And it's still here...

     Whenever I drive by the stretch of North Sheridan Road where the Granada Theatre used to be, I flash back on its Venetian splendor and, if the traffic is moving slowly, take a moment to note the echo of the round window — tribute? mockery? — cut into the charmless strip mall that replaced it.
     You can't shake your fist too much at the philistines who demolished it, not remembering the struggle to figure out what to do with the Granada. A building needs a use, or most buildings do. There are only so many empty shells we can keep in tribute to years gone by.  It's always a judgment call. Some people think Prentice hospital should have been kept forever — to me it was an eyesore, and thus expendable. As was the Granada, ultimately, a ruin torn down in 1990.
    Sometimes a building can survive and find a use. In the early 1980s, the Chicago Theatre was seen as a similar white elephant to the Granada or Prentice. Pretty, yes, but what to do with the thing? After a long battle, it was saved in 1985, to civic rejoicing, and soon was hosting concerts from Frank Sinatra to Tom Waits. If you haven't been there, you're really missing something. It's worth the price of admission just to walk through the lobby; the fact that somebody also puts on a show is an added bonus.
     To me, the marque of the Chicago Theatre, like the Bean, like the Picasso, is one of the images that define life in the city. Catching sight of it is like glimpsing the face of an old friend, made all the more precious by the knowledge of how close we came to losing it forever. Almost a miracle.

Plus!

A rare midweek column, thumbing my nose at the IOC.

Don't miss the boat

     A strong image can stick in your brain and return at unwelcome moments. Such as that scene in Fritz Lang's classic 1927 German silent movie, "Metropolis," where the workers shuffle forward in lockstep, heads bowed, shoulders slumped, souls crushed.
     That image bubbles up whenever I'm stuck in line in the loud, overlit, stinking, Stygian underworld of Union Station's north platform, inching my way slowly toward the stairs, trying not to think about what a design blunder this whole layout is, how if there were ever an emergency and we had to get out quickly, we'd all die on those stairs.
    Which means I pretty much think about "Metropolis" every day, at some point, because when the train empties, it overwhelms the platform and the lines form, one splitting to the left, the other to the right. So at least I have that empty choice, left or right.
    Now and then an iconoclastic soul veers off, hops down onto the tracks, crosses over to the next, empty platform, and races to freedom. I can't say I admire those people. What they do is dangerous, and against the rules, I tell myself that it is a good thing most of us conform, and wait patiently. Otherwise it would be chaos. And what's the rush? Where are any of us going? To the same place, eventually.
     So we look at our phones, our iPads, our shoes, breathe fumes, marinate in thought, or nestle in the void of no thought at all, staring straight ahead. Nobody looks at each other. It's as if we're all alone, en masse. Step forward, wait, step forward, wait, anticipating the thrill of that first stair —almost there!— and the liberation of  reaching Madison Street, like a diver breaking the water's surface. We scatter, reunited with air and light, flee this pit, forget about it for another day.
     Which is why it's so good there's a Chicago Water Taxi stop right there, directly across Madison Street. As if it were planned that way. As a service to disinterred commuters, emerging from their crypt, staggering away from the station like the dazed survivors of some daily catastrophe. I try to take the brief three dollar, three minute trip to LaSalle Street — it then pushes on to Michigan Avenue — at least once a summer. As a reward to myself for going through this. But this summer has snapped by so quickly, I hadn't done so yet. Too busy. Until Friday, when there was no question. Too much Lang, too little lark. On impulse, I leaned far over the stone rail at Two North Riverside Plaza, saw the cheerful yellow boat "Bravo" sitting there, as if waiting for me. I hurried downstairs, hopped aboard —made it!— and soon we were on the water, sliding under the city's lovely bridges.  Suddenly it was summer, beautiful summer. At last. The buildings floated by as if in dream, the bridges plunging the boat into shadow, then returning to brilliant sunlight. The water smelled wet, clean, refreshing. The brief trip felt so good I took it again on Monday.
    A reminder, that we create our own reality, even when we feel stuck in routine, and while that reality can sour in a moment, we can also change it back just as quickly, if we try and we're lucky. If you think to look for it, there might be a boat, waiting for you, and if you get on that boat, it will take you away, for a while.

Clout Street

And sometimes a good story just falls into your lap...  

