"You better party"

     "Who is he? (And what is he to you?)" is a great title for a blues song, and Sugaray Rayford delivered it with power, sincerity and a surprising dance groove for such a big man.    

     "Six-foot-five, 365 pounds baby!" he enthused to the crowd at the Pritzker Pavilion stage of the Chicago Blues Festival Saturday night.

St. Regis Hotel

      As glad as Rayford said he was to be in Chicago, as opposed to all the other places all over the world the Texas native has performed, we were a seated crowd, and that just would not do. Rayford urged us to our feet, several times, until everyone was standing and swaying.

     "You better party," he half urged, half threatened, invoking the possible return of COVID to dampen scenes like this one. "It could shut down again tomorrow."

     That sense of urgent fun seemed the general mood on a jammed Michigan Avenue, packed with people enjoying perfect June weather. Lines of latecomers to get into the Blues Fest stretched around the block. Summer seemed in full swing. Musicians played, families strolled, children gawked.

     We couldn't stay for the end of Rayford's set — reservations at Miru, a Lettuce Entertain You Restaurant opened last month in the new St. Regis Hotel, the shiny green Jeanne Gang tower with its way cool two floor "blow-out" section to keep the 100-story structure from swaying in the Chicago wind.

     "It's a thrill just going in the building," I told my wife, as we went in. "The fact we also get dinner is just a bonus."

     We got off the elevator, edged into the young, hip crowd. From the maitre d' station, the restaurant looks small, intimate, but then as you step inside, it unfolds, through an expansive section out onto one of the great romantic restaurant decks in Chicago. Miru is Japanese for "view," and offers an expansive sweep across the river, from Trump Tower ("I'm going to be standing there when they take those letters down," I told my wife, leaving out the part about cheering) to Navy Pier, the Ferris wheel and the lake, and the biggest challenge of the experience was deciding which way to face at our table, and even then, we kept swiveling in our seats, admiring the glorious city all around us.  

     While we were being ushered to our table, we bumped into Lettuce founder Richard Melman. I don't know why I was surprised to find him there on a Saturday night, if not quite bussing tables, then midwifing the birth of his latest creation. He paused his efforts to join us at our table, advising us on the best things to order — grilled avocado in a spicy soy, which was truly wonderful. The broccolini gomaae in sweet sesame sauce was a fun twist on the classic spinach, the vegetables firm yet yielding. We had chopped Bluefin tuna on little leaves of crispy shiso, and smoked pork belly skewers in apple cider glaze. I couldn't resist trying the miso black cod, and Edie opted for their hamachi ponzu maki. Sometimes dessert is a trifle, a sweet afterthought, but dessert at Miru was perhaps the highlight; coconut cake and mango sorbet, and — my favorite — black sesame mochi with charcoal vanilla ice cream and black sesame praline.

     And the sushi.... I've eaten at some first rate sushi places — like the eight-seat Omakase Ume — and Miru is right up there with the best.

     The St. Regis is on Wacker, just west of Lake Shore Drive, and it's a 1.7 mile hike to Union Station. But my wife shrugged off my suggestion of a cab and we power-walked it in half an hour. Oddly enough, the sprint to the train was itself fun, almost marvelous, the capstone of a very busy day — my 63rd birthday. It like a dream — a good dream this time — to race across the Loop, through all the color and lights and noise and crowds, the familiar buildings sliding past, the cars and commotion. Our train car heading home was host to a cluster of loud, laughing girls, talking excitedly, as if they'd never been downtown before. Maybe they hadn't.  

View from the patio at Miru in the St. Regis Hotel.

Works in progress: Jack Clark

     The Works in Progress feature which had been running Saturdays ran out of steam — well, ran out of writer-friends, actually. I'd hope that readers who had various literary side hustles would step up. But they didn't. Since I try not to repost TOO much old stuff, I crafted a slice-of-life glimpse of my visit to Schuba's on Sunday, and that ironically flushed out Jack Clark, who I had invited to contribute a few weeks back. On Thursday, I posted a 2002 column on him, by way of introduction. Take it away, Jack.

     When Schuba's opened back in 1989, my first thought was, "Oh, oh. Here come the yuppies." I was driving trucks back then, moving furniture. My favorite breakfast joint, the Holiday Grill, was kitty-corner from Schuba's, one door off the corner. It was a single storefront, not very deep, ten stools and three or four small tables. That was the entire place, open for breakfast and lunch only. "Southern Cooking," the sign said.  

