s cultural figures — Hulk Hogan, Twisted Sister, Mary Lou Retton — ripping a store apart and hauling it away. The ad not only was clever, but addressed the central problem of Radio Shack—it is indeed stuck in a time warp, and since they can't change the name — Computer Shack? I don't think so — a store makeover is the next best thing.
     What else? Coke had an emotional tribute to immigration, with various American minorities singing "America the Beautiful" in a variety of languages while engaged in ordinary activities, that was moving but probably flew past most viewers, except of course for a few bigots who were appalled.  Budweiser scored with its puppy-and-Clydesdale love story, though really, when you trot out puppies, it's cheating. Audi had a funny commercial featuring a horrendous mix of a big and little dog, the "Doberhauhau,"  though its point "Compromise scares us too" is sort of a strain (though credit to Audi for creating an actual parody public service spot, not seen during the Super Bowl, that featured Lilith Fair stalwart Sarah McLachlan). Which is a general problem that the automobile ads have. Even the effective ones had little to do with cars, and half the time you forget which make was behind the commercial, though Maserati's was strange enough to stand out, with a feral child making a speech about small people climbing out from the shadows to claim their due: memorable, but in a bad way.
      While leads to the Bob Dylan ad for Chrysler, a follow-up from the excellent 2011 Eminem commercial for Detroit in general and the Chrysler 200 in particular. But while that ad had drama, and impact, and beautiful scenes of Detroit. Dylan's begins with, er, Dylan, a black-and-white photo of the back of his bushy 1960s head, and the fall-flat-and-lay-there question, "Is there anything more American than America?" (Why no, Bob, I guess not. America is the most American thing there is. Why?) By the time present day Bob steps out of an old-fashioned elevator cage, looking around the eyes like a transvestite at his day job and sounding, with his grizzled drawl, a bit like Albert Finney in "Big Fish" -- "American prahhd" — I remembered that nothing guarantees failure quite so much as trying to ape your past successes.  The commercial didn't make me think about Detroit cars so much as think about Bob Dylan, and who wants to do that? Like Detroit of 1995, he's been coasting for decades on past success, trying to pretend his various misfires didn't happen.  Maybe people a few years older than myself have this enormous store of goodwill for him, and will be happy just to lay eyes on the guy. But to me, he's the singer who put out the superb "Blood on the Tracks" in 1975, followed it up with the less good but still alright, "Desire," and "Hard Rain" and then found Jesus and became a parody of himself.  It wasn't quite Chrysler having Woody Allen narrate their commercial, but in the same realm of creepy old recluses you don't want to find prowling your living room. 
    But we've strayed from Super Bowl commercials. The Bud Lite "Are you ready for whatever happens" fantasy date went nowhere — again, the creepy Arnold Schwarzenegger in a wig playing ping pong probably seemed wild and fun on the storyboard, but was just weird and off-putting (though I liked Lilly the Llama, not enough to redeem the ad). 
     This was a year when the football game was far better than the commercials, though given that the game was a 43 to 8 blow-out that the Broncos were losing from the first play, that isn't saying much. 

Philip Seymour Hoffman — Addiction cares not for talent or fame

Philip Seymour Hoffman — 1967 - 2014

     “It ain’t a question of his being a good boy,” Mama says, in “Sonny’s Blues,” a 1957 short story by James Baldwin, “nor of his having good sense. It ain’t only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that get sucked under.”

     Philip Seymour Hoffman was neither a bad one nor a dumb one, but among of the smartest, best actors of his generation. His audience not only admired and respected him, but loved him—there was something about the man, a twinkle, a regular guyness, coupled with the odd characters he played, and the daring parts he chose. There was nothing phoned-in or half-baked about him. He was more than a star; he was an actor.

     Hoffman  certainly was not movie star handsome—a large head on a thickset body—yet was always much more than a character actor. He was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won the Oscar for Best Actor for his 2005 portrayal of Truman Capote, in “Capote,” cutting through the mincing stereotypes to show the author’s pathos and strength. 

     My own favorites were his priest in “Doubt” co-starring with Meryl Streep, and his maverick CIA agent working with Tom Hanks in “Charlie Wilson’s War.” Hoffman was raw and real and human.

