The letter

The Artist's Letter Rack, by William Harnett (Met)

     So I sat down Tuesday evening, just before dinner, to prepare Wednesday's blog post—something whimsical about the dubious holiday decorations at O'Hare airport—and it occurred to me that this is one of those moments where prudence requires one to set aside trifles and focus on the ongoing horror show that is Donald J. Trump. I tried reading the six-page letter he sent to Nancy Pelosi, but it's so long and corrosive I physically could not do it. My eyes went out of focus and trailed off the page. Maybe you'll have better luck; you'll find the full letter here.
     Instead, I'd like to do something that regular readers know I seldom do: defer to another writer, in this case, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, who must be made of stronger stuff, and whose column, It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is, does about the best job that a person can to dissect what she calls his "rambling, unhinged and lie-filled letter," I don't see a need for me to try to do a better job than she does. I tip my hat and yield the field. 
     Besides, I'm on vacation this week, theoretically, from the paper at least—habit and momentum had me writing full posts Monday and Tuesday. I should at least try to dial it back a bit here, and this seems a perfect occasion. The important thing is the bad news, not the paperboy who delivers it.  See you tomorrow. 

My near-brush with Harvey Weinstein

By Damien Hirst

     Probably nothing that Harvey Weinstein could possibly say would alter his image as a predatory swine who, along with Bill Cosby, finally shattered the Hollywood code of silence. Eighty women, including some of the most beloved stars of cinema, lined up to accuse him of a raft of nauseating crimes—he goes on trial for rape next month. No slick spin or millions in hush money will wash that away.
     Weinstein's self-pitying interview this week with the New York Post only made his reputation worse, if such a thing is possible, and instantly entered legend in the annals of self-immolation. The second paragraph begins: "The alleged serial sex predator and disgraced Hollywood producer whined to The Post in an exclusive interview that he should be remembered for doing more professionally for women than anyone in history — rather than the slew of sickening accusations against him."
    I have to admit, I read that with a tinge of envy mingled with regret—that might have been me feeding rope to Weinstein as he hung himself. The Sun-Times could have gotten all those clicks and I, in my naivete, blew it.  An apology to my bosses is in order. I'm sorry; I dropped the ball.
     Might as well just tell the story.
     Last February, I wrote a column about Jussie Smollett that put me on the Weinstein team radar, though I didn't realize it right away.  Among the load of  email was this:

      I think your piece is very important and pivotal for our times. I am working with a lawyer on behalf of his client on something similar, where the subject of this story lied about everything, and had media help her con several businesses and government agencies. I also work with another client who is having some bigger issues, but some fall into this category too.
     If you are interested in hearing more and possibly looking at an issue more critically, please let me know. Thank you and congratulations on your bold piece.

   The name of the writer—Juda S. Engelmayer—meant nothing to me. I responded as I would respond to any reader:

     Thank you for your kind observation. I would never go so far as to describe anything I write as "important," never mind pivotal, but I'm glad you found value in it. As to your client, you do get that I'm in the business of putting stuff in the newspaper, right? Because your vagueness makes me wonder. If you want to know if I'm interested, tell me what you're talking about—name, specifics, etc. Otherwise, I'm not interested in the Dance of a Thousand Veils.

     His reply caught my attention:
    
                I work with Harvey Weinstein.  

     I immediately did a little digging and found that Engelmayer is indeed one of Weinstein's spokesmen. My reply telegraphed surprise:

     Ah. If you're asking me whether I'll talk with Harvey Weinstein, the answer is, "In a heartbeat."

     Had I shut up there, I might have been the one fanning the flames after Weinstein doused himself with gasoline and struck a match. But that's exactly what I wanted to avoid and I did not shut up, alas, but blathered on, as is my habit:

     I would be worried about being played by Harvey Weinstein. I'm just a small potato slowly decomposing in a neglected Midwestern field. I tend to avoid stars and Hollywood, if I can. Too much stress. But I don't want to be a coward here. The only stipulation I'd have is that, after we speak, I might not use it. I'm not TMZ, I'm not interested in gossip, in dirt.

