Sunday, June 13, 2010

Chicago, June 2010

Posted by Laura / no comments » / , architecture, chicago, cleveland, food, friends, music, travel, trip, weather

Not being originally from the Midwest, there are a lot of things that I seem to have “missed out” on. I’d never, before visiting Johnathan the first time, been to New York City. I knew very little about the Amish and their lifestyle. I hadn’t ever paid any notice of the Kentucky Derby. I had never been to any of the major cities in the area, either – the iconic ones that everyone talks about. Chicago is one of those places that I always figured I’d get around to visiting “someday.”

As it turned out, that someday was expedited when we found out that there was going to be a W00tstock in Chicago. We had heard good things about the 1.0 concerts, and then even better things about 2.0 in Seattle and 2.1 in Portland, OR. (Portland’s concert ran really long – 5 hours instead of 3!) So, we decided that we had to go. And while we were there, why not meet up with friends who live in the area? This quickly became more than just a “jaunt” out to Chicago for a concert. We decided that we had to stay the night if we were going to go, owing to the length of Portland’s concert. It took us a couple of days to get clear answers from work, but we both were able to secure that Monday off. We decided that instead of staying one night and driving out that same day, we would instead stay for two nights. That way we would have one day to travel and one day to see some of Chicago and have fun. So, we booked a hotel near the airport and figured out what time we wanted to leave. Voila! Plans!

On Saturday the 5th, I got up earlier than I had intended to get up. My alarm was set for 8:30AM, but I got up at 7AM. Oh well. C’est la vie. Johnathan didn’t get up until later, however, and even later than intended because he hadn’t set his alarm and I didn’t remember to wake him up at 8:30. Whoops. We got off to a later start than planned, and further delayed ourselves by stopping to eat breakfast. (I had french toast stuffed with vanilla cream cheese and topped with bananas and strawberries. It was totally worth it.) We got some car adapter charger thingies and some cash for tolls and then got on our way.  Lady Gaga was apparently our theme music for the trip, because we seemed to listen to her music more than anything else. It was easy and not bad to listen to, if sometimes a little weird.

Chicago is, according to Google Maps, 5.5 hours drive away from Cleveland. That’s fine. It’s a long drive but we survived. However, we were not in any way prepared for the traffic that we encountered as we came into Chicago. There were so many people! The first thing that occurred to me was that people were driving much less aggressively. We didn’t have to worry about how close to follow so that people wouldn’t zoom in to the spot assuming it to be large enough for a car regardless of whether it is or not. We saw more signals than we usually see at home. Still, it took us quite a long time to drive over near to O’Hare.

Google Maps was a bit misleading as we tried to find our hotel. It told us to go left when we should have gone right or vice verse at least twice. We did eventually find our hotel, which, for its cost, was really quite nice. The beds were squishy, which was nice after a long day in the car. And, hey, it was clean. I like clean hotel rooms. The first order of business was to find some food, and I wanted to do something that Chicago considers unique to, er, itself. Deep dish pizza “is” Chicago, right? So we found an area chain that did deep dish pizza and headed there.

Lou Malnati’s was our dinner destination, and we figured by how busy it was that we’d made a good choice. I don’t usually prefer deep dish pizza, but I was willing to sacrifice my preferences in order to try something new and local. I’m thinking that before then, I had never tried real deep dish pizza. We got one plain cheese and one sausage, mushroom and onions. They were both delicious! It certainly changed my mind about how I felt about deep dish pizza. Seriously, the cheese was so stringy and beautiful, and the sauce and oh the crust – I love crust and this was good. Okay, now I’m drooling. Moving along.

After that, we weren’t really sure what to do. We hadn’t made any plans for when we got there and given how long a day we were destined to have the next day, I kind of thought it would be a bad idea to try to go into Chicago proper. Johnathan had an inspired idea, though: IKEA. I’ve never been to IKEA and neither has he, but we’ve both heard good things and wanted to visit. The closest to Cleveland is in Pittsburgh which is about a three-hour drive. Other than that is Cincinnati and then, I think, Chicago. So it wasn’t ever really convenient to get to one.

