Pete Lit

Quote

"I learned that, if you truly want to enjoy something, you have to share it with others."
- Ralph Freese, master canoe builder and waterway conservation activist

Memo to Mayor Daley

Just a thought: before you blow a billion-plus bucks on a temporary Olympic Stadium in Washington Park, you might consider this marvelous idea from 1958: Mechanized Stadium of the Future. Assemble and use it for the Olympics, then sell it to the next Olympic host city. Saves money while also representing the largest single act of recycling in the history of the world, thus further burnishing your "green" credentials. At least think about it, okay?

"That's a mighty fine Goose."

Well, this news thoroughly blows: Goose Island loses lease, to close its Clybourn spot.

It's truly sad that Goose Island and its landlord can't come to terms on a new lease, especially given the fact the brewpub was a true pioneer for the commercial redevelopment of the Clybourn Corridor area. When Goose Island opened in 1988 (in a former Turtle Wax factory, of all things), the neighborhood was pretty dicey. Now that the area has exploded, Goose Island is on its way out.

I've got a lot of great memories of that place, most notably:

+ Office Christmas parties in 1988 and 1989, with the second one immortalized when two over-indulged co-workers took a strong liking to a plastic, interior-lighted goose on display on a counter. The goose was spied from the adjacent tap room several times during the evening, prompting one of said individuals to repeat the phrase in quotation marks above. So great was their admiration for this object of dubious aesthetic merit that, at last sufficiently fortfied and emboldened by the tenth or twelfth microbrewed draft of the evening, they finally marched over to the counter, concealed the goose under a coat and snuck it out through the back door. Although I categorically deny any knowledge of who either of these nerfarious individuals might be, I've heard rumors that the goose's residence has alternated between their two homes ever since.

+ My going-away party when I left NBD in 1991 to return to grad school. Highlights were a) a male co-worker drinking out of female co-worker's shoe; and b) the evening ending with that same male carrying that same female out of the building, slung over his shoulder. The male was married, and the female single, and I can only guess what happened after that. Whatever it might have been, it would have occurred in a Toyota Celica. (Ewww.)

+ My wife's going-away party after she quit her job at this horrible equipment leasing company which happened to be in the same neighborhood. She and her soon-to-be-former co-workers arrived in midafternoon, but I only got there after driving back from my job in the suburbs. By the time I got there the only ones left were her and this goofy guy Jim, who was the only other normal person in the company and who quite valiantly kept her sane for the last several months she worked there. The three of us stayed for several more rounds, ruthlessly mocking the other employees.

+ Stopping in with Julie for a quick dinner last summer after my first-ever public reading. The mood was pleasantly celebratory, and the food and drink was as good as ever.

Good times, good times. While I wish Goose Island the best of luck finding a new location in the area, for me it will never be the same.

At Maurice Lenell, one taste will tell...

Marshall Field's becomes Macy's, fine. Jay's Potato Chips goes bankrupt and gets sold to an out-of-state company, fine. Wrigley Field might change its name, fine. But one thing in transition in Chicago business that ISN'T fine: Maurice Lenell Cooky Company is in Chapter 11 reorganization and is being forced out of its long-time home.

The 70-year-old Maurice Lenell Cooky Co. factory and store at 4474 N. Harlem Ave. have been sold to a developer who wants to open a Costco-anchored retail center on the site and surrounding property.

Maurice Lenell Cooky Co. — whose Jelly Stars, Almonettes and other cookies are a Chicago tradition — is operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and could either reorganize or be sold, according to Ken Mann, president of Equity Partners Inc., the broker Maurice Lenell hired to find investors or buyers for the business.

The company has apparently been done in (at least partially) by our federal government's perpetually misguided agriculture subsidies which prop up domestic sugar and corn production, those same subsidies that have already killed off most of Chicago's candy industry. Nice work, Washington.

Maurice Lenell was a cherished staple of my childhood. Quite frankly, though, I hadn't thought much about Lenell literally for decades, until this past Christmas, when a client of my company sent over a gift package of Lenell cookies that briefly found a home atop a filing cabinet ten feet from my desk. And I do mean briefly - I blissfully gorged myself on all my old favorites, delighted to discover that all of them tasted exactly the same as they did thirty years ago, and did more than my fair share of polishing the assortment off. This is one local institution whose demise would truly sadden me.

Say it ain't so, Maurice!

Chicago Cultural Center

This month's art exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center look quite interesting, especially these three:

Petronele Gerlikiene: Embroidered Myths and Everyday Stories
through April 6, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington Street
Free

One of the most acclaimed, self-taught Lithuanian-American artists, Petronele Gerlikiene was born in Chicago in 1905 and died in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1979. She spent most of her life working in the countryside but, after retiring in 1972, she moved to the capital to live with her artist son. Fond of needlework and embroidery, she started to create her own compositions on curtains and rugs, with different trees as the central motifs, often surrounded by people and animals, sometimes referring to Lithuanian myths or simple daily life experiences. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in cooperation with the Lithuanian Art Gallery Ciurlionis, Inc. and the Lithuanian Consulate in Chicago.

Women of Islam: Photographs by Rania Matar
through March 30, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington St., Chicago
Free

Boston area photographer Rania Matar originally hails from Lebanon, where she has repeatedly returned in pursuit of images of her homeland. This newest body of black and white work provides an insightful, inter-generational study of women and the volatile issue of the head scarf in Muslim culture. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Marcelino Stuhmer: The Recurring Dream
through March 23, 2008
Chicago Cultural Center, Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E. Washington St., Chicago
Free

Marcelino Stuhmer's new installation of paintings presents a 12-foot diameter panoramic painting depicting the famous dream sequence from the Cold War film classic, The Manchurian Candidate (1962). In this scene, the camera pans 360º around the room, transforming an elderly women’s meeting on hydrangeas into a brutal Communist display of mind-control. As part of the installation, Stuhmer is also exhibiting a series of portraits of the American character actor Henry Silva, who has consistently been typecast in movies as an ethnic bad guy. While Silva's Korean Communist character Chunjin actually appears in the panoramic dream sequence, the portrait series entitled The Silva Screen, consists of manifestations of the actor, drawn from the numerous minority menaces he's played throughout his career. Organized by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

And I also see there's an upcoming exhibition by one of my favorite artists, Tony Fitzpatrick, starting in May that I'll be sure to attend as well. When I first starting working downtown, over five years ago, I was very diligent about regularly attending art exhibitions in the Loop (including the Cultural Center, the Illinois Gallery at the Thompson Center, and Columbia College) but even though I saw some great shows early on (most notably Gary Stochl and Jay Ryan) I haven't done much of that lately. I'll certainly be rectifying that soon, starting with these shows.

Memo to Sam Zell

To: Sam Zell, new Tribune head honcho
From: Pete Anderson, longtime reader (and former employee of yours)
Re: Reviving the Tribune

Sam, I know you're looking to make a big splash in media circles by reviving the Chicago Tribune, which you've recently taken control of. Everyone says newspapers are a dying medium, but you've defiantly retorted that they ain't dead yet. Given your history of contrarianism, along with the hundreds of millions of dollars you stand to gain if you are proven correct, I'll assume your statements are sincerely felt. Although your maverick status implies you're not terribly receptive to outside opinion, I still have a few ideas to suggest for the Tribune.

Although substantial improvements are needed on the editorial side of the business, I can't comment on much there other than to point out that your front section on Sundays reads like a glorified wire service sheet. While I haven't tabulated any hard figures, I could swear that at least half of the stories there come directly from the Associated Press - in other words, the same stories that every other newspaper in existence has access to. Bolstering your non-Chicago correspondent ranks and foreign bureaus, and thus delivering much more original content, would be a big first step.

But on a more basic level, even if your editorial product improves dramatically, it doesn't mean a thing if you can't deliver that content to the reader. On the internet side, drop the silly site registration formality that's currently required to read Tribune articles online. People will be much more likely to share your stories with others, thus increasing your site traffic and the rates you can charge advertisers, if they can do so without burdening their friends and acquaintances with the annoyance of site registration.

