Storm flashback, 1999: "A heart finds warmth in a frigid city"

     Admit it. You anticipated the arrival of the blizzard on Sunday with a certain thrill. Setting in supplies, making preparations, half anxious, half eager. I took in the flag and the umbrella, covered the grill and gassed up the snow blower, while Edie went to Sunset for milk and bread and grapefruit. I kept track of the weather situation as if I were in charge of it.

     Both boys' flights back East were cancelled, and while a trip to O'Hare is in the cards for Monday afternoon, that'll be it. I don't have a column in the paper today—since I was technically off for the Thanksgiving holiday Thursday, yet still wrote a column for Friday's paper, my boss told me not to write one for today. A break I gratefully accepted, though not without being a little nostalgic for the days when duty would send me downtown in such a storm, exploring the city, such as this column, from 1999, relates:

     Of all the memories I'll carry away from this week's storm—struggling across IBM Plaza in Saturday's arctic gale, one hand trying to pull my parka hood down over my face, the other clinging to one of those ropes, or walking in the middle of a deserted downtown street late that night, not a car around, just hunched figures loping off in the distance—the one I'll cherish most is an unexpected greeting from a guy shoveling on Oakdale Avenue.
     It was a struggle just to get there, to get home after work Monday. No cabs on Wabash. Nothing on Michigan. I reluctantly joined the throng at the bus stop across from the Wrigley Building, only to have three jam-packed buses blow by. I then wandered north on Michigan, looking for cabs, contemplating trekking over to the L station, several painful blocks west.
     Then the cavalry arrived. A bunch of empty CTA buses roared down the street, lumbering to the rescue. I joined the two dozen people shivering at the bus stop and struggled aboard.
     The bus illustrated how people shed their reserve in a crisis (well, semi-crisis). The windows were completely frosted over—you couldn't see. The driver wouldn't call out the stops, so nobody knew where we were. An enterprising young woman in almond-sized eyeglasses tapped the lady in front of her and told her to pass up the request to the driver that he announce the stops. I was positioned so I could watch the message move several people up the aisle, then stall out at a Julia Roberts-like lady who obviously couldn't bring herself to tap the hulking bald man in front of her and speak to him.
     A well-dressed executive-type next to me, sitting by the window, instituted Plan B, the careful creation, with his gloved thumb, of a small porthole in the frost to peer through, trying to determine where the bus might be. He called out the stops, when he could.
     The trip only took twice as long as usual, and was marked by bonhomie unusual for public transportation. People looked at each other, smiled, spoke. A woman in a full-length fur coat and matching headband remarked to me that this was turning into quite an adventure, and I responded that my wife had a coat exactly like hers, and thus can't understand what all this "cold" talk is about. (Maybe it's nerves, but I've noticed that if a strange woman speaks to me, on whatever subject, my answer invariably includes a reference to my wife. Some sort of self-preservation instinct, the way a possum will play dead if threatened).
     I left the bus, crossed Sheridan Road, and passed a guy digging his car out from the 3-foot-tall berm of snow kicked up by the city plow. He surprised me by greeting me. I stopped, squinting through my scarves, to see if I knew him. I didn't. I said hello and waited. Maybe he wanted me to help him shovel. 

     "Do you think you'll get your car out?" I said, as a prompt. He said he did. There was a pause. "Well, make sure you mark the place with a chair," I said. "People seem to be doing that. Maybe the space will be there when you get back." He went back to digging. I quickstepped up the street toward home, marveling at this bit of small-town small chat.
     What is it about extreme weather that brings out friendliness in people? You'd think it would be the other way around. That beautiful summer days, with soft zephyr winds puffing off the lake, would inspire people to suddenly start talking on the bus and greeting strangers.
     But they don't. Warm weather is when tempers flare and fistfights break out at the beach. And when the city is blanketed with record amounts of snow, suddenly we're leaping to join others pushing at the back of cars as their wheels spin.
     It's as if there is some human need for warmth, and if the weather doesn't provide it, we have to provide it ourselves. At least it's pretty to think so.