     Hoffman also excelled on stage. Chicago’s own Robert Falls directed him in the 2003 Broadway production of the Goodman Theatre’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” where Hoffman playied Jamie Tyrone, the booze-soaked son of a great actor. It’s hard to steal the spotlight from Brian Dennehy, but Hoffman did in the Eugene O'Neill masterpiece. "I am heartbroken," Falls said Sunday evening, no doubt speaking for many.

     I met him only once—I don't know why, when a prominent person dies, we journalists feel compelled to dredge up any fleeting personal connection and wave it over our heads. To puff ourselves? I hope not. I think that is more a general human response to tragedy, something everybody feels, to gasp, "But I met him!" Though I think the exchange does say something about what kind of guy Hoffman was.
     My son and I were at the Goodman in 2010, seeing Dennehy perform a pair of short plays: O'Neill's "Hughie" and Samuel Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape." Hoffman came tramping up and sat directly across the aisle from us, dressed casually in a big parka and green knit Jets hat. To me, courtesy dictates that celebrities be left alone when encountered in public, but I quietly pointed him out to my son, then 14, figuring it would give the kid something to tell his pals back at junior high school.
     What I didn't realize is my son would then spend the entire intermission nagging me: What kind of reporter am I? How could I ignore this star sitting a few feet away? He painted my good manners as timidity, which it probably was. So we positioned ourselves at the end of his row after intermission so Hoffman had to squeeze by. I pretended I just noticed him, "Philip Seymour Hoffman! I heard your film did great at Sundance!" I introduced ourselves to the star, who shook our hands and made conversation.
     Hoffman said he was there as part of preparing to direct "The Long Road." He was nice to us, and to me that speaks as well of him as winning an Academy Award, because so many actors, particularly those known for their careful craft, drop the ball when it comes to meeting the public. Hoffman was gracious. I respected him before we met, but respected him even more after.
     A nice guy and a drug addict. You can be both. In the Baldwin story, Sonny's curse is heroin, and that is what New York police say killed Hoffman; cops say the syringe was sticking out of his arm, the heroin nearby. He was sober for more than 20 years but recently fell off the wagon. That's how addiction is — you get free and then it perversely reels you back. People are said to be "recovering" but never "recovered"; 20 years doesn't make you safe.
     A terrible end, a loss to the world of movies and theater, not to mention to his friends, colleagues and loved ones, plus a caution to all of us who battle daily with the demon. Maybe that sounds like an excuse, but those who puzzle over Hoffman's sad end will be missing the point. Which is that neither talent nor wealth, fame nor skill, offer protection against the plague of addiction. Sobriety is but a good sign, but no guarantee. The pit sits there and waits, and it takes luck and work and constant diligence to not end up back in it. Philip Seymour Hoffman was 46 years old. Whatever he got from heroin, he would have gotten more from being alive for the next 25 years. If only he could have kept on the path.

A new meaning for the term "dog house"

 
    There were a lot of fascinating details to cram into this piece. You know you have a complicated subject when only after the story gets into print do you realize, "Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the owners has a paw print tattooed on the back of her neck."

     Step inside the double front door of the Greco residence on North Tripp and you will be met by a swirling, sniffing, barking welcoming committee: the six dogs who live there, a range of colors and sizes straight out of Disney, from Bongo, a tiny 9-pound Chihuahua, through Sugar, a Pomeranian; Blanche, a Shih Tzu mix; Cheyenne, a shepherd; ending with Shirley and Howard, a pair of 85-pound Bernese Mountain Dogs, Howard having the habit of sneaking up behind you and rising between your legs so you find yourself straddling him like a horse, an animal he resembles in size.

     Close behind will be Mario and Julie Greco, who live in what has to be one of the most singular homes in Chicago: a 6,600-square-foot, five-bedroom residence they built in 2009 with an eye firmly fixed on canine comfort and happiness, which dictated everything from the profusion of window seats, so the dogs could easily gaze out at their Old Irving Park neighborhood and a side yard dog run, to the heated floors in the basement and the marble wash station, raised 2 feet off the ground.

     That might be more for the comfort of owners who don’t have to bend down so far when washing their dogs, as are the mostly wooden floors.