     I must have been nervous, because I nattered on a lot. I'm doing both you and myself a kindness leaving out most of it: not only explaining my reluctance, but also sort of pitching my open-mindedness by musing whether Woody Allen got a raw deal.  But the bottom line was I didn't want to give a platform for the kind of lame self-justification that the Post cannily whittled into a splintery stick and shoved up Weinstein's ass. Not that I'm incapable of that, but I couldn't smile benevolently and welcome him into my lair. Engelmayer took my cue and spun off his own involved tale of various situations with various Hollywood actors and assorted circumstances and justifications, all of which the media were cruelly ignoring. His argument struck me as off point. I was worried that I would end up with this detailed defense from Harvey Weinstein that had nothing to do with the central question readers wanted to know about him. I doubted he'd say anything to me of interest to anybody outside the helping professions. Hoping to test the waters, I wrote back:

     I can't vouch for the entire media, only my little corner of it.  If I just jumped in and started addressing the various specifics you allude to—Vigo Mortensen—my readers would think I had lost my mind....Why don't we do this: I talk to your guy, completely off the record. If he says he killed Elvis, I'm not going to use it. Maybe we get along, maybe we don't. If we don't, fine, we gave it a try. If we do get along, then we have a second call which introduces the idea that I'm now in communication with Harvey Weinstein. He says something about what it is to be him, now. My guess would be, a certain bitterness, a feeling that the wheel of fate, so good to him, had now turned. But I don't write fiction and I don't want to guess. He can say whatever he likes and I'll put it in the paper, as said by him. But if he isn't persuasive, in the last three paragraphs, well, he might not like them. I want to be clear about that. If he is persuasive, we might continue to another day, and get to Vigo Mortensen, eventually.... The question I have for you is: What does Harvey Weinstein want to say to people in Chicago? If he's a victim, he needs to say that. I can't; I'm not God, I have no idea of the truth of these situations and don't want to judge or guess. The bottom line is, I have to face my wife at dinner every night, and I so I have to approach this opportunity like a man smoking a cigarette, walking up to a pool of gasoline.

     That sufficiently scared off the Weinstein team, because they fell silent. When I realized what I had done, yes, I kicked myself—I should have just grinned and bobbed my head and got my tape recorder ready. "Shutting up is an art form," as I say at the end of the Smollett column. 
     In my defense, the opportunity was so out of my realm of experience—it was like getting a collect call from Bill Cosby in prison—that I can't beat myself up too much: my instincts were good; I didn't want to deceive anyone, even Harvey Weinstein. I didn't want this guy to think he was getting a sympathetic audience when he wasn't.  A person, even a journalist, especially a journalist, has to be honest and conduct himself in a direct manner, even when his immediate interests might dictate otherwise. It's a shame that Harvey Weinstein still hasn't figured that one out because, you know, he's had plenty of hints.  

