Wednesday 7/30

I get into Chicago early afternoon and hike from my end of O'Hare International's world to its Blue Line "El" (elevated subway, best oxymoron ever, just like Philly!) train stop. Here, friends, was the first thing I fell in love with in Chi-town: the Chicago Transit Authority [CTA], which puts SEPTA to shame. If you ever visit Chicago for, say, 3 days or more, the best $20 you will ever spend is on a CTA 7-day pass, and the best freebie you will ever get is a CTA system map -- actually useful for navigating the city!

The north-leaning Blue Line and south-leaning Red Line run 24 hours and connect to other color-coded El lines, plenty of crossing buses, and the region's Metra trains (Philly peeps: think Regional Rail). Every place I needed to see or be was near an El stop, a few blocks' walk away, or had a bus connection right there. Taking into account fares of $1.75 plus transfers, my pass probably paid for itself about halfway through my trip and my only cab rides were two shared ones later Wednesday evening.


My CouchSurfing host Jeff is a bank manager who lives three blocks from the California Blue Line stop (20 train-minutes away from both O'Hare and downtown), in a neighborhood called Wicker Park (Philly peeps: think "Hispanic Port Fishington"). His street has closely-packed individual houses and stone/brick apartments and condos, at times reminding me of Columbus, Ohio; Brooklyn; or Northeast Philly. I plop into the nest he's left for me, unpack (noting my rolling luggage has just about lost one of two wheels, meh), and try to nap.

Through the afternoon and early evening plans are texted to another CouchSurfing host and Lollapalooza volunteer, Adam, who wants to get a small group together that night at the Signature Lounge in the Hancock Building, the black skyscraper that looks like the Sears Tower's little trapezoid brother. I head downtown and up to this bar and restaurant on the Hancock's 96th floor. It is jammed at 8pm; apparently not only is this the spot for high-altitude night shots of Chicago, there are weekly municipal fireworks to watch as well. I am severely underdressed in my hipster t-shirt and jeans...


...and I am fuming and hunger-headachey as I wait 90 minutes for Adam to arrive with other CSers: a birthday girl from Minneapolis and two guys from Canada's Northwest Territories. (Jeff informs me later that while Adam is super-nice, lateness is his M.O. A guest from 1,000 miles away might call that bad form.) Adam's plan is to bar-hop, so I join in with a raspberry vodka/sparkling wine martini in Chicago's stratosphere. We then make our way to The Cheesecake Factory (?!) at the Hancock's ground level for actual dinner and dessert (with some lemon drops mixed in). Then, the Funky Buddha welcomes us for their dancehall/reggae/hip-hop club night (with Red Stripe!). Afterwards, we jet over to a Division Street club called evilOlive. I'm ready to go home once Adam and Miss Minneapolis are given a free pass while I'm damn near thrown out before I pay full cover. At least the girl on turntables spins some superb house to keep me around until the wee hours. Adam meant well, but damned if this excursion didn't have the low points of my visit.

Thursday 7/31

This was the full-contact tourist day of my trip. It started with a pilgrimage to ground zero for Frank Lloyd Wright residential architecture, the neighborhood of Oak Park (Philly peeps: think Main Line with wider streets). Actually, even before I got to the FLW zone I ran across historic sites related to another rather famous resident I had not known about: Ernest Hemingway. A museum and his childhood home are there...I'm filing that info away for another time.


My first bit of time on the FLW stomping grounds was a self-directed walking audio tour of the neighborhood to see particular houses and their context within the area and within FLW's "prairie architecture" methodology. As best as I understand it, prairie architecture rather simply involved (a.) construction that incorporated nature, especially wood and high windows with flooding light; (b.) an emphasis on long, low horizontals in order to mimic the landscape and view the then-visible prairie horizon; and (c.) placement of structures on building lots for advantageous use of surrounding green space. You can see the early horizontals in the wood wrapping his 1893 Walter H. Gale House...


...and the more fully realized horizontals and spacious lawn of the Heurtley House, executed nine years later.


When I get back to Chicago I want to take a tour of the Unity Temple, a Universalist Unitarian church of Wright's design superficially included on the walking tour. It's an imposing concrete "urban" structure but the inside's supposed to be rather calming. Side note: the literature in the church's entry and the rainbow decals at two other churches I passed suggest Oak Park is quite the gayborhood, for you readers of that persuasion. Pass it on.