     The Grecos are a married couple in their early 40s who, needless to say, love dogs. “They’re family,” says Julie, formerly a professional dog walker and doggie day care worker in Lincoln Park. Mario is a lawyer who now works as a real estate agent. They also care for numerous foster dogs — Bongo is a foster — and they wanted a house suited for that. Thus, matte-lacquered walls — easy to clean — and wood floors stained dark brown.
     "So the dark hair doesn't show as much," Julie said. "We had four Bernese Mountain Dogs at one time."
    Five of their previous dogs passed away and are memorialized by a magnolia tree in the garden, their own memorial stones and an elegiac ensemble of large photos transferred to canvas in the Greco bedroom where, yes, the dogs do sleep. If you naturally want to despise anyone in a position to build a mansion that coddles their dogs — my inclination before stepping into the house — that attitude would likely evaporate in the warm outpouring of love the Grecos have for their animals, by their unaffected, regular-folk demeanor and by the buoyant personalities of the dogs themselves, all rescue dogs. Howard, one of the Bernese, has cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. Plus the overwhelming aesthetic beauty of the home that would be extraordinary without a single pet: a central staircase with trim that evokes a series of stacked boxes, 9-foot doors, countless built-in drawers and cabinets, 2-inch-thick limestone counters.
     The attention to detail is staggering, from the oil-rubbed bronze door handles and window latches, to the custom-made bricks, extra low and wide, to the intentionally sloppy mortar around the bricks, giving the sense not of new construction, but of something old and roughly tuck-pointed.
     "We moved from an old house in Lincoln Park that we renovated," Mario says. "We wanted to make the house feel like it's been here forever."
     They might have to live there, if not forever, awhile. The house (and lot) cost $3 million, Mario says — what happens when you install heated sidewalks — but in this market and neighborhood it's now worth $1 million. Then again, the Grecos aren't going anywhere soon, but plan to live with their loved ones in their doggie heaven.

Ten inches of snow predicted

     Ten.
     Ten inches.

     Of snow.
     Ten inches of snow. 
     Ten. 
     Inches.
     Of snow. 
     
      There was a time, a period of years, when I had in my possession the phone number of a man who had a plow attached to the front of his pick-up truck. I would dial the number, on evenings when a significant amount of snow was predicted for the next day. He would stop by like clockwork, shortly after the snow fell, and plow my  long driveway at breakneck speed, backing up, pushing huge berms of snow off to the side. I would leave an envelope containing a sum of cash —I think $25 or $30 —in the mailbox, and everyone would be happy.
      But guys with snowplows on the front of their pick-ups are a transitory lot —like the men in country songs, putting on their boots and cowboy hats and moving on down the line. One day I phoned him and he wasn't plowing anymore. 
      So I shovel. 
      I try to dragoon my two sons, 16 and 18 to help.  They should help. 
  
   "Where are your sons?" Willy Loman is asked, in "Death of a Salesman. "Why don't your sons give you a hand?" 

      Well, they have activities—Ross has a chess tournament Saturday. And Kent volunteers. Important things to do. Places to be. They don't like shoveling. And I failed to instill in them the sense of leaping duty that dads always seem to impress upon their sons in fiction. My dad was good at that, good at a "get your ass out there and shovel" bark that sent me scrambling for the door. I tried to avoid being that guy, so now I have to shovel alone, sometimes. Usually.
      Ten inches.
      I should have bought a snow blower. Years ago, I almost did. I went to Home Depot to get one, with an acquaintance, who was also buying a snow blower. Another snow blower. I went with him to see how it was done, as moral support, or something. He walked immediately up to the most expensive snow blower in the Home Depot, one that had, I swear, rectangular lights on stalks, and a radio, and looked like it was built to clear airport runways. I hovered behind a shelf of seed packets, watching. The snow blower cost, if I recall, $1400. The snow blowers that I eyed suspiciously, that I thought cost a decent amount and were in my price range, cost about $500 and looked like bread boxes on wheels the size of Oreo cookies by comparison. 
       In my memory -- and heck, perhaps in actuality too, sometimes the two intersect—people in the store stopped, to watch my friend go by pushing this snow blower. Some clapped or whistled or cheered, as my friend wheeled his snow blower to the check out line. It was like the ending of "An Officer and A Gentleman."
     I bought a shovel instead.
     I view it as exercise. Shoveling. Exercise in the crisp air. Exercise ordained by God. Why go to a gym and work out and pay someone to plow your driveway when you can take a shovel in hand, do the thing yourself, and get in exercise as ordained by God while saving money? It's perfect.

     HOWARD: This is no time for false pride, Willy. You go to your sons and you tell them that you're tired. 

