Happy birthday, U.S. Coast Guard

     Today is the 225th anniversary of the United States Coast Guard. Three years ago I noticed one of their powerful little speedboats cruising the Chicago River—or, rather, noticed the big ass machine gun at the back, and got curious as to what the Coast Guard does here. The resulting column is made more fun by an overly-cautious Coast Guard PR rep, who reminds us of a vital Communication Age truth: always know what's on your own web site:

     Chicago does not have a coast.

     It can't, in that a "coast," according to my dictionary, is "the border of land near the sea," and the city, despite its many glories, is not on the ocean.
     Though coastless, Chicago does, however, have a coast guard, a unit of the United States Coast Guard based at Station Calumet Harbor, whose job it is to patrol the Lake Michigan shoreline, as well as the Chicago River plus some 120 miles of connected rivers and waterways.

     A big job and, this being summer, with a job to do myself, I thought somebody ought to join the Coast Guard on one of its random lake patrols, to keep tabs on the situation.
     The Calumet station, a large white wooden structure built in 1933 has, well, their spokesman asked me not mention the exact number of sailors based here, in case al-Qaida is reading this. So let's just say too many to transport on a bus and too few to fill three (or, checking the official Calumet Station website, as a resourceful terrorist might, we could also state, as they do, that there are 42 active duty personnel and 32 reserves).
     They're well-armed—again, I was asked not to mention the exact weaponry but, again, it's all plain as day online, from the M240 machine guns mounted at the bow of their Defender speedboats, which you might sometimes notice patrolling the Chicago river, to the Sig Sauer .40 caliber automatics carried as sidearms (no big secret either, as lots of military personnel carry those).

   Of course, before al-Qaida could cause trouble at Station Calumet Harbor, they'd first have to find the place, which is a lot easier to do from the water—it's on Lake Michigan, naturally, just north of ComEd's State Line Generating Station. Coming from land, a least for the first time, you have to navigate through winding, largely abandoned streets, a confusing tangle to a North Sider, and something of a revelation: I would have bet money that there isn't an Avenue L in Chicago and I'd have lost. There is.
     Before patrol, a briefing. Petty Officer William Flores accesses risk—green, amber, red— and goes over weather, noting that, with the heat index, it could feel like 105.
      "It's going to be hot out," he says.
     The local Coast Guard has three main duties—to guard against terrorism, to conduct search and rescue of boaters in distress, and to encourage marine safety. Six sailors and I pile onto a 45 foot patrol boat—which the Coast Guard refers to, none-too-lyrically, as an "RBM," or "Response Boat-Medium." The boat is two years old, with a jet drive, which means it isn't pushed forward by anything as retro as propellers, but by twin 825 horsepower Detroit Diesel engines powering what amounts to a pair of jet engines—two Rolls Royce Waterjets that suck water out of the bottom and rocket it out the back. With a top speed of ... well, I'm not supposed to say that either, though the website says 40 knots. The thing can really clip along.
     The boat has all sorts of fun bells and whistles, such as an advanced FLIR thermal imaging and night-vision system, for finding people in the water. "I haven't actually found anyone with it yet, but it's a pretty good asset to have," says Flores, 24, who went to St. Pat's High School here and had to endure such hardship posts as Key West and Hawaii before getting himself transferred back to Chicago. "It's nice to get home," he says.
     Despite the fine weather, the lake off Calumet is oddly free of traffic. "I hope we can find some boats out here," says Petty Officer Tim Morley. We pass the harbor breakwall, source of regular business for the Coast Guard; about once a month a boater coming back from downtown manages to ram it. 

     "There are a lot of lights, and if you're not looking for them, you can be complacent and hit the breakwall," says Flores. "It's pretty damaging. Some people just don't see it."
     Finally, we have a catch. "We've got a boat up here, we'll do a boarding," says Flores. They do about 1,000 boardings a year.
     Unlike the movies, there are no stern warnings barked through megaphones, no radio contact. The two men aboard the Sundancer power boat "Almost Summer" don't seem to be fishing, just floating, watching the Coast Guard approach. Morley and Seaman David Durr hop aboard bearing paperwork.
     The two poke around, peer under cushions. The boat is found not to have a portable fire extinguisher, though it does have a fixed fire-suppression system—pull a handle, and it floods the engine compartment. Though that secondary extinguisher is important too.
     "He could have a fire in his berthing area and he'd be screwed," says Morley, later.
     "Almost Summer" is issued a warning and the Coast Guard moves on. "The biggest thing we make sure operating safely on the water and if not, educate them," says Morley.
     "Everyone strapped in?" asks Flores before gunning the RBM forward.
     "This is an awesome boat," says Morley.

                   —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, July 18, 2012

Meet your 2016 Republican presidential candidates!

