Miraculous Monoliths on the Magnificent Mile Part II

Every time I post a picture of a cool building I tell myself not to type too much, but I always end up going over board. I probably will on this one too. Last time we were on top of the Sears Tower I looked out at the Chicago city scape and decided that the coolest building out there is the Tribune Tower. It sits directly across Michigan Avenue from the Wrigley building, and next door to the gigantic Grant Wood reenactment I went on and on about a few postings ago. Check out how cool this joint is! It was built waaaay back in 1922 towards the end of the Gothic skyscraper movement in the United States (see New York's Woolworth building) and looks like it came right out of Gotham. In commemoration of their 75th anniversary, The Chicago Tribune held a contest to design the building. The winners of the contest were John Howells and Raymond Hood, who also did our beloved Rockefeller Center in New York City. Second place went to some other folks that ended up building their design in Houston as the Gulf Building, which is nowhere near as awesome. The Tribune building is covered in coolness. The architecture is as gothic as a French cathedral, and actually has butresses and gargoyles on the top of it. The gargoyles include a howling dog and Robin Hood, in memorium of the designers.

What I like most about the building are the international stones built into the first few floors. The Tribune asked their correspondants and producers to bring back rocks from significant buildings around the world, and they've inserted them into the exterior walls. Check out the picture of me next to the Cathedral of Notre Dame brick. Among the 136 famous rocks are chunks from the following: The Taj Mahal, The Great Wall of China, Lincoln's Tomb, The Parthenon, The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Berlin Wall, The Alamo, Westminster Abbey, and some petrified wood from that redwood forest in California. They've recently shoved some of the steel from the World Trade Center in there, and there's a chunk of the moon in a box by the window. They would have put the moon rock in the wall but NASA legally owns every moon rock and they've only loaned it to the Tribune. Those selfish moon misers. So how does that work anyway? "Hello international person, I'm from the Chicago Tribune and was wondering if I might have a chunk of your historically significant structure." Maybe they just pulled a Napolean and "acquired" it. By the way, all the scenes in the batcave from The Dark Knight were filmed in the basement of the Tribune Tower.

To avoid the craziness of the St. Patrick's Day crowds we thought it best to park a few blocks away from where they dye the river. We ended up leaving the car right next to Chicago's historic water tower. It was built in 1869 as a means to store water in the unlikely event of a fire. Two years later Miss O'Leary's cow knocked over the lantern and the tower got to see some major action. Maybe they should have built it a wee bit taller as the structure is now the only building (still standing) that survived the fire. There's only one older water tower in the world, which is in Louisville Kentucky and was built in 1860. This may not have any significance to you Westerners, but the Chicago Water Tower is the inspiration for the design of the Whitecastle hamburger joints. Classy.

Miraculous Monoliths on the Magnificent Mile Part I

Hooray, its another blog chuck full of ramblings on about tall and otherwise awesome buildings. Chicago is the birthplace of the skyscraper, and has now become the sibling that other sky scraper-building cities' moms say, "Why can't you be more like your older brother?" about. A perfect example of why Chicago has maintained its architectural prowess is the newly topped-off Trump International Hotel and Tower. In early 2001 good ol' Donny Trump announced that this building would be the world's tallest, then later that year something happened in New York that caused him to back away with his tail between his legs. I guess its a good thing that Donald gave up his tallest building pursuit since the Burj Dubai would totally be kicking his rear right now. Any faithful reality tv fan will know that the bulding construction is/was being overseen by Bill Rancic, the winner of the first season of The Apprentice, though Don and Ivana's kids are really the ones in charge.

Nope, not done talking about the Trump tower yet. The building is more than just a huge hotel and spa, its actually a gigantic monument to the adjacent buildings. Notice that there are different layers in the building, these are called set-backs. The first set back is the same height as the Wrigley building next door to the east, the second set back is lined up perfectly with Marina City two buildings to the west, and the third is the same height as IBM Plaza directly to the west (that black boring building in the pictures). I think that's pretty darn cool. Your homework assignment for the weekend is to watch The Dark Knight, as it was mostly filmed in this area. As a matter of fact, the very last scene when Batman takes down the Joker was all filmed in and around the Trump Tower construction site. The Trump Tower is the 3rd tallest building in the US (first is the Sears Tower, 2nd is the Empire State Building), and the 13th tallest in the world. I'm proud to say that I have seen the 11 tallest buildings in the US personally. Very personally.

