Washington woes dissolve at your favorite Chicago restaurant

  

     Food is comfort. And my guess is, a lot of Chicagoans will wake up Wednesday morning and want nothing more than to drop their faces into a plate of warm solace and briefly forget the travesty unfolding in Washington.
     Luckily, it’s Chicago Restaurant Week.
     The event, now in its 11th year, paradoxically runs two weeks, and focuses on the new and the hip. I’m not much help there. I never want to go to a new restaurant. I prefer the same old restaurants. New places tend to be split between those I can’t get into and those I’m sorry that I did.
     So allow me to share my top seven Chicago restaurants — I tried to do a Top 10, but couldn’t jam them in, so plucked out my favorites from the suburbs. (Sorry Prairie Grass; apologies Psistaria). In alphabetical order, so no feelings are hurt though that might be inevitable, since I’m including a downside for each, lest this devolve into press-agentry.
     Chicago Pizza and Oven Grinder Co., 2121 N. Clark: Can you love a restaurant just for its salad and bread? That’s the main meal when my family rush here to celebrate being all together again. The Mediterranean bread, a warm disk of Parmesan-dusted freshness overflowing the plate. Poppyseed dressing. This one of two restaurants I go to knowing we’ll have to wait 45 minutes to get in. Downside: the “pot pie pizza,” a cheesy, overturned bowl of glop.

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What do Ohio and Belize have in common?

     Knowledge imparted second-hand—through books, say, or photographs displayed in airports—is inferior to knowledge that is imparted directly, through experience in the living world.
      I encountered a noteworthy example of this during my visit to Central America last week.
     One of the first things I saw in Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport in Belize City, steps away from the tarmac, lining up to go through security, was a large photograph, suspended from the ceiling, of what looked like Amish children.
     Being as instinctively arrogant as any American, I automatically assumed it was some kind of general photo of a scenic local, a banner from Pennsylvania perhaps, somehow scavenged, mis-directed here, and repurposed to decorate this very Third World airport.
      But I passed under it, a caption said something about Mennonites in Belize. 

      I thought no more about it until a few days later, driving out to the Mayan ruins at Lamanai.
     Suddenly the road was busy with horse drawn carts. On either side, fields being tended by men in beards and suspenders, by women in long, homespun dresses and bonnets. 

     And I thought, with genuine surprise: "Oh, there are Mennonites in Belize."
    You'd think that the big honking photo at the airport would have been a subtle tip-off.

     But wasn't.
     The obvious first question is: how did they get there. 

     The short answer: circuitously.

     What started as an offshoot of the Anabaptists in Europe in the 16th century found their way to Russia, then Canada and the United States which, in the 1950s, tried to get the Amish, et al, to enroll in their Social Security program. 

     Which inspired communities of Mennonites to emigrate to Belize in 1958, where they farm and raise animals, as well as build vessels. There are some 12,000 living in Belize now, and I saw quite a bit of them, even at resorts, family groups hanging together, the father with his inevitable beard and suspenders, mom in her handmade dress and bonnet, and a few boys with big straw hats, staring in unashamed, slack-jawed curiosity, almost wonder, at us, as if they had never seen outsiders before.

     Leading to a second question that had never crossed my mind before. I knew of Amish from travel in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And I had heard of Mennonites. They obviously shared social traits—in dress, in speech. Both speak Pennsylvania Dutch or Low German. But what is the connection between the two? Are they rivals, like Shi'ites and Sunni? My uninformed guess was that "Amish" was the larger, general term, and Mennonites were a subset of that, the way that Hassids are part of general Jewry. 

      The truth, as usual, is complicated.

      There are dozens of sects of "Plan People" who avoid the modern world and embrace less complicated lifestyles. The Amish—followers of Jacob Amman, who felt that non-believers should be shunned—split with the Mennonites, who didn't, in 1693, and thus the Mennonites are more receptive toward modern conveniences such as telephones and electricity, and also have an evangelical aspect that tends to send them further afield. 

     I always thought that the Amish/Mennonite model is one that fundamental Islam might want to consider as it continues butting up against the West. Rather than trying to undermine what they consider a hopelessly sinful society, it might work better if they just formed their own enclaves, where they'd be free, more or less, to seek a life they consider ideal. 