Secondly, there will always be a substantial amount of people who prefer reading an old-fashioned newspaper in hand rather than online. (Assuming, of course, that your editorial quality is high - if a reader only expects to see a few articles they're interested in, they'll probably just read in for free online instead of paying for a copy of the paper.) But those people have to be able to physically access the paper to even consider making a purchase, and I've increasingly noticed instances in which the Tribune's distribution function is sorely lacking. Three pieces of anecdotal evidence from my own experience:

1. Until a month ago, I had home delivery of the Sunday Tribune for most of the past twenty years. Reading the Tribune was a cherished part of my Sunday ritual - in my younger bachelor days, I'd even read it cover to cover. But the Tribune has abdicated its home distribution role, instead outsourcing home delivery to an anonymous fleet of generally unaccountable independent contractors. Our home delivery service grew increasingly erratic, with the paper never arriving half the time, which required us to contact a call center (overseas, we suspect) which always assured us that the delivery person would be contacted immediately and our paper would be arriving shortly. It rarely did, even after calling, and even if it did arrive it wouldn't be there until 10 or 11 a.m. at which point my prime reading time had already passed. Since most such mornings ended up with me driving out to the drugstore to buy my own copy anyway, we decided to cancel home delivery and pick up our copy at the store.

2. Since then I've been picking up the Sunday Tribune at my local CVS. But the clerk there told me that the Tribune has recently been providing significantly fewer copies of the paper each day, which isn't a problem for me since I get to the store fairly early but increases the chances that the later-arriving Tribune reader won't find a copy to buy. On top of that, the Sunday final editions are often mixed up with the early editions (which should have been removed when the final edition was dropped off), thereby risking my arriving back home with a paper full of nothing but Friday's news. The paper's sections are also sorted haphazardly, so I never really know if I'm buying a complete paper.

3. Lastly, this past Sunday I stopped to pick up breakfast at the most popular doughnut shop in town. The place was particuarly crowded this week, with every seat occupied and a line that stretched out the door. Inside, copies of your rival Sun-Times and its subsidiary Joliet Herald-News were in plentiful supply, but no Tribune. While there was a Tribune coin-operated box outside, the box was completely empty - and given the early hour, my guess is that it had never been filled.

Not putting the paper where people can buy it - outside high-traffic doughnut shops and inside drugstores - or reliably delivering it to people's homes are just two aspects of the Tribune's business model which are clearly broken. No matter how good your paper is, if people can't get their hands on it, they won't read it. So fix your distribution system first, and do it quickly. Otherwise your newspaper's steady decline into irrelevance will be no one's fault but your own. Yes, the problems predated your stewardship, but they're your problems now. So fix them.

Algren's Long-Ago Cons

It's the holiday season, a time of peace and goodwill to men (and women), of nostalgic remembrances of the past. What better time to read about my patron saint Nelson Algren reflecting on some of the finest con jobs he pulled during his boyhood? I find it utterly impossible to resist, especially this Christmas-themed one...

Around Christmastime the paper guys had cards printed and sold them to us little paper guys for a nickel apiece. They read something like this:

Christmas comes but once a year
When it comes it brings good cheer
So open your heart without a tear
And remember the newsie standing here.

That got them, every time. Especially if there was a light fall of snow. And the swindle in the card routine was this: After he'd paid for the verse and would be thinking he owned it, you'd have to tell him no, it was your only card, you just wanted him to see the sentiment on it, it had cost you a nickel, so please mister could you have it back?

I've been meaning to pick up the reissue of The Last Carousel for a while now. Reading priceless reminiscences like this piece just might clinch my purchase.

(Via Destinyland.)

"Whoa!"

Hands down, THE news video of 2007. My wife and I have been fans of Ravi Baichwal on ABC 7's weekend newscasts for a while now, and after witnessing this I think he might be the most professional television journalist there is. I don't know about you, but if a minivan crashed through a wall right behind me at my workplace, my verbal reaction would have been quite a bit more colorful. After that brief initial shock, his composure was rather remarkable.

Lake Shore Athletic Club is saved!

I was quite pleased yesterday to read of this news item: the venerable Lake Shore Athletic Club appears to have been saved. As I've mentioned previously, the classic building had been in grave danger of being demolished by a high-powered local developer in favor of a new condo tower. But the developer backed off, apparently from the very public opposition of new ward alderman Brendan Reilly, and the building is now being sold to a preservation-friendly developer who plans to convert the building to high-end senior housing.

I can't begin to describe how satisfying this resolution is. Had the prevailing opposition to the building's demolition come from the city or the alderman's office, the resolution wouldn't have meant nearly as much. But the developer-friendly Mayor Daley wasn't about to interfere, and even the alderman stuck a neutral stance at first, only gradually coming around to the side of preservation. Instead, this victory came from the little people - grassroots activists and neighborhood residents - who opposed demolition from the very start, rallying public opinion and bringing the alderman into the fold. These are the very same little people who are so often marginalized and ignored in our increasingly undemocratic society. For once, everyday citizens win a victory which, while minor in the grand scheme of things, is heavy with symbolic significance. We the people can make things happen, if we band together for the common good, make our position known and never back down from the ensuring fight.

"Art's magic bond of light, and beauty's bloodless stain."

The Tribune ran a nice piece yesterday on the Cliff Dwellers, the social club - founded by author Hamlin Garland and named after the once-famous novel by Henry Blake Fuller - which is celebrating its hundredth anniversary. The club's commitment to the arts and intellectual discourse is quite refreshing (I like the quote from the UIC professor who said "I've had more intellectual conversations here than at a university") and in sharp contrast to the other downtown clubs and their profit-is-holy ethos; if I were to join one of the clubs, which admittedly is very unlikely, I'd opt for the Cliff Dwellers. The Trib quotes from verses penned by Garland:

Garland, its founding president, once took poetic notice of what the club was about:

"Down in the city's deeps we meet in savage fashion,
And play as best we may the selfish, sordid game,"

But after hours and up in the Cliff Dwellers:

"Man greets his fellow man, and only then remembers,
Art's magic bond of light, and beauty's bloodless stain."

As an aside, you might think from all the Hamlin Garland references I make, that I've actually read some of his work. Which is not the case, at least not yet. Soon, he insists, soon.

Bell's Beer coming back to Chicago!

Er, sort of - and likely only after what promises to be extensive litigation.

The Kalamazoo, Mich., brewery stopped serving Chicago after a dispute with National Wine & Spirits Inc., the Indianapolis company that holds the rights to distribute Bell’s Beer in Illinois.

The label’s disappearance from local bars that cater to specialty-beer lovers, such as the Clark Street Ale House and the Hop Leaf, made headlines last year, and sparked a wave of hoarding among beer aficionados.

Brewery president Larry Bell says he has found a way to get around the impasse: He has created three new beers specifically for the Chicago market.

"This is a different beer," he says. "These are not the beers that were assigned to them."

Different beer (Kalamazoo Porter, Kalamazoo Amber and Kalamazoo IPA), perhaps, but I'm hoping they're suspiciously similar to Bell's Porter, Bell's Amber Ale or Bell's IPA. Or even - dare I dream? - Oberon or Two Hearted Ale.

Probably will never happen, given how slanted the liquor laws are in Illinois toward the distributors. But you still have to admire Larry Bell's chutzpah.

Boy's Gotta Have It, Part 2

Behold: Chicago under Glass: Early Photographs from the Chicago Daily News. Already, I'm salivating. And envisioning it on my bookshelf, right next to Real Chicago: Photographs From the Files of the Chicago Sun-Times.

On Public Transportation

In a remarkable coincidence, the Chicago-based Journal of Ordinary Thought (of which I've previously expressed great admiration) is holding a discussion of the role of public transportation on everyday lives, just as the CTA, Metra and Pace are about to institute draconian fare increases and service cuts in response to the state's chronically irresponsible funding. Should be a lively event.

Speaking of which, Springfield lawmakers: cut the crap, stop the political posturing, and get public transportation all of the funding it needs. There's no reason to delay in trying to tie it to expansion of the state's casinos, a highly contentious issue whose inclusion will only ensure that the funding never gets done. Instead, institute a significant regional sales tax for the Chicago metropolitan area, with all proceeds going to the CTA, Metra and Pace. Public transportation benefits every one, whether you ride it or not, so everyone in the region should share the burden of paying for it. Raise fares and cut service, and you'll just force more people into their cars and out onto the already overburdened highways. (Chicago already has some of the very worst traffic in the U.S. - I cringe at the thought of how much worse it would be with public transportation cutbacks.) And then we'd need even more roads to be paid for and maintained, along with more fuel consumption and pollution.

Rod Blagojevich, Mike Madigan, Emil Jones, all the rest of you - just do your frigging jobs. You know, the ones we elected you to do.