Jack Clark at the Grafton Pub

      Ruby was the waitress. Her husband was behind the grill. I forget his name. They were originally from Athens Georgia. I'm pretty sure that's right. They made the best biscuits and gravy I'd ever tasted. I also loved their French toast, a very light batter on fingerprint white bread. It didn't need syrup, strawberries or powdered sugar, just a touch of butter.
     I'd been stopping in regularly since the mid-'70s, usually along with a moving crew. We often ran into crews from other moving companies inside. It was a long way from a yuppie place, and I took it as a bad sign when Schuba's showed up. Rents would go up and the Holiday Grill would be priced out of the neighborhood.
     One day I walked in and Ruby was behind the grill. Her husband had had a stroke. I remember their daughter came in and worked as a waitress to help out. The food was as good as ever. But you could tell it was taking a toll on Ruby, cooking all day and then going home to take care of a sick husband.
     Ruby hired another cook for a bit. The gravy was as white as bleached flour, and I think that's all it was, flour and water. There wasn't a hint of sausage, no bits of meat scraped off the grill to turn the gravy that lovely shade of grey.
     The next time I stopped by, the place was closed. A few months later, I heard that Ruby was cooking breakfast across the street, in Schuba's back room. They'd decided to open bright and early special for her.
     I went in with a moving crew and she was smiling behind the grill. The food was as good as ever. The same room where the bands played at night was filled with morning light. I decided to forgive the Schuba brothers for being yuppies (if that's what they were).
     Ruby always had the radio tuned to WMAQ, which was a great country station back then. One day, George Jones came on singing, "He Stopped Loving Her Today." Ruby shouted from behind the grill, "Ain't no food going out of this kitchen 'til this song ends." You could hear Georgia in every word, and you knew without a doubt that Ruby was thinking of her husband, sick at home, waiting for her to get back to him.
     I was in and out of town in those days. Once I got back and a fellow mover told me that Ruby and her husband had died. "Her husband, you mean?"
     He shook his head. "Both of them." That's what he'd heard.
     I double-parked on Belmont Avenue and went inside. Ruby had been helping her husband across the street, the bartender told me, when they'd been hit and killed by a turning car. That was all the details he knew.
     I've been in Schuba's many times since then. I've heard plenty of good music. But it's Ruby's voice that comes clearly through the years.

     If you'd like to dive into Clark's work, start with his three-book Nick Acropolis private detective series. It's all Chicago based, and start with "Westerfield's Chain," then "Highway Side," and "Dancing on Graves."

Do I have the right to write this?

Palazzo Zuccari in Rome, built 1592

     Not even a month since Chicago welcomed its new mayor. I applauded, more or less, then turned my attention elsewhere, figuring: it’s honeymoon time. Let the man settle in. Get used to his new chair. Start facing the demands of running ... checking the stats ... what is still the nation’s third-largest city, with Houston not expected to pass Chicago for another 10 years.
     Then Monday, when my back was turned, the mayor sticks the knife in. While kissing up to the latest crop of police officers, he announced:
     “And let me make this emphatically clear: If you don’t live in Chicago, you don’t have a right to talk about the city of Chicago.”
     Sez who? The brand-spanking-new, wet-from-the-womb mayor of America’s (for now) third-largest city? Bzzzzt. Oh, I’m sorry: Wrong. We do have the right. But no need to trust an auslander, with the shameful stain of suburbia upon him. Flip open my U.S. Constitution to the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”
     Yes, the mayor of Chicago is not Congress. He’s far less. A local official. Don’t we have enough local officials who feel entitled to score cheap political points by telling others what they have the right to say, read, think? Is Chicago’s new mayor really springing out of the blocks to join that race? Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, meet your new teammate, Mayor Brandon Johnson.
     The sad thing is, I know what Johnson was trying to say. He’s sick of Chicago getting kicked from all directions by those whose closest connection to the city is watching “The Bear.” But the answer isn’t covering your ears and shouting “Stop it!” It’s called, “not caring.” My inbox fills every day with rage-addicted Floridians trying to lord the weekend shooting stats over me.

To continue reading, click here.

Flashback 2002: Cabbie has a story, and you should listen

Library of Congress

     I heard from Jack Clark Monday. He's a writer and former cab driver whom I've known for ... gee ... decades, and I'd asked him to submit something for my periodic "Works in Progress" Saturday feature. 

