When my son started kindergarten in 2001, the group of kids his age starting school was so large our school district had to add three extra sections of kindergarten. This big group has moved through our town’s elementary system wreaking havoc on sectioning now for almost ten years. Each year teachers had to be moved from one grade to another to accommodate this tsunami of learners.
My friend Susan attributes this very specific bump in the number of school-aged kids in our area to the Chicago heat wave and blackout of 1995.
The heat wave / blackout was an amazing event in many ways. It has certainly been hot in Chicago before. But that year it was VERY F***ING HOT. I seem to remember the “heat index” being in triple digits for almost a week. I’m probably wrong about that, but it sure seemed like it was very hot for a long time. We had been experiencing brownouts for some time previous to the blackout, because everyone in the city had their air on simultaneously, and finally a bunch of transformers blew and the power went out. We went almost two weeks with no lights, no air conditioning, no power for cooking, no hot water for showers….
Early on the city begged people not to open the fire hydrants because of the various dangers: kids running in the street and getting hit by cars, cars driving through large amounts of water and having wet-brake accidents, flooding of nearby basements, and the fear that the water pressure would be too low in the “event of an emergency”. Soon the city realized that this WAS the event of an emergency, and instituted a program of rolling “waves” of open hydrants block-by-block, so that at least the flow could be controlled.
The city also instituted the 311 emergency phone line and opened cooling centers -- places where folks could go just to get out of the terrible heat. The Mayor appeared regularly to remind people to check on the elderly and housebound, so I called my Mom everyday to say I was requested to do so by Rich Daley himself. Many people who depended on oxygen or other mechanical devices or were too sick or too stubborn to leave their homes ended up stacked like cordwood in refrigerated semi trailers parked outside the city morgue. More than 700 people, mostly poor and/or elderly, died as a result of the heat and lack of power.
At the time I worked in the Wicker Park/Bucktown area of the city in a large, busy restaurant that occupied a three story converted brownstone house. Although it was more than 100 degrees outside the building, inside it was a refreshing 85 degrees -- due to the six Volkswagen-sized air conditioning units on the roof. The roof was big and flat and covered with tar. The air units were on full blast for more than 12 hours a day. We were one of the few restaurants not to lose air conditioners or refrigerators during the heat wave, in no small part due to the assigning of an extra bus boy whose sole job it was to hose down the air units continuously during daylight hours.
Slowly the power started to come on in various parts of the city. Each night on the way home from work we would see a few more blocks with streetlights on. Each night we hoped fervently that there would be power on our block. Over and over again we turned onto our street to find only darkness. It seemed as though we were the very last building on the very last street on the very last block to get power. A couple of nights we lay awake in the sweltering darkness, unable to sleep, listening to the air conditioner run in the building across the gangway from ours. Finally one night we realized we could see the lights on at Wrigley Field, and we were sure we would find bright lights and cool air when we arrived home. Nope. Hot and dark.
So for almost a week it was too hot to sleep. It was too hot to wear clothes to bed. No TV, no lights-- what was there to do? Many nights it was too hot to do anything but lay in bed and doze fitfully. But apparently many nights many of us found something to do there in the dark with no clothes on.
And nine months later there was a spike in births at all Chicago city hospitals.
Or so says my friend Susan.
Wednesday
Afraid to Drive in the City?!
I live in a nice well-organized suburb northwest of Chicago. Most of the nice well-organized people here are either native to the suburban area or are transplants from other nice suburban area. One thing many of them seem to have in common is a terror that they may one day be forced to drive in the city (i.e. Chicago).
Now I know that driving in the city does require some specialized skills. It’s not easy to ignore speed limits, traffic lights and lane markings all at the same time. It can be hard to decide which of many obstacles to avoid: garbage trucks, bike messengers, pushcart vendors, or tourists from Germany and Iowa who have staggered into the street, agog at the tall buildings.
Driving in the city also requires split-second decision-making. The sound of an ambulance siren bounces off the buildings, making it impossible to figure out which direction it’s coming from. The omnipresent scaffoldings and the stanchions for the el trains often make it impossible to see around corners, so an ambulance may seem to suddenly appear as if from a trap door. Your lane may suddenly disappear. The directional signs giving you advance warning of your turn may have disappeared months or years ago. Street signs can be a luxury item in some neighborhoods: sometimes you have to go through an intersection and then crane your head around backward to try to see what street you just went past. A city bus may move into your lane without so much as a turn signal, and then stop dead at an intersection for up to ten minutes, taunting you with that “Do NOT turn right in front of bus” sticker.
The places in Chicago where three streets cross, creating six-way intersections, are more thrilling than any roller coaster at Six Flags. Those with traffic lights are fun enough, but the ones without are a white-knuckle thrill ride not to be missed—especially when you mix in a semi tractor-trailer truck , bicycles, strollers, drunks and the man pushing the paletta cart. Since the concept of taking turns is anathema to most humans, sometimes you just have to grip the wheel, grit your teeth, and floor it.
Chicago also has a big river running through it. This means that a lot of streets end abruptly with no option but to turn around (if you’re lucky) or back out (if you’re not). Chicago also has a lovely variety of drawbridges that alternately allow street traffic to pass over them and river traffic to pass under them. My family and I were on a water taxi on the river one day and saw a large barge go through out to Lake Michigan past the Lake Shore Drive bridge, a truly wonderful thing to watch. Drawbridges are amazingly cool devices, and they make for great film locations.
Unfortunately one thing that happens to drawbridges is that they can get stuck open. One of the largest and busiest Chicago River bridges, the Michigan Avenue bridge, was stuck in a raised position for two months in 1992, as a result of an accident involving a construction crane. Traffic was backed up and snarled for blocks around.
One of the most fun parts about driving in downtown Chicago are the many ramps leading to fabulous underground locations. Lower Wacker Drive (featured extensively in the Batman movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smwyiIIImhA&feature=related, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEOkPPn214&feature=related ) is a city unto itself. This spooky, winding, constantly dripping route that follows the river for about 2 miles is like the servant’s stair of Chicago. Most of the big buildings on Upper Wacker have their loading docks down here. For years it has functioned as an enormous open-air homeless shelter (although many people say they were rousted with fire hoses when Daley decided to clean up the city for the 1996 Democratic National Convention).
Another of Mayor Daley’s bright ideas was a number of enormous concrete flower garden/planters the size of a single car garage. When they were originally unveiled, it soon became apparent that although undeniably beautiful, they were so grand that they completely blocked