Vacation's over.

     Upon reflection, of course a dusty grocery on a congested street in unlovely downtown San Pedro, Belize, was not going to have actual Cohiba Esplendidos sitting in a box on the counter for $10 a stick. 
     But in the moment, as I fingered the substantial cigar, that chip of larceny jammed in the heart of so many men gave a little shiver, and I ponied up $20 Belize—the smallest Central American country prudently pegs its currency to the U.S. dollar at a convenient 2-to-1 ratio.
   The cigar looked real enough, with its shiny label proclaiming "Habana, Cuba." And like dupes everywhere, I wanted to believe. The stogie was tucked away for the perfect moment, when the rains subsided Saturday afternoon, before the final dinner of our luscious 8-day excursion among rainforest, rivers and ruins.
     It was only when I popped the thing unlit in my mouth, and tasted a certain ... green sourness ... did I think, "Duh. Smart move Neil." Okay, I thought, deflecting self awareness, putting the bright spin on things, too mellow to allow myself to be annoyed. Nothing to do but shrug, snap it in half and throw the fraud away. A sophisticated man would have known better, but I am not a sophisticated man And anyway: what's another 10 bucks down the tubes in the cost of a vacation like this? In the money-burning potlach of squiring me, the wife, the two boys around the Yucatan peninsula, with drivers and guides and boat captains? Besides, what choice is there? Not too smart to smoke a fake cigar. God knows what's in it, chemicals and such. It could be dangerous.
     And yes, that's supposed to be ironic.
     But I didn't throw it away. I tucked the cigar in my shirt pocket. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Freud said, and while it probably wasn't a Cuban, it still had a certain well-packed quality to it. It had to be good enough to fool people. I try to be fair, even to questionable cigars. Figuring it made sense to give this fellow a chance, I walked it out of the house, down the beach, and to the end of the pier, where the obligatory grass hut looked out over the requisite flat horizon. I settled in a white wooden chair and fired the charlatan up.

The author, in an uncharacteristic pose.

     Not bad. Not bad at all. It burned unevenly, and didn't seem what I remembered Cohibas to be. Yet a mild, serviceable cigar. I didn't fling it away. And a reminder that when the best isn't available, a reasonable facsimile will often do. 
     Just as the vacation might not have really been the rich man's idyll I pretended it was. Certainly an acceptable imitation. It would do. I'd always wanted a vacation where I did nothing, stared at the water, and relaxed. Thinking nothing is actually wonderful, and while I don't want to make a career of it—too many Americans have staked out that territory already—it does make for a welcome change of pace. I even took a cigar-smoking-selfie, as a tribute to my reader Chris Wood, whose Facebook page is studded with them.
     Not that the whole trip was sitting around doing nothing. There was the lovely family wedding that drew us all down there in the first place, and many memorable moments that might bear relating: the unexpected appearance of Mennonites. That larcenous monkey who tried to steal my iPhone. I'll see if my writing engine hasn't seized up from neglect and try to get the thing to turn over, setting a few of those down tomorrow. We got in late, after 10 p.m. Sunday. I wanted to say ... something ... to show I hadn't forgotten you ... at least not completely. I did forget you for long stretches, which was sort of the idea. I hope you didn't forget me too thoroughly, not so much that you won't wander on back. See you tomorrow. 

1990sFest: Day Nine—More than an attitude, big-headedness hurts

     I've been on vacation the past week, handing this space over to chestnuts from that distant era, the late 1990s. This is one of those topics that I'm half-amazed, half embarrassed that I wrote about. I'm flying home Sunday, and hoping to have some fresh content up tomorrow. Thanks for your patience during my absence. 