Great Chicago Novels

Chicago Magazine weighs in with its list of "the ten essential Chicago novels." No real surprises on the list, nor any glaring omissions either:

The Cliff-Dwellers (1893), by Henry Blake Fuller
Sister Carrie (1900), by Theodore Dreiser
The Pit (1903), by Frank Norris
The Jungle (1906), by Upton Sinclair
The Studs Lonigan trilogy (1932-35), by James T. Farrell
Native Son (1940), by Richard Wright
The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), by Nelson Algren
Maud Martha (1953), by Gwendolyn Brooks
The Adventures of Augie March (1953), by Saul Bellow
The House on Mango Street (1984), by Sandra Cisneros

Several of my favorite novels - in general, not just Chicago ones - are on that list. And I still really have to read Augie March and the last two books of the Lonigan trilogy. It's also nice to see Bayo Ojikutu get a nod on "the new school" list, for his debut 47th Street Black - his latest, Free Burning, is one of the best books I've read this year.

(Via Bookslut.)

Columbia College Acquires The Center for American Places

Two great organizations get together: Columbia College Chicago has announced the acquisition of the publishing house The Center for American Places. I own one CAP volume, Gary Stochl's gorgeous On City Streets: Chicago, 1964-2004 and the press also has several other noteworthy Chicago-related titles, including Bob Thall's City Spaces: Photographs of Chicago Alleys and At City's Edge: Photographs of the Chicago Lakefront, Brad Temkin's Private Places: Photographs of Chicago Gardens, Scott Fortino's Institutional: Photographs of Jails, Schools, and Other Chicago Buildings, Jay Wolke's Along the Divide: Photographs of the Dan Ryan Expressway, and Julia Bachrach's The City in a Garden: A Photographic History of Chicago's Parks. Lovely volumes all.

A great meal at Keefer's

I'm not much of a gourmand - I'm convinced that I have an undiscerning palate, and living in restaurant-challenged Joliet doesn't help either - but I really have to put in a strong word for Keefer's, in Chicago's River North. I'm one of three brothers-in-law in my wife's family, all of whom have birthdays in the fall. Rather than having three separate birthday get-togethers, we have one big dinner in October at a nice Chicago restaurant. This year it was Keefer's (surprisingly, it was my suggestion, having enjoyed a company holiday luncheon there a few years ago) and it was a truly excellent experience. Great food, courteous service, beautiful atmosphere. And the waiter even directed us to a nice Irish bar around the corner for a nightcap. I'm still savoring the halibut with wild mushroom sauce. Mmmm.

Here's to you, Mr. Weisner

No Weekend Multimedia this week, as we pause to honor the life of Kenneth Weisner, founder of Victory Auto Wreckers and the man behind that legendary TV commercial. Chicagoans, of course you know which one I'm talking about.

As Kenneth Weisner lay in the hospital Thursday, his wife and son spoke with the nurses, who couldn't help but notice their matching Victory Auto Wreckers sweat shirts.


One of the nurses finally asked about them, and the family told them: Mr. Weisner was the owner of Victory, the wrecking company best known for its iconic commercial that has run for more than 20 years.


"And all of them started reciting the commercial, and we heard the whole thing, right there," said his son Kyle. "My dad loved stuff like that; he always got a kick out of it."

From auto salvage to alpaca ranching. Quite the entrepreneur.

Daley's Nowhere

Missing from most of the political/racial hysteria about the proposed move of the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park is any discussion of what the potential site actually consists of. Lynn Becker provides an welcomed antidote, with a gallery of photos from the relatively bucolic and quite ironically-named Daley Bicentennial Plaza. And his accompanying commentary is dead-on accurate:

Opponents to the museum believe, as did Daniel Burnham, that it is essential to have places of beauty and nature that are not extensions, but antidotes to the congested density and frenzied activity of a great city.

As you will see from these photos, that's the indispensible role that the park at Daley Bicentennial Plaza plays. It is a place of scenic beauty and wide, untrammeled lawns. It is the place where neighborhood families take their kids to play, and people come to read in the sun or sit in quiet contemplation. It's a calm counterpoint to Millennium Park's fizzy, aggressive urban pop on the other side of Columbus Drive.

Count me among those opponents of the museum's move. Not every city park has to be a tourist spectacle on the scale of Millennium Park. Most of them need to just be city parks - Daley Bicentennial Plaza included. Give the place a few upgrades like those Becker mentions, but for heaven's sake don't drop a huge traffic-drawing museum in there. If the Children's Museum truly has to leave Navy Pier, there are any number of appropriate alternatives to exacavating Chicago's Front Lawn.

Courtroom sketches of the Chicago Seven trial...

(Image by Franklin McMahon.)

...are, rather surprisingly, quite artistic. That fine image above depicts Abbie Hoffman casually reading a book during the trial proceedings, to the obvious chagrin of the judge. And there's many, many more.

These images are among 483 courtroom sketches from the 1969-70 Chicago Seven conspiracy trial recently acquired by the Chicago History Museum. The pictures, the work of famed news artist Franklin McMahon, tell the story of one of the more bizarre spectacles in U.S. courtroom history, a trial that reflected the divergence of the youth counterculture of the 1960s from the previous generation.

Check out the Tribune's selected gallery here.

Chicagopedia

I just discovered a relatively new feature in the Chicago Sun-Times called Chicagopedia, which provides useful definitions of Chicagoese words, or English words which have unique meanings in Chicago. I particularly enjoyed daboddause, gratchki and couple two tree, plus I always enjoy linguistic discussions of pop. And the synonym listed for gangways is absolutely perfect.

(One quibble: I know they're trying to be all trendy and invoke Wikipedia here, but this feature actually follows the format of a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. I'll be nice and just assume they know the difference.)

Block 37: Before

Chicago's infamous Block 37 has been empty for so long - since 1989 - that recently I've begun wondering what it looked like before its ill-fated demolition. Well, reading Lynn Becker's post on the deterioration of the Uptown Theater and recent demolition of the Nortown Theater lead me to this listing for the old United Artists Theatre which was located on Block 37, at the northwest corner of Dearborn and Randolph. And reading the comments there ultimately brought me to the photo you see above. (Full-size image here; several more images here.) This view is from the corner of Dearborn and Randolph, looking southeast, with the building in the immediate foreground being the United Artists Theatre. The big white building at the left rear is Marshall Field's.

True, the block appeared to have been a hodgepodge of non-aesthetic buildings - and I could be very wrong; maybe there were some real treasures there - but even an unsightly mess still would surely have contributed more to city life than eighteen years of a vacant lot. Even if all of these buildings weren't worth saving, surely a few gems could have been restored and the vacant spaces between tastefully in-filled with new development.

Oh, wait. Gems restored? Tasteful new development? Sorry, I must have been thinking of another city.

Weekend Multimedia

Due to system restrictions, I'm not able to view streaming media at the office, so throughout the week I'll usually accumulate various links which I finally check out on Saturday morning at home. Here's this week's highlights:

+ Crain's Chicago Business profiles Jeff Dreyfuss of Chicago's Metropolis Coffee Company, which we visited last year and enjoyed a great deal. Any place that commissions poster art from the great Jay Ryan is already good enough for me (we own a framed copy of that one), but their coffee is excellent and their store is a very comfy hangout.

+ My old hero Bob Mould has licensed one of his best songs, "See a Little Light", to the pension fund TIAA/CREF. Check out the commercial spots here. On his blog, Bob wondered what his fans might think of such a decision, if they'd think he's selling out.

What would you think if one of my songs was used in a TV commercial? Would the product be of concern? Would it change the meaning of the song?

No concerns here, Bob. It's your art, so you're entitled to do whatever you wish with it, and it's a great song whose message generally fits with that of the sponsor. And besides, TIAA is selling retirement security and financial peace of mind - it's not like your song is helping to shill artery-clogging cheeseburgers or anything similarly egregious. Nicely done.

+ Ben Tanzer (yeah, him again) is charmingly interviewed by his five-year-old son, primarily (but not entirely) about his novel Lucky Man. I say "not entirely", because among several other bold queries, the kid has the audacity to ask the burning question that's on everyone's lips: "Why do you wear your hat backwards?" Clearly, the softball-tossing Larry King is thankfully not an influence on the kid.

+ And the multimedia gods at WFMU unearthed these two timeless gems which should bring a smile to any Midwesterner of a certain age: the Heileman's Old Style beer song and waltz. Prosit!

New Beer in Town

There's a new brewing company in Chicago: Half Acre Beer Company. I say "brewing company" instead of "brewery" since, while it's based on the West Side, the actual brewing is handled by a contract brewer in Black River Falls, Wisconsin - which is certainly the smart way to go for a startup. I heartily welcome Half Acre's arrival, and am looking forward to sampling their wares. The website currently lists only two bars where the beer is carried (and no stores yet) but I'm hoping they'll quickly add more.

