Free stuff is better than advertising

Fresca

      Fresca is my favorite soda. I love Fresca, and drink a can every day, more or less. I never get tired of Fresca. When the supply gets low my wife stocks up on more Fresca, lining up 12-packs so I never run out. Fresca has no calories, yet tastes wonderful, grapefruity, yet something more complex ("Surprisingly complex," according to the tag line).
     Squint your eyes and it tastes like a gin and tonic, almost—its parent company, Coca Cola, doesn't push that aspect though. 
     I've been eagerly drinking Fresca for almost eight years, a date I know with precision because I can trace when I had my first sip of Fresca, at least the one that set off my current fling with the brand.

     It was 2006. The family was visiting Niagara Falls* when we came out of a gift shop and wandered over to a table set with cups of Fresca.
     I accepted a small plastic cup of the stuff.
     If I were telling my story in front of a Salvation Army band on a street corner, it would be how that one taste opened up the gates of hell, the downward slide into Fresca addiction, as my life collapsed into a Fresca-fueled disaster after another.
     But Fresca has no side effects, as far as I can tell. It doesn't have calories. It doesn't leave an aftertaste. It's just good and refreshing, and if all those artificial ingredients cause something bad, well, given how much of it I drink, it would have happened already. My jaw hasn't fallen off yet.
      I say this to give some long overdue credit to a generally ignored area of marketing: the free sample. While the Mad Men advertising creative types get all the credit for their stupid cartoon characters and annoying jingles, which are celebrated forever as cultural touchstones, often there is no better way to get the message about a product across to consumers than by pressing that product into the hands of the would-be customer. Fresca was introduced in 1966, and I don't know how many Fresca ads and Fresca commercials I shrugged off and ignored before that fateful day in Canada. You can turn the page in a magazine, look away from a screen. Harder when somebody hands you something. Drinking the stuff worked.
     Some companies have samples built into their business plan. Costco has an army of employees ladling out the samples on weekends. And as much as the boys used to clamor to go, the experience was only in the freebie gobbling. I'm sure the theory was to draw customers to the products, but for us, it merely drew us to the store. Nobody ever wanted to buy packages of coconut shrimp. Just the idea was sort of nauseating. One was plenty. 

A Larabar

     So giving away samples is a trust drop into the arms of your product, a statement of faith that, having tasted it, people will pay for more. The key is to give away stuff that people will still want, even when it's no longer free. A few weeks back, my older son Ross and I were handed miniature Larabars as we headed out of Union Station and into work. A soft mash of unprocessed dates and fruit. I thought the Larabar was okay. But Ross just loved it. Suddenly, cases of Larabars were showing up in the pantry at home. It's like a candy bar whose parents were Whole Foods and Gerber, with the calories of a Snickers but pretensions toward healthfulness. A Milky Way for Millennials.
     On Monday, the Larabar teams were back. On the North side of Madison, a bald young man pressed three into my hand. "Thanks!" I said brightly. "My son loves this stuff." Then across the street there was a lone woman, also handing them out. I tucked the trio into my briefcase and vectored over for more. "Thanks," I said, again. "My son loves this stuff." That must have touched a maternal nerve. "Here," she said, pushing another handful at me. "Take more."
      Down into Union Station, I rendezvoused with my boy—well, went over to where I saw he was sitting. "Rendezvous" implies he gave a damn whether I showed up or not.  He was reading The Economist. I sat silently down beside him. 
     "Did you get any Larabars?" he asked, his way of hello.
     "A fistful," I said. "About 20."
     Actually, it was 10. 
     "Why so many?" he asked.
     "I told them you liked them," I said. "Would you like one?"
     "I already ate three," he replied "This is a particularly good one."
    "Cashew cookie," I said, reading the label. One hundred calories for the little sample, God knows what the full bar would be.  I shrugged and ate it. Of course, you can't expect something called "Cashew Cookie" to be exactly dietetic, can you?
     Ross is 18. He might be eating Larabars for the next fifty years, assuming they still make them—General Mills owns the brand, started a decade ago in Colorado, surprise, surprise, by a woman named Lara, Lara Merrikan (I hope to God, if she has a daughter, she names her "Anna). To whoever is handling the marketing budget for the Chicago area: that sampling budget is money well spent, at least from our perspective. I certainly like them free. Whether I'll learn to like them bought and paid for, well, we'll see.

* In the post, originally, it was at the base of CN Tower in Toronto; but my wife assures me this memory is mistaken and it was Niagara Falls. Given that she right about most everything, she no doubt is right about this, too. 

How do we lure tourists to the Riverwalk? Beer.

