The best ribs

      "These are the best ribs I've ever eaten in my life," my wife enthused.
      "These," I replied, "are the best ribs I've ever eaten in my life."
      My son took a bite.
      "These are the best ribs," he echoed, "I've ever eaten in my life."
      And then it struck me: Oh my God; we're agreeing about something. 

   We were sitting in the courtyard of Green Street Smoked Meats Friday evening, located, unsurprisingly, at 112 N. Green. None of us had ever been there before. I hadn't even heard of the place before that morning, when Ross suggested we have dinner at High Five Ramen, the tiny, trendy Japanese noodle bar in the basement of Green Street Smoked Meats. When I asked him how he knew about High Five, he answered, "Yelp."

    To get our ramen, however, we had to pass through GSSM, because its entrance is  tucked away there somewhere.  To find exactly where took a minute or two of exploration—clear signage is not a thing in the hip world—probing around the courtyard, until we found the line snaking downstairs in a corner of the cavernous bar. Thus we didn't get in line until 5:40 p.m. which meant, when the doors swung open at 6 p.m., we were 18th, 19th and 20th in line, and the wee soup shop only holds 17. So we became first on the list, and had 45 minutes or so to kill. An appetizer of ribs upstairs in the capacious, high-ceilinged Green Street Smoked Meats seemed called for (I knew better than to say what was on my mind—"Why not just eat here?"—since I knew the answer: "Because this is not the place where we must eat" for whatever unfathomable teenage reason prompted my son to want to eat there).  
     "What do you want?" I asked my amended family (the younger boy is eating his way across Spain).
     "Not pork ribs," my wife said. "I don't like pork ribs. Beef." 
     "Pork ribs," said Ross, always eager to contradict. A dilemma.       
     Luckily they were out of beef. So pork it was. I waited in line while they snagged a table in the courtyard, ordered a half pound, watched the guy slice off three, count 'em three ribs, and made an executive decision and went for a pound, which set me back $25.90, for six ribs. About four bucks apiece. 
     Quite a lot, really. Ouch, I thought, bearing the paper covered tray holding the precious cargo of swine flesh over to my family. 
     One bite made $25.90 seem a bargain. Not too fat, not too lean, not chewy, not soft, just tender and succulent and perfect. I loved the ribs. I loved the space, the yellow lights strung overhead, the big industrial doors, the odd large coat hooks on them, the crowd of 25-somethings pausing to swill beer, meeting up while meating up. It helped that the weather was perfect, the week, over. This was the hip, happening city I had always heard about.

High Five Ramen

    About 6:30 p.m. my son got a text, and we trooped down to High Five. I liked its little basement bar vibe, with toy skulls scattered around and driving ... well, music of some sort, too hip for me to have ever heard or be able to identify the genre. Fusion rap, perhaps. Frap.
     The ramen was deep and brown, with chewy, kinked noodles and slices of pork belly. I would have gotten full spice—just to prove I could—but the heavily tattooed man behind me in line assured me, after I quizzed him, it would be just as unpleasant as the menu suggests. ("There may be pain, suffering, sweating, discomfort and a creeping feeling of deep regret" is how the menu puts it). "Why not enjoy your meal?" he said. Made sense to me, and the guy really saved me—just goes to show that you shouldn't be reluctant to chat up a guy with tattoos on his neck— half spice is plenty spicy. 
     We slurped and chewed, faces toward our bowls. We all liked High Five, and its rich complicated flavors and broth. My wife wasn't enamored—the ramen is challenging stuff, not easy on the digestion—and said that while Ross and I were free to return, she wouldn't be leaping to join us next time.
     But Green Street Smoked Meats, on the other hand, we not only intended to go back to, we did go back, the very next day for lunch. We had to go to Union Station to pick up a St. Louis cousin in for the weekend, and went back with her for lunch—my wife's idea. "I have to try that potato salad," she said, with a gleam in her eye, like it was something really important that needed to be taken care of, right away. Our country cousin confirmed our suspicions, raving about her pulled pork sandwich, and said when she goes back to school at Alabama she'll tell the Crimson Tiders that she has seen the light. "They think they have barbecue, at tail-gaters," she said. "But this is barbecue."
      The potato salad, by the way, was great. Although for $4.95 for a small paper trough, it had better be.
      Both Green Street Smoked Meats and High Five are the handiwork of Brendon Sodikoff, the young restauranteur genius behind Gilt Bar and the paradise that is Doughnut Vault. The man really knows his stuff. A great restaurant needs great food, great service and great ambience, and Green Street Smoked Meats has all that, while putting off a relaxed, pure aesthetic—not contrived, not arch, just comfortable and fun. Suddenly Chicago expanded, and we had a new home in the West Loop. We sat for a long time, lingering, after finishing our meal. "I just like being here," my wife said. "I don't want to leave." Eventually we did. But we'll be back, soon. We still have to try the beef ribs.