     The television reporter followed me out into the street.
     "You and your big head were blocking two cameras!" she fumed. I gave her my widest "I don't care" smile and entered into a brief conversation that quickly devolved into a mutual exchange of obscenities.
     Now, I didn't mind being cursed out by a TV reporter — TV reporters are the lowest, rudest people on earth; their cameramen would just as soon club you to the ground with their 20-pound battery packs as ask you to step aside. I was glad I blocked two cameras.
     But the "big head" comment really hurt — as the most painful insults always do — because it is true. I've got an enormous head. Always have. "I had to give birth to that head," my mother said, on too many occasions, never completing the thought because nothing further need be said. Nobody follows up, "I climbed Mt. Everest" with "quite a feat since it is really tall, you know." The listener is expected to understand.
     My head stands out in school pictures, as if a character greeting patrons at Disneyland had slipped in among the normal-headed children.
     I try not to think about huge-headedness. But there are always reminders. The recent redesign of the Sun-Times features section, lovely in every other respect, abandoned my suave "I've got a regular head" column photo for the above Wizard-of-Oz-like orb.
     Or hats. I used to buy normal hats and try to stretch them out. But that was torture — I could feel the headband squeeze every time I moved my jaw. So now I limit myself to Kangol caps, which come in XXL.
     "They also make XXXL sizes," said Edwin Urrutia, manager of Hats Plus on Irving Park Road, who confirmed my suspicions that we melon-heads are a forgotten lot.
     "Most companies don't even go up to an 8," he said, noting that many broad-pated customers find his store only after being turned away elsewhere.
     "I've had customers look all over the place — many stores won't even go as far as extra large," Urrutia said, noting that, as an extra large himself, he knows first hand the pain of trying to find a nice topper.
     "You see a product you like, but they don't even have it in your size. You spend 20 minutes waiting. It's frustrating," he said.
     His pet peeve is baseball caps, which, rather than recognizing the rights of the Brobdingnagian-beaned to boost their teams, instead seem to be shrinking.
     "Fitted baseball caps used to go up to a size 8. Now they only go as far as a 7 3/4," he said. And forget those adjustable caps.
     "One size fits all is actually one size fits most," said Urrutia, who keeps a waiting list of customers to be called when certain styles of hat arrive in the jumbo sizes.
     Richard Alcala, of Alcala's Western Wear on Chicago Avenue, said keeping the largest hats around the store costs a lot of money in inventory, and many stores don't bother, since just one customer in 50 has truly gigantic noggin.
     "We have a hatmaker in Texas who can make a size 9," he said, with a certain pride. "Most people stop at 7 1/2."
     For some reason — chauvinism, I suppose — I assumed Mardi Gras float heads were a male problem, but Alcala finds both sexes are afflicted.
     "This is definitely not confined to men. A lot of them are women," he said. "Hair is a factor, but not only hair. It's not unusual to get a woman in here with a really large head. Of course they don't like to admit it. Who does?"
     Not me. Though I'd would have guessed that women wouldn't mind much. Big-headedness is a central element of being cute, is it not? Think of Charlie Brown, Hello Kitty, baby ducks, etc. All with big heads, proportionally.
     Men don't want to be cute, however. They want to be rugged, handsome, regular-headed. And here I can offer a bit of comfort from the highest authority: Roger Ebert, who once claimed on his television show that movie stars tend to have these really large heads.
     He showed a clip of Clint Eastwood standing with a crowd of people on a courthouse stairway. Clint was a few steps behind the crowd, Ebert pointed out, so his head should have seemed smallest. Yet it loomed above those tiny-headed people around him, demanding attention, creating a focal point for the star.
     So maybe there's an upside to this. Maybe, as a column brand image, my nearly size-8 head will work to my advantage. It's about time.
     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 20, 1997

1990sFest: Day Eight — Turns out Big Brother is neighborhood grocer

     Whenever people get tied into a knot over their information being harvested and used, I think of this column. The joke is that our personal details were ALWAYS traded around by our associates. It's the idea that we should be anonymous that's new.

     Oh, and Dominick's Finer Foods is long gone. So mining my information didn't help them, or at least didn't help them enough. 