     The big black Chevy SUV headed east on 25th Street, then abruptly turned left under the Stevenson Expressway and paused before a steel gate. The armed driver lowered his window and inserted a plastic card into a scanning device. The steel gate slid away and the car roared onto an empty stretch of pristine highway, a straight shot into the heart of downtown Chicago.
     “Where are we?” I asked.
     “The Magic Road!” Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle laughed, explaining that it is a special highway that permits government officials to speed on their way without having to suffer traffic delays.
     “Rahm Emanuel calls it the ‘Bat Cave,’” she said, while I was still trying to digest news of a highway I hadn’t known about running just east of Michigan Avenue.
     We had spent the morning at the Cook County Jail, gazing in sorrow at a sclerotic legal system that grinds the lives of young black Chicagoans into a grim powder with agonizing, expensive slowness. The always candid Preckwinkle—perhaps the only politician in Chicago who says what she thinks and doesn’t sand every thought into a smooth pebble of guile before gingerly letting it slip from her fingers—of course would spill the beans on the secret government highway.
     Or the not-so-secret highway.
     “Convention buses use it too,” she added, as we flashed by 18th Street, then 14th, as I twisted in my seat, trying to get my bearings. 

     Built for conventioneers

     Welcome to the McCormick Place Busway, the most obscure road in Chicago, a two lane, 2.5 mile thoroughfare constructed in 2002 on a railroad right-of-way for $43 million.
     The original idea was to speed conventioneers attending trade shows from McCormick Place to the Loop, and the road, paid for by McPier. The busway does that admirably. A trip that takes 25 minutes in traffic up Lake Shore Drive can be tossed off in eight.
     Naturally, politicians would want in on this. We went under McCormick Place, flashed past the South Loop condo development where former Mayor Richard M. Daley lived before moving to North Michigan Avenue. Preckwinkle pointed out a convenient gated exit.
     “They built the road when he was mayor,” she observed.
     Hmmm, thought I. Not a lot of hotel buses filled with conventioneers pulling off there. The road cuts right through and below the Art Institute, ending at Lower Randolph.
     Preckwinkle might be the only one bold enough to take a reporter on it. But she can’t be the only official making use of the road. 

     Gov. Pat Quinn, who does indeed sometimes drive himself, doesn’t drive himself on it because he lacks the special pass.
     “There’s a card you have to use,” said his press secretary, Brooke Anderson. “You won’t see the governor in the driver’s seat on that road. But his security detail sometimes takes it.”
     The mayor’s office confirmed both that he uses the road and he calls it the “Bat Cave.”
     “He does,” said Tarrah Cooper, the mayor’s press secretary. “Occasionally.”
     She was quick to echo that it’s mainly a route for convention buses.
     “That’s who primarily uses it, during the convention there are tons of buses.”
     She scoffed at the idea that the road is unknown.
     “It’s not magic,” she said. “People know about it.”
     I’m sure they do. I’m sure somebody is in charge of handing out access cards to connected politicians. McCormick Place brass said the Chicago Department of Transportation runs it, but CDOT spokesman Pete Scales said he knows nothing about it, and suggested I try Streets and Sanitation. “I just found out about it a month ago,” said Anne Sheehan, Streets & San spokeswoman, who has been with the city 10 years. She suggested CDOT runs it. “I’m pretty sure we don’t.”
     Actually, it is overseen by the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
     I wasn’t too broken up over hitting a brick wall, fairly certain that whoever the somebody in charge turns out to be, they will cry “national security” in three different languages before ever commenting on just how many politicians have access to the road or who those politicians might be, waving the bogeyman of panicked mobs of Chicagoans blocking access to ambulances in the case of civic calamity should the public become aware of exactly who is speeding from swank fundraiser to lavish dinner.
     People in other cities already seem to know all about it.
     “We do market it quite heavily,” said David Causton, general manager of McCormick Place, who views the road as a draw for the $6 billion worth of trade show business that comes to Chicago. “We see it as an absolute asset. The advantage it offers is lower cost. It obviously makes getting here faster, which is part of a pleasant experience for the attendee. Plus we don’t have to have as many buses to move people because the buses can go quickly on the private road, so they carry more people in a shorter time. It’s a true time saver.”
     I bet it is.
     “It may not be well known by locals that live here,” said Causton. “But it is well known in the industry. All of our customers take advantage of it. We’ve known about this for years.”
     And now you do too. You may not be able to ever drive on it.
     But at least now you can know it’s there.