How on earth have I lived 24.9 years without knowing the wonders of IKEA?

I had no idea, to begin with, that the store was so big. We drove up to it and I went slackjaw, just seeing that it was three stories tall and not skinny stories at that. Then we walked in. That place was enormous. We got our little paper tape measure and our little pencil and map and went up the escalators. Since the store was set to close about an hour or so after we got there, I wanted to start on the third floor – living room, dining room, kitchen, etc – since it seemed like it would be the most up our alley. I’m glad we did, too. We have been talking about redesigning our living room so that it actually has a design and I was able to see the ideas we’ve tossed about and help push those into a more tangible scheme with lots of the things that were on display. I loved the style of a lot of the furniture, and I especially loved that there were display rooms about for shoppers to get an idea of how things can fit into small spaces and how various things can be used. It was very clever and I was pretty much geeking out the whole time we were in the store.

As we walked around the store, I began to have visions of what our apartment could be with some of the furniture that was on display. I mentally redecorated our living room, dining room, computer room, bathroom, kitchen (even though there’s no way we could redesign it!), and bedroom. Basically, I mentally redesigned our whole apartment. The first order is the living room, however, as our bookshelves aren’t going to last through our next move, if they last even that long, and we really would like to tie everything together aesthetically. IKEA was a wealth of inspiration for that. We made it through both floors, although we did not browse as leisurely as we would have liked. They “kicked” us out at closing and we had browsed most of both the second and third floors, and only had a short while to gawk at all the flat-pack furniture available on the first floor before we left. There was such elation after we left that we went straight to the IKEA website after we got back to the hotel. We played with some of their planners (which were really fun, if a little difficult to use at times), and tried to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, knowing that we would very likely be out quite late the next evening for the concert.

The next morning we got up, well, not too early and headed out for the day. We met a couple of friends for lunch at Todai at a nearby mall, which was really nice. I was expecting to sit for maybe an hour and then go our separate ways. We ended up eating lots of sushi and chatting for about two hours, which was nice. I learned a lot about the Quaker belief system and we talked about nerdy things. As we do. By about 1:30, it was time for our friends to leave to go to a baby shower, and we wanted to get downtown.

We had planned to go on an architecture boat tour on the Chicago river at 2PM, but owing to how late our lunch went, the 2PM tour just wasn’t going to happen! The boat tour had a few more running until about 5:30PM, though, so there was nothing to worry about. We headed toward the CTA park and ride near our hotel. One thing I’ll say for CTA is how easy it is to understand. It’s one of the transit systems on Google Maps, which is very helpful, and, well, it was just pretty easy to figure out what we were supposed to do. (Easier than the NYC transit we’ve navigated, I’ll say!) Park and remember your spot number. Pay for the parking at the kiosk. Get a fare card. Ta da! You’re ready to get on the train! Even on a Saturday, the trains were running more frequently than the RTA trains usually do, other than maybe during rush hour. Anyway, we took the train to the station that Google Maps suggested and found our way to the street. Then we walked about three blocks to get to the boat launch. We missed the 2PM, and we just missed the 3PM (owing, I think, to the fact that we crossed the street on the wrong side before realizing we couldn’t cross the other way from that corner – lost a few minutes), so we got tickets for the 3:30 launch. Then we got in line, and it started raining. Pretty hard, too! We didn’t think to bring long-sleeve shirts with us, nor umbrellas. We had assumed that the weather in Chicago would be the same as in Cleveland: very warm and mostly sunny. Silly us. We should have known better. So all I had were tank-tops with high temperatures of 75, and then we got rained on to boot! Ah well. After a few minutes, they let us onto the boat and everyone crowded inside to escape from the rain. Just before the tour was going to start, it stopped raining! Thank goodness! Except that meant all the seats were wet. We wiped ours off the best we could and it was time to go.