     Conjure up the standard grocery fantasy: Mr. Cooper, behind the wooden counter in a small store with a pickle barrel and a little bell that jingles when you walk in. "Why hello there, Mrs. Smith," says Mr. Cooper, rubbing his hands together. "We have a nice shipment of cherries today. . ."
     That image unites the American people as much as the flag does. It strikes a chord even for those too young to remember anything like it, which is most people. The closest I ever got was a hardware store off Logan Boulevard where the owner wrapped my purchase in brown paper and twine and figured out the bill in pencil on the side of the package. I plan to cherish that memory for the rest of my life, particularly when going to the store becomes punching a number into a keypad and waiting for your purchase to slide down the chute.
     Keep Mr. Cooper in mind. We'll get back to him later.
     My local supermarket is Dominick's Finer Foods on North Broadway. I like my Dominick's, in the main. Their cashiers are nice. They've got one, Carlos, who helped my wife with groceries when she was big and pregnant. And once, when the bill was $33.06, and I was fishing in my pocket, filling time by saying, "I've got 6 cents," Carlos riposted, "You've got a sixth sense?"
     Not the best joke, but enough to build customer loyalty.
     Like any relationship, my cozy bond with Dominick's is always being tested. For instance, on the way in I would sometimes grab a cart and take it inside with me.
     Then the Dominick's put up a big sign. "PLEASE BRING A SHOPPING CART INSIDE WITH YOU." Immediately I took offense. What's the matter? Can't Dominick's pay a few minimum wage teens to collect shopping carts and not dump the responsibility onto its customers? What's next? "PLEASE GRAB A MOP BY THE DOOR AND TIDY UP SPILLS AS YOU SHOP"? My affection for Dominick's cooled, for a while.
     Eventually, of course, I was able to rationalize the sign. Dominick's is just appealing to customers' higher nature. This sign happens to be directed toward the operation of the store, but the next one could exhort people to trust in God.
     The latest test came when Dominick's instituted a card: Fresh Values. You give them your name and address and Social Security number and driver's license number and they issue you this card with which you can get discounts and cash checks. Jewel has had one like it for years.
     I saw the new card and felt a chill. I know how these things work. They feed your purchase information into the big Dominick's computer in Northlake, and before you know it there's a hurt little note from Bird's Eye slipped under your door every time you forget to buy frozen peas.
     We live in an information age, and people tend to guard their personal information the way they once guarded their good name. I had no idea what data about my grocery choices would be used for, and didn't want to find out. All I knew was that when the authorities came for the people who buy pickled herring, my name wouldn't be on the list, and I would slip quietly over the border into Denmark.
     My wife, however, ratted me out to Dominick's. Dazzled by the thought of savings, she signed us up, and slapped our new card into my hand the last time I went to the store to get eggs.
     The eggs cost $ 27.30, including the rib-eye steak and milk and smoked turkey and apples and everything else I picked up on the way to get the eggs.
     But I paid only $ 26.01. My Fresh Values card saved me $ 1.29. Who knows what that $1.29 could become, invested wisely in the current stock market. Probably 45 cents.
     Scurrying home, I pondered the trade-off. A clear-cut deal: Dominick's gives me $ 1.29, and in return gets information, which it swears will only be used for its own research purposes.
     "We are not selling lists at all, period," said Nancy Siler, manager of consumer affairs at Dominick's. "The information is extremely limited to a few individuals within the company, who have signed integrity statements."
     If you can't live with that, you can always pitch the card. It's interesting to have a tangible price put on your sense of free-floating paranoia. Vague unexamined anxiety about Big Brother is one matter. Saving a buck and a quarter is another.
     To put this in perspective, flash back to the cherished ideal, to Mr. Cooper at the little grocery. He knew everything you bought, didn't he? If you started picking up boxes of diapers or quarts of gin, he would certainly note it, and probably even blab about it to his other customers, something I can't picture Dominick's doing even in my worst Orwellian nightmare (although it's fun to imagine how they would. A computerized letter, probably. "Dear Lake View Resident: Did you know that NEIL STEINBERG is buying an awful lot of Ben & Jerry's ice cream for a man trying to lose weight. . . .")
     Odd how the misty nostalgic past and the scary anticipated future can end up being almost exactly same thing.

         —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan. 12, 1997

1990sFest: Day Seven—A cultural oddity gets a glimpse of the future

This is faintly terrifying: but with very little effort, I was able to dig into
the center drawer of my desk and come up with my Screenz card.

     We like to think the pathways of technology were clear, that a few far-sighted individuals were able to forge the future, while others missed out. The truth was that nobody knew how the cards were going to fall, and those we think of as prescient were actually just persistent and lucky. It could have gone many other ways, such as this stillborn effort I tried out, once.     