I guess this is a good place to give a quick shout out to Marina City as well. That's the two towers pictured to the left. That black one in the picture is IBM Plaza, which is next door to the Trump Tower. Anyhow, these towers contain an entire city including condos, bowling alleys, grocery stores and all that. Those semi circles that jut out from the sides are for parking. The same company that built the Trump Tower also did Marina City clear back in 1959. You can see these towers in The Dark Knight as well. Man I love Chicago, it makes any sky scraper enthusiast want to pee his or her pants with excitement. Usually when we come to Chicago we do most of our sky scraper watching around the Sears Tower, I forget that there were so many incredible structures on Michigan Avenue. Don't worry, I didn't forget about the Tribune Tower, or the Water Tower, they'll be making a special guest appearance in the next posting. So remain on the edge of your seat.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This posting is just for you Grandma Merrill! Happy St. Patrick's Day from Chicago.

The Greening of the River

Ok, I gotta start this blog by saying that it is impossible to spell conjugations of the word "dye" correctly. I had no idea that watching the river get dyed green would be as awesome as it was. The only way I can describe it to you is to post all three of these videos on the blog for your viewing pleasure, with my inevitable comments in handy caption format!

We'll start with the bird's eye view of the river getting greened. This is clearly all time-lapsed, but I think it is one of the coolest videos I've ever seen. I came across the video about a year ago, and wanted to post it on the blog that day, but I told myself it would be so much more effective to post it having actually seen the event. Check out how many people are lining the streets!

And here it is from the Sara cam. I'm no river dying expert but I think the second boat is there to either rustle up the water and spread the dye, or simply to give one more set of guys the chance to use the line, "by the way, I'm the guy who dyes the river green" to one of the red-headed bar chicks later that night. I think another way to get the river this exact color would be to fill it with antifreeze. This, of course is not a possibility since all the antifreeze in the Midwest is used up between the months of November and March, the only reasonable substitute being lime snow cone concentrate, but everyone knows that the only snow cone color available in that magnitude is grape.

In this video you can see that the powder they chuck into the river isn't green at all! It's orange! It's a St. Patrick's Day miracle! I guess I should explain the band-aid on Zoe's forehead. Leprechaun bite. Actually, while we were all cramped together with strange strangers waiting for the river to be be greened, Zoe got spooked by the weird kids next to us and as she was backing away she tripped over the stroller wheel and fell, smacking her head on a rail on the way down. It was super sad, but she only cried for a few minutes. She later told me that watching the river get dyed was worth every second. Underneath that band-aid is a truly Irish lass.

Down by the river

Like I mentioned in the last posting, we were in downtown Chicago early enough that we had some alone time with the local wildlife, including the giant silver moose. Just behind the moose is the stone wall-fence that overlooks the river. We set up camp just below the moose, and stood waiting for the river elves to cast their magic dye into the water. Actually, I use the word "stood" very lightly since Zoe has an attention span of about 2 seconds, and a crack-like addiction to stairs, resulting in a very wiggly little girl. Sara and the stroller staked our claim at the river bank while I followed Zoe around as she ascended every stair along Chicago's riverwalk over and over again.

But Zoe really did have a good time. We got her the coolest little monkey backpack so she could help us haul all of our stuff around. The greatest feature of the monkey back pack is that it comes with a leash. Yes, I got my kid a leash. We figured we had to make a choice between looking like one of those strange "kid on a leash" couples, or having our child abducted by drunken leprechauns. The leash doesn't really work though because when I tried to tether her to stuff, like trees and railings, she just kept on walking in place, and I didn't want her to ruin her shoes. But check out those green hair dealies! Oh yeah.

Notice in the picture how we were the very first people at the river. I was worried that no one would show up, but boy was I wrong. You'll see in the upcoming pictures that this place was hopping only a few minutes after we got there. Also, notice in the pictures that the river is always slightly greenish and everyone who showed up to watch the festivities felt obligated by St. Patrick's Day ordinance 17(a) to say, "Wow, they don't even need to dye it because its already green!" Everyone.

Grant Wood - Enbiggened

Ah, Chicago! A few days back I wrote that I'd begin posting about last year's cruise, but that was before I realized that Sara, Zoe and I's trip to Chicago yesterday would be so picturesque! So on we go to yet another string of postings from the Windy City.

Several months ago we discovered that the City of Chicago actually dyes the Chicago river green for St. Patrick's Day. This is exactly the sort of thing that we wouldn't even consider missing, so we did a bit of research and found out that the festivities are always on the Saturday before St. Patrick's Day, not the day itself. It's a good thing we checked, because I wouldn't have wanted to ditch work and spend hours staring at a river all day for nothing. Our little Zoe is such a good sport, we peeled her away from her little crib and strapped her into the car seat at 6 am and hit the road for Chicago.

