Chicago

A couple of weekends back the crew went on a Saturday excursion to Chicago. Now I would choose The Big Apple any day over the Windy City, but this weekend we could get tickets to see "Wicked" and it is always sold-out in NYC. Chicago is a beautiful city and a late summer visit is generally a winner as Lake Michigan provides a beautiful blue backdrop for all activities. We checked into our hotel, The Allegro, which we have stayed in before. It is located within the Loop and is only a block down from the Oriental/Ford Theatre where "Wicked " was showing, and is on the same block of buildings where the Cadillac Theatre is located. When you say"Broadway Show" in Chicago then the better plays are inevitably in one of these two theatres. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant which is decidedly more upscale than the Kentucky Depot in Stanford or Colemans Deli. Tim had riceroni and Erika had some funny colored ravioli, both entrees which were called something else with Italien names, but being a sensible country boy I couldn't be fooled.I chose chicken something. It definitely wasn't KFC but what do these snooty mid-westerners know about chicken?We had opted to take the Architectural River and Harbor Tour which is a fantastic way to see modern Chicago. It's interesting that one of the Idiotic tour bus drivers for the Dave Matthews group had dumped his toilet holding tank over one of the many bridges over the river and completely covered a filled riverboat with human waste! Talk about bad luck!! It seems the boat was filled with a group of senior citizens that suddenly was inundated with a deluge of Rock Star Feces. Wow! If Chicken Little thought the sky was falling think about Granddad and Grandma covered at the start of an otherwise perfect day with Shit from the skies. You can bet that this country boy listed with one ear about Mies Van De Rohe and watched the bridges for Dave Matthews.Mies had designed many of Chicago's towers and helped shape modern glass and steel architecture.The 1927 Barcelona World's Fair was Mies' coming out party and that's a long ways from Chicago. I've been fortunate enought to see some of Frank Lloyd Wright's stuff as Chicago was his playground, and I'm in awe of how The Prairie School gave way to Mies and eventually the Sears Tower and The John Hancock . I think Chicago is a great big Louisville because the place, unlike NYC, closes down about 8:00 pm even on the weekends. The Majestic Mile(Michigan Avenue) for all its smartness and upscale shopping appears to start closing around dinner time and you cannot find many restaurants to eat in after 8pm. Maybe the Suburbs are more exciting but Downtown seems to be the pits. I might add that the architects have taken the Bear's home , Soldier Field and made it perhaps the ugliest facility ever devised by man. Talk about bi-polar, the building looks like an ugly space creature has landed on the old columned front and taken up residence. Everyone in Chicago hates the look, but it's a done deal. We took the Elevated railway back to Midway and it cost$1.75 , a bargain by any reckoning. I must admit that Chicago has the most user friendly cabbies of any city I've ever visited, including Stanford. All in all I like Chicago for it's midwestern laid-back attitude,for its legions of blond, farm- fed girls ,and for the less than one hour flight from SDF, but give me New York for everything else. I like those dark exotic looking babes dressed in black as they rush down Madison Avenue, or those wild looking travellers on the subways as they exit at Grand Central Station or maybe Canal Street. The last visit to NYC this past spring was wonderful as Sandy and I sat on the curb in front of the Plaza in the warm sunlight and watched the Carriage riders and horses on the edge of Central Park. Chicago is ok , but it is almost like visiting Aunt Ruby, while New York is ,well New york.Maybe Dave Matthews was making a subliminal statement.And "Wicked"?I'd probably rather have seen Nascar at the Indy Speedway, but I'm trying to take a higher road.