The pickler's art is not an easy one

   
     The pickle—perhaps aptly—is forever locked in time. While all manner of ethnic foodstuffs have shed their peddler's rags, polished their diction, and joined haute cuisine, the pickle remains firmly down market, its accent heavy and pungent, its humble origins intact, the eternal sidekick, the permanent garnish.
     Thus pickles are unjustly neglected. Restaurants that ballyhoo purple foam and raw leaves and teaspoons of air fall silent when it comes to pickles. An eatery celebrating its pickles would seem as wrong as a place celebrating its bathroom or its napkins. ("Fine Egyptian cotton, 1500 thread count...")  Nobody wants expensive pickles -- what would those be?  Surely inferior to the cheap ones. In fact, deli diners expect pickles to be free, on the table, in a tub, just another staple of life: salt, pepper, pickles.
     Thus the pickle retains its modesty as a comfort of home. A restaurant pickle can be good. A store bought pickle, even, can be not bad. Claussen pickles are not bad. But just not bad. Like Thanksgiving, you need to make your pickle at home for it to be wonderful, for it to soar and, maybe, touch greatness, whether full sour, half sour, new or properly aged (sweet pickles? Dos ken nor a goy). 
    Because a great pickle is like family: it is an act of love, of duty, consideration and devotion. A pickle is to share. No one makes pickles for his own private use, alone. My in-laws were picklers, and pickled so long and so well that none of us had the foresight to learn the picker's craft at their knee. We thought they would pickle forever—is that not part of the pickle mystique? Pickles endure.
      My wife, boldly tried to fill the pickle-scented void in our lives since my in-laws passing. These were the result -- gorgeous to look at, marinated in extraordinary love. But, alas, a pickle can only go so far on its looks, and affection-soaked though they were, these pickles, like beauty, were deceptive -- pretty, but not so appealing when you got to know them. They didn't taste good. My wife nibbled one and immediately threw them all away. Nobody argued with her. The pickler's art is not an easy one. It is hard-won, and part of the love process is trying and trying until you get something right, then sticking with that. "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds," Shakespeare wrote. "Or bends with the remover to remove. Oh no!" Her next batch will be better. And if it isn't, the one after that will be. Or the one after that. The pickler's art, like love, requires patience, and persistence. It only looks easy.

Summer relaxation voodoo

     Though this blog, by its very name, "Every goddamn day," demands a certain relentlessness, I don't want to suggest that all I do is write, nor give the impression that I'm recommending you throw yourself continually at your chosen task, whatever it is. As Horace observed, "Sometimes even noble Homer nods."

      And a good thing too. Everybody needs rest. Particularly in summer, when so many opportunities for relaxation abound. We busy types sometimes resist taking a break—our idea of fun is work, which is our glory and handicap. Here's where I'm fortunate to have a wife who counterbalances my tendency to continually labor with an active interest in the world of recreation, cultural and fun. Just this week we've walked in the Chicago Botanic Garden, twice, gone to Ravinia with friends to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and walked to downtown Northbrook -- if that isn't a contradiction in terms -- for its Arts Festival, where I watched young baseball players practice and heard my older son's buddy, Charlie Laughlin, play the guitar for an hour.

      I shot this video of Charlie performing Rodriego y Gabriella's "Buster Voodoo" with classmate Maxine Nusinow. To be honest, I wasn't really thinking about work, wasn't thinking about posting this—if I had, I would have done a better job, gotten closer and found a more advantageous angle, one without the rail being in the way. But then, that's the balance, between professional and casual, between working and unwinding. Take it too easy and your video is no good. But push too hard and you haven't rested. Anyway, I'm striving for a balance, and hope you are too. Click on the arrow and spend a few minutes listening to some invigorating guitar music. Keep an eye peeled for the dancing girls, who appear toward the end.  There's a good lesson in that too — stay focused, but if you're too intent on what's in front of you, you may miss the dancing girls. And who wants to do that?