Obligatory book-related comment: Black River Falls just so happens to be the setting for Michael Lesy's infamous Wisconsin Death Trip, which I've been hearing about for years but still haven't read. I hope to rectify this oversight soon, perhaps accompanied by a Half Acre Lager.

(Via Gapers Block.)

Three cheers for Alderman Reilly!

Finally, the forces of historic preservation and civic tradition have their day.

Brendan Reilly, freshman alderman of downtown's 42nd Ward, came out against the demolition of the old Lakeshore Athletic Club, saying the "historically significant" building can be saved. His opposition could kill a developer's $41 million contract to buy the property at 850 N. Lake Shore Drive.

It also puts him at odds with Northwestern University, the building's seller. A mandate to keep the 19-story building lowers its resale value.

The decision was Reilly's first involving a controversial and high-profile project in his high-rise ward. Last February, he beat nine-termer Burton Natarus in part by arguing that the incumbent had gotten too close to developers.

Somehow, I imagine Northwestern will survive the likely loss of a few million, and Fifield will find countless other buildings to tear down and toss up bland glass towers in their place. I'm not entirely anti-development, but Lakeshore Athletic Club is a gem that's undeniably worth saving.

Update: Lynn Becker has some appropriately sobering commentary on the powerful institutional resistance that Reilly is likely to face in his preservation efforts. But for now, I'm just going to keep wallowing in today's (perhaps momentary, perhaps moral) victory.

Farewell, Noble Car-Bob

Berwyn's infamous Spindle, aka the Eight Car Pileup or Car-Bob, is facing its final days.

The "car-kabob" is coming down in west suburban Berwyn -- a decision prompting kitsch fans to moan "No way!"

Way, says the mayor of Berwyn.

Officially known as the Spindle and made widely famous by the first "Wayne's World" movie, the artwork of eight automobiles stuck on a steel pipe will be removed this summer to make room for...

For what? What critical piece of infrastructure is slated to replace this wonderful piece of public art? Why, another Walgreen's, of course, even though there are already seven Walgreen's stores within three miles of this site. The bitterly cruel hand of progress squeezes a bit more life out of the urban landscape. Sigh.

Relentless scourge of progress continues...

The City of Chicago, in its never-ending quest to sate the petulant whims of powerful real estate developers, wants to tear down a block of buildings at 300-308 W. Randolph Street. Included in this block is 300 W. Randolph, the charming home of the Showmen's League of America, a fraternal organization of carnival workers, and 50-year Loop mainstay Harry's Hot Dogs. The building is one of the few quirky buildings left downtown, replete with carved elephants above each of the 24 upper-floor windows and a vividly-colored painted depiction of the league's logo.

Why does the city want to tear this endearing building down? Does it want a brand-new commercial building in its place, one which will bring hundreds of workers downtown? No. Does it want to build a new public park? Yes, but with a huge catch. Uber-developer John Buck Co. is pushing for the vacated space to become a publicly-owned plaza, not for the common good of the city's residents, but to enhance the value of its latest Wacker Drive office tower which is being built right next door. Never mind that the property owners don't necessarily want to sell, or at least not at the terms offered by Buck, which now wants the city, through eminent domain, to do all the dirty work instead. Never mind that, if the city really wanted park space in this area, there's a large surface parking lot right across Randolph which could be developed into a park at a substantially lower cost than acquiring and demolishing the buildings at 300-308 W. Randolph would require. But, of course, that scenario wouldn't directly benefit the value of Buck's property (since that park would be across the street instead) and thus, given the developer-friendly milieu of City Hall, will never happen.

Let's see, obliterating a unique relic of the city's past, at public expense, and removing productive commercial buildings from the property tax rolls, all for an amenity whose primary function is to greatly benefit the coffers of a well-connected real estate titan. Yes, indeed, the city's priorities are firmly in place.

Save Lake Shore Athletic Club!

An unsolicited letter to Alderman Brendan Reilly, of Chicago's 42 Ward:

Dear Alderman Reilly:
I strongly encourage you to support the preservation of Lake Shore Athletic Club. The building is an absolute treasure and a beautiful throwback to a bygone era which should be saved and cherished, not demolished to make way for yet another anonymous condo tower. For far too long real estate developers have had the upper hand, and in many cases the only hand, in Chicago and particularly in the Loop and Near North areas. Surely if the prospective developer of this property is intent on building a condo tower, there has to be a parking lot or at least a less important existing building to replace, even along Lake Shore Drive.

In addressing the subject of Lake Shore Athletic Club, please honor the balanced approach to development-versus-preservation which was such a key component of your successful aldermanic campaign this year.

Sincerely,
Pete Anderson
Joliet

Enshrouding the Bug

Farewell, dear Plug Bug. Yes, you grinned in mockery on the city's folly for eighteen years, but if there's one force of nature which is all but unstoppable, it's commercial real estate development in Chicago. Might take nearly two decades, but eventually it will get built. And yet, I can't help but admire this sentiment:

Thousands of years from now, when future archeologists pull down the last steel beams of the buildings currently rising, the Plug Bug will again be revealed, and future peoples will be amazed and perplexed as they create their own stories of what it must have meant to we lost-in-time primitives of today.

Three Lasts of Chicago

Last week's Newcity Chicago featured a charming trio of articles by Maude Standish, each highlighting a "last in Chicago": the last hand-set bowling alley (Southport Lanes, one of my favorite places in the entire city), the last silent movie theater, and the last typewriter repairman, Steve Kazmierski:

"Computers I hate. Oh yeah, `cause you get in trouble with the computers. That's why everyone has much problems. The computers. Don't you know the problems we are having? With the teenagers. They get in and they deal with narcotics and they buy narcotics. They steal the banks from the people. They cheat people. On computers!"

My late father, an unrepentant technophobe (I had to reprogram the speed-dial on my parents' phone every time I visited their house; they never learned to program the VCR; their six-month-long fling with a PC and the Internet earned them little more than a single, borderline-bogus purchase on eBay) would have gotten along great with Mr. Kazmierski. I really like the fact that the latter gives priority to fixing machines that will actually be used for typing, relegating the antiques destined to be mere display items to the back of the line. Fixing the antiques probably pays better, since that clientele is likely wealthier, but he still favors the writers and other old-school typists who keep typewriters' spirit alive in this digital age.

Tony Fitzpatrick Graces the Tribune

Chicago artist and writer Tony Fitzpatrick has a wonderful piece in today's Chicago Tribune in which he explains the creation of his stunning collages, which draw heavily on the city's history.

People walk in and out of my shop all day -- delivery guys, salespeople, kids selling those ratty Snickers bars "for after school programs," and art collectors. They always wonder how I can get any work done with all of the noise and traffic. I tell them that the noise and traffic is part of the music, and the music is part of the stories, and the stories are why I am here.

The print version of the piece also includes gorgeous, full-color reproductions of two of his collages: "Hannibal of Chicago" and "Night Train". Do yourself a favor and browse Fitzpatrick's entire website -- I guarantee you won't regret it.

(Tribune site requires registration. Use "chicagotribune123@mailinator.com" for the user name, "tribune" for the password. Thanks, as always, to bugmenot.com.)

On Waterways

Two interesting takes on waterways, and the large and small ways they impact humankind, have come to my attention recently. In an interview at The Elegant Variation, Chris Abani considers the big picture:

...every great city in the world has usually been situated on the banks of a river. I mean it is the water that draws people to settle there in the first place for obvious reasons – drinking, crop irrigation, transport, etc. Usually the river builds a symbiotic relationship with the city and its inhabitants that is beyond merely the practical, it becomes mythological. We can’t think of Paris without the Seine for instance. There is something about water that does this, its flow, its ability to absorb history, the dead, and the desire of a people. Water is also closely associated with birth and femininity and most rivers and other large bodies of water are linked to goddesses – Yemenya, Oshun, Mami-Wata and so forth. In many ways, you can almost think of the river and stories around it as vital to the city – there is really no London (Londonus) without the Thames, no Shakespeare even. This is the case with LA.

In contrast, Beth Bosworth's nice short story, "Buick" (from the journal Guernica), zeroes in with a much tighter focus, revolving around Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal:

We'd reached Second Avenue and gone beyond, toward the bank of the canal. A garden, renowned for its red roses, had once prospered there in the days when they called it Gowanus Creek Canal, and fish swam into it from the sea. Unlike my father's Buick, we knew, a subterranean propeller, like some mythical underwater beast, had recently come back to life. The canal water now flowed constantly, but its sediment still contained poisonous waste. It still shone a strange shade of pink.