 

     Walking along Wacker Drive, I of course noticed the Riverwalk construction, and thought it might be fun to write a column telling people about what was going on, perhaps skimming the most interesting technical aspects. But prying those details out of the city proved difficult; rather than guide me through the project, they were satisfied with the chief engineer briefly describing it to me. Luckily, he mentioned the need for Congressional approval to narrow the river, and that seemed a strong enough hook to hang the thing from.     

     Getting the work permits, as every homeowner knows, is the tough part for any renovation project.  Pouring a new concrete patio is child’s play compared to arranging the city paperwork to do it.
     So a tip of the hat to the Riverwalk construction folks, who are proceeding furiously on the south bank of the Chicago River along Wacker Drive, a project that needed not one, but two official acts of the U.S. Congress in order to happen. Given that Congress on most days seems as if it couldn’t pass a law to declaring the American flag pretty, that’s saying something.
     The first was required by 33 U.S. Code Chapter 9, PROTECTION OF NAVIGABLE WATERS AND OF HARBOR AND RIVER IMPROVEMENTS GENERALLY SubChapter I, Section 403: “The creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress, to the navigable capacity of any of the waters of the United States is prohibited; and it shall not be lawful to build or commence the building of any wharf, pier, dolphin, boom, weir, breakwater, bulkhead, jetty, or other structures in any port, roadstead, haven, harbor, canal,  navigable river...”
     A “dolphin” a pier not attached to shore.
     Doesn’t mention “riverwalk,” but the city can’t go sticking promenades out into the river without federal approval which—miribile dictu—was granted: permission to move the south bank 20 feet to the north, under the bridges, and 25 feet between them.
     And the second Congressional okay was the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, which provided the $98 million needed to pay for it all.
     A loan, alas, to be repaid over 35 years, through dockage and usage fees, according to the city (hmmm, that’s ... about $3 million a year, or about $10,000 a day, 365 days a year for 35 years. Quite a lot really).
     I visited the site Wednesday with Daniel Burke, chief engineer at the Department of

Daniel Burke

Transporation; we looked out at a clutter of cranes, gravel and corrugated steel barriers.
Won’t narrowing the river affect navigation, as various Wendellas, barges and schools of kayakers jockey for position?
     “We worked very closely through the whole process with the United States Coast Guard and a number of river user  stakeholder groups,” Burke said. “There was a comprehensive study done of  traffic on the Chicago River. While we’re proud there’s quite a bit of traffic and usage, we feel there’s plenty of capacity and clearance.”
     That seems true; even with the construction barges,  various derricks and supplies, blocking nearly half of the river, a steady stream of boats had no trouble slipping by.
Work began in December, 2013, and three blocks of the Riverwalk are under construction now, from State to LaSalle—the State Street bridge will be closed to traffic all week, beginning Monday. This phase should be done by Christmas. The next stage will push the Riverwalk west then turn south, the three blocks from LaSalle to Lake, making a promenade of about a mile and a half.
     Now that I think of it, perhaps the Congressional passage should be expected. This has been a priority for Rahm Emanuel. The first time I spoke to Rahm after he was elected three years ago, I asked what he wanted to do most as mayor, what his legacy should be. He surprised me by saying he wanted to complete the Riverwalk. At the time, it seemed to be setting his sights low, and more recently he denied saying it (though he did) and picked grander goals.
     Will it become the tourist destination he envisions? My impression, the rare times I’ve wandered down to the finished portion by the Vietnam Memorial at Wabash, is the area is sort of forlorn. The new configuration won’t allow bicycles. How to lure folks there? I would suggest food; rather than stick the kind of generic churro and candied nuts carts found at Navy Pier (or, in case it has to be said, eyeing the Park Grill fiasco, instead of tapping some connected mayoral foodie pal) they need to enlist purveyors of  distinctive, hard-to-find Chicago cuisine: Rainbow Cones , Skrine Chops, The Doughnut Vault and such treats that would send people scrambling along the river.
     Three Floyds Beer. Now there’s a thought. Suspend the open container law, like at Taste. Let people buy craft brews and stroll along the river. That’ll get them packing bags in Des Moines and Hammond. If Congress can pass a few laws, I’m sure our City Council is up to it, with a kick-in-the pants from the mayor. Ten grand a day in fees is a big nut to crack. It would be a shame to go through all the paperwork and trouble to build a sidewalk jutting into the Chicago River then not have anyone show up. 

Call the cops.