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     I've been doing the Saturday fun activity for well over a year, but this one is a first. No, not for where it is or what this lattice of tubes and wires represents. But because of who sent it it: my esteemed Chicago journalist, friend and former colleague, Mark Konkol.
      So where is this strange construction? The winner will get one of my sure-to-be-a-rare-and-valuable-collectible-unless-it-isn't 2015 blog posters. Place your guesses below. Good luck, and if anybody else wants to send in potential Saturday fun activity photos, please do. If I select yours, you'll receive a blog poster too.

Why is failure expected in business but unacceptable in government?

    So here is my question.
    When it comes to business, failure is expected, anticipated, almost celebrated. A cliche at this point: you have to be willing to fail in order to succeed, to try new things, to have them sometimes not work, then pick yourself up. That observation isn't challenged; it isn't profound. Everyone agrees: Take pride in your failures. 
     Now shift your frame of reference from business to government. A failure in government—even one example of failure, one bad program, one person frustrated by the system—is an indictment of the whole. Here failure is not only unexpected, it's intolerable. More evidence that the whole system needs to be reworked, if not abandoned. A slow roll-0ut indicted Obamacare no matter how many millions of people were helped. With government, failure not only stings, it stains, forever.
    What's going on here?
    My theory:
    It isn't government, as such, that upsets the Right Wing, as the people the government helps. It is no longer polite to rail at minorities, to heap scorn on poor people or laugh at the handicapped, to blame them for their situations and minimize their plight.
     So the government stands in as proxy. The hate that many feel, still, for certain classes of people can be safely directed at the government, and resources yanked away, citing these failures that are an intrinsic part of business, and used for purposes that don't benefit people who shouldn't be here, messing up our pristine lily-white worlds in the first place. They don't want the government to work on their behalf, so they use the inevitable failures as a straw man rational to oppose it. 
    That's the situation in a nutshell, is it not? 