I myself think about rivers and canals quite a bit. I look at the nearly-empty Chicago River, which flows sluggishly past my office building, and strain to imagine how it was once lined with wharves, schooners and steamers scuttling to and fro, the docks swarming with commerce and sweat and human toil. The river is all but ignored now, garnering attention just once a year on St. Patrick's Day, when the city famously dyes it a shocking shade of green.

Joliet, where I now live, has considerably more traffic along its Des Plaines River, mostly barges with pilot houses sufficiently high that the city's five drawbridges have to be raised to let them pass. But the barges never stop here, plodding their way somewhere upriver or downriver: there are no more wharves here either; and the adjacent Illinois & Michigan Canal, once so critical to the 19th Century development of the region, is now little more than a drainage ditch. And Cary, where I grew up, required a quick drive over the Fox River (narrow, shallow and navigable only by speedboats) to get anywhere to the east, which included Chicago and anything else resembling urban civilization.

The Fox has always been sleepy, the I&M has long been irrelevant and invisible, and the Des Plaines still retains a bit of its old bustle, and all of that makes sense to me. But, in a way, the quieting of the Chicago River saddens me. Though I know that the railroads and highways that eclipsed river transport are much more efficient, and the river is considerably cleaner than during its commercial heyday, it still feels like something vital has been lost. It seems like downtown, despite its never-ending flow of pedestrians and cars, is missing something. Maybe, in growing ever more clean and polite and white-collar, it's lost touch with the natural world, from the river around whose marshy mouth the city first arose.

Or maybe I'm just indulging in false nostalgia for better times that really weren't better.

Tre Kronor

Chicagoist is on a roll. Just a few weeks after reviewing my favorite German restaurant, they visit another of my old faves, Tre Kronor, a wonderful Swedish place on Foster Avenue right across from North Park University. I've been to Tre Kronor ("three crowns") several times, including way back when it was still the second location of Andersonville's Svea. That photo above is quite possibly my favorite meal in the world -- Swedish pancakes sweetened with lingonberries. (No syrup necessary.) Add a side order of limpa (sweet rye) toast and a cup of jet-black coffee, and I'm in heaven.

Tre Kronor also has a traditional Swedish smörgåsbord during the holiday season that I have not yet experienced but would really like to, one of these years.

Mirabell Reviewed by Chicagoist

Chicagoist has seen fit to give a nice restaurant review to one of my old favorites, Mirabell, which for my money has always been the best German joint in the city. The place is pretty obscure due to its off-the-beaten path locale (neither downtown nor on the traditional German strip of Lincoln Avenue) but is defintely a hidden treasure. Years ago I tried to stop there for dinner on a Sunday afternoon with my parents, only to find a hand-written sign on the door, which I roughly translated (with my four years of high school German) as "We are closed. Sunday is a day of rest." Checking the website, I see that admirable policy remains in place.

For Chicago Junkies Only

Here's an interesting project: "Chicago Community Areas, to scale and decontextualized, arranged sequentially", by Christian Mark Schmidt. Without the usual geographic bearings, I'll be damned if I can identify a single one of these community areas, and I consider myself a quasi-native of the city.

(Via Coudal.)

Anybody Recognize This Scumbag?

He's a white male, 35-40 years old, and probably has an apartment full of stolen goods, but doesn't necessarily have a good eye for genuine antiquities.

On January 12, this wretch ripped off a staircase ornament from Chicago's venerable Monadnock Building. Somehow he managed to steal the only one out of 200 in the building that wasn't original, but a replica. And he was captured repeatedly on security cameras. Apparently graverobbing and stealing candy from babies just lost their thrill for him.

No arrests have been made, which is where you come in. Anybody who recognizes this schlub is encouraged to contact the Chicago Police Department. Let's give him the chance to ogle the considerably less aesthetic toilet fixtures of a jail cell for a few years.

(Tribune site requires its typically insidious registration. Use "bugmenot@gmail.com" for the user name, "bugmenot" for the password. Thanks, as always, to bugmenot.com.)

Rick Kogan

The Bright One has a piece on Rick Kogan, Tribune columnist and author. It's ostensibly a review of his two new books, Sidewalks: Portraits of Chicago and A Chicago Tavern: A Goat, A Curse, and the American Dream -- both of which I was thrilled to get autographed copies of for Christmas -- but in reality it's a very nice profile of Kogan.

This passage -- when he talks about his dad, longtime Chicago newspaperman Herman Kogan -- is particularly pleasing:

"I think maybe the seminal moment of my life was sitting on the back porch of our house in Old Town when I told Herman I wasn't attending classes," he recalls. "He listened and said, 'Well, what do you want to do?'"

"Given this little opening, I told him 'I really want to drive a cab so I can meet people and hear stories.' And he said OK. If he hadn't, there's no telling where I would have wound up.

"So I drove a cab for a while and wrote lousy short stories. I worked as a lifeguard. Then I saved up enough money to go to Europe for about a year. I lived in a little town called Estepona in Spain. I got a place for $40 a month -- and wrote lousy, lousy short stories."

A dad who willingly lets his son drop out of college in order to drive a cab? Now that's some courageous and open-minded parenting. I can't speak for the quality of Kogan's fiction -- and based on his assessment, I doubt if any of it will ever see the light of day -- I've enjoyed his journalism for many years. Good guy.

Chicago's Indie Bookstores

Newcity Chicago posts their independent bookstore guide. Plenty of my favorites -- both old friends and new acquaintances -- are listed, including Quimby's, Bookman's Alley, 57th Street Books, Powell's Books and The Book Cellar. With the suffocating market dominance of the big chain stores during the past decade or so, it's easy to forget what a vibrant indie bookstore community still exists in the city. This list was quite a pleasant reminder.

(Just one nitpick: Brent Books is no longer in business, having been replaced months ago by a generic discount bookstore.)

Update: Prompted by Colin, who left the comment below, I checked into this further. Brent Books is still in business, as I explain here. Thanks, Colin!

The Slow Death of Chicago Factories

Another very notable Chicago industrial relic, Gutmann Leather Co., is shutting its doors. North Siders might recognize the tannery (shown above in a photograph I took in 1998) as the oddly vertical building which sits just west of the Webster Place Theater, right on the Chicago River. The North Branch of the river was once lined with tanneries which were supplied with animal hides from the great slaughterhouses of the South Side, but Gutmann's demise now leaves just one, the much less imposing Norween Leather Co. on Elston Avenue.

Crain's Chicago Business, which first reported the news two weeks ago, is now reacting to the closing of Gutmann and the pending relocation of the nearby Finkl steel plant with barely concealed glee, calling for the industrial sites to be redeveloped into -- you guessed it -- more retail stores and condominiums. To make this possible, Crain's is calling for the end of the Clybourn Corridor planned manufacturing district (or "PMD") in which properties are restricted to industrial uses, in the city's very admirable goal of keeping good-paying blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the area. In making their argument, the magazine cites the declining number of factory jobs in the PMD (from 1,146 in 1998 to 336 in 2004) as evidence of the district's supposed irrelevance, though I'd argue that an entire block of retail establishments along that stretch of Clybourn probably don't employ any more than 336 people in total -- and I guarantee those aren't good-paying union jobs, either.

The last thing the Near North Side, and the Clybourn and Elston corridors in particular, needs is more retail and condo development. The corridor areas were already ridiculously congested six years ago, when my wife and I left the city for the suburbs, and it's undoubtedly grown much worse since then. A touch of sanity needs to be maintained on the subject of Chicago's economic development, to maintain both the quality of life of area residents and good opportunities for blue-collar workers. It's not only possible to have both, but also good for everyone involved.

Royko on Daley

Here's a tremendous item from the annals of journalistic history: the late great Mike Royko's 1976 ode to former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, who died thirty years ago tomorrow.

In some ways, he was this town at its best -- strong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful.

In other ways, he was this city at its worst -- arrogant, crude, conniving, ruthless, suspicious, intolerant.

One incomparable Chicagoan, writing about another.

He'd be, at best, bemused...

In its Beer of the Week segment, Chicagoist prefaces its review of Piece Worryin' Ale by pondering what Nelson Algren would think of his yuppie- and hipster-fied old neighborhood of Wicker Park, were he alive today.