               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 7, 1999

The holiday season is upon us

   

     Christmas is a month from today.
     The holiday season.
     Or, if you prefer,
     The Christmas season.
     A month of .... what?
     Buying.
     Selling.
     Eating,
     Drinking.
     Stringing lights.
     Against the gathering winter darkness.
     Expressing goodwill toward men.
     And women.
     And, lately, those in between.
     Among some of us, at least.
     Among others, not so much.
     Expressing hostility toward our fellow men.
     And women.
     And those in between.
     And not even knowing it.
     A friend posted one of those memes on Facebook:
     "IT'S NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS
     IT'S MERRY CHRISTMAS
     SHARE TO AGREE!!!
     Not just a Facebook friend.
     But a friend friend.
     Someone I know in the living world.
     Or thought I knew anyway
     A good guy, big, effusive
     Someone who, the last time I saw him.
     Expressed sincere gratitude for something I'd written.
     With tears in his eyes.
     What to do?
     Usually I'd just ignore it.
     Life is too short for Facebook spats.
     But someone I knew.
     Or thought I knew.
     So I spoke my mind:
     "C'mon George," I wrote. "Eyes on the big picture."
     "How about, 'It's whatever the fuck you feel like saying'?
     "Isn't that the American way?"
     "I'm surprised at you, dictating to folks what they can say to each other to express their holiday ... whoops, excuse me, CHRISTMAS cheer."
      And moved on.
      Maybe that seems harsh.
      That f-bomb.
      But I think of it as loving.
      As expressing an indomitable hope
      In the perfectibility of my fellow man.
      And woman
      And those in between. 
      Because if these past two years have taught us anything.
      It is not about the jaw-dropping constellation of flaws
      Concentrated in one particular human
      But in how those flaws vibrate sympathetically
      In so many other people.
      How easily they are lead astray from sense.
      From decency
      And our supposed American values
      And the supposed warmth of the holiday...
      Excuse me, Christmas season.
      So that even hello can be 
      Crafted into a weapon.
      The good-hearted holiday greeting
      Recognizing our frequent differences.
      Can be sharpened into a pointed stick
      To shove up somebody's ass.
      Just for the joy of doing so.
      For that little false high of self-superiority
      That all this is about.
      The dominance 
      That some of us need to feel.
      All the year round. 
      Even during the holiday ... .
      Whoops Christmas season
      And all that BS about goodwill
     But so as not to end on that note I will point out
     That though people can be led astray
     They also can be coaxed to return
     To the fold of humanity
     That we all belong to.
     In theory.
     That is what the holiday season is supposedly about.
     Or the Christmas season.
     If you prefer.
     One month out of 12. 
     I don't know about you.
     But I could use one of genuine warmth
     And real fellowship.
     And so speaking solely for myself.
     I prefer to err on the side of 
     Kindness
    And charity.
    And lots of hope
    Hope for the redemption of my fellow men.
    And women.
    And those in between. 


     

Saturday Snapshot #16

     The Merchandise Mart is an enormous building: four million square feet. When it opened in 1930, it was the largest office building in the world. And while more massive buildings have opened since, it still holds its own as a vast space.
      As such, there is no shortage of nooks and corners to hunker down, check your email, read a book, do whatever you need, in relative privacy.
      Which made me puzzle over this pair of Jabbrrbox units spied in the second floor corridor last week. They're new, private rental spaces to do business: make a phone call, check your email. They provide power, WiFi. It's as if someone re-invented the phone booth, then tried to charge $30 an hour for the privilege of using it. Eight of them were installed in LaGuardia airport earlier this year. They are soundproof, with a video screen, a camera for conference calls, variable lighting, and a few other features.
     Didn't phone booths die out when they were free? To be honest, I can't imagine using a Jabbrrbox, particularly not at the Mart, an environment rich with remote vistas where a person or a platoon could set up camp and work uninterrupted. A 30 second stroll away from the Jabbrrboxes is this utterly abandoned area where you could convene a Security Council meeting in utter privacy. I sat there for 15 minutes reading a newspaper and never saw another person, with all the room I needed to spread out and be comfortable. And it was free.
    The Jabbrrboxes, on the other hand, are quite cramped. Did I call them phone booths? Or coffins; I can't tell, I wasn't going to pop the money to try one. I suppose there are situations where they might come in handy: in noisy airports, if you are on an expense account and need to shut out the world so you can make that life-or-death conference call. But even then, you could go to a restaurant, order a nice dinner for the price of an hour in the Jabbrrbox, and both eat and have a workspace to yourself.
     Perhaps I am too far removed from the corporate mindset to accurately made a judgment call on this one. But I would call it a solution in search of a problem.

   

It's Black Friday, so what else is there to do? Let's go shopping.