You too can be a rental car company

     Oil used to sit in the ground, unused. And then entrepreneurs started pumping it out and selling it.
     The grab-a-natural-resource path to riches is fairly picked over at this point. But that doesn't mean there aren't untapped assets just waiting for someone to notice them.
     Take cars.
     There are a billion automobiles in the world. While it might seem as if they're all trying to merge onto the Ontario feeder ramp at 5 p.m. on a Friday, the truth is that most cars at any given car are parked somewhere.
     The folks behind Uber realized that all those idle cars, along with their underemployed owners, were a resource that could be molded into a cab company. In just six years it has grown to a $40 billion company.
     Airbnb did the same thing with empty apartments, using the Internet to organize them into virtual hotels. Next in the sights of the sharing economy: the rental car industry.
     Meet FlightCar. Like Uber, it taps into the underutilized automobile pool, but rather than put their owners to work as cabbies, it borrows their cars, using the Internet to organize them into a rental fleet.
     The clever twist behind FlightCar is it's centered at a place where people not only bring their cars and leave them for spans of time but pay for the privilege: airports.
     FlightCar began operations in February 2013 at San Francisco International Airport, and Tuesday opened shop in Chicago, from the parking lot of a Best Western near O'Hare Airport. It's the company's 17th location nationwide.
     "Overall, our national growth is very good," said Ryan Adlesh, FlightCar's head of expansion, who predicted the company will be in 25 cities by year's end. "Chicago is going to be a great market for us."
     It works like this. You sign up and go park your car. FlightCar zips you to the airport. While you're gone, they wash your car and then offer it for rental. If nobody rents it, you've parked your car for free, saving the $14 to $35 a day it costs to park at O'Hare. If somebody rents it, you get 10 cents a mile. Renters who use FlightCar pay between 40 percent and 50 percent less than mainstream rental agencies.
     The company was founded in 2012 by — brace yourself — three teenagers: Shri Ganeshram, Kevin Petrovic and Rujul Zaparde.
     Not that they have the market to themselves. Relayrides, Silvercar and Getaround all operate similar services.
     Is FlightCar the next Uber? Hard to say. Americans are weird about their cars, and while earning extra money for Uber obviously appeals to those struggling to make ends meet, handing over your car to a stranger for $10 or $15 a day plus free parking might not excite the average traveler with enough resources to buy a plane ticket. Who's the FlightCar market?
     "Three main demographics," Adlesh replied. "Young, tech-savvy people who don't mind using his concept. Second, young families who see a huge savings over long-term parking. Lastly, surprisingly, senior citizens, on fixed incomes, who want to travel for less."
    Companies like FlightCar represent a fault line in the American economy, between old-school, heavily regulated industries like taxi cabs, rental cars and hotels, and the Wild West online world of unbridled capitalism where anybody with an idea and an entrepreneurial spirit can go into business with a few keystrokes.
     Rental cars are a $30 billion industry. Are they scared yet?
    "We haven't seen much push back at all, they're obviously aware of us. I don't think we're cutting into their market share enough," said Adlesh. "We think the growth will continue."
     The key question is: Do we need all that regulation? Do cabbies need all that training? Or was it merely creating monopolies and high barriers to participation in the market that jacked up prices needlessly? It'll be very interesting to see how this plays out, not just from a consumer point of view but politically. Republicans have embraced Uber — Jeb Bush was taking an Uber car to campaign stops — because it echoes their cry of getting the government off our backs.
     I suggested I'd be reluctant to hand over my car to a stranger. Adlesh said the cars are insured for $1 million, plus they've noticed a surprising dynamic among their customers.
     "People want to treat the cars nicely," he said. "There's a sense of community. The thinking is, 'They allow me to use it, I'm going to take care of somebody's assets.' Repeat users are very high. They like being part of the sharing economy."

Children dying in hot cars

     The Internet is a lens designed to focus and concentrate contempt. Dr. Walter J. Palmer, the Minneapolis dentist who killed Cecil the lion, a beloved and protected resident of a wildlife preserve in Zimbabwe earlier this month, is discovering that now, as global condemnation pours down upon him. I imagine his dental practice is over, and will leave it up to you to decide whether he deserves it. My sympathy is quite minimal, other than to observe if he had traveled to Africa and killed a human being with a crossbow, outrage would have been considerably muted.
     More interesting, to me, was reaction to the Joliet mom who accidentally left her 7-month-old son in a hot SUV for two hours Tuesday while she went to a meeting. The child was found near death.
     "How do you leave your baby in a hot car?" one of my Facebook friends asked on her page. And while I really try not to get down on the mat on Facebook—it wastes time and produces little but angst—I happened to know, so weighed in. 

    "I can answer that," I wrote. "Harried parents forget their kids in the back seat. Gene Weingarten wrote a heartbreaking story about the phenomenon. Here's the link, but I warn you. It's one of the saddest things you'll ever read:"
     And I posted this 2009 Washington Post article on parents who leave their kids in cars.  I both encourage you to read it and warn you that it is truly awful, and contains descriptions that you will never get out of your head. 