     Registering an opinion on the topic of rape seems to be an invitation for a guy to get himself fired.
     However. This is my personal blog, so the odds of me firing myself are slim.
     That said, the New York Times ran a long, front page piece Sunday about an 18-year-old freshman who was raped at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. The article is on how the college, a school I had never heard of before, located west of Syracuse in New York's Finger Lakes region, had mishandled its inquiry into the case, which involved football players, allegedly.
      Now I am not an expert in these matters, and I am a man. However: rape is a serious crime and serious crime should be reported to the police. Is that not so? The story never addresses why she didn't. Now I'm not saying there aren't reasons people don't report rapes to the police, embarrassment, lack of trust, and such. The notion might be that a college investigation would be less traumatic, for the victim, than a police investigation, but that doesn't seem borne out in reality. And I am not saying that, if you don't report a rape to the police, you should take what you get. But colleges have a hard enough time fielding competent professors. They are not in the crime-detection business, and while their bobbling such an investigation is not acceptable, it's not surprising either. A recent study showed that 40 percent of colleges haven't investigated any rapes over the past five years. The message from this story, a message that I believe is not driven home enough, and should be, is that if someone rapes you— a football player, a priest, a friend, anybody — you should always call the cops. Immediately. The cops might mishandle it, God knows they do that. But they're the ones with experience in investigating crime, the ones in the best position to have a chance to get it right. Calling the police, I believe, is an important step in a crime being taken seriously. If a crime is committed against you, and you don't call the police, the obvious question is "why?" and there is an implication that you yourself have your doubts as to whether you are actually a victim or not, since these situations can be murky.
     Or am I reading this wrong? I'm not the Jedi Council. But having read the New York Times piece, that's my feeling. If you're raped, call the cops.

Shutting up is an art form

     I like to give directions to strangers, because there's pleasure in helping somebody. 
     You see a couple standing on the street, puzzling over a map or an iPhone, and you ask where they're going, and they tell you, and you point it out, and the puzzled persons stride gratefully toward their goal. It's so simple, and pure.
     With parents, it's the same. You know the way, you want to give a little hint, some direction, because you've so been there, and you so understand what they're going through, and what's going to happen. 
     Though it doesn't quite work as simply as with directions to the Willis Tower. Because parenthood is complicated.
     When our boys were small, a million years ago, an older person would notice them, in all their porcelain cuteness, playing in the park or whatever, and pause, smiling wistfully. You could just tell the older person was bursting to say something, wanted to pass something along, and eventually they'd make eye contact, and sigh, and utter a remark along the lines of, "Enjoy them while you can," or at least that's what I heard. They might have said something closer to "Enjoy them while they're young" or "What a great age!"
      Which puzzled and, honestly, slightly offended me, this grizzled stranger, this buttinski, offering this crazy comment, suggesting stuff that was never going to happen, not to me. "While they're young?" What do you mean? These boys are 4 and 5, have been for an eternity, and would be 4 and 5 forever. It sure felt that way at the time. Other parents felt their children's live speed past, perhaps, because they weren't paying attention. Not a problem here.
     Boom.
     Now that the boys are 17 and 18, at the moment, and it seemed like yesterday they were 15 and 16 and tomorrow they'll be 22 and 23. I find myself smiling, oddly, at parents with young children, and starting to say, "A great age. Enjoy them while they're..." and the words strangle in my throat, and I fall silent. Shutting up is an under-appreciated art form. 
     I find saying nothing is something I've been doing more and more lately. Even though I ride the train downtown with the older boy in the morning, the trip passes in total silence. That is what he wants. I know because I asked him about it once. "The train is for reading," he said, with asperity.  O...K...
      If the first shock of parenthood is when they show up, the second is when they grow up and leave or, in my case, are about to leave, or have already left in mind if not in body, the older one anyway, and you suddenly face the grim realization that what you thought was forever was really just a phase, a period, a span, an era. Eighteen years, from "had a baby" to "off to college." 
     And then what?
     Oh sure, you always remain the parent. That's what they say. Cold comfort. Like "we'll always be friends." Since the meaning changes. You're still a parent the way you were once a Cub Scout—it's a cluster of memories without a lot of day-to-day practical significance. He's never going to call;* if he won't look up and say something on the train, he's never going to call. I am certain of that. Not once. Maybe on my death bed. "Hey dad, hear you're dying; sorry I haven't called for the past ... 27 years. Been busy. Umm, how are things? Besides dying that is."
     Life is generally a letting go anyway, but with kids you see it so clearly. I've been lucky, in that I've had practice. When he had his bar mitzvah, I realized, somehow, that this wasn't a moment for me to hold some kind of potlach to myself. It wasn't my bar mitzvah, it was his. So I didn't pick the restaurant, didn't invite pals from work, didn't write his speech—heck, I didn't even read it. It wasn't about me.  Parents try to micro-manage because they want to impress people, want it to go perfectly. I figured, if he screws it up, then that's what'll happen and he'll learn from it. I stepped back in the shadows, where I belonged.
    He nailed the whole thing, by the way, beginning to end, including playing "Hatikvah" on the viola.
    I've used that logic a lot during the college process. It's not my life, it's his. That horrified some of my older friends. If I wanted him to go to a certain school, they urged me, I should just tell him. Order him. I'm the father. I have the authority. That wasn't my approach. He has to make these decisions, and if he makes mistakes, then they''ll be his mistakes. Better to let him make his mistakes than to force him to make mine.
    You'd think this broadminded approach would score me points, but it hasn't. My wife explained why.
     "You know," she once said, the best parenting advice I've ever heard, "they're going to have to push away against us, no matter how good parents we've been."
     So I accept the silences, let some harsh things he says fly by, when I can. Stuff I might argue about I let go. "This is not the hill to die on," his elementary school principal would say. Also good advice. The world will bring him down a notch or two, it always does.. I don't have to do it.
     I think, because of that idea, I've been able to avoid the fractious arguments that sons often go through with dads. I know I did. But this isn't about me. My work is done. Take a bow, and edge off stage, at least for the moment. That's what I tell myself: you can make a little speech after he gets married, at the reception, if you like. If there is one.  
     Maybe he has a point. If he wants silence, try silence. I can do silence. I don't have to talk all the time. Shutting up, as I said, twice now, is an under-appreciated art form. I've been tempted to ask him, if he feels the same way, but I'm worried he'd say, "Why don't you try it and we'll find out?" I'd smile tightly, biting back a retort, and think: good line. I like to read on the train too, so we know where he gets that from. 