Don't despair

     Now I'm as proud a liberal Democrat as they come. "The king of left-wing lunacy in the Windy City" Breitbart News called me waaaaay back in 2010, to my button-popping pride.
     But we do have a defeatist streak, no doubt developed after, you know, losing so much. Every victory from the Civil War to Civil Rights carries with it its own jaw-dropping backwash, a Thermidor where advances are undone, achievements are blunted, and if things don't quite entirely go back to where they were before our supposed triumph, they get damn close. Barack Obama being the latest example, the avatar of cool American intellectualism and weep-with-you compassion, the living embodiment of our national triumph over our grim racist past, ends up the midwife delivering the viscous monstrosity of the Trump era, squalling and puckering, flapping and flailing, half human, half your worst nightmare made flesh. Thanks Obama!      
     So perhaps it is natural, particularly after Trump's English doppelganger, Boris Johnson, crushed his opponent last week, that a certain By The Waters of Babylon We Sat Down And Wept quality has entered into Democratic discourse, the crux being that we're staring four more years of Trump in the face as the Democratic field of contenders try to decide if they're imitating a Three Stooges short or the final scene of a Keystone Kops two-reeler.
    If he wins again, the logic goes, the American Dream is Over. The fabric of civil society, permanently torn asunder.
    "When I contemplate the sort of illiberal oligarchy that would await my children should Donald Trump win another term," Michelle Goldberg writes in the Times. "the scale of the loss feels so vast that I can barely process it."
     Really? Because last time I looked six of Trump's closest allies are either in prison or on their way. I'm not saying that the election of Donald J. Trump, by 3 million fewer votes than were cast for Hillary Clinton let it never be forgotten, was not a terrible thing for this country, or that all sorts of terrible repercussions are not taking place. What I'm saying is, this isn't our first brush with trouble. We've endured shit before.  
    Like what? Take your pick. Attacked by an axis of Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. That looked bad, in 1942. A grim McCarthyite witch hunt 10 years later. A bloody war in Southeast Asia 10 years after that, in which—in case you forgot—57,000 young Americans died. That's a lot of Americans, and as visceral a shame as Donald Trump represents, and as much as I hope that every supporter lives to kneel weeping and clawing his face on the rail of regret for so mindlessly backing a mendacious moron, it ain't as bad as those young lives snuffed out. Ten years after Vietnam began ramping up, Watergate, and a president we thought was the nadir of loathsomeness at the time, the respect for government that hadn't been killed by Vietnam snuffed out, ushering the mushy moralizing of Jimmy Carter.
    What I'm saying is, the United States has been through a lot, and might have a bit more resilience than we are giving her credit for. And we still have a lot on our side. The free press is still free. All the "fake news" horseshit that runs out of Trump's mouth in a diarrheal stream hasn't changed that, yet. We've still got laws. The rest of the world sees our shame very clearly—even his buddy Johnson kept Trump at an arm's distance, worried about his fatal embrace. Let's not throw in the towel quite yet.
    I haven't given up on 2020. I'm hoping that the Dems offer up a candidate able to withstand the blast of the worst Donald Trump and his Droid Army of Treasonous Twits can throw at him, or her. But if America loses again in 2020 and an all Republican Congress changes the Constitution so that Trump can serve a third term in 2025 and his disembodied head preserved in a jar of nutrients can serve after that, then America will somehow right itself and recover. Germany got over 12 years of Hitler. We'll get over four or eight or however many years Trump will continue to hold 42 percent of the country in a mesmeric trance. 
     What's the alternative? And besides, if a few Twitter bites from a human flea like Trump can infect the entire American system, then we weren't that hardy to begin with. I don't believe it.  Being liberal, I believe in truth, honesty, courage, democracy, government, patriotism, diversity, compassion, and I believe in the essential bedrock durability of the American dream. They are hardy and will survive. We will hock out this mouthful of poison, one way or another.  Be patient, work hard and don't give up.

Riding the SWS line

     Business took me to Oak Lawn on Friday. While the natural thing probably would have been to drive, driving across Chicago on a Friday afternoon did not seem a wise practice. So I took the Metra Milwaukee District North line from Northbrook to Union Station, reading the newspaper and eating green tea mints along the way. Then strolled from the North Concourse to the South, musing on the historic fact that Union Station is misnamed: it is not a station, in that no trains pass through. Rather, it is a terminal, in that all lines terminate here—11 Metra routes, plus Amtrak.
     Which is more than a matter of nomenclature: Chicago, since its earliest days, grew to greatness because it is transfer point, a place where routes end. First as a portage, where Native-Americans carried their canoes from the muddy trickle of the Chicago River to the slightly more substantial Des Plaines River. Then as a gateway West, to the rest of America. Then, for 100 years or so, trains stopped here. They had to; it was important to have the trains stop—24 tracks dead end at Union Station (a single "thru-track" allows out-of-service equipment to creep from North to Side sides and back; otherwise a train cannot physically pass on a route through Union Station)—so the locals could get their meathooks into whatever was aboard. If we could force airplanes to land here, we would—I suppose a dynamic O'Hare International Airport is our attempt, a hub that encourages changing planes.
    As a testimony to the power of habit, I've constantly used Union Station for 20 years, and thought I knew it: The Great Hall, the various wings, the Gold Coast Hot Dogs tucked way off in the netherlands, But I had never stepped onto the South Concourse. Never taken a Metra South (not from Union Station; I've taken the Metra Electric to Hyde Park out of the station in the basement of the Cultural Center. A fun jaunt to the University of Chicago). 
     I was surprised to find the South Concourse, not a mirror image of the North, but different. While North Siders plunged through a Stygian netherworld, where the station ceiling is a black void, literally falling down on their heads, South Siders have these way-cool peaked skylights. They have Burlington Northern rail cars, with the line's art deco lettering on the side. Their cars have WiFi.