We don't presume to know what Algren would have thought of modern-day Wicker Park, but we're sure he would have dug around to find its seedy underbelly, somewhere between the designer handbags and strollers. Would he have written of the ambivalent detente between yuppies and hipsters, or the subtle class warfare between black labrador and golden retriever owners? Would he have appreciated the irony of the Tribune, which called Chicago: City on the Make a "highly scented object" in its review, naming a short fiction award after him? Would he have schooled some folks at Rainbo in the basics of good hygiene?

I've long wondered how Algren would have reacted to the Tribune so honoring him in death when, during his life, the paper considered him a loathsome threat to the city's real estate values and tourism trade. Probably with a bitter laugh and an upward thrust of his middle finger in the direction of Tribune Tower.

Brush With Greatness

Andrew Huff reports on a chance meeting with three of Chicago's most illuminating illuminati -- at the Billy Goat Tavern, no less.

I notice that a table over in the VIP (Very Insecure People) section is looking my way. It takes me a minute to realize it's Jim Coudal and Kevin Guilfoile, and they're sitting with Rick Kogan. They invite me to sit down with them, and I do.

Kogan's Mike Royko anecdote is priceless. Random serendipitous meetings like these -- or even the opportunity of same -- are something I really miss now that I no longer live in the city. Life's full of tradeoffs, I guess.

Another Cultural Artifact Lost

A major fire in the South Loop appears to have claimed yet another relic of a bygone era. The Wirt Dexter Building at 630 S. Wabash was the long-time home of George Diamond's Steakhouse, and also an early commission of legendary architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler.

The Dexter Building once housed George Diamond's Steakhouse, a classic celebrity-watching site in the great age of Chicago nightlife in the 1950s and 1960s. Outliving that era, its trademark red carpeting was threadbare when the restaurant closed a few years ago. Fire officials said the building was not occupied at the time.

The Dexter Building was a less celebrated design of Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler. A six-story commercial structure, it was built in 1887 as a furniture factory and showroom. But the Commission on Chicago Landmarks has called it "an irreplaceable link in the chain of work of one of the nation's most important architectural partnerships."

Quite sad. (Full Tribune story here. Photos above were borrowed from the Tribune.)

Update: Lynn Becker has further commentary and photos here.

Devil in the (Vanishing) City

Gapers Block has a very nice photo essay based on Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, by the always wonderful Alice Maggio and Brian Sobolak. Somehow, despite my fervent interest in all things Chicago, I still have not read the book, and am seemingly the last person in Chicago not to have done so. I'll have to rectify that one of these years.

Just a lazy holiday...

...browsing through the massive Encyclopedia of Chicago.

Did you know that Cracker Jack (love that photo!) and Playskool were Chicago companies, or that Palos Park originally had so many Northern Irish immigrants that its post office was named Orange, and was later an artists enclave for the likes of Lorado Taft, Pearl S. Buck and Sherwood Anderson?

Me neither.

Tony Fitzpatrick, Bum Town

Tony Fitzpatrick’s book-length poem Bum Town is a tough but deeply moving ode to Fitzpatrick’s father and the disappearing Chicago they once knew. From the very first stanza (“From 79th Street/Southworks flexed its/Muscle of light,/An infinite halo/Of orange and white;/Like they had captured/The sun/In four steel walls…”), Fitzpatrick sets the tone: his poem will not be about the Chicago of skyscrapers and celebrities and victory, but of railroad tracks and steel mills and rubbled lots, of death and the commercial gaudiness of Western Avenue and local hero Tony Zale losing his title bout to Graziano at the Stadium on one should-have-been-magic evening in 1946.

Much of the narrative consists of Fitzpatrick’s memories of driving around with his father—to Montrose Harbor (where the smelt are “a whir of silvery light—/As indecipherable as/The tails of/Comets”), to a butcher shop at 18th and Halsted and the garlic smell which overpowers the car’s interior, past the Stadium and the site of Zale’s defeat, and to Mt. Olivet Cemetary, where Fitzpatrick’s Uncle Ray (a childhood victim of a train accident) is buried and haunts Mr. Fitzpatrick’s waking hours. Their meanderings are set to a soundtrack of Bob Elson announcing White Sox games and Mr. Fitzpatrick’s memories of and reflections on the city.

The verse is written in short and crisp lines which cleanly present the vivid descriptions of the city passing by:

I could feel the
Murderous rumble
Of my Dad’s Oldsmobile
Weaving in and out of
Night and day traffic
Like a gull in the wind.
He’d tool up Western Avenue
And remind me that the
Green Hornet streetcars
Once rode the longest line
In the world,
Right here.

And Western would trot out
Its goods: grocerías
And tarted-up car lots
Lit up like the Carnival
Or Saint Rocco’s day,
Used cars and short skirts,
Hot-dog joints and the union hall.
Then like now
Western looks like the girl
With too much eye-shadow.

In the scrap lots,
Bottle-gangs of invisible men
Drank pints of Mad-dog
While burning garbage
Kept them warm. They seemed to
Disappear into the smoke
One orange ember
At a time.
Like human coal
The city shovels
Into itself.

Although the tone is elegaic, Fitzpatrick acknowledges that the past isn’t really gone—his father lives on in Fitzpatrick’s memory, and the old neighborhoods, while no longer familiar to him, live on for their new and very different residents. The past is present, as it were. Fitzpatrick is, of course, also a very accomplished artist, and the verses are accompanied by his wonderful pencil-sketched collages, with the images and the verses complementing each other perfectly.

Bum Town is a wonderful work of art, one which deserves a place on the shelf of great Chicago literature alongside Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make, Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, Farrell’s Studs Lonigan triology, the poems of Carl Sandburg, the stories of Stuart Dybek and the newspaper columns of Mike Royko. It’s that good. I can’t recommend it more highly.

Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

Theodore Dreiser marvelously depicts Chicago in the late 19th Century in his landmark novel, Sister Carrie. In the following excerpt from the book's second chapter, the protagonist Carrie Meeber (a small-town girl who has just arrived in Chicago) has begun looking for work in the city's central business district:

In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district, to which the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by other cities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individual buildings. The presence of ample ground made this possible. It gave an imposing appearance to most of the wholesale houses, whose offices were upon the ground floor and in plain view of the street. The large plates of window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use, and gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and prosperous look. The casual wanderer could see as he passed a polished array of office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerks hard at work, and genteel businessmen in "nobby" suits and clean linen lounging about or sitting in groups. Polished brass or nickel signs at the square stone entrances announced the firm and the nature of the business in rather neat and reserved terms. The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to make the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep.

Into this important commercial region the timid Carrie went. She walked east along Van Buren Street through a region of lessening importance, until it deteriorated into a mass of shanties and coal-yards, and finally verged upon the river. She walked bravely forward, led by an honest desire to find employment and delayed at every step by the interest of the unfolding scene, and a sense of helplessness amid so much evidence of power and force which she did not understand. These vast buildings, what were they? These strange energies and huge interests, for what purposes were they there? She could have understood the meaning of a little stone-cutter's yard at Columbia City, carving little pieces of marble for individual use, but when the yards of some huge stone corporation came into view, filled with spur tracks and flat cars, transpierced by docks from the river and traversed overhead by immense trundling cranes of wood and steel, it lost all significance in her little world.

It was so with the vast railroad yards, with the crowded array of vessels she saw at the river, and the huge factories over the way, lining the water's edge. Through the open windows she could see the figures of men and women in working aprons, moving busily about. The great streets were wall-lined mysteries to her; the vast offices, strange mazes which concerned far-off individuals of importance. She could only think of people connected with them as counting money, dressing magnificently, and riding in carriages. What they dealt in, how they laboured, to what end it all came, she had only the vaguest conception. It was all wonderful, all vast, all far removed, and she sank in spirit inwardly and fluttered feebly at the heart as she thought of entering any one of these mighty concerns and asking for something to do--something that she could do--anything.

(Transcription via Project Gutenberg.)

Upton Sinclair

Yesterday's Chicago Tribune Magazine was devoted almost entirely to Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel The Jungle, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year and has been reissued by Penguin Classics. Greg Burns writes about the global resurgence of meat consumption, James O'Shea pens a tribute to Sinclair as one of the progenitors of muckracking journalism, and David Greising tells of Chicago's dominant industries and place in the global economy now that the once-mighty meatpacking and steel industries have departed.

Most interestingly, the magazine reprints the reissue's preface, written by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation). Schlosser sharply points out the incredible progress made in the meatpacking industry in the decades following publication of The Jungle: by 1970, thanks to labor union victories and trust-busting government intervention, the four largest meatpacking firms controlled only 20% of the market, and industry workers had incomes which were 20% above that of the average factory worker. But these hard-earned gains were quickly reversed with the waning of unions as well as industry deregulation and lax anti-trust enforcement starting during the Reagan era. As a result, today the four largest beef companies control 80% of the market, and workers' wages are 24% below the average factory worker.