* Editor's note: In his first three years of college, he phoned every Saturday morning, like clockwork, without fail, including his semester in Paris. Last Saturday we spoke for over an hour. EGD doesn't like to make errors, but it in no way regrets this one. 

RIP Tommy, remembering the Ramones

   Just the other day I saw a kid wearing a Ramones t-shirt, a common occurrence. The band represents a certain unnamed truth, a gritty, seminal element in rock music, a quality long departed that people clutch at, trying to touch something real. To catch the murmur of an after-echo. The shirt showed their unexpected-yet-perfect presidential seal logo, which somehow perfectly fit a band that crashed out chords, shouted out garbled lyrics and that was about it.

    And I almost said to the guy wearing the shirt, "I saw the Ramones once." At the Agora, a famous bar in Cleveland, a city that once prided itself as being the soul of rock and roll. With my girlfriend Sue. A long time ago. It had to be 1980, because it was their "End of the Century" tour —I still have the t-shirt — and that's when the album came out. Thirty-four years. Ouch. Still, several things remain clear. The dark bar, packed people, a few tables pushed to the side of the stage. The way the three band members stood on stage, four feet away, it seemed, their pipe thin legs spread wide, furiously thrashing at their instruments, Joey holding the microphone stand. How they would, on cue, turn, sweep one knee up in the air. The near innocence of it. The driving force of the simplistic, one-chord party music. All of us in the room, hopping up and down.

    "Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go....I wanna be sedated..."

     That, and how, at one point Sue got up on a table ... I must have helped her up ... and danced.

     That's it, that's my contribution to the oral history of rock music fandom. It isn't a moment that resonates with much of my life, before or after, which is why I cherish it, and don't trot it out much, lest it get spoiled by overuse.. But now seems apt. It's the thought that comes to mind when I see those t-shirts, and did when the sad news came that the band's last surviving member, Tommy Ramone, the drummer, had died. Rock and roll has been of limited use lately, since you weren't supposed to get old. But get old it, and we, did. At least, being old, you have the memories of rock and youth. And a bit of wisdom, enough to hold back bragging to strangers wearing a certain band t-shirt. It's lame, which is the opposite of rock and roll. Or at least I hold back, so far. Supposedly this old thing gets worse. Tommy Ramone's real named was Tamas Erdelyi; he was born in Hungary. He was 62. 

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

 
     One secret of living an enjoyable city life is knowing how to carve out a little private space for yourself, such as this picnicking couple spied recently is doing. To step aside from the hubbub for a little while. They could be in any park anywhere, but are actually across the street from one of the most tourist-clogged spots in the city. Where are they, exactly? If we turned our gaze away from them, what Chicago icon would we see? 
     The winner will review one of my dwindling stock of blog posters, sent in its own sturdy mailing tube, a $21 value. But you need to post your guess below and, being correct, need to claim your prize and send in your address. People often let that aspect drop, and it's dispiriting. I've never stumped you yet, so probably won't stump you now. But really, some grass, a few trees, an enigmatic wall in the distance. Maybe this one has a shot...Good luck, thanks for playing.
     