     South Siders are always so aggrieved, I thought, recalling my colleagues from Beverly, Mount Greenwood, and points south. ALways griping about perceived slights, and the general Northern orientation of the city, despite the South Side being physically bigger. Protesting the way the country embraces the Cubs and ignores the Sox.
    And here, Metra-wise, they've got a far sweeter set-up. Natural light and WiFi. 
    The train left the station. I tried to read, but ended up plastered to the window, like a child, gazing at the unfamiliar territory rolling by between Union Station and 95th Street. A lot more above ground pools, which seemed a hint, to me, that South Side neighborhoods are perhaps a little more cohesive than North Side ones, a pool being a little wet social center you stick in your backyard to lure the neighborhood kids to your own.
     The Oak Lawn station looks very much like the Glenview Station: Metra of course wouldn't go to the expense of designing different train stations, but would use a pattern, and most travelers would only be familiar with their home station anyway. The Glenview and Oak Lawn stations have something in common besides design: both are the busiest stations on their routes outside of downtown, according to Metra, which keeps track of these things.
    Speaking of which (and yes, pun intended, keeping track) ridership was down last year 76.1 million trips, a fall of 3.2 percent from the year before, the lowest volume since 2005. A deeper dive into Metra data hints why: 56 percent of poll respondents report sometimes telecommuting, aka, working from home, and those that do work an average of 9 days, almost half the work month. 
    Couple that with the fact that 90 percent of Metra trips are workers on their way to jobs, and the wonder is that the numbers aren't lower. Of course technology helps as well: the Ventra app, launched in November, 2015, amounts for nearly 50 percent of ticket sales, which saves Metra printing and punching costs.
    What else? About 50,000 of those trips were police and fire fighters in uniform riding for free. A shame the working press isn't given the same perk, the way journalists are waved into museums in Europe. The average trip is 22.4 miles—nobody takes short hops on Metra—and peak month is August, at 6.7 million, a full million riders more than in December. Which strikes me as something of a mystery, maybe something for you to discuss on a Sunday. Both August and December are traditional vacation months, so you'd think ridership would be low in both August and December. Yet one is high, the other low. I wonder why.

Have you done your duty, cheesecakewise?

Eli's cheesecake are perfect for birthdays too. 