      The guy across the street, whose driveway is half the length of mine, has a snow blower. He very kindly does the sidewalks of the neighbors on either side of him, and at times, tracking him out of the corner of my eye, I've imagined him steering the thing into the center of the street, where he puts it in neutral. I walk over, as one does in dreams. It sits there thrumming, vibrating with power and possibility. He smiles and makes a sort of Gallic "here it is" shrugging gesture, both palms turned up and to the side, proffering. I take the thing in hand, feel it straining to go forward, like a brace of bloodhounds. He nods. I jiggle the throttle, or the clutch, or whatever it has and the snow blower springs to life with a throaty roar, and I snowblow my way up my driveway, loudly tossing an arcing plume of snow into the yard.
       But he never has done that. 

       WILLY: I can't throw myself on my sons. I'm not a cripple! 

       It is not —I insist — cheapness that keeps me from buying a snowblower. No no no no no. No. It's tradition. My father never owned a snow blower, or a garage door opener, and so now those devices seemed like sybaritic luxuries. More. They are impossible, forbidden. People like me did not have those things. It is outside the realm of possibility.  Buying a snowblower would break some known order of the universe, and if I bought one — not that I could, not that it is possible, but say it happened — as a result, as punishment, my scarf would dangle down into the twirling blades, and I would be sucked face first into the maw of the thresher, or whatever it's called, and a plume of bright crimson leaping from the device, which would crawl away with my upper body jammed in it up to the shoulders, feet dragging limply behind, bouncing a bit on the uneven parts, spewing as it went. It would become an urban legend. My family would move away, but nobody would buy the house, the Snow Blower House. Eventually, the structure would be torn down and they'd build a small park that no one ever stepped foot in on the site... 
      It was a long week, and to be honest, I am tired and was looking forward to resting on Saturday. On the couch. With the newspaper or a book or both. Now I'll be in snowpants, shoveling all day, trying to stay ahead of the 10 inches of snow. 
     Maybe it won't happen. Maybe the weatherman will be wrong. He, she, they, have been wrong before. Maybe the snowy frontal system, or whatever it is, will skirt Chicago, and dump over Wisconsin, a state of resourceful, burly men who, I believe, all must own snowblowers as a matter of state law.
       That is what I'm praying. 

       Ten.
       Inches.
       Of. 
       Snow.
       Ten. 
       Snow.
       Snow.
       Snow.
       Sno

                                                                   #


Postscript: Only about three inches of snow fell. And Kent came out and cheerfully helped without being asked. Ross won his games.

Post-postscript: In December, 2016, I broke down and bought an Ariens, one of those fancy big snowblowers with the light and the little shovel attached. It didn't snow more than three inches for the next year and a half, but what I didn't realize—what the mindset of this column blocked me from seeing ahead of time—that I would be happy just owning the thing, just seeing its orange, powerful presence sitting my garage, gleaming, ready. 

After-Words New and Used Books, 23 E. Illinois Street, is the only remaining independent book store in downtown Chicago. A large, yet comfortable space, it features both a range of new books, with an emphasis on political and counter-culture books, plus a vast used book section downstairs. I never walk by without stopping in, and appreciate their displaying my blog poster — No. 16 —— in their foyer. The next three book stores I asked turned me down. 

     

Cold weather flames scorch University of Illinois chancellor

     With temperatures predicted to be as low as 15 below zero Monday, many schools canceled classes. The University of Illinois did not. 

     “Classes and operations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will proceed as scheduled Monday, Jan. 27,” Chancellor Phyllis Wise wrote in an email to students, faculty and staff. “Please use caution as you travel in and around campus during what is forecast to be an extremely cold and windy day and night.” 

     A simple communication. But on the Internet, with its easy anonymity and its tendency toward snark, if not outright cruelty, simple things can get complicated quickly. 

     Student complaints immediately began popping up on Twitter. “I’m still not going to class tomorrow,” wrote someone tweeting as “Mr. Wilso.” By 10 p.m., a few students started to vent their ire on Wise who, like all administrators, is not universally popular.

     “Yo Phyllis,” Ryan McGuire wrote. “if people die, that’s on you.” Critical comments were aggregated under the hashtag “#F---Phyllis” — no dashes in the actual tag of course. Wise is both a woman and of Asian descent, and those qualities were remarked upon, sometimes in the same tweet.