     Every now and then my father abruptly announces that he could have bought stock in McDonald's in the mid-1960s and we'd all be rich by now.
     I'm not sure why he says this — free-floating remorse, I suppose. Squeezing a government pension can do that to you.
     A good son would sigh and commiserate. But I can't help but perversely remind Dad that, in the mid-1960s, he didn't even allow his family to eat at McDonald's, never mind buying stock.
     I can clearly see us burger-craving kids, piled in the back seat of our lime green 1960 Nash Rambler. Waiting while mom pulled over to the side of the road at a phone booth to call my dad to ask permission to take us to a little red and white tiled McDonald's stand. He said yes, finally, but my mother had to argue with him.
     I flash back to my father's failure to recognize the potential of McDonald's whenever I confront a radically new business enterprise, such as the "Screenz Digital Universe," a computer center; coffee house that opened last week on Clark Street, south of Diversey.
     I must admit, I was first drawn to Screenz because I thought it was a cultural oddity, a momentary representation of our infatuation with computers and coffee, a blip on the social screen that I had better familiarize myself with now before it evaporates.
     But as I was shown around the day before it opened, by Screenz' founder, a 29-year-old entrepreneur named Dan Kite, I got the sinking feeling that maybe I was the cultural oddity, and this might just be something that will catch on with people in a big way.
     Perhaps, I wondered, I should go empty my bank account and hand the money to Kite, if only to keep me from an old age of impoverished regret.
     Screenz is a good-looking operation. Large, brightly lit, and done in pleasing purples and yellows. Fashionable metal chairs from Italy; sconces from Sweden. As you walk in, to the right is a small cafe section, where you can buy java — the drink not the software — and bakery goods. To the left, 45 computer stations, each with a jumbo 17-inch terminal, a joystick, a mouse, speakers, a little control board and a headset with microphone.
     "We're the only place outside the Navy using this," said Kite, putting on the headset and explaining how users will be able to communicate with each other — say while playing on the same team in computer games. They also will be able to talk to a centrally located helper, who will guide them when they get stuck navigating the intricacies of the online world.
     Eager to leap into this world, the day Screenz opened, I signed up, charging my Screenz card with $ 10 worth of computer time and grabbing a $ 1.25 coffee.
     Of course nothing at Screenz is beyond what you can do at home. What Kite is counting on is that most people will not have the quick, state-of-the-art equipment they do, nor the wide range of new software. The endless delays of waiting for my pitiful 486 computer, an antique at three years old, are wiped away by Screenz' powerful server and direct dedicated lines.
     Is this enough to get people to go to the place — a clean, well-lighted place — and pay 13 to 19 cents a minute?
     "We are really trying to be the community center in cyberspace," said Kite, who previously established a string of Blockbuster videos and a small software company. "We are focused on making this a neighborhood destination."
     I started in on the games, since I don't have any at home and wanted to know what all the fuss is about. I tried Doom 2, which I'm sure has 100 different levels, each more challenging and wonderful than the next. But I ended up stuck on the first level, having blasted away all my monsters, wandering the computerized maze, lost.
     I suppose I could have sought assistance. But I couldn't bring myself to press my aid button and say: "Help — I'm stuck in maze on the first level of Doom 2." It seemed, I don't know, demeaning.
     So I got out of the "Fun and Gamez" section and headed for "The Knowledgeable Explorer," another of the six zones Screenz has created to help its users navigate cyberspace. I was attracted to the Encarta Encyclopedia.
     Yet, as happens so often with my computer at home, I couldn't make the thing work. This time, emboldened by failing at an educational pursuit and not mere carnage, I donned the headset, and checked in with the helper, who was prompt and friendly in telling me that the Encarta wasn't working just then.
     At least it wasn't me.
     I poked around in various other areas and time slid by, if not pleasantly then at least imperceptibly. Every so often the computer would tell me how much money had trickled away. After about 45 minutes I decided I had better head home to supper. The computer thanked me, told me I had spent $ 6.90 and had $ 1.85 left in my account, which didn't precisely add up, but was close enough.
     The coffee, however, was excellent. The place seemed to be running well considering that it was their first day and, heck, if there are 10,000 Screenz outlets in a decade, it won't be because of me anyway.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 6, 1996

1990sFest: Day Six—"The struggle never ends for Planned Parenthood"

Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground) by Barbara Kruger (The Broad, Los Angeles)

     I'm on vacation this week. One great thing about this job is meeting fascinating people who've spent their long lives doing important work. Peggy Carr passed away only in 2016, at age 103. 