    Hey, parasite! 
    Yeah, you, reading this now: listen up. Every day—every goddamn day—I present a big warm helping of high quality journalism or certified whimsy, some work of semi-professional writing, and your obligation is ... what? Pretty much nothing. You show up. The big scorekeeper in the sky registers a click that some consider all-important but in reality neither puts a nickel in my pocket nor decreases the general shabbiness of this endeavor by smoothing out a single wrinkle. You read the thing, or don't. You gaze at my attempt to produce photographs. You comment, or don't. Half the time you complain. And I let you, generous, open soul that I am.
     Ten months a year, that's it. No coral reef of ads generating a dime or two an hour. Why stoop in the gutter for pennies? No cup-rattling button to click, begging for dollars. No paywall, no membership drive. I don't need to monetize the blog, because I've got my gold-plated Chicago Sun-Times columnist job fire hosing money at me. Really, it's embarrassing, and takes all my ingenuity to find way to spend it. Thank God for my two boys in law school. What will I do when they become high-powered attorneys, at the end of next year, mirabile dictu, and no longer look up from their studies, blink, and realize they need another four-figure handout from ma and pa? Uncomplainingly given, I hasten to add, though I do like to telegraph, by a remark or two, that in a few decades—sooner than you think—and the shoe is on the other foot, I don't imagine the river of largess will run quite as easily backward. "Gosh, that CHA senior living facility is getting kinda pricy. Couldn't we put dad in a box on Lower Wacker Drive? A really good box, I mean. Heavy duty."
    Sorry, where was I? Oh yes. You, leech. The only attempt at monetizing the blog happens at the holidays, when Chicago's own iconic Eli's Cheesecake runs a holiday ad from mid-December to mid-February, reminding people how nice it is to send a cheesecake for Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day or, ideally, all four.
     So Eli's is doing their best to nudge you toward the superlative joy of cheesecake. And I, by accepting their money at great personal sacrifice—even more money to worry about, guard, and dispose of, somehow—and posting the ad, do my share. 
    But you, what are you doing? Personally, I mean. Have you clicked on the ad and been taken to the Eli's wonderland of gustatory delights? Have you examined the astounding range of flavors available? My guess is you haven't. Do so now, then return.
     No really. Do it. Click RIGHT HERE.
     I'll wait.
     Hmmmm, mm-mm mmmmmmmm. La-la-lah. 
     Back? Good.
     Did you notice the Double Chocolate Cheesecake? The Turtle Cheesecake? The Chocolate Chip Cheesecake—my personal favorite. How about the Peppermint Bark Cheesecake? Did you order it immediately, impulsively, like a diver breaking the surface of water and filling his lungs with sweet sustaining air? Why the hell not? Are you dead?
     Peppermint ... bark ... cheesecake. The bark being chocolate ... not real tree bark. Sometimes I forget that not every reader is... well, better not to go there. Just remember: bark = chocolate.
     I would like to draw your attention to Eli's Original Plain Cheesecake. That's the one served at Eli's, The Place for Steak back when men were men and could walk the streets of Chicago, hog butcher to the world, with pride without stooping over their phones to tell them how to think and feel. That's the cheesecake that I sent to my own sainted mother last week, because she loves cheesecake.
    It arrived in two days. Halfway across the country. Meaning that you can dispatch your gifts for Hanukkah or Christmas and be done with it before other people have even contemplated the 9-ring Dantean Hell of  Christmas shopping. 
     The moment I told my mother it was coming—anticipation is part of the joy—she said she would invite her Colorado pals over so they could experience actual authentic Chicago cheesecake produced as God intended it in the famous gleaming Eli's factory on the Northwest side of Chicago, the same factory where her grandsons once sat, in white lab coats and paper hats, decorating their own cheesecakes because they're special, connected, clout-bedewed boys.
    But actually having the cheesecake in her possession meant she could no longer merely tuck it into the freezer for future use. Here is her actual, unedited reaction:
   "We tried it," she said, in her joyous phone call to her elder son, me, giddy with gratitude. "I took out two pieces—very easily—and put them on two beautiful plates to let them thaw."
     She served them to my father and herself with a dollop of fudge sauce from Trader Joe's, which I had informed her is almost as good as Margie's Fudge sauce. 
     "It was wonderful," she said. "Better than The Cork"—the Boulder Cork, big deal steakhouse—"creamier, more substance to it. I like the plain because we can put whatever we want on it."
     There you have it. Now what about your mother, if you are lucky enough to have her around? Or son, or brother or close friend, some significant person who you haven't sent a cheesecake to yet but really should. Why is your bond so much less than mine? Bearing in mind what an extraordinarily cheap person I am. Are you really willing to let me have that to lord over you, all year long? I should think not.