On our way along the Miracle Mile to stake our claim on the river bank, we passed by my second favorite Chicago structure (the Tribune building) and walked into Pioneer Court to be greeted by B.H. McKeeby and Nan Wood Graham as 25-foot statues! It was so bizarre because they were standing exactly where King Lear used to be just a few months ago. We looked everywhere for King Lear but he was nowhere to be found, I assume he had been stabbed with a giant pitch fork. The cool thing about all this is that we got to Chicago very early and were the only ones in the plaza, as compared to an hour later when you couldn't swing a dead cat without scratching 50 drunken Irish wannabes.

Being the super geek that I am, I couldn't just say, "Wow, those guys are big", take a picture and never think of it again. I had to find out who was responsible for these Americana monoliths. I was surprised to see that it was J. Seward Johnson Jr., grandson of Robert Wood Johnson, the founder of the Johnson & Johnson company. Good ol' J. Seward is another one of those great artists that specify in giant works of urban art, and he can do whatever he wants since his dad inherited well over $50 million and a gigantic company. If you're into this sort of thing as much as I am, I recommend you look up J. Seward Johnson Jr. on wikipedia and see some of his other gigantic works of art. A lot of them are famous paintings redone in 3-D like this one.

The name of the sculpture is "God Bless America", but believe it or not, it isn't meant to be as patriotic as you might think, according to what I'm reading online. Notice that the stickers on the suitcase aren't to Hawaii and France, rather China, Taiwan, Bangladesh and India. It seems that America has outsourced it's blue-blooded, Iowa-born hard work ethic to the lowest bidder. Johnson's made his statement in what's gotta be the most subtle way possible, and I just wanna say to him, "Hey, you've got the money and the clout, if you're gonna make a statment, make a statment!" Instead, thousands of tourists take pictures, knock on the massive legs and think about how great it is to be an American. And I guess that's a good thing, sometimes we all just get tired of our fellow Americans making even a subtle mockery of the nation that has treated us all so well...especially a fellow American who has very much enjoyed the rewards that democracy has wrought. Three cheers for America! But enough of the USA, on to our tribute to the Emerald Isle.

I want my plaque back!

It had been 3 and a half years since I'd seen a dentist, and I was reminded exactly why that was yesterday as my gums were poked by the most sadistic dental hygienist to ever fail dental school. I really liked the dentist himself, he was so nice and jovial as he shoved his hands into my mouth, asking me questions all the while, to which I responded "Arroh horl guh". Apparently he liked me so much that he wanted to become a part of the Kason fan club, or at least I think that's what he meant by saying "inclusion" three times while he yanked on my tongue.

Honestly though, I have never left a dental cleaning with such aching teeth. The problem was that the hygienist lady was actually a cyborg. On the outside she looked just like a regular Wisconsin-grown middle aged lady, but once she had me tied down to the chair and had conned me into opening my mouth, thousands of tiny steel pokers extended from her fingers and slithered their way into my jaw via my gums. I think the reason I let her get away with it is that she had fried my brain with the x-ray machine for half an hour before the gum drilling began. Why is it they cover your heart and intestines with a lead shield, hide behind the wall and zap you in the head without providing a brain shield? Then came the lecture. No, I don't floss. Ever. I lied to The Terminator that I floss about once a week...but I know she was on to me. Here's the reason why I don't floss. Sara is like the queen of oral hygiene, and it takes her ten minutes to floss each night. Ten minutes per night adds up to over 2.5 full days of flossing per year. I'd much rather endure the half hour of tooth prodding and annual flossing lecture. If we were to take the 2.5 days worth of flossing from the hundred or so people in America that actually do it, we could probably use that time to cure cancer.

And one more thing. I've got one of those permanent retainers on my bottom teeth, and I have been working hard for years to get it full of plaque so its nice and smooth. Now all that nasty build-up is gone, and it's like a tongue magnet for some weird reason. I can't quit licking at it and now my tongue hurts a lot! I want my plaque back!

Wow, so clearly this is a touchy subject for me. To lighten the mood, I now leave you with my new favorite commercial on the TV. I have no clue why I like this song, it really ought to be the most annoying song I've ever heard, but for some reason I can't get enough of it, probably because it's been stuck in my head for nearly two weeks. I've never had a Fillet-o-fish, but I really want one now.