     “Asians and women aren’t responsible for their actions,” said one tweet. Another compared her to Kim Jong Un, a third to Hitler.

     Some students started pushing back.

     “Aside from the fact that #F---Phyllis is racist & sexist, I’m sad that more of you don’t have critical thinking skills & a survival instinct,” wrote Mikki Kendall.

     At 2:49 a.m. Monday, the hugely popular social media aggregator BuzzFeed posted a detailed account, setting the whole tawdry Twitter moment in amber, under the headline "After Being Denied A Snow Day, University of Illinois Students Respond With Racism and Sexism."
     It noted that a parody account for Wise "racked up over 1,000 followers in a few minutes" and 7,000 students signed an online petition demanding class be canceled.
     If it weren't for the BuzzFeed article, the Twitter paroxysm over this might not have reached the level of an incident, never mind news. But it did. Wise reacted in an essay posted Thursday on the Inside Higher Ed website. She wrote that making unpopular decisions is part of her job, and while only about a dozen students made comments that were "vulgar, crude and in some instances racist and sexist," the attacks disturbed her not on a personal level, not because they reflect upon the university, but for what they say about the online world.
     "What was most disturbing was witnessing social media drive a discussion quickly into the abyss of hateful comments and even threats of violence," she wrote. "I shudder to think what might happen if that type of vitriol had been directed at a vulnerable member of our student body."
     The Internet is a vast social experiment that has become increasingly pervasive for 20 years. The question is: Will it coarsen society or will society master it, or will the two coexist, as they do now, in uneasy alliance?
     Maybe the problem is that we still pay attention to this stuff. Society was pretty coarse before the Internet. People scrawled slurs and obscenities inside bathroom stalls. It just wasn't considered news.
     The fact is that almost any online comment board can veer into poison and hate. If a 7-year-old is run over by a bus and killed, the comments section afterward will inevitably include, if not be dominated by, people jeering at the child, making catty remarks, crude jokes or dragging in irrelevant topics.
     One can assume these same people would not make those statements directly to the grieving boy's parents, might not even think through the process enough to realize that, of course, they'll read this garbage and be further hurt. Or maybe posters are confident that their anonymity will protect them from repercussions, or just don't care. The solution could be to have people identified on the Web, but that would create a whole new set of problems. You wouldn't want to undercut the next Arab Spring to keep people from posting mean remarks online.
     Wise was in New York on Thursday being honored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The university - though it has a code of student conduct that contains the words "respect for the dignity of others" and claims "It is the policy of the University not to engage in discrimination or harassment against any person because of race, color, religion, sex" - considers the offensive tweets free speech and plans no disciplinary action. Most of the university's 43,000 students went to class Monday. No weather-related injuries were reported.

A study in roasted root vegetables

      Beauty is found in unexpected places. It can strike you while leaning over a pan in the kitchen, such as this arrangement of roasted root vegetables — carrots, onions, garlic, parsnips, plus an eggplant — that my wife was preparing the other day. The color, first: the gentle earth tones, punctuating by the dramatic orange of the carrots. The exclamatory flourishes of the gently purple onion strips. The pale green sprigs of rosemary.  The juxtaposition too — the varying sizes of the circles, the uniform distribution of the types and colors—she had shaken them up in a bag with olive oil—which actually holds something of a key because, in my opinion, something beautiful carries a secret message, a meaning, locked in its physical attraction, hidden there, waiting to be figured out. In this case it is in the uniform distribution of the vegetables. Notice that they are not piled in the pan, but lain — none overlap, except for a few of those exuberant onions. Which means, when you pause to consider it, that somebody — my wife — did not cut and carelessly dump those discs of vegetables into a pan, willy nilly, but carefully set each slice in, just so, to be roasted with the maximum efficiency and effect, so no vegetable would shield another, leaving it undercooked. So an element is the care about ordinary things, about small details, which is itself beautiful and that the vegetables wordlessly reflect. And finally a kind of innocence. Just as a model, heavily made up and posing for a magazine fashion photo tends not to have the kind of unforgettable loveliness that someone caught off guard at the exact perfect moment can, so there was an unconsciousness to this study in root vegetables, an innocent joy. When I said, "Wait here for a second, let me get my camera," my wife, who had just created this tableau, had no idea what on God's earth I'd be photographing. She stood with puzzled patience as a I snapped a few shots, then told her she could put the pan back in the oven — another minute, not quite roasted to perfection. Only when I showed her the picture did she say, "Ohhh."
     Of course, like most men, I underestimate the work and deliberation that women put into creating something beautiful. When I ran my accidental arrangement theory by my wife, she replied, "I always cook according to color..." Not so accidental after all. 