     Peggy Carr was born in 1913 on Chicago's South Side, the third child in four years.
     "My poor mother," said Carr, 83, who has devoted much of her long life to helping women plan their families through an organization that came to be known in Chicago, 50 years ago this month, as Planned Parenthood.
     Three years after Carr was born, her child-weary mother slipped off to a South Side meeting held by contraception pioneer Margaret Sanger.
     Sanger was the New York nurse who started the movement leading to Planned Parenthood and, it might be argued, should be listed as one of the founders of 20th century life, for good or ill, along with Freud and Darwin and Marx.
     Carr's mother had to go in secret because in 1916 a woman could be arrested in Chicago not only for speaking about contraception, but also for hearing about it.
     That sort of oppression is worth remembering in the complicated present, since those who moon for the days of farm wives and their 12 kids churning butter forget that misery often went hand in hand.
     Peggy Carr remembers. While opponents of Planned Parenthood often give lip service to their love of children, sympathy for the plight of children led Carr, and others, to form the group in the first place.
     "My mother was president of the Chicago Orphan Asylum," said Carr. "Here were these neglected, unwanted children. We used to have the children come and play with us; the old orphanage was not far from where we lived on 48th Street. It was always so sad for these children nobody cared for."
     Then, as now, society found it more convenient to ignore unwanted children than to try to keep them from being born.
     "Lots of convents had a revolving door, you put the baby on a little shelf and rang a bell," said Carr. "They came and turned the door around and took the baby away."
     In 1939, Carr joined what was then the Illinois Birth Control League and served as its last president. At the time — and, in fact, until the 1960s — most states had laws either banning or restricting the spread of information about contraception.
     "Women begged their doctors to tell them how not to have another baby, and the doctors told them to tell their husbands to sleep on the roof," said Carr.
     Acting in the margins of the law, the Birth Control League held clinics and women just seemed to know when to show up.
     "They had never heard of birth control, but somewhere they found out and came to us. They may have already had nine children when they came, it meant so much to the women," said Carr. "You saw constant child bearing -- women had 10, 12 babies, and so many babies died."
     Though not a professionally trained nurse, Carr would help in the clinics to teach wives about reproduction and how to prevent it using methods available at the time, condoms and diaphragms.
     "Our clinics were only for married women," she said. "It never occurred to me that we would offer birth control to unmarried women."
     Even when money for professional health workers was available, the workers were not always willing in the early years.
     "You could hardly get anyone to work 50 years ago," she said. "They'd hardly dare tell what they were doing. It took a lot of courage."
     Carr remembers when Red Cross volunteers got in trouble for attending Planned Parenthood programs.
     "They were told never again to appear at a Planned Parenthood program in uniform," she said. "That's how much we were shunned."
     She also remembers the husband of one important Planned Parenthood advocate being called on the carpet and told that unless his wife curtailed her activities, he'd be fired.
     Another longtime Planned Parenthood worker, Geneva Hayden, who joined in 1966, remembers there being a constant struggle just to find a room to hold a clinic.
     "In Markham, we had to set up in the judge's chambers," said Hayden, 60. "There was no other place."
     To focus on the dismal past is to imply the situation is much better today, and it isn't. Simply because you can listen to Peggy Carr without fearing jail doesn't mean that her message isn't blunted in other ways.
     Ad agencies, for instance, that do pro-bono work for other social service groups still shun Planned Parenthood out of fear that clients will object.
     Television, which runs the vilest garbage, can barely bring itself to run ads for condoms. And while accepting the "Life: What a Wonderful Choice" ads from the religious right, TV stations refuse Planned Parenthood's most benign offerings, such as the one that boldly states: "Children have the best chance at a healthy life when they're born into a loving home."
     With such opposition, the next half century will hardly be easier. But as Carr noted, observing a fact that seems to elude so many of Planned Parenthood's opponents: "You can't go back."
               —Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 22, 1997