The tour was very interesting. I didn’t know much about Chicago architecture other than that it had the Sears Tower (now known as Willis tower, apparently), and I couldn’t have identified it for anyone even if I had to. So I was definitely not well-versed on Chicago’s buildings. The lady who was talking had quite the accent. I suppose it could be considered “very Chicago”. Chicago is pronounced with an “aw” sound in the middle, apparently. That aside, the tour was very interesting. She was able to tell us the history of nearly all of the buildings (the interesting looking ones, anywa) on the river and how the social climate regarding the river had changed over the years. She talked about the varying construction styles, how certain buildings came into being and under what conditions some of them had to be built. The tour was an hour and a half long, and we went all the way up to the lake, as well as on both forks of the “Y” portion of the river. I learned for the very first time about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which is apparently surprising to a lot of people. What, I ask you, difference does a fire in Chicago make to someone in Oregon? It’s just not part of the regional history! So I never learned about it, and while I’d heard things said about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow in the past, I think I made little notice of it. Now I know about the fire and about the legend surrounding it as spread by a newspaper reporter. Anyway, if you’re ever in Chicago and have a couple of hours to spare, definitely try to see the tour. It was wonderful and I learned a lot. I think Johnathan got some good pictures, too, but I’m still waiting for him to process them.

After that, we hopped on a bus and rode over to Park West for W00tstock. W00tstock was such a huge undertaking that I’m going to have to write about it fully later, but I’ll give you a run-down. We rode a bus over to near where the venue was, and then walked to the venue. It was convenient that there was a Subway close by, because it had been a good five hours since I’d eaten at that point, so I was hungry! We ate, taking note of the W00tstock goers all the while, then decided to get in line. I think my favorite anecdote of this time was with Johnathan:

Johnathan: Hey, check out that guy’s shirt! I bet you he is going to W00tstock.
Me: Um. Did you see who it is?
Johnathan: Holy crap! That’s Wil Wheaton! He better be going to W00tstock!

So, Johnathan noticed someone’s shirt, but not his face. Ah well. It’s okay, Wil Wheaton, I knew who you were. We got in line sometime around 5:30, and then had to wait until 6:30 for the doors to open and let all the nerds in. By the time we lined up, we were around the corner of the building already, and we were there extra early! The unfortunate thing is that at some point while we were all waiting, it started raining. And then it started raining harder. Some folks had umbrellas but most didn’t. It was cold and I was only wearing a tank-top. The couple behind us was nice enough to share their extra umbrella, so we huddled under it while they huddled under their other umbrella and we waited for 6:30. The rain just kept getting harder and it didn’t let up before the line started moving, signifying that people were being let in. By about 6:35 or 6:40, we were finally inside the building. We were cold and wet, and the air conditioning was on, but at least we weren’t being rained on anymore!

The show itself was amazing. It lasted for 5 hours, even though the show is billed as “3 Hours of Geeks and Music”. So much for that! We saw Molly Lewis, Bill Amend, Peter Sagal, Kevin Murphy, Trace Beaulieu, Bill Corbett, Len Peralta, Jason Finn and, of course, the four W00tstock founders, Paul & Storm, Wil Wheaton and Adam Savage. It was a wonderful night and I would do it all over again if I could. (In fact, if they ever go to Pittsburgh or something, we are so there!)

So, the show started at 7:30 and didn’t end until about 12:20AM. I was pretty thankful at that point that we’d verified that CTA runs all night. It meant we didn’t have to take a cab back to our car. We managed to pull together enough change for two bus fares, because we hadn’t loaded up our passes with enough money for the return trip, and we got on the bus. The next adventure was finding a working fare machine that took credit cards. We were tired, very hungry (we hadn’t eaten since the subs at about 5PM), and just wanted to get back to our car. The box in the station lobby that we went to first had a machine, but it didn’t work. We found someone whose only suggestion was to take cash out. Well, eff that! We weren’t putting $20 each on transit cards, and the machines didn’t give any change, so we were kind of SOL. We walked across the street to the other lobby where the man suggested we might find another machine that took cards. We must have walked around it five or six times and not found anything. I was ready to cry at that point because I was just so tired. We were going to walk out and try to find somewhere that gave change, but we spotted the card-taking machine at the last minute. Oh, thank FSM for that. Then it was just a matter of getting to the platform and getting back to our station.

