Chicago

I'm at the Hyatt Regency, which is a gi-normous and beautiful hotel overlooking the Chicago river. I'm on the 27th floor with two floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on the city. On my first day I had three adventures.

In the morning, I went over the Michigan St bridge and found a Kenneth Cole store, where I spent nearly a thousand dollars that I don't have on several large bags worth of stuff: a pair of shoes, two pairs of boots, and a briefcase. I arrived in Chicago wearing a pair of used cowboy boots and now I have a blister. The strap fell off my old briefcase last summer. It was a shocking experience to have a choice of good-looking shoes that fit. Usually there are none, or if there is a pair, it's only one pair. Maybe I didn't handle the decision so well.

When I came back to the hotel, about half a block away, a big black man named something like Leoni conned me out of eight dollars by rubbing hand lotion on my sneakers. So I gave him ten and said he could keep the change. It was a surreal experience, my hands full of Kenneth Cole bags and this person insisting I put my foot on his knee so he could rub goop on my shoe. He said he thought it was better than begging for money, and I guess he gets to say.

In the afternoon, I took a taxi and went to the Contemporary Art Institute of Chicago, mistakenly believing it was the Art Institute of Chicago. The latter has a world-class collection of impressionists. The former had a display of Rudolf Stingel, including some giant photo-realist paintings, some things that weren't supposed to be paintings per se, made of styrofoam and I think it was rubber cement, and a room with an orange carpet, which was the art object. The foyer was lined with the kind of insulation that has an aluminum foil cover, and you were allowed to contribute to the project by marking it somehow. I thought about writing a quote from the Hong Kong movie 2002. It's what a little old Chinese woman harangues the hero with: "Work hard. Respect your parents." But I decided not to do that.

On the upper floors there was an exhibition of artists' books, which I liked very much, in part because they reminded me of Peter Bartl. I made a note of a chart in a book by Edward Hall and George Trager called Systems of Culture. I think it was this exhibition that made me think I should try out this blog. I thought of getting a book to write about my adventures, since somehow they aren't very reified for me if I only have them, and I wondered if they might be more solid if they were also recorded somehow.

Another thing I liked were a series of photos of seascapes, by Hiroshi Sugimoto. He had maybe 15 or 20 0f them, all a b&w flat horizon of water and sky; they varied largely in terms of how much fog there was. They might have been all the same seascape at different times of day, for instance, only in fact they were each of a completely different body of water. Arranged as they were, side by side along a white wall, they had somehow the emotional effect of looking at a seascape. It was very nice.

Finally, in the basement they had half a dozen charming carp, lazing around in a little wedge-shaped pool.

Chicago Day 2
I'd like to commend Milena for choosing a wonderful hotel. It is close to everything. The greater Chicago area has about 7 milliion people. The city proper has about 3 million. In the city there is a downtown area called the loop, because it is within a circle created by the elevated train. The Hyatt I'm in is at the edge of the loop, which means a lot of great things are within walking distance, or, as I'm beginning to think of it, blistering distance.

I really enjoyed my lunch. I went to what I later realized is a chain called The Corner Bakery Cafe. I loved their slogan: "Feed the Day." The one I ate at was across the street from a sign that said it was the end of the legendary Route 66. The cafe also had an innovation that impressed me. At each table was a little metal clip standing eighteen inches above the salt and pepper shakers. When you placed your order, they gave you a big plastic piece with a number on it, and you clipped it at your table so they could find you. People were coming and going like crazy, but it never got lined up at the counter more than two or three deep.

After lunch I went to look at all the great stuff at the Art Institute of Chicago. (http://www.artic.edu/artexplorer/ but I'm pretty sure they only have a small portion of it digitized). I was fortunate to arrive during the February Free days, which saved me twelve bucks. In fact, today was the last day of the promotion. As in any large gallery, there is far too much to summarize, and I saw most of it.

I also realized something today, as I limped up and down the marble stairs. One of the things I like about art galleries is the rules there tend to restrict unseemly behaviour. If you stay quiet and don't get too close to the art, everyone leaves you pretty much alone. Other patrons will even give you elbow room if you stand directly in front of something.

Some of the highlights of this collection are:
- Van Gogh's self-portrait
- American Gothic
- Nighthawks
- At the Moulin Rouge

I also enjoyed looking at:
- several classy suits of armour.
- lots of Monet, including every painting he ever made of a haystack. This was several more than I would have expected.
- a surprising amount of Georgia O'Keefe.
- Ivan Albright's shocking 1943 lifesize portrait of Dorian Gray, painted for the movie.

There were some very nice Buddhas, boddhisattvas, and dakinis, so I hung around with them for a while. There was also a nice little Chinese guardian creature that appeared to combine a dragon, lion, and dog. I felt safer just looking at him.

On the way there, and again on the way back, I walked by the Millenium Park, which has among other things a music pavilion that Frank Gehry designed on a good day. People were skating at an outdoor rink at the park. They seemed to be having fun, falling down in front of their friends' video cameras and holding hands and laughing.

I came back to the hotel to shower and change my shoes, then took a nap before going on another forced march, this time along Wacker St. The Dorling-Kindersley Eyewitness book I bought at the Northwestern University bookstore yesterday recommended it. There were plenty of Chicago's great buildings and bridges, and then dinner at what I can only describe as a character-rich Italian restaurant, Buca di Beppo. The walls were plastered with vintage photos of starlets getting out of cars, contortionists contorting, people kissing while driving Vespas, and so on. On the way to your table they make a point of walking you through the kitchen. They have to make special arrangements for people dining alone, since the menu only contains two sizes of items: small (for 2-3 people) and large (for more). I had lemon chicken with capers and fettucini, and my gosh it was great.

Chicago to Evanston
What a lovely day I had today. I started out by taking Piotr's advice and going over to the Prairie Avenue Bookshop on South Wabash. At first I thought it was all architecture books all the time, but in fact there turned out to be about, well, fifteen design books that I wanted. They graciously offered to ship them for me. I feel like one of those upper-class Victorian women from the States who used to make an annual pilgrimage to Paris to shop for the year. But wait till you see what I bought. Robin Kinross. Emil Ruder. Tufte's latest. All very nice.

The man at the bookshop was also kind enough to direct me to a bookish coffee shop, called The Gourmand, which was an appropriate name because I was starving. They serve, I believe, a brand of coffee called Intelligentsia, which was in any case very good, and so was the spinach and feta omelette.

Back to the hotel, where I stuffed my old abandoned briefcase into the garbage under the desk and caught a taxi north to the Homestead Inn in Evanston. I wasn't sure what to make of it. At first I thought it was quite Oxford-like, sort of ancient and tweedy, but after I walked around a bit it seems significantly more modern. There are probably a dozen restaurants and three or four coffee shops within five blocks. I spent most of the afternoon napping, taking a brief walk to find another latte and a cinnamon bun, and writing an abstract for the Prague Design conference in November. The topic is lists, and I'm pitching our dynamic table of contents project. Sometimes I get so busy I forget how much I enjoy writing. I really become a five about it for a brief time.

Come evening I headed downstairs to find a table full of colleagues in various stages of eating dinner. I joined them, and the food was great. I had a bowl of clam chowder that started out just as a bowl of clams in their shells, and the waiter brought along a jug of chowder that he poured on top. I once again was struck, after these past days of being largely alone, by how much I enjoy the company of my colleagues. I couldn't get enough of them. Now tomorrow we meet all day to talk about what we're going to do together for the next couple of years. John tells me one of the likely outcomes is that we'll meet regularly for hackfests. I couldn't be tickled pinker.