Guess where we went this weekend.
Instead of birding we spent the weekend in the Windy City. Took Amtrak to Chicago and spent a couple days visiting with Zack and Nikki, doing a little architectural photography, and just checking out the big city.
Molly and Zack.
We rode business class going in but had to ride in steerage going back. Business class was quite comfortable but steerage was OK too. Much more relaxing than driving. I could work on the laptop or read. Things that are usually frowned on while driving. Still had some issues though. Going in we had over an hour of delays that really set off this drunken loudmouth in our compartment. Coming back we had some teeny boppers that just had to make sure they were heard.
Riding the train gave us a look at a slice of the countryside one doesn’t usually get to see. Even going through Lansing it was hard to figure out where we were because we were seeing things from a different view. The usual landmarks weren’t there. Sometimes there were nice views and sometimes there was nothing but a blur of vegetation or other trains. Kind of like a green wall.
The green wall
Passing train.
Everything in this area is dry. Like Lise said, we saw brown fields and we saw brownfields. Some pretty interesting things and some really scary things. And, with an air of smugness ,we got to be moving while the cars at the railroad crossings waited for us. Usually it’s the other way around and I’m stuck cursing and waiting for a train to pass.
Brown fields from a fast moving train.
Brownfields from a fast moving train.
Just don’t expect to get into Chicago on time and bring some rations for the delays. The rail lines are owned by freight lines so Amtrak passenger trains get zero priority.
Heat aside, Chicago was great. Or as Dan Quayle, America’s own village idiot said, “It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago…”. I’m glad he was elected vice president and not something important like student council president. As vice president he couldn’t do any more damage to the country than highlight the inadequacies of our educational system.
We were stayed downtown, right in the middle of things. A couple blocks from Navy Pier, right by the Tribune Plaza, 15 minute walk to Millennium Park and right at the start of the Magnificent Mile. Expensive as hell but an exciting place to be. “You’d never think of taking a cab if you had to walk a mile down Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.” – Helmut Jahn
Architecturally and photographically Chicago was a lot more interesting than DC is. DC has the mall with the monuments but other than that is but it is mostly a bunch of ho-hum limestone and brick government office buildings. I think Chicago is better than New York too. There was enough open space along the river and in the plazas that you got great views of buildings reflecting in each other. Intricate stonework mixed in with steel and glass. All kinds of crazy lines running in all directions. Doesn’t look like anything was laid out with any rhyme or reason to but it works.
“New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.” – Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, 1968
“Eventually, I think Chicago will be the most beautiful great city left in the world” –
Frank Lloyd Wright.
Our hotel interior.
Our hotel interior in black and white.
“There are almost no beautiful cities in America, though there are many beautiful parts of cities, and some sections that are glorious without being beautiful, like downtown Chicago." – Noel Perrin
”In the twilight, it was a vision of power.“ – Upton Sinclair
Millennium Park has the Bean. Not exactly high art. It’s kind of like a reflective kidney bean. On the outside you get these warped reflections of yourself or the skyline. On the inside you get reflections of reflections. Almost every picture you take you find yourself in the picture.
The Bean.
Warped skyline.
Warped skyline with Ed.
Apparently native Chicagoans think this thing is ugly and hate it. Everyone else loves it though. I had to be there at 6:30 in the morning to have the place almost to myself. Just me and a couple of other photography geeks. The rest of the time, even in crazy hot heat, it was crowded. While talking pictures of the Bean I had one guy walk past me and say, “nice tripod.” I’m really hoping he was just a tripod aficionado and it wasn’t a pick up line.
Ed at 6:30 AM.
Ed in the Bean at 6:30 AM.
Molly, Lindsay, & Ed inside the Bean.
The real beauty of the Bean was watching how people interacted with it. That alone was worth a couple hours. Almost always the first reaction was to walk up and touch it. Then it was getting a picture of your reflection. People seemed to lose their inhibitions around it. I can’t think of any other place where someone in a crowd would lay down on the ground to see their warped reflection.
Molly doing a hand stand.
Zack doing a hand stand.
Chicago had some down sides. Lot’s of desperate looking homeless people. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be homeless there in the winter. ”I think that’s how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, ‘Gee, I’m enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn’t cold enough. Let’s go west.“ – Richard Jeni
“Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation.” – Eugene V. Debs
Seeing the homeless was bad enough but then there was this. The Chicago Theater had “An Evening With Barry Manilow.” The only thing worse I can think of would be two evenings with Barry Manilow.
”Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It’s the most theatrically corrupt.“ – Studs Terkel, 1978
Through history people have had some less than positive things to say about the Windy City:
”Hell has been described as a pocket edition of Chicago.“
Ashley Montagu
”Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.“ – Carl Sandburg, in Harry Golden, 1961
”In most places in the country, voting is looked upon as a right and a duty, but in Chicago it’s a sport. In Chicago not only your vote counts, but all kinds of other votes–kids, dead folks, and so on.“ Dick Gregory, Dick Gregory’s Political Primer, 1972
”I have struck a city – a real city – and they call it Chicago… . I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.“ Rudyard Kipling, 1891
“That’s great advertising when you can turn Chicago into a city you’d want to spend more than three hours in.” Jerry Della Femina
They may all be right in their own way but I think Mark Twain sums up Chicago nicely. “We struck the home trail now, and in a few hours were in that astonishing Chicago–a city where they are always rubbing a lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago–she outgrows her prophecies faster than she can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.” – Mark Twain “Life on the Mississippi,” 1883
We didn’t get any new species but the trip wasn’t devoid of bird life. Between the train ride and a few birds lost in downtown Chicago we saw red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes, goldfinch, house sparrow, crows, turkey vulture, rock doves, starling, barn swallow, Canada geese, great egret, great blue heron, mourning doves, ring-billed gull, and red-winged blackbird, and robin. We didn’t get the peregrine that nested on the building beside Zack and Nikki. Also, there were a bunch of dragonflies zipping around the gardens of Millenium Park, right in the middle of millions of tons of steel and glass and a couple million people. That’s resilience. No wonder they have been around since the dinosaurs.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 