The ride back was relatively uneventful. We listened to a group of guys try to speak German to one another (one of them, I gathered, actually speaks German fluently, possibly as a native language, but the others were n00bs at best, and even I could tell!) We saw a rough-looking guy go out into the space between two of the trains to smoke a cigarette – he was sandwiched between them, and there was absolutely nothing keeping him from falling off if the train jerked suddenly. People aren’t supposed to be out there. Ah, the things people do for a nicotine fix.

We got back to our car at about 1:45AM, and headed for food. There isn’t a lot open late-night. We could have gone to our room and ordered a pizza from the place that advertises that it’s open until 4AM, but then we would have had to wait for the pizza and we were too hungry to consider that as a first choice. We passed a McDonald’s which was not at all appetizing, and ultimately had to go with a Denny’s because, really? What else is open at 2AM? We at really bad diner food and went back to our room where I promptly sacked out. It was a long day.

We got a late check-out – which really meant checking out at noon instead of 11, but the hour helped. We packed everything up and headed out for some lunch. I wanted to eat something that was “uniquely Chicago” that wasn’t deep dish pizza, and it seems that there’s a certain kind of hot dog that’s considered to be unique to Chicago. One of the places that was recommended in a couple of sites online was Portillo’s. We decided to stop there for lunch. Once we got there, it was clear that this was no ordinary fast food joint. They had a double-drive through and people standing in it to take orders. It was amazing how efficient they were! Even inside there were two people standing in the line getting people’s orders, so that when we got to the register, we’d just hand someone our bag and be ready to go! I got a Maxwell style polish dog, and Johnathan got, I believe, a jumbo hot dog. We got cheese fries with chili on them (we ordered chili cheese fries when we really meant cheddar cheese fries – a fortuitous error), and a couple of drinks and we were ready to go. We only waited a couple of minutes for our order to come up. The trays had drink holders in them which I thought was very clever.

Words cannot adequately describe how good that dog was and how tasty those fries were. The fries were just what I wanted after a long day, and the hot dog was just delicious, slathered in mustard and covered with fried onions and peppers. Whenever we go back to Chicago, I will have to have another one of those because it was just too good to pass up. After that, we headed back east, bound for home.

The drive home was fairly uneventful, thought it felt painfully long, probably because of how tired we both were. We got home at about 8PM and were bombarded with needy kitties who had missed us in the days and days that we had been gone. Our kitties are not at all dramatic. Not one bit.

On the way home we ruminated about what we’d felt while we were in Chicago. It is city full of life. It is a city which is proud of itself, its roots and everything that defines it. It is not, like Cleveland, a city full of self-loathing. There were things to do, even late at night. The people were generally less suspicious, I felt, than people in Cleveland, who always seem to be suspicious of anything remotely friendly and who don’t know what to do if you’re trying to be polite. Chicago was night and day with Cleveland both in attitude and in city planning. Chicago has a plan! And they actively pursue those things which will breathe life into areas of the city which are currently not thriving. Cleveland needs to take a page from Chicago’s book, I think. Clean up the attitude, clean up the streets and make neighborhoods that people will want to live in, other than just Ohio City! That is, I think, most of what I came away from Chicago with. I had fun, and I definitely want to go back, but ultimately, Chicago showed me what a city like Cleveland could be with the right leadership and the right ideas applied to its neighborhoods.

For an impromptu trip with very little pre-planning, our trip to Chicago was, I think, one of our more successful. I really can’t wait until we can plan a trip to go back.