Divvy Diary: "The air felt almost solid"

     A balaclava cuts your peripheral vision, which is just as well, because that helps with the and-away-we-go swan dive of trust you must execute to make a left turn in rush-hour traffic on a Divvy bike from Lake Street onto Wacker Drive. A quick leftward jerk of the head, more symbolic ritual than actual glance to see if you’re about to be creamed by a truck. 

     Tuesday morning, 9 a.m., five degrees below zero. I had considered staying home. But our mighty nation was not forged by men staying home, padding around in their slippers and keeping track of the temperature on The Weather Channel. So even though, stepping out the door, the air felt almost solid — something jellied, frozen — I took a big searing lungful and headed toward the train station. 

     Being outside for more than a minute was like doing the breaststroke in liquid nitrogen. At first. But you get used to anything. 

     The Metra gods were smiling, and we got downtown only 20 minutes late (going home, it would be 40 minutes late). Finding out whether Divvy was up and running seemed a doable cold-weather task. Three weeks ago, when it was minus 15, they shut the system down — to protect Divvy workers, they said. But it was 10 degrees warmer now and besides, there is a certain boy-who-cried-wolf quality to official reaction to extreme weather conditions the second time around. The first is expected. The next seems unnecessary, an awkward blend of timidity and luxury. Chicago Public Schools leaders were denounced for closing too tardily earlier in the month and risking children’s lives, then damned again this week for closing at all, with aldermen idly speculating that the schools should be kept open as a day care center for kids whose parents have to work. Bad idea. If you’re going to do that, you might as well keep the schools open and teach the kids who show up. Remember, on an average day, 9 percent of CPS kids don’t come to school whatever the weather. It would be nice to think that parents concerned their kids might freeze on the way to school due to the extraordinary weather would keep them home while the rest could go. But if CPS could rely on that level of parental oversight and discernment, then half its problems would be solved.

     The first bike port outside Ogilvy Station stayed red, and I thought the system was down. What kind of weaklings and cowards are running this thing? But the next: green. While I rolled my bike out, a second heavily bundled idiot, to my surprise, took one too.

     “Nice day for it,” I said, always the conversationalist, and he grunted something through his face mask and yanked the bike. 

     I eased the blue bomber onto Canal and began pedaling north. Traffic backed up turning right onto Lake, and I threaded my way forward. Riding a Divvy in subzero weather is like whitewater rafting or exploring a cave — something that sounds a lot more daring than it actually is. The trip took five minutes versus 15. I never felt cold because my full attention was focused on not being crushed by a cab. The streets are dry.

     Since last I wrote about Divvy, the Montreal-based supplier of the bikes and assorted docks and systems, the Societe de Velo en Libre-Service, called “Bixi” for short (a mash of “bike” and “taxi”), filed for bankruptcy, claiming $46 million in debt, in part because two disgruntled customers, Chicago and New York, withheld $5 million due to problems with the software. The middleman between the city and Bixi, Alta Bike Share of Portland, Ore., insists the mother ship’s financial woes won’t affect the bikes. Perhaps, but it already has affected the perception of the system, from cheery civic embellishment to potential parking-meter-scale disaster. Or maybe it’s just me being cranky; I like the bikes and would hate to see the system fall apart. 

     While I was on the topic, I checked with the city to see if we’re any closer to having a sponsor for Divvy. New York got $42 million from Citibank to brand its bike system. Chicago got nothing. The city says it’s more complicated than that.

     “We got $25 million in federal grant money that paid for the initial build-out of the system,” said Peter Scales, Chicago Department of Transportation spokesman. “Because we had those grants, we didn’t need a sponsor at the outset to fund the equipment purchases and were able to establish a brand that was uniquely Chicago.”

     I guess. Though I don’t see why the city couldn’t have gotten both the federal cash and a lucrative sponsor. With all our money woes, are we not monetizing whatever we can? The new bike share system should have been a no-brainer. Scales said the city is still looking for a sponsor, which strikes me as sort of late. But better late than never.