      Given my hobby as a connoisseur of really bad Republican candidates—I once wrote a prayer, begging God to allow milkman Jim Oberweis to run for office yet again, and it worked—I could not pass up the chance to handicap the field of Republican presidential hopefuls. Only 10 will be onstage at the first Republican debate in Cleveland this Thursday. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't examine them all while we can.
     Yes, more than a few are vanity campaigns. None are really gold-plated, first rate, Alan Keyes-quality awful. Well, maybe Bobby Jindal. Some campaigns won't live out the month, assuming they're alive now. But we've spent so much time gazing in jaw-flapping wonder at the bloviating bag of bombast that is Donald Trump, we're missing a chance to snicker into our hands at other GOP stalwarts who, each ridiculous in his (or, in one case, her) own special way. I can't say we'll miss them when they're gone, but at least we should glance at them as they flash by.
     In that spirit, I present to you the field of 2015 Republican presidential candidates, in order of likelihood of snagging the GOP nomination, from least to most. Drumroll please.   
  17. Bobby Jindal: No one seems to have told the governor of Louisiana that his national political career died in 2009 after his laughable, amateurish televised response to an Obama speech. The Hindu-turned-Catholic conservative makes headlines with occasional bursts of hate-speech nuttery. But his record in Louisiana is abysmal, and it follows him, quacking like a pull toy duck. Odds: 200 to 1.
     16. Jim Gilmore. You haven't heard of him at all because the former governor of Virginia filed his papers last Thursday. Obscure, late and parroting bromides, he flopped out of the gate and lays there, quivering. Odds: 150 to 1.
     15. George Pataki. Trump gets more press by pausing to tie his shoe than the three-term governor of New York has gotten since he threw his hat in the ring in late May. Socially liberal, he might appeal to mainstream voters if anybody ever heard anything about him. But they haven't and won't. Odds: 125 to 1.
     14. Carly Fiorina. She's a woman, which makes her outstanding in a party that spends a lot of time trying to cook up new ways to repress women that don't involve adopting sharia law. The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard also lacks any political experience whatsoever, a big plus among Republicans. Odds: 100 to 1.
     13. Ben Carson. Half of the electorate can't place his name, but he's slated to be one of the 10 on stage this week. An African-American neurosurgeon, his joke about gays finding poison in their wedding cakes is a reminder that a person can be black and yet a bigot. Odds: 90-to-1.
     12. Lindsay Graham. Until Donald Trump gave out his cell number, America didn't know the South Carolina Senator was running, and he used his moment in the spotlight to post a video of himself destroying his cell phone. Odds: 80 to 1.
     11. Chris Christie. Like Jindal, a walking political corpse. Abrasive personality would be burden enough, but, like Lord Jim, his not-so-secret shame dogs him. Either he knew about closing down the bridge at Fort Lee as political payback and is lying, or obliviously let his staff run amok, and really, which is worse? Odds: 75-to-1.
     10. Rick Santorum. Plug "Santorum" into Google and six of the seven hits are references to Dan Savage's wildly successful campaign to punish the former Pennsylvania senator for his brainless anti-gay comments. Odds: 70-to-1.
     9 . Mike Huckabee. Former Arkansas governor and Fox News host, this Baptist minister made a name for himself for his faith-blinded. folksy immorality, from claiming immediately after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary that the culprit was a lack of prayer in schools to his recent jaw-dropping Holocaust imagery. Odds: 65-to-1.
     8. Rand Paul. The Kentucky senator's Libertarian worldview inspires a fanatical cadre of supporters, but everyone else just views him as strange. Odds: 60-to-1.
     7. John Kasich. Ohio's popular governor is considered dead in the water among Republicans for clinging to intelligent policy goals, such as providing a road to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Odds: 50 - to 1.
     6. Ted Cruz.  The senator from Texas established his reputation as a vicious, say-anything critic with a fondness for paralyzing government.  Camille Paglia nailed it when she called  Cruz a "smirkily condescending and ultimately juvenile" who gives her "the willies." Odds: 40-to-1.   
     5. Rick Perry. The former governor of Texas seems to have shaken off his "now-what-was-that-third-agency-I'd close?" gaffe of 2011, and fired back at Trump, calling him "a cancer on conservatism" when most GOP hopefuls were hiding the weeds. But he's still tone deaf: he challenged Trump to a pull-up contest, which really isn't a thing. Odds: 30 to 1.
     4. Marco Rubio. He's young, handsome and Hispanic. But actual Hispanics see him as Cuban, a member of a special protected political class. Plus he's a lightweight advocating policies 180 degrees against real immigrant interests. Maybe he'll have better luck in 2020. Odds: 15 to 1
     3. Donald Trump. Nothing more need be said. Not top pick only because God wouldn't do that to America. Would he? Odds: 8 to 1.
     2. Scott Walker. Wisconsin's Tailgunner Scott has made a career out of demonizing union members, an appealing strategy in Illinois, where government is being gutted by giveaways to unions. His slashing rhetoric excites big money donors like Joe Ricketts. Odds: 5-to-1.
     1. Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor is seen as the brains in the Bush family, which is like being the tasteful Kardashian. But his moderate policies, his reluctance to say the stupid things that other GOP hopefuls spout all day, and his Mexican born wife all speak well to his chances. When the smoke clears, he'll be the one who hasn't shot himself in the foot, twice. Odds: 2-1

     So that's it. You can cut this out and keep score Thursday.

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.