After the walk was a guided tour of FLW's own home and studio. As luck would have it, my group consisted of just me and two ladies from Germany. (Most approached 20 people.) As more luck would have it, we began our tour as clouds gathered and stepped inside the residence as the skies opened up. The slightly musty smell of old wood and fabric, the dim period lighting, and the rain outside made for a rather intimate, mystical atmosphere as we walked through historic rooms and observed their quirks: the piano set into a wall and the staircase running underneath its back end; the very low ceilings (Wright apparently thought people six feet tall were "wastes of space"); the hallway with a tree growing through it, usually closed but open to us because of the rain; gaps in walls to give the illusion of more space; false columns as ornaments and studio storage.

Following the tour I was able to sneak in my first sample of a Famous Chicago Food. About two blocks from Wright's home and studio was a Giordano's location, a recommended spot for deep-dish pizza. As opadit  opined to me, deep-dish is not pizza, it's casserole -- and a cheese one at that. I'm rather finicky when it comes to eating cheese, and I've concluded that deep-dish pizza involves waaaaay too much cheese for me. So it's not that I had a bad pizza at Giordano's, I just think deep-dish isn't my speed. Sorry, Chi-town.


Another train ride and bus ride, and I am back downtown heading to the Skydeck atop America's tallest building, the Sears Tower. The Skydeck has its own little entry building off to the side of the actual tower, where you go down (!) through ticketing, entry cattle-chutes, and a short introductory film before taking a special elevator up to the 7,000th floor. I got off the lift and for the first time I can remember had -- Vertigo? Height/motion sensitivity (since tall buildings sway)? Fear of heights in a building? Whatever it was, I was hugging the colorful museum-like exhibits in the center of the room for a while. I eventually made it over to the windows to try to photograph the cityscape around and below me. As I pointed my camera east I stumbled upon a cool scene:


It's Lollapalooza as seen from space! (Almost.) Below the blue water and boats of Lake Michigan, the green strip in the middle of this picture is the festival venue of Grant Park, at this point just about almost ready for 75,000 people times 3 days. The left side of the park was referred to as Northapalooza, where bands like Nine Inch Nails, Wilco, and Flogging Molly played. The center of the park (partially obscured by the tall red building) features Buckingham Fountain and hosted a ton of concession areas and the festival's smaller stages. The right side was Southapalooza, featuring performances by Kanye West, Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, Lupe Fiasco and more. The media area, my base of operations for the weekend, was on the western edge of Southapalooza -- near the buildings, not the lake.


Once back on terra firma I went for the gusto and took a short trip from Sears Tower to find another Famous Chicago Food. While other locals would in hindsight suggest other locations, Jeff pointed me to a place downtown called Portillo's where I might find an Italian beef sandwich. (Philly peeps: think cheesesteak, except the cheese is optional, your suggested topper is hot or sweet peppers instead of onions, the steak is marinated to be a bit spicier, and "real" sandwiches are dipped in the marinade/jus.) For a weird Philly native like myself who's not a big cheesesteak fan, this is a fine substitute. Sandwich + fries + beer = about $9. Afterwards, I hightailed it to meet Jeff and some other CS hosts.


My host Jeff is on the far left, and I'm "Delicious" right next to him. This was at a vegetarian restaurant called Mana on a much more densely populated part of Division Street (Philly peeps: think Main Street in Manayunk, 2nd Street in NoLibs). Seeing as I had just beefed up, I merely picked at someone's tasty eggplant dish and passed around some chocolat pots du creme but I did have a great drink of sake and pear nectar. Jeff suggested one more stop at a sake bar called Rodan, so we and the girl in white on the far right in the photo (I forget her name) hiked around the corner and up a hot mess of a street called Damen (Philly peeps: think South Street done about 1000% better) past tequila bars, late-night used bookstores, and Urban Outfitters. Jeff sprung for a slim bottle of awesomely smooth sake at Rodan, and if we didn't have seriously early wake-up calls for Friday no doubt we would have hung out more with the three young lovelies who eventually joined us, friends of God-knows-who.

My goodness, I haven't even talked about the festival? That's to come next, along with exclusive pictures!