     Children die in hot cars  quite frequently. Up to two dozen deaths a year in the United States. Once, three children died in one day. Why? The short answer is parents strap their kids in in the back seat and forget they are there. Out of sight, out of mind. Ironically, when baby seats were regularly put in the front passenger seat, this almost never happened. But the risk of being killed by air bags is such that auto experts recommended the seats be moved into the back, where they are safe from air bags but prone to be overlooked by harried parents. It's an open question whether more children die of heat than died swiftly from exploding air bags, but if I had to pick a way to go, I'd chose the air bags in a second. Far more merciful. 

     Tough as it is to read, I admire Gene's story as much as anything I've ever read, not just for its execution, which is flawless, but for its conception. I had seen those news items about kids dying in cars for years. Usually a small story, the type of thing readers tend not to linger over.  I couldn't turn the page quick enough. Gene Weingarten read the same stories and decided he was going to plunge into that world of unfathomable grief and suffering. That's why he has two Pulitzer Prizes.

    Posting the story did not stem the outrage, not even on this one Facebook page.
     "And how does the mother think that her own child was with someone else?!?!?!" a woman thundered.  She'd have had an answer if she just read the news story. The Joliet mom dropped her boyfriend off with two of her other kids, but he didn't take the third child, for some reason. Mom wasn't aware the child was back there. A tragic misunderstanding, apparently.
     "Dumb bitch!" Lisa C-----n wrote. "That makes me so mad!! YOU DON'T LEAVE YOUR BABY IN THE CAR! Are people really that forgetful .. seriously.. it's a living breathing baby ... I will NEVER understand this mentality ..omg! OK I'm done ranting."

    Thanks for the timely advice, Lisa. Of course you'll never understand it if you don't try.
     "You should read the story," I wrote under her remark.
     Maybe some people did read Gene's piece, because the comments stop at that point.
      It's so easy to get mad, so satisfying to vent your ire over a situation you only half grasp. It's much harder to withhold your anger and understand why something happens. Maybe that's why so few people bother to try.

      I originally was going to use Lisa's full name, to punish her for her "Dumb bitch" remark. But then decided there's far too much punishment on-line already. There's too much suffering in the world as it is. Why add to it? Maybe she has woes of her own. We should at some point start erring on the side of kindness.

Wheaton College stones its students

    The Bible is filled with acts that horrify us today, morally. Disrespectful children being stoned to death, a vengeful God smiting people for trifles—look back over your shoulder when the Big Guy tells you not to and you find yourself a pillar of salt. 
     In that tradition, Wheaton College on Friday will stop providing health insurance, affecting about a quarter of its 3,000 students, because the Affordable Care Act mandates birth control coverage for those who want it.
    This is the key thing to keep in mind: Obamacare doesn't force anyone to use birth control. It just makes it available, like any Walgreen's. If you want to manifest your religious beliefs and not use birth control, you are completely free to do so. 
    Just as those who feel no moral qualm about using birth control can use it. 
    That isn't how Wheaton College spins the situation of course. They make it a matter of their freedom being trampled on by the government. So rather than participate in a system of health care that might allow students to make a moral choice of which they don't approve, Wheaton College is yanking health care away from everyone, over a thousand students, giving them just a few weeks to scramble and find insurance coverage on their own. 
    That's the 2015 version of stoning a whore. 
    Religion should be voluntary. I don't know anybody who disagrees with that, at least publicly. That's why the government should be religion neutral: provide the full health care system and let individuals decide what part they avail themselves to, based on their individual moral beliefs. That's the only way a pluralistic society can work.
     Wheaton College doesn't buy into that because, at heart, they lack the courage of their convictions. They can't tolerate a system where their students don't use birth control because they believe it's morally wrong and avoid it. They have to make it unavailable to them. If they were secure that their students would make the decisions they believe their faith demands, they wouldn't care what the government offered. Because they know that young people actually want access to birth control, their supposed dogma be damned, the school tries to reach over their heads and swat it away. The risk that students, caught without health care, could suffer and die, well, Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord. 