Charlie Percy enjoying his cheesecake

     Heck, I've sent Eli's cheesecake to strangers. Look at this photo. This is Charlie Percy, enjoying the cheesecake that I sent his grandfather to thank him for so scrupulously copy editing this blog (some readers offer daily editing reports; you have to be browbeaten to order a single frickin' cheesecake which—am I right?—you have still not done. Go do it).
     If the Percy name rings a bell, it is because he is the great grandson of Charles Percy, the Wonder Boy of Illinois, our former senator. A reminder that Eli's is interwoven into the history of this city and state, from 1940 when Eli Schulman founded his coffee shop, Eli's Ogden Huddle, the tap root reaching deep into the loamy soil of Chicago's culinary patrimony. Order one, and you never know where in history it will bring you. 
     Hanukkah begins Dec. 22. Christmas is three days after. Sure, you could join the miserable scrum in some department store, or flop your fingers on a keyboard and gaze with limp uninspiration at the web site of some enormous international conglomerate offering anodyne crap that your loved one wants to receive even less than you want to send it, if such a thing is possible.
    Or you could send cheesecake, which would arrive in plenty of time and distinguish this year as the year you gave cheesecake, and redeemed yourself in the eyes of your mother/son/friend/whatever, who honestly had begun to take a dim view of you, in their secret heart, after the crappy gift you sent last year, worse than no gift at all in its utter wrongness.
      You could order cheesecake. Here. Three words: White Chocolate Raspberry. 
      A friend of mine mentioned that the "parasite" in the opening sentence is sorta harsh. "You don't usually insult your readers," he said, perceptively. And that's true. But an important ethical value is at stake here. If you were failing to send your child to school, I would speak to you severely. If that child were cheating on his exams, or stealing money from the poor box at church, you would have harsh words for him. Such is the situation here. "Parasite" of course does not apply to those readers—an elite—who take that step, cross the burning bridge, and fulfill their obligation to this blog. You gave $50 to Beto O'Rourke, didn't you? And what did that get you? Nothing? A flash in the pan. You've given that much to hidebound, bureaucracy-clogged supposed charities. No cheesecake traded hands.
     If today's offering seems particularly protracted and strident, I'm trying to avoid two very dire situations: first, someday I'm going to see Marc Schulman, the owner of Eli's, at a dinner, or a Chicago philanthropic event—he glides seamlessly across the city, appearing now here, now there, lifting up the downtrodden, succoring the struggling poor, supporting the worthy. He will make significant eye contact with me, and raise one hand, fluttering three or four fingers. He will tap those fingers with the index finger from his other hand, shaking his head and mouthing the words, "One, two, three, four..." representing whatever completely inadequate number of cheesecakes that his Every goddamn day sponsorship netted. The skull of steely business acumen appearing through the avuncular skin of literary beneficence. And whatever little spark of significance I harbor in my secret heart, like that tiny flame being toted around in a rag bag in "Quest for Fire," will snuff out in a wisp of smoke. It'll kill me.
     Shortly thereafter, word will reach you, through the one or two surviving news outlets in our beleaguered city, that a certain minor blogger has gone insane, deleted his blog, and been institutionalized in some grim state facility reserved for that purpose. You'll go to read the high quality professional journalism, or certified whimsy, that you are used to finding here, day in and day out, week after week, year after year. But it will be gone. The wind howling through a bottomless silence. And you'll look up, the cold and bleak uniformed future stretching before you like a curse, and think, the stone of regret you will carry through the rest of your life forming around your heart, "I should have bought a goddamn cheesecake."
   It's not too late. Buy a cheesecake. Now. Here.

Will UK election hint at USA’s future, again?

     Where were you when Britain voted to drop out of the European Union?
     It isn’t like 9/11. Not exactly a searing shock. Rather one of those queasy moments when you feel the bedrock wobble.
     Do you remember? Here’s a hint: June 2016. I was in Washington, D.C., visiting my older son. Getting the news amidst the Roman splendor of our nation’s capital helped seal it in memory.
     As did the news itself: Britain was bailing out of the European Union, tired of living in an interconnected modern world where standards might be set somewhere else. Rejecting the EU’s open borders, which meant some foreign person could come to your country, where they don’t belong.
     Not that I cared much about British politics. Rather, I saw the vote as tea leaves indicating where our own country was heading come that November.
     Or as I wrote on my blog three days later:

“The news filled with the spectacle of a nation submitting to xenophobia and fear, leaping off a cliff at the behest of mavericks who had no plan other than to trash the system and see what happens next. It’s like burning down your home to marvel at the pretty fire. And I couldn’t help but feel: we’re next... It was scary to walk through these wide federal plazas, with their gleaming beige stone buildings. To think, ‘This is the Department of Commerce that Donald Trump will be responsible for. This is the White House where he will live.’