 

     Elyse Koren-Camarra walked into My Sister’s Circus, a women’s clothing shop on the fourth floor of 900 N. Michigan. She was looking for …. something.
     “I’m not sure,” she said. “Whatever jumps out at me.”
     In this case, a vest by Alembika.
     “A snuggle kind of vest,” she said. “It’s warm, lined with that little fur stuff.”
     Victoria Fuchs, the store manager, walked over.
     “I’ve been waiting on her for 25 years,” she said. “I was born the year the store opened.”
     That would be 1968; Dec. 1, 1968, to be exact, when Sue Gantz and her older sister Janis Siegel opened a boutique within a larger store on Walton.
     My sister and I had been on vacation and we saw these bikinis at a store,” Gantz explained.
     Not just bikinis — but ensembles, with matching hats, shoes, purses and cover-ups.
     “A very unusual thing at the time,” said Siegel, who now lives in Florida. “They were darling, really, really cute.”
     “We came home, borrowed some money from a friend, went to Hialeah, Florida where the company was,” recalled Gantz. “We filled a suitcase with stuff and came home. Made a deal with our friend who owned The Wig Warehouse on Walton.” He gave them a counter in the corner and “said you can do what you want as long as you also sell wigs.”

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An adult reaches for protection

 

      So how do you do your holidays? Bareback, or with protection? The guy is supposed to be partial to the former, but, ever the considerate gentleman, I left the decision to my wife, who preferred the route of caution.
     "Let's put out the table pads," she said, raising the specter of sizzling hot platters of turkey.
     "Actually, the turkey's fairly cooled by the time it reaches the table," I said, by way of argument—I love the natural wood—then sighing and going upstairs to get the pads.
     As we put them in place, my wife reminded me of something.
     "Remember how adult we felt, ordering these pads?"
     Yes I do honey. Very grown up. In fact, I wrote a column about it, which seems apt for Thanksgiving Day, and if it isn't, well, it will have to suffice. We have guests to feed.

     When do you become an adult? The traditional coming-of-age ceremonies, like bar mitzvahs and quinceaneras, are pegged too early to mark true adulthood, but are remnants of cultures where you had to become an adult quickly because you'd be dead by the time you were 40.
     Voting and drinking, at 18 and 21, are popular candidates, but there's more to being grown up than quaffing a beer or casting a ballot, and the truth is, despite what those in their mid-20s might think, the full weight of adulthood usually hasn't yet settled upon their shoulders.
     Some say that you aren't really, truly an adult until both your parents die, but with people such as John McCain, 72, enjoying a living parent, that seems late in the game.
     Myself, I pinpoint the onset of true adulthood to a specific consequence of our honeymoon—table pads.
     My wife and I honeymooned in New England, and were drawn into a lovely woodworking shop on a winding road in Maine. We ordered a magnificent spoon-leg dining room table out of honey-stained bird's eye maple—5 feet across, nearly 10 feet long with the leaves in.
     A table like that costs a fortune, and needs protection. It needs, I realized, despite my relative youth, table pads, to guard it from the spills and scuffs of years to come.
     So I phoned Superior Table Pads, and they sent out a salesman. I still can see him with his sample case, carefully explaining the various qualities of pad, from the top of the line, which would protect the table from a hot rivet—more pad than I needed, he confided—to the cheapie pad, which of course I didn't want.
     Like any good salesman, he made the transaction effortless. I ordered the middle range pad, feeling both extravagant and frugal, not to mention an adult, finally, the kind of responsible person who would purchase something so practical.
     The Superior Table Pad Co. is located in a modest brick factory in the middle of the 3000 block of North Oakley. It was founded in 1937 by Joe Antler and his wife, Molly. He died in 1989, but she still works in the dark-paneled office at the age of 91.
     Her son Steve runs the company and is also a professor of economics at Roosevelt University. Like many children of businessmen, he had no intention of entering his father's business—initially. He studied economics and became a professor in St. Johns, Newfoundland.
     "I taught for 20 years in Canada's largest and least prestigious state universities," says Antler, 63.
     The prospect of helping his father make table pads was, Antler says, "a nightmare."
     "I was very conflicted about it," he adds. "My dad talked me into coming back to Chicago, and here I am."
     Superior is one of perhaps five table pad companies in the country.
     "Let me show you the business," says Antler, ushering me into a large, airy, clean workroom, filled with cutting tables and rolls of vinyl. The production crew—numbering three persons—is just returning from break, and we watch Booker Banks assemble a table pad, basically a sandwich with heat-proof felt in the middle, velvet on one side and woodgrain vinyl on the other.
     "A machine can't do that," says Antler, as Banks manipulates a three-fold pad.
     I observe that the factory floor is not precisely a hive of activity, and Antler explains they are just entering into their busy period.
     "The business is very seasonal," he says. Orders are concentrated between Labor Day and Easter, when people realize they have guests coming over for big dinners and unprotected wood tables.
     Superior sells four levels of pads—the Athena, the Elite, the Select and the Budget—which differ based on how many layers of heat-insulating felt are in them and the quality of the fabric underneath. They range in price, for an average table, from $90 to $250.
     Measurement is key to the table pad business. The company sells table pads nationwide, and most customers reach them online, taking their table dimensions themselves using brown paper and a crayon from the kit Superior mails out.
     However—and this struck me as the most novel aspect of the business—if you don't live too far away, Superior will send one of their staffers, meaning Antler, his wife, Sally, or his nephew Geoff, to your home to measure your table for no additional charge. Home visits are the best part of the job.
     "I feel like I have a wonderful job because I get to see these beautiful, beautiful tables," says Sally Antler. "I love it."
     "It's what we've been doing for years," says her husband. "I visit people's houses and sometimes see a table pad that's stitched in a certain way and know my grandmother worked on it."
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 7, 2008