We've come full circle, as Schlosser soberly notes:

The United States in the first decade of the 21st Century bears an unfortunate resemblance to that of a century ago. Once again free-market rhetoric cloaks an absence of free markets, a handful of companies control the leading sectors of the economy, the political system is corrupted by money, and the gulf between rich and poor is widening. Once again the meatpacking industry serves as an excellent symbol of all these larger social trends.

Which raises a few questions: Where is today's Upton Sinclair, its populist champion? And if someone were to write a modern version of The Jungle, could it even get published in today's pro-corporate environment?

(Trib site requires registration...if not already registered, use "double@mailinator.com" to log on, with "123456" as the password. Thanks to bugmenot.com, as always.)

Intelligentsia Coffee

Chicago's best coffeehouse (and our personal favorite) Intelligentsia Coffee is profiled on WBEZ's 848 program. Their concept of fair trade and dealing directly with coffee growers in developing countries is a very worthy arrangement that benefits everyone involved--the growers, the company and coffee drinkers.

Also, if you're a coffee fanatic and live anywhere near the city, their roasting works tour is fascinating and not to be missed.

Butch McGuire, 1930-2006

Butch McGuire, founder and long-time proprietor of the eponymous Chicago saloon (one of the very first singles bars) has passed away.

At such a reflective moment, I can't help but recall the old Saturday Night Live fake commercial for "Hey You," a perfume "for that special someone you never expect to see again."

Royko on Film

What a lovely piece of Chicago history...Sun-Times era Mike Royko, holding court at the Billy Goat on the glories of 16-inch softball, in a film ("Royko at the Goat") by Scott Jacobs and Lilly Ollinger. There's a particulary tantalizing bit at the end in which he says that "(winning) the Pulitzer Prize didn't compare with the kick" he got from hitting a homer in some long-ago game. Priceless. Makes me want to lace up the old spikes and head for the park in search of a pickup game.

(Via Coudal.)

Ausgezeichnet!

Check out this incredible digital painting by Bert Monroy of the Damen Avenue El stop, created entirely in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Lovely!

(Via Gapers Block.)

Farewell, Coach Ray

Ray Meyer joyfully devoted his life to his family, his players, DePaul University and the city of Chicago for over ninety years. He was one of a kind, and will be sorely missed. Current DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright put it very nicely:

"He was as vibrant a man as when I first met him. You can add up all his wins, but they pale in comparison to the lives he touched. He left a little bit of himself with everyone he met.''

The Sun-Times has an article of lovely remembrances from those whose lives he touched.

"Mini South Chicago"

How cool is this? A scale model of South Chicago at the Southeast Chicago Historical Society, as photographed by John Mikrut.

Fun With Anagrams...

...at Metra's expense. Inspired by the various transit-maps-in-anagrams at BoingBoing, I've created my own Metra anagram map, focused on the two train lines which originate in Joliet, the Heritage Corridor Line and the Rock Island District Line.

(Anagram generator courtesy of Brendan.)

(And thanks, Cory!)

Ken Lay, Meet Sam Insull

Last night's broadcast of Marketplace had an intriguing piece on Chicago tycoon Samuel Insull, whom biographer Jon Wasik (The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis) calls "probably the most influential businessman of the 20th Century that you've never heard of." Wasik draws some surprisingly sharp parallels between Insull (founder of Commonwealth Edison) and Enron's Kenneth Lay.

Reconfiguring Congress Street

Interesting discussion on this week's edition of Hello Beautiful! about new architectural developments on State Street. On a related note, this comment is from architect Larry Booth regarding Congress Street:

I think Congress has to be closed, has to be returned to a regular street. It’s not a highway, and it splits the city in two, and if we’re going to balance the city north to south, let’s let the Eisenhower complete itself at Desplaines or somewhere else, and return Congress to a major street.

Booth is absolutely right. With the South Loop redeveloping so quickly, it’s insanity to have what is essentially a highway separating it from downtown. Any pedestrian who’s ever attempted to navigate their way across Congress knows what a harrowing experience it can be. As an added bonus, as host Edward Lifson points out on his blog, narrowing Congress back to its original state would also enable the restoration of the legendary "long bar" in the Auditorium Building, which had to be sacrificed for the relocated sidewalk when Congress was widened in the 1950s, thus robbing Chicago of one of its great interior spaces.

"Chicago by the Numbers"

At Gapers Block, Alice Maggio celebrates her 100th GB column with a fascinating list, "Chicago by the Numbers". My favorite is the final one:

55: Age of Studs Terkel when he published his first oral history collection, Division Street: America.

Hey, I'm only 40. Maybe there's hope yet for my dream of becoming a best-selling author, witty raconteur and beloved civic icon.

"So Much On My Mind"

With This is Grand apparently on hiatus, I've decided to publish a piece here that I submitted to them back in August. True story...and not nearly as surly as last time.

So Much On My Mind

I parked my car on a Joliet side street, as I do every morning to avoid the one dollar fee the city charges for its commuter lots. I sat in the car for a few minutes, listening to the end of a Mekons song, during which time a guy got out of the car immediately ahead of me and started walking toward the station. I hadn’t seen him before, a fact I took little notice of since I’m not in the habit of getting to know my fellow Metra riders.

After getting out of my car, I couldn’t help noticing the sound of an engine running. That occurrence itself isn’t unusual, as people often sit in their cars when they have a few minutes to spare, listening to the radio and basking in the a/c, especially on hot mornings like this one. But I quickly realized that it was the car right in front of me that was still running, and the guy that I had seen get out was now far down the street. I thought of calling after him, but shouting on the marginal streets of downtown Joliet usually provokes only fear and a flight impulse. I took note of the car--a beat-up, dark blue Chevy Corsica--and hurried after him.

Stepping onto the platform, I saw him getting onto my train, and I hoped he would find a seat quickly so I could tell him about the car. But he continued walking the length of the train. I finally found him several cars back, sitting in the upper level. I approached him, standing on the aisle on the lower level, and said, “Hey, do you drive a blue Chevy Corsica?”

He acted surprised, coming rapidly up from deep in thought, and said yes.

“You left your engine running,” I said. “And I assume the keys are still in it, too.”

He immediately jumped up, rushing down the aisle toward the exit. He clambered down the stairs, and in the otherwise empty car I heard him wearily say, “I’ve got so much on my mind.”

He and I entered the vestibule at the same time, but the doors had already closed and the train began pulling away from the station. He exhaled in exasperation, and I paused to say, “You’ll have to get off at New Lenox and take the next one back.” He grunted in agreement as I passed into the next compartment, working my way to the front of the train to find myself a seat.

I had done my good deed for the day, acting as a Good Citizen, but there was nothing more I could do for him. I left him alone with his problem and the "so much" he had on his mind.

Copyright © 2006 Peter Anderson

Kogan & Wendt, Chicagoans

The Bright One has a nice article on the great Chicago journalists Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt, whose landmark histories Lords of the Levee and Big Bill of Chicago have recently been reissued by Northwestern University Press.

I suspect that long after All the President's Men has faded into the second-draft mists, two books by Wendt and Kogan will still be read widely -- and for pleasure as well as the facts.

I can personally vouch for Lords of the Levee, a fascinating account of legendary Chicago aldermen John (Bathhouse John) Coughlin and Michael (Hinky Dink) Kenna. I picked up a 1943 first edition almost ten years ago at a now-defunct bookstore on Lincoln Avenue, and it really spurred a revival of my interest in Chicago history, particularly its disreputable aspects. With it being widely available again, Big Bill is now on my list as well.

Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of Chicago

Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of Chicago: An Informal History of Chicago's Underworld is a fascinating account of Chicago's most notable criminal elements, from the city's 1830s inception as a desolate prairie outpost through 1931, when Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion, thus effectively bringing the Chicago mob's Roaring Twenties heyday to a close. (Ending the heyday, but not eliminating the mob entirely, of course.) The book was originally published in 1940, with the rather ironic title Gem of the Prairie. The renaming of the Thunder's Mouth Press reissue was clearly meant as a tie-in to The Gangs of New York, the Scorcese film which was based on Asbury's similar NYC crime survey; however, it's unclear why the reissues of Asbury's San Francisco and New Orleans surveys, The Barbary Coast and The French Quarter, weren't similarly renamed.