     Reading his prose sparked a single memory — sitting in the Billy Goat together — and I realized I'd written a column about him, 21 years ago. I thought the column would be a good way to introduce him to you, and prime your for his Saturday piece.

     Jack Clark is a cabdriver. He lives in Lincoln Square, though finds it getting a little hoity-toit for his taste. "They took down the Laundromat and put up a Starbucks," he said, disgust flitting about his face.
     As with most cabbies, Jack is overflowing with stories. No sooner had we settled down at a red-and-white checked table than our setting — the Billy Goat Tavern — inspired a good one. I can't quote it, sadly, as it would be too cruel, even toward a competitor across the street. But take my word for it. The next story, happily, is sharable:
     "The only cab trip I ever took in reverse was to here," Jack said, reflectively, looking about the place. "A lady called from Riccardo's. She got in, and said she wanted to go to the Billy Goat. So I put the cab in reverse and backed around the corner. God, she was embarrassed."
     His mother, Mary Jo Clark, is also filled with stories. Most moms are, I suppose. Her stories were the mythologies of the family, tales both universal and highly particular. Both the classic immigrant arc from Ireland, and the individual eccentricities found in all families: Aunt Nell, who gave her children away; Aunt Maggie, who couldn't read.
     As Mary Jo Clark got older — she's 88 now — her son realized that if he didn't collect her stories, they would die with her. So he dutifully interviewed her and compiled a 160-page manuscript, intended to be passed around the family. A family history.
     But Jack has moxie — another trait common in cabdrivers. It dawned on him that there was more value to his mother's stories than a mere family heirloom.
     "These stories have a lot of history with this town," he said. "Almost all of them take place in the first half of this century. This is a great middle class city, and the book is like a history of the move from blue collar into the middle class."

     So he showed his mother's storybook to an editor at the Chicago Reader. The tales ended up published as a series there and, now, as a book, "On the Home Front," published by Plume.
     The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint. Jack, for all his opinionated brio, fades into near-invisibility, as his mother narrates, in her own no-nonsense voice, brief episodes. Some are private moments — being 4 years old, getting shiny new shoes and remembering looking down at them as she toed circles in the sawdust on a butcher shop floor.
     Others brush against history— news of Pearl Harbor, or the Dorchester, a World War II troop ship sunk off the coast of Greenland. It was famous for the four chaplains who gave up their life vests to other sailors, but Bill, who was dating Mary Jo's younger sister, wasn't one of the lucky survivors.
     "She was a wreck after that," Clark writes. "She'd read every paper looking for articles. . . . They never found Bill. They found some of the men frozen on rafts. There were some that survived, I believe, but not too many. She watched the newspapers for months."
     The book's strength is that it doesn't stoop to Greatest Generation mythologizing. The Clarks are real people, and Mary Jo doesn't try to make them heroes.
     "All of our people were drafted," she admits. "Nobody joined. I don't know anybody who was a volunteer. Nobody I know. They all had a number. When their number came up, they went."
     The book captures the meekness and daring of being low on the economic pecking order. After Mary Jo's father blows half his pay on a spree, her mother is so angry she storms out and blows the other half on a fancy hat. Another time, teenage Mary Jo brings her birth certificate to the Sears at Homan and Arthington, looking for work. But the woman doing the hiring holds it to the light and sees it has been tampered with. The next day Mary Jo returns, in the same dress, and hands her older sister's birth certificate to the same woman, who hires her. The tough part was reminding all her high school friends working at Sears to call her by her sister's name.
     Like most authors, Jack is trying hard to push sales of his book.
     "It's frustrating not to get a review in a Chicago paper," he said. "It's a Chicago book. A real Chicago book."
     He does have the book in his cab, and is not shy about pressing it on passengers.
     "I had a romance writer in the cab the other day, and she said that publishers expect you to do your own publicity," he told me.
     Toward that end, Jack Clark has a plan. He would like his mother's memoirs to be picked as the next book for "One Book/One Chicago," like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or, recently, "Night."
     "What could be more perfect?" he said. "A Chicago book by a Chicagoan about Chicago. Only I don't know how you submit them. I don't think there's any place you send in nominations."
     He was wrong. I called the Chicago Public Library and not only found they take nominations on their Web site, but that the committee that picks the books is meeting today. So I nominated "On the Home Front," which really is a very moving book and, while I was at it, since I am not without moxie myself, I nominated my own new book, "Don't Give Up the Ship." It's a tough business, and a guy has to do all he can.

         — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2002

Chicago has rolled with radio for 101 years

     Not many Chicagoans recognize the name George Frost. Typical for a city that shrugs off its technological pioneers. I also imagine most people here, even if they know the atom was first split by human agency on that repurposed squash court under the stands at Stagg Field on the University of Chicago campus in 1942, have no idea which human led the effort (sigh, Enrico Fermi, which will be better known when Columbus Drive is finally named after him, perhaps by the centennial in 2042).
     Frost is considered the first person to rig up a car radio, putting one in the door of his Ford Model T, in May 1922, in his capacity as president of the Radio Club at Lane High School.
     Somebody was going to do it — cars were all the rage and radio was all the rage, particularly in Chicago. (Ever wonder why the red wagons manufactured here for years were called Radio Flyers? What is “radio” about a kid’s wagon? The answer: Radio was wildly popular, and Antonio Pasin, the Italian immigrant who founded the company, wanted his wagons to be wildly popular, too. The “Flyer” part of the name was a nod to Charles Lindbergh.)
     That same year, 1930, that Liberty Coaster changed its name to Radio Flyer, another burgeoning Chicago company, destined also to build an empire based on mobility, Motorola, started selling radios specifically designed to go into cars. Founder Paul Galvin said he came up with the company name while shaving, a mashup of “motor” and “Victrola” (double sigh: a kind of early record player). The ST71 cost $110, and to put that in perspective, the average new car cost $600 in 1930, which means putting in that new Motorola gizmo would be like paying $5,000 for a car’s sound system today.
     Those expensive receivers were AM radios. The AM range of the electronic spectrum, from 535 to 1700 kHz, has been popular ever since, as it leads to a stronger signal because the waves don’t skip away out of the Earth’s atmosphere as easily as FM waves. AM reception has an improved signal-to-noise ratio, or less interference.

To continue reading, click here.

Art and the suburbs

"Factories at Clichy" by Vincent Van Gogh

       I have an amazing capacity to miss things: the big game, the hot concert, the hit TV series, the latest best-seller. General acclaim is off-putting to me — I avoided the Harry Potter books for years because I assumed anything that popular had to be crap.
      My Achilles heel is museums. If I go to a city, I want to visit the local museum, to see what they've got. There isn't much in Dallas after you've clapped eyes on Dealey Plaza, but if you slide by to convenient Fort Worth, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art does have Grant Wood’s wry masterpiece, "Parson Weems' Fable," and that's enough to make a trip to Dallas worthwhile, almost.
      Museum shows are even more compelling — unprecedented in-gatherings of great works from all over the world. You miss one, and it's never coming back. You can motivate yourself to go see a famous work that has taken up brief residence at the corner of Adams and Michigan. Or you can haul your ass to the Hermitage.
     Though I don't rush to be among the first. I've done that. I think it was opening day of the Monet show, years ago. The advertising had been particularly aggressive, and everybody else in Chicago had the same idea. I said to Edie, "This is like trying to look at art in a crowded 'L' car."
     And I don't come at the very end, because that too, is crowded with stragglers. (Though I do remember arriving 90 minutes before closing of a Georgia O'Keeffe show, flashing my press card and blowing in).

     So I wanted to see the Dali Show before it closed. Even though I don't particularly like Dali. Why? The paintings are small, distorted, dark, weird. His showman's aspect. His paintings are circuses in oils. His whole personality. The waxed mustache. The affectations. The way Dali let himself be taken advantage of at the end, signing stacks of blank paper. All art is fraud, but Dali overdoes it.
     But you never know. Sometimes the comprehensive museum show of a particular artist will win you over. I didn't think much of Andy Warhol, either, until he got the full Art Institute treatment. You had to be impressed with the skill, the creativity, he shifted from an ad illustrator drawing shoes to the darling of the creative world. This was Dali's first major exhibition at the Art Institute.

   Plus my wife really wanted to go. She had seen an early 1925 Dali portrait of a woman turned away from the viewer, when we were in Barcelona at the Reina Sofia, and it struck her.
     The optical illusions were not without charm, though his phallic tower seemed more juvenile than transgressive. Fame and art are generally at odds, and there he was, part of the 1939 New York World's Fair and on the cover of time. He's more in the realm of Peter Max of artists famous for being famous more than famous for being good. Though I invite readers who disagree to make their case.

     After dispensing with Dali, we headed to the "Van Gogh and the Avant-Garde: The Modern Landscape" show. Such are the riches of the Art Institute that I didn't even realize the Van Gogh show was there until we walked in. 

      I am not, as a rule, a big landscape fan — I like people in my art  — but this focused on the tortured Dutch painter and his circle of younger artist friends lighting out for the suburbs to find their muse — as a suburbanite myself, I enjoyed the narrative that Van Gogh had to escape the narrow confines of Paris and find his true artistic self in the suburbs an hour away.

"The Seine at Saint-Ouen, Morning," Charles Angrand

     It groups five artists — not just Van Gogh, but Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand, who painted together, argued, inspired and disgusted each other between the years 1882 and 1890 during the three months he painted at Asnieres, Clichy and the Island of La Grande Jatte. One was Charles Angrand, and I admired a painting of the Seine that was mostly green and blue dappled water.

     Indeed, I found myself appreciating the words of the lesser-known artists even more than Van Gogh, who could include these stiff little figures in his landscapes, and had not yet entered into the blazing glory of his final phase.

     The show not only discusses the artists and their work, but the societal changes going on at that exact moment, as greenery gives way to train stations, bridge embankments, and the factories that Van Gogh captures so charmingly above.

     If the "Grand Jatte" above sparked an association, you've seen the Georges Seurat masterpiece "A Sunday on the Isle of Grande Jatte." He was among the group of painters working in the Paris suburbs — the first to fix on the bucolic retreat in the Seine between Neuilly-sur-Seine and Levallois.

     He did hundreds of sketches and preliminary studies for the enormous canvas, a number included in this show, and one of the takeaways for me was just how much trial and effort it took for him to get the composition right, arranging and rearranging the trees, playing with the angles of their limbs, experimenting with various groupings and individuals.

     Some of the quick studies were themselves engaging works of art, such as trying to get the exact angle of a woman turned away from the viewer in this Conte crayon sketch, and it's only now that I realize it's something of a mirror image of the Dali work at the top of this short summation that captivated my wife. Birds of a feather. 

      We spent a lot of time reading the commentary of the show. Van Gogh died at 37, but Seurat was even younger, 31, when he succumbed to an infection. If "Grande Jatte" weren't singular enough on its own, it's the only major painting he created, along with "Bathers at Asnieres." 

      On that note, it's probably best for me to start my day and let you go about yours. My apologies for this awkward veer into art criticism — a reader in the comments section yesterday asked for it, and I figured, it's as good a theme as any. 

      The Dali Show only runs until June 12, so you'll have to get a move on if you want to see it.  The landscapes exhibit — Van Gogh's name is in the title, but only 25 of the 75 works on display are his, opened mid-May, and will run all summer, until Sept. 4. Many of the works are from private or obscure collections, have never been publicly displayed before and might never been seen again. Now's your chance.

‘Swiftian’ takes on a new meaning as Taylor Swift fans descend on Chicago

     My wife and I joined the legions of Taylor Swift fans heading downtown Friday afternoon, clad in white cowboy boots, little fringed dresses and pink sequined cowboy hats.
     The fans, that is. My wife and I wore regular clothes appropriate for a 60ish couple visiting the Art Institute (sigh, all right. Me: black jeans, sky blue button-down shirt and blue boat shoes; my wife: lovely in a deep red flowered skirt, black blouse and sandals).
     Our journey had nothing to do with the big concert at Soldier Field. But the timing certainly was fortunate. The ingathering for the first of the weekend’s three Swift shows cast a festive tone.
     Most people waiting on the platform in Northbrook for the 1:35 p.m. Metra were Swift fans, though not all dressed for the occasion. To our left, a 30ish couple in standard-issue suburban dishabille, the man carrying a backpack. Heading, he said, to check into a hotel before the concert.
     “Smart!” I replied, the “What’s a few hundred dollars more on top of the several grand you laid out for tickets,” being unvoiced.
     Not to pass judgment. You put your money where your passion lies, if you’re lucky enough to have both money and a passion. My wife and I blew ... ah ... a Taylor Swift ticket worth of greenery to plant this spring. Those bushes and flowers will no doubt be dried husks buried in landfill while memories of the concert are still glittering bright.
     To our right, five young women in two groups. A pair in the aforementioned white boots and fringes. A second group of three teens, a father flitting around them. As he left, he turned to us — like an actor breaking the fourth wall — and observed that sending them downtown is the easy part. The challenge will be driving to Soldier Field at midnight to retrieve them.

To continue reading, click here.