Nothing to give thanks for this Thanksgiving? A cynic’s guide to gratitude

     Thursday is Thanksgiving, the gateway holiday. A big happy — well, not always so happy — family meal that lures us toward the thornier challenges of Christmas (all those gifts) and New Year’s (all those resolutions).
     It’s called “Thanksgiving” because you’re supposed to give thanks, it’s right there in the name: Thanksgiving. We should be giving thanks and – bulletin! — while we certainly live in a challenging time, with imbeciles running the country and heavily-armed lunatics seeming to lurk around every corner, there is still much to be grateful for. Just in case specifics don’t leap to mind, I’ll help with a short and by no means comprehensive list:
     1. You’re alive. Most people are dead — more than 100 billion, according to demographers. Compared to 7.5 billion who are enjoying this brief flash between two very long, very cold eternities. Be grateful to be here; not everyone is, and you won’t always be either.   
     2. You’re in the United States. Sure, we’re in the grip of a would-be tyrant, the most flawed, toxic buffoon to ever occupy the Oval Office, which is really sayin' somethin'. But our institutions are still strong. The voters gave a vigorous thumbs-down a few weeks ago. We ate a bad clam, politically. It feels horrible, but our system is purging the poison.

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Don't blame the customers you couldn't keep

     On Friday, my wife and I celebrated the end of the week by walking over to Kamehachi and enjoying a sushi dinner. We could have gone to BluFish on Willow, also very good, or Fuji Yama over on Dundee, truly excellent. But those require getting in the car, and we like to support restaurants in our immediate neighborhood.
    Good fish. Good prices. Good service. As always.
    On Sunday morning, we did make the drive to Prairie Grass for breakfast: Sarah Stegner's lemon ricotta pancakes. To. Die. For. We had thought about Georgie V's—also very good, and within walking distance. But those pancakes...
    "And besides," I said, sealing the deal, "maybe we'll run into Bill Kurtis." Sometimes we run into Bill Kurtis. We've gone there 50 times. At least. We chatted with the owners, Sarah and her husband Rohit Nambiar. We praised their pumpkin pie: really, the most delicate pie. Not too heavily spiced... 
     What I'm trying to say is we're restaurant sorts. We eat at restaurants, think about restaurants, enjoy restaurants. Especially restaurants in downtown Northbrook. We are rooting for them, patronizing them, hoping they can solve the puzzle and find success. Nobody wants to see a business fail. To see someone's dream wither.
    So of course we noticed, and were saddened, when two, count 'em, two restaurants within a few blocks of our house both closed at almost the same time. Lucky Fish abruptly covered its windows with brown paper a couple weeks ago. Then Jar Bar, directly across the street, announced it will go out of business at the end of the month.
    In a story on the closings in the Northbrook Patch, both restauranteurs threw their customers under the bus.
     "The support wasn't there," said Lucky Fish's Steve Geffen, washing his hands of doing anything wrong.
     "Small business can only thrive on continued daily support from its community," wrote Jar Bar owners Karen and Adam Firsel.
     And why wasn't the support there?
     They didn't say. So let me designate myself as a spokesman for the community and suggest a few possible reasons.
     The support wasn't there because both restaurants fell down on the job.
     Lucky Fish is something of a puzzle. An extension of the popular Lucky Fish in Highwood, it always seemed crowded. I ate there a dozen times. It was expensive, but the food was good. Except when it wasn't. The quality was erratic. My wife would find a meal she liked, then return and order it again and it would be completely different. That bothered her. What bothered me was that the service was fumbling. At those prices, they should have had the bring-your-meal-to-you drill down. They didn't. Instead it was Amateur Hour. It was as if they yanked passersby off the street and put them to work rushing meals from the kitchen. The space also had an unfinished quality; it was like you were eating in somebody's garage.
     And the Jar Bar. I was really excited about the Jar Bar. Good advance press. They spent a lot of money getting the place ready. It had this way cool blue sign.
     A day or two after it opened, I went in for breakfast, hoping for the start of a beautiful relationship.
     "Would you like to try our buttered coffee?" a woman behind the counter asked.
     How nice. "Sure!" I said, expecting, from her phrasing, that she was about to give me a sample. I had never tasted buttered coffee. 