Asbury provides exhuastive detail on the colorful personalities from the first 100+ years of Chicago's underworld, as well as the districts where vice was allowed--either officially or unofficially--to flourish, as well as the quixotic moral crusades which endlessly fought to shut them down. Interestingly, to Asbury's credit, he devotes no more than 40 of the books's 374 pages to Capone, who was by far the best-known Chicago hoodlum. In fact, Asbury doesn't even glorify Capone, as he does numerous other mobsters; in fact, as Perry Duis points out in his introduction, "Asbury credits Johnny Torrio (Capone's predecessor) with being the organizational genius who turned bootlegging into a massively profitable business, while dismissing Al Capone as a ruffian who substituted brutal force for intelligence." And yet, Capone somehow comes across as a mildly sympathetic character, one who became a prisoner to the very empire he helped create:

On the night of his arrest (in 1929) Capone told Major Lemuel B. Schofield, Philadelphia's Director of Public Safety, that he had been trying to retire for two years. "But once in the racket," he said, "you're always in. I haven't had peace of mind for years. I never know when I'm going to get it. Even when I'm on a peace errand I must take a chance on the light going out. I have a wife and an eleven-year-old boy I idolize, at Palm Island, Florida. If I could go there and forget it all, I would be the happiest man in the world. I want peace, and I'm willing to live and let live. I'm tired of gang murders and gang shootings."

Of course, it was the lack of peace, all of those gang murders and gang shootings that he ordered, that brought him the immense wealth and power that he enjoyed for many years. Though it's obviously very self-serving for him to say, after gaining all that wealth and power, that he suddenly wanted out of the whole dirty business, it's still somewhat poignant to see that he knew he'd never escape. The book's only drawback is that, in adopting a biographical, personality-based focus, Asbury the journalist fails to present his otherwise fascinating information into a larger sociological context. As a result, the book comes across as largely anecdotal, without an overriding sense how Chicago vice and society as a whole impacted each other. This is a weakness that Duis notes as well:

History built on the deeds of a series of individuals tends to be episodic and to ignore long-term trends and similarities in different time periods; Asbury's (vice) innovators, then, generated change--not industrialization, immigration, communication, or a host of other social forces. Thus, while the book remains an excellent account for the popular reader, it is for the historan a detailed compilation of information on which to base interpretive ideas.

Overall, however, the lack of sociological context detracts little from the sheer enjoyability of Asbury's accounts of Chicago's most incorrigable characters, including wry gems like this one:

The name of Chicago's pioneer thief is now unknown, but a record of his wickedness remains--he stole thirty-four dollars from a fellow-boarder, one Hatch, at the Wolf Tavern, and was arrested by Constable Reed on a warrant issued by Justice Russell E. Heacock. He was taken at once to Reed's carpenter shop for examination, and the Justice held court sitting on the workbench. Since there was no state's Attorney to handle the prosecution, Hatch engaged John Dean Caton, afterward a noted judge, and the defendant employed Caton's partner, Giles Spring, who likewise became a well-known jurist and City Attorney as well. Despite Spring's objections, Caton compelled his partner's client to strip, and at length the stolen money was found wadded in the toe of the accused man's sock. The defendant was held for trial, which got under way next morning in the Wolf Tavern, "where the public could hear the young lawyers to the best advantage." After much argument and speech-making by counsel, the prisoner was found guilty, but was released on nominal bail pending action on a motion for a new trial. He promptly disappeared, thus establishing a precedent which has been followed more or less regularly in Chicago ever since.

The Gangs of Chicago is a must-read for students of Chicago history and anyone who, like myself, enjoys the guilty pleasure of witnessing the machinations of the criminal underworld.

Big Jim O'Leary, Sporting Gent

One of Chicago's leading gambling house proprietors around the turn of the 20th Century was Big Jim O'Leary (who, incidentally, was also the son of "Mrs. O'Leary," she of Chicago Fire infamy). His resort was renowned for its lavish and sumptuous furnishings, first-rate accomodations and, apparently, for its fortress-like construction. From Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of Chicago: An Informal History of Chicago's Underworld:

   In 1911, when he (O'Leary) talked of retiring and tried to sell his Halsted Street (gambling) house to Cook County for an emergency hospital, O'Leary told a newspaper reporter that he had never paid a dollar for protection. "I could have had all kinds of it," he said, "but let me tell you something. Protection that you purchase ain't worth nothing to you. A man who will sell himself ain't worth an honest man's dime. The police is for sale, but I don't want none of them."
   Big Jim always boasted that his resort, with its massive iron-bound oaken door, steel plates in the outer walls, and inner walls of heavy oak covered with zinc, was "fire-proof, bomb-proof and police-proof." It did resist several attempts to burn it, and bombs planted near it during the gamblers' war of 1907 caused no damage, but the police frequently managed to gain an entrance by battering down the outer doors with axes and sledgehammers. Occasionally they arrested some of O'Leary's customers and bookmakers, but usually Big Jim was ready for them. Once when a detachment of policemen swarmed into the house they found the poolroom bare of all furniture except a plain kitchen table, at which sat an old man devoutly reading a prayer-book.
   On another occasion O'Leary loaded his inner walls with red pepper, and when the police struck their axes into the zinc they were so blinded that for most of them hospital treatment was necessary. The eyes of three were so inflamed that they were off duty for a week.

Though he was a generally deplorable character, you still have to admire his brazenness and his ingenuity.

Crime and Punishment: Chicago

I came across this wonderful passage in Herbert Asbury's The Gangs of Chicago: An Informal History of Chicago's Underworld, regarding some, ahem, flexible punishment meted out to noted bootleggers Terry Druggan and Frankie Lake.

   In 1924, for refusing to answer questions put to them by Judge James Wilkerson of the United States District Court, Druggan and Lake were sentenced to a year's imprisonment for contempt of court. Several months later a newspaper reporter called at the county jail to see Druggan, but when he asked for the gangster he was told:
   "Mr. Druggan is not in today."
   "Then I'll talk to Frankie Lake," said the reporter.
   "Mr. Lake also had an appointment downtown," the jailer said. "They will be back after dinner."
   The dazed newspaper man returned to his office, and an investigation disclosed that both Druggan and Lake, in return for twenty thousand dollars in bribes, as they testified later, had been given extraordinary privileges. Supposedly incarcerated and treated the same as other prisoners, they had actually spent much more time in Loop restaurants and in their own luxurious apartments than in jail; they had been permitted to come and go as they pleased, and the death cell of the jail had been turned into a private office where they received their gangsters and issued their orders.
   As a result of the exposures, Sheriff Peter Hoffmann and Jailer Wesley Westbrook were each sentenced to three months in jail for contempt of court.

Presumably, Druggan and Lake were each sentenced to serve out the remainder of their terms, only this time as actual prisoners.

The Merchant Graveyard

At Gapers Block, Alice Maggio relates the sad fates of the legendary retailers whose founders are immortalized in sculpture at Chicago's Merchandise Mart. I encourge you to read the entire article, of course, but if you're pressed for time, here's a crib sheet:

Frank Winfield Woolworth, Woolworth's - Dissolved, 1997
Aaron Montgomery Ward, Montgomery Ward - Dissolved, 2000
Julius Rosenwald, Sears, Roebuck - Bought by Kmart, 2005
Robert Elkington Wood, Sears, Roebuck - Bought by Kmart, 2005
John Wanamaker, Wanamaker's - Bought by May, 1995, name abandoned, now owned by Federated
Edward Albert Filene, Filene's - Bought by Federated, name to be abandoned in favor of Macy's
Marshall Field, Marshall Field's - Bought by Federated, name to be abadoned in favor of Macy's
George Huntington Hartford, A&P - Still in business on the East Coast

Two thoughts:
1] A&P fans had better pray that Federated doesn't venture into the grocery business.
2] Can we get Sam Walton added to the pantheon?

Studs Terkel on the Mend

National treasure (and my hero) Studs Terkel is recovering quite nicely from a complex open-heart procedure to replace a narrowed aortic valve and redo one of the coronary bypasses he underwent nine years ago. His doctor marvels at how quickly Studs, at a still-spry 93, has recovered. Studs, in his inimitable manner, takes the grand historical perspective in contemplating his personal ordeal.

"Aug. 9, the day of the operation, you know what day that was? Sixty years to the day the bomb dropped on Nagasaki," Terkel said Tuesday night. "Amazing...the human race designs something like that, something that kills, and then the same human race designs things to save human life."

(Trib site requires registration...if not already registered, use "blurb@sofort-mail.de" to log on, with "noblurb" as the password. Thanks to bugmenot.com, as always.)