“With the bad news from Britain, as the country, in an act of collective derangement it instantly regretted, voted to be a smaller, more cut off and less prosperous nation, it was easy to suspect we had now entered a world gone mad, that the populist rage that has for so long simmered under our politics had truly exploded. . . Brexit is strike two... Will Trump be strike three?”

     He was. Though Trump has not been as bad as feared. When I asked my boy interning in Washington why he wasn’t that alarmed about Trump, he replied, “The institutions are strong.” And they have been, generally. While individual Republican leaders line up to stain themselves with the deathless shame of cowardice, treason and betrayal of every moral value they once flaunted, there has been institutional resistance. By the courts. By the federal bureaucracy. By Congress — the impeachment process distracts Trump from doing greater damage. The media has never been so important.

To continue reading, click here.

Super mega grande Starbucks

     I am so glad, I though, again and again, wandering the new Starbucks Reserve Roastery on Michigan Avenue Tuesday, that I didn't go into business. 
     Because, the thought continued, I have no idea what people want.
     The largest Starbucks in the world, 35,000 square feet, opened in the middle of November to great fanfare. I barely noticed the hoopla, out of the corner of my eye—big lines—but didn't bother to read it. A big Starbucks; so what? I'm not even a fan of the coffee: too strong, generally. I mean, I'll drink a cup, if nothing else is available.
     But now I had been hoofing up Michigan with an hour to kill, between lunch at The Purple Pig (roast cauliflower, mmm) and an appointment at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (pre-op interview; more surgery at the end of the month, booo), the place offered exactly what I needed: something to do.  The ropes were still set up on Erie Street, in case a few hundred people suddenly mobbed the place, as they did when it opened Nov. 15 and lines formed at 5 a.m., four hours before the doors opened. But now they were empty. I could just walk in. 
     I spent the next 20 minutes or so methodically drifting around, floating upward, floor by floor. There had to be 200 people spread over its four levels (I skipped the rooftop deck—cold outside—so can't tell whether it was empty or crowded too).
     Every seat was taken, by people eating complicated little sandwiches, plates of truffles and pastries and pizza. A spiral escalator—I can't recall ever seeing one before (uncommon, first because they cost four times as much as a straight elevator, and second because they are "stupidly twiddly" when it comes to mechanics, according to a surprisingly long history of the contraptions you can find here)—which led to a bakery on the second floor, a bar on the third, with gleaming bottles and artisanal cocktails. More coffee on the fourth. Barrel aged coffee seems to now be a thing, or at least Starbucks is trying to make it a thing—and tea, ironically, seemed to be big, with mosaics of teabags—one spelling "CHICAGO"—on the walls. 
     This is the sixth of what Starbucks calls "theatrical, experiential shrines to coffee passion”—the others are New York; Tokyo; Shanghai; Milan and the company's home, Seattle, where the first Roastery opened in 2014. That puts us in good company.
    There were glowing gas fireplaces and displays about beans—I could have spent an hour reading the walls, had I been so inclined, though in truth none of the information being presented caught my attention. The Smithsonian this is not, though there was a museum gift shop vibe to corners of the place: high end t-shirts and various cups and souvenirs for sale. 
    I easily resisted buying or ordering anything—I have an overabundance of coffee mugs, and just had coffee after lunch at the Purple Pig—but immediately saw the great appeal of the place: a perfect location, the perfect place for tourists to flop down and recharge themselves after shopping, grab a coffee and a chocolate croissant and watch the crowds below. 
     The building opened as Crate & Barrel in 1990, the year I got married, and its commercial usage over the past 30 years seems to be tracking my own life. Then I needed glassware and the various kitchen tools that Crate & Barrel offered in massed array, to feather our new nest and entertain our squads of new friends. Now a place out of the cold for a solitary coffee is far more appealing, and the glassware gathers dust or is packed away. I suppose that means that in 2049, with Starbucks a shadow of itself, the place will be turned into a columbarium, displaying gleaming niches of urns. I'll be ready.