     Instead she handed me a cup of coffee and charged six dollars.
     I've never spent six dollars on a cup of coffee in my life, at least not one that didn't have a slug of Jameson in it.
     On top of that, the oatmeal was the sort of gelid glop you make yourself out of a pack of instant. Half filling a little paper cup. Like the old Catskills joke: lousy and in such small portions.
     So let's reprise: wildly-expensive buttered coffee that I didn't know I was ordering, coffee that tasted, well, like coffee, plus a dollop of the kind of oatmeal you made for yourself in a cup in college. Total price, $11 plus tax.
     Would you go back? Despite feeling robbed, kind soul that I am, I did return, figuring they wouldn't rob me twice. I got a cup of non-buttered coffee, drank it and left and that was it. Why? I can make coffee and instant oatmeal at home. Plus, the place was packed with the owners' friends; sitting there, I felt like I had crashed a party where I hadn't been invited. The sense of having been robbed lingered. They had other meals, but they didn't appeal: poke, bleah. Plus the fare didn't sit well together on the plate of the mind: the only thing worse than poke is poke and oatmeal. The room itself was uninviting. I walked by Jar Bar dozens of times—my dry cleaner is around the corner—and never once saw anything that moved me to step inside. Not an appealing sign, no special offer, no "Try our fresh-baked whatever." They did have a chalkboard on the sidewalk, and would write witticisms, and I give them credit for trying. Still, I live two blocks from the restaurant, and never got a flier, a coupon, nothing. Were it my restaurant dying on Shermer, I'd be buttonholing customers in the street.
     I was tempted to write this while they had a chance to fix themselves, but didn't want to draw attention to their shortcomings, to step on the fingers of a new business trying to climb up the slippy pole of success and, frankly, my experience of human nature is such that I know it wouldn't have mattered. Very few people can take responsibility for their own failings. They'd just resent it. Reading how the culinary masterminds behind Lucky Fish and the Jar Bar both blamed the communities where they set up shop for their own mistakes, it tells me I was right.
     People can eat at home. If you want them to patronize your place instead, you had better give them an offer they can't refuse. And if they do refuse it, don't lash out. It's a bad look. I want people to read my column, but I'd never dream of damning those who don't. It's unprofessional. Read what you like.
     The two restaurants mentioned in the beginning of today's post  aren't the only ones we've gone to this week. After another great meal at Kamehachi, we were walking home, and decided to stop in at Graeter's and pick up desert to take home. Graeter's is always crowded, even selling ice cream in the dead of winter, because it's really good ice cream, sold with enthusiasm in a fun setting. What's not to love?
     Before we could walk across the store to the freezer case we had been intercepted by Daniel, a clerk, who stepped from behind the counter. Could he help us? A pint of ice cream? Why here they are. Have we tried this flavor? Or that flavor? Please, taste some samples. He handed us little spoons piled with ice cream, apologizing that they were uneven.
    Read that sentence again: he apologized that the free samples he was handing us were uneven. Compare that with Jar Bar tricking me into buying six buck coffee.
     Daniel kept up a banter so enthusiastic, so friendly, that I not only paid $6 for a pint of ice cream, but tipped him a buck AND signed up for their special Graeter's fan club. And I never sign up for those clubs.
     That's how a food establishment stays in business. It isn't rocket science. Sell something good. Do so from a pleasant setting. Nicely. Treat your customer like you value their patronage. Form a relationship: I knew the name of the clerk at Graeter's because he was so personable I asked him. My wife and I walked away, happy, talking about that bright young man's shining future. 

     If you can't do that, at least have the good graces not to blame everybody else for your own shortcomings. A lesson for whatever establishment moves into the Jar Bar and Lucky Fish spaces. The restaurant game is difficult. But it can be won if you play it right. And if you screw up, don't try to ladle out your bitterness to the public. That, you should eat in private.