Rapmaster Rahm spins his favorite hits at Chief Keef

     So in a month that, so far, has seen 274 Chicagoans shot, 45 fatally, Mayor Rahm Emanuel snapped into action and blocked a hologram appearance by rapper Chief Keef because he worried it might be dangerous?
     “An unacceptable role model,” in the words of the mayor's spokesperson.
     That's a joke, right?
     No, it seems real. The mayor is now vetting the role models for black youth in Chicago. Following Rahm's lead, in Hammond, Indiana, police burst in and closed down a music festival Saturday night when the aforementioned Keef appeared, in hologram form.
     “Even though I was told no Chief Keef by the promoters, they tried it anyway. So we shut it down. We turned the power off, we’re closing the park down,” Hammond Police Lt. Patrick Vicari said at the time.
     Yes, Keef, who once upon a time went by Keith Cozart, is vile, his persona an image of black manhood as crafted by the Klan, his songs soporific, a bunch of gyrating toughs flashing guns and wads of cash while flinging their fingers around.
     So what? Since when does that matter? Since when does the mayor get to decide what is performed in the city? When did he earn that right? Did we give it to him, or did he just take it? And what makes any of us confident he'll use that power for good?
     Hasn't Rahm gotten burned by censorship already? Didn't he learn anything after his handpicked Chicago Public Schools chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, paused from canoodling her former employers with no-bid contracts, allegedly, long enough to cravenly pull acclaimed graphic novel "Persepolis" from CPS libraries after one complaint, then lied about it?
     How'd that one work for the reputation of the city? "Chiraq" is a compliment compared to the oppressive Midwestern cowardice conjured up by "Persepolis."
     Does Rahm Emanuel have any idea of Chicago's long history of shameful mayoral censorship? We're the city that wouldn't show newsreels criticizing the Nazis because they might foster anti-German feelings. Rahm's predecessor, Mayor Edward Kelly, banned Nelson Algren's "Never Come Morning" because the Polish National Alliance didn't like it. In 1948, Mayor Martin Kennelly banned Jean Paul Sartre's "The Respectful Prostitute," based on its name alone.
     Sis Daley, Richard J. Daley's wife, was able to get Mike Royko's "Boss" pulled from store shelves before a national howl got them put back.
     More? Sadly, there's much more.
     We're the city that banned the movie "Georgie Girl" as obscene, that arrested Lenny Bruce for holding up a photo of a breast at the Gate of Horn in 1962.
     Richard J. Daley blocked the production of movies he felt did not reflect well on the city, and as a result movies weren't filmed here for years. Did that hurt the movies? No, they went to Toronto. It hurt Chicago. Censorship always, always, always blows back in your face.
     Richard M. Daley condemned the movie "Hard Ball" because the kids in it swore. Maybe the kids swore because they knew Daley was planting a fiscal bomb that would blow up the city.
     And the swarm of low-rent buffoons on the City Council is still working up their courage to yank tax incentives from Spike Lee because they don't like the name of "Chiraq." The same august body that condemned Richard Wright's "Native Son." I'd bet you $20 that if Spike Lee called the aldermen decrying his movie and offered them a cameo, not one would turn him down.
     Not one.
     The mayor's office said a Keef concert "posed a public safety risk." So does the St. Patrick's Day Parade. So does traffic. So does Lollapalooza, but that's a bunch of white kids, so the risk is acceptable.
     Everything is a public safety risk. All the oppressions of Communist China are done in the name of security, protests and concerts and books banned because they might disturb domestic harmony. Given that the Chicago police kill more civilians than any other big city force in the country, I'd say a little musical pushback is to be expected.
     You want to know the worst part of this? This elevates Chief Keef, a flash-in-the-pan with cognac dribbling down his chin like pablum. I never had a charitable thought about Keef before. Not exactly the brightest bulb, Keef was the guy tweeting photos of himself smoking an enormous blunt in what was clearly his Northbrook home while simultaneously claiming not to be living there. And now he's Patrick Henry. Anyone going to a Chief Keef concert at least has to be aware of the chance of trouble. Why doesn't the mayor help kids whose only risky behavior is sitting in their bedroom when the bullets come through the wall?