Bookstores can't die if new ones keep being born

Nina Barrett and Jeff Garrett at their bookstore.

     A pal of mine teaches in Evanston, where we sometimes meet for lunch. At Dixie Kitchen, of course, where I get the blackened catfish, every time, since I can’t conceive of liking anything better.

     As satisfying an experience as that is, Evanston is off the beaten path, so while there, I try to be efficient by hitting the various cultural highlights — Comix Revolution sometimes, and, until last winter, Bookman’s Alley, the sprawling used bookstore actually located in an alley off Sherman. I started going there as a green NU sophomore, and went regularly for the next 34 years, part to browse the books, part to chat with its eternally amused owner, Roger Carlson, the last man I referred to as “Mister.”

     But Bookman’s Alley closed, gradually, over years, lingering in a dim twilight of boxes and clutter.  Eventually, it was shuttered around December. In mid-June, I was vectoring from Dixie Kitchen to my car, when I instinctively glanced down the alley, holding a faint flicker of hope that the store might still be there, magically. There was a blue sign that hadn’t been there before, enough to get me hoofing down the alley.

    The sign was for “Bookends & Beginnings,” an aptly named bookstore that opened in mid-June in the former Bookman’s Alley space. Inside, I founded Jeff Garrett and his wife, Nina Barrett (“the copy editor isn’t going to like that,” I muttered, noting the Garrett/Barrett dichotomy).  If you think your career choices are daft, Jeff and Nina (as I will call them, since Garrett/Barrett just sows confusion) have opened a bookstore. In 2014. Without Wi-Fi or coffee.

     “Opening a bookstore is really overwhelming,” said Nina, who was a food reporter for WBEZ and is in charge of the store’s ample cookery section.

     Jeff was head of special libraries at Northwestern for 20 years but quit to devote himself full time to the book business.

     “It’s an area where our interests meet,” he said. “We both left our day jobs to start this bookstore. We’re hand-selling each book; we’re hand-curating the entire store.”

     “Curating” makes me wince — what’s wrong with “picking books our customers might like” — but the hand-selling aspect is key to the bookstore experience. When I think of small bookstores at their finest, I think of the old Stuart Brent’s on Michigan Avenue, and bright-eyed Adam Brent pressing Alfred Lansing’s Endurance upon me so skillfully that I bought it even though I had no interest — I thought — in early 20th century Antarctic explorers. Masterpiece.

     Bookman’s Alley had a grungy, comfortable, dusty vibe, which Bookends & Beginnings sandblasted away for something brighter, freshly painted, lighter but still homey. New books, quality remaindered sale books, a large cooking section, a big children’s section in the back. They had me at “new bookstore,” but I couldn’t help but admire the in-for-a-dime, in-for-a-dollar moxie that inspired them to install a permanent puppet theater by the children’s section. 

     What kind of shows will they have?

     “It depends on who we can get running our puppet theater,” Jeff said.

     “That’s Phase II of our plans,” Nina said.

     Talk about fate! I almost volunteered on the spot to be their first artistic director: We could mount a series of Eugene O’Neill plays adapted for the puppet stage while I pursue my dream of writing Punch & Judy vignettes pegged to current events. But I figured I was already in one moribund profession and it wouldn’t do to shift to another.

     Three weeks have passed since my visit, so I thought I would circle back and see, nearly a month in, how the couple are doing? Sorry yet? Divorce on the horizon?

     “We’re doing great,” Jeff said. “The art fair weekend was just spectacular. I think in a year we’ll still be here.”

     And still married?

     “Absolutely.”

     It’s encouraging to see people drop established careers and make a change. When it comes to professions, we have a sad tendency to slavishly follow the general trends. If the field of law is crowded, we urge people not to be lawyers. If there’s a shortage of doctors, great, then go to medical school. 

     We wouldn’t do that in other aspects of life — if a friend said he was marrying a blonde, you wouldn’t say, no, marry a brunette, studies show they get divorced less.

     The lone factor in choosing a career should be: Are you happy doing it? Then you can do the hard work needed to succeed, and if you don’t, hey, you’re still doing what you love. The message behind someone opening a bookstore in Evanston is not only that there’s a new bookstore in Evanston, but it’s never too late to chase your dreams.