Still a few bugs in the system

     

     It is against the law to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk in Chicago. For adults, that is. Kids under 12 are okay.  One of the many rules, instructions and pieces of advice learned while preparing for my debut ride on the new Divvy bike share program, which the city rolled out in early July.
     To be honest, the idea of taking one of the communal bikes for a spin normally would never have crossed my mind. There is nowhere I need to go that can't be walked, cabbed, trained or avoided. And the whole shared bike thing has a distinct European tang to it. Something they do in Amsterdam, or Brussels, or France. Not in Chicago, that most American of cities. We Americans get behind the wheels of our Barracudas and blast down the highway. We own things, we do not share things. That's socialism. 
     Yes, I see a flaw in that thinking. Maybe that logic could be maintained when we were on top of the world and burning through its resources. Now, in dwindling times, well, perhaps some reconsideration is in order.
     That isn't what got me studying the Divvy web site, however. Riding one of its bikes was not to be a political statement. Actually, fate played a hand. I looked out the window of our office this week and saw, directly across the street, a rack of robin's egg blue Divvy bikes. It hadn't been there before. And now it was, a personal challenge. Life sometimes serves up these go-to-Nineveh moments, and when it does, you better get yourself to Nineveh. Otherwise, you end up in a whale. 
      So I began planning a brief bike excursion downtown, to satisfy capricious fate and keep myself on the breezy side of whales.  I read up on the Divvy system. The site is very friendly, with a map of bike docking stations, and brief helpful videos, explaining how to pay, how to unhook the bikes from their moorings (lift at the seat, not at the handlebars). It all seemed so simple. And only $7 for 24 hours, provided you break that into 30 minute rides, returning the bike to a station before your half hour is up. Ride more than 30 minutes at a time, they add more fees. If you keep the bike for six hours, you're out $102. 
     Wanting to be thorough — and to stay alive — I asked a devoted bicyclist pal of mine for extra advice. A professor of literature who thinks nothing of hopping on his bike and tearing across the city, I knew he'd tell me what I should know. I've ridden a bike downtown exactly once in the past 25 years — in 2000, when we were about to move from East Lake View to the suburbs, and biking to work seemed something worth doing at least once in my life—another challenge to be overcome. It was a pleasant spin on my lumbering black one speed Schwinn balloon-tire cruiser, down the lakeshore bike path, a trip that didn't turn slightly terrifying until I left the bike path and headed west toward 401 N. Wabash, the newspaper's old home. A lot of trucks in the city.
    My pal's central suggestion: be alert at all times. 
    "Head on a swivel," his reply began. "I have a three part routine: look ahead at traffic/ground conditions (potholes), then at the parked cars for potential doorings, then in the rear view mirror for what's coming up behind me. Then front, side, rear, repeat perpetually. I've actually rewired my damn brain doing this."
     No wonder I've let more than a dozen years go by since I last attempted this. He wasn't done. "And go slow," he warned — not an issue for me —"most people I know who get doored were going fast and so did not have time to stop."
    If "door" as a verb is unfamiliar to you, it refers to a bicyclist riding into a flung open car door. Riders get killed that way. 
     Despite this chilling advice, I decided I was going to do it. On Thursday. Even thought it was supposed to be nearly 100 degrees. I can be determined, when I choose to be, and I've always thought that scuttling plans due to weather is for the elderly and the weak. I also had inspiration, a manageable goal: Skrine Chops, at 400 S. Financial. Off the beaten track for walking. But perfect for a bike jaunt. I haven't been there in months, so am Skrine deprived. The plan was, I would ride my Divvy bike across the Loop, Skrine up with a pork chop sandwich, and return. The dangers would be slight and acceptable—this is a pork chop worth risking your life for. 
      But I didn't want to face any more risk than was absolutely necessary. Before leaving for work, I went into the garage and dug out my bike helmet, a Bell helmet covered in dust and cobwebs. At first it seemed like a lot of bother, to bring the helmet downtown. But the phrase, "not as much bother as learning to type with a stick held in your mouth" formed in mind, and that decided it. I cleaned the helmet off with a damp paper towel and tucked it in my briefcase.

      Just before lunch, a look of steely determination in my eye, I stood up, snatched my helmet off my desk and marched down to the street. On my way, I felt something unexpected: fear. Real fear. I was afraid to ride a damned bike downtown. I stiff-armed the anxiety. Too late now. Stepping into the oven-ish air was like being hit at the back of the knees with a mallet. I pressed on, crossed Orleans, and presented myself to the cheery blue-faced Divvy pylon. Clicked through various screens, dipping my credit card, giving my phone number and Zip code, agreeing that if I lose the $1200 bike I'm on the hook. (At least I assume that's what the fine print said —I couldn't bring myself to actually read it). All I had to do now was wait to receive a receipt that would give me a five-digit code to punch in and remove my bike. 
    I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together, anticipating the slip of paper, eyeing the blue bikes, trying to decide which one I'd pick.
     "We're sorry," the screen said. "We cannot process your request at this time." 
     Oh.  I stood there a moment. Briefly considered starting the process all over again. No, I had worked up a sweat just clicking through the screens. Maybe riding across the Loop at midday in this heat was in fact a Bad Idea. If fate had nudged me here, perhaps there had been a change in the cosmic order, and now I was being rescued, directed back upstairs. Okay then. Skrine Chops will have to wait. My helmet still under my arm, I retreated to the cool of the office, not without a certain sense of relief. I will definitely try out Chicago's Divvy bike sharing system. I am committed to doing that. Some day very soon. When the system is operational. When the fates decree the day apt for adventure. And when it's a lot cooler. 

"Next guest..."

   
     The meanings of words can get so twisted, you begin to suspect we are already living in the oppressive dystopia that once seemed so scary in science fiction. You start to wonder whether all those smash-the-system revolutionary types might be onto something. Maybe we already are slaves, and don't even know it. 
     "High Yield"? For a savings account that gives 0.35 percent interest? That's 35 cents per year on every $100 forked over to the bank so they can loan it back out at 10 times your return. That's a third of a percent away from 0.0 percent interest, a.k.a. nothing. Given that benchmark, what would a "Low Yield Money Market" look like? Is that where you pay the bank for taking your money? With bank fees, many of us already are.
     A few minutes after I snapped the above, shaking my head at the memory of the quaint 5 percent passbook accounts we had when we were kids, I popped into the Walgreens at Clark and Lake to pick up some personal supplies —deodorant, Cherry Life Savers, nothing earth-shattering.
     Not the most complicated process. Scan the aisles, grab the products, head for the check out. There was a line -- one line, which seemed long, but it fed to five, count 'em, five cashiers, so it wouldn't be too bad. I got in line; it moved quickly.
     "Next guest," said a cashier, as the customer left and a person walked up to make his purchase. "Next guest," another cashier called out. "Next guest..."
     I heard the "guest" locution about half a dozen times before I had the chance to pay for my stuff.
     "Is this something new?" I asked the clerk, who looked at me, amazed, as if the deodorant had spoken. This wasn't in the script. He looked confused.
     "This 'guest' business?" I elaborated, trying to be helpful.
     A pause.
     "Yeah," he finally said. I considered questioning him further but, realized he wasn't going to be a font of information, so took my purchase and hurried out.
     Not to take anything away from The Walgreen Company. A fine Chicago-born institution, the largest drug store chain in the world, based in the benign suburban funzone of Deerfield. The stores are well run, as far as I can tell, with none of the oppressive fascist taint of Walmart or the gigantism-induced queasiness of Costco.  They're trying to make customers feel welcome. I get that.
     But "guests"?  Really? If I am going to be a Walgreens guest, I want to be lounging on the Walgreen family yacht, and I would bet that nobody popping into one of the stores for hygiene products considers himself to be a "guest" either, no matter how well treated. Nor does he want to be.
    I know exactly where this particular bit of nonsense is from -- the Disney total control system, where workers are not "employees" but "cast members." Pretty to think so, though at Disney World the "guest" business at least makes a bit of sense, since you're bedding down there, often, and eating there, which meshes closer to traditional notions of hospitality than rushing in to pick up Q-Tips.
     Walgreens has just started this latest degradation of our language; it should stop it now, before "guest" takes on the shabbiness of "event," a word that car dealers seized upon and ruined, chewing it up like dogs, unwilling to have their automobiles disposed of at anything so low class as a "sale." They have held so many "special sales events" for so many years, the words have been scrubbed of all meaning, with "special" suffering even more abuse at the hands of those trying to put a bright spin on disability, so much that now "special" is freely used as an insult by children on playgrounds all across America.
    Don't let the same thing happen to "guest." Don't let it take on the meaning of "person spending money while being treated indifferently by minimum-wage automatons." Consumers have less and less power as it is. Let's snatch back "guest" and keep it for ourselves, as something special ... well, no, not "special" ... something meaningful, to use to describe the real people in our lives who visit us at our homes for tea on Sunday afternoons. Not that such people exist, but if they ever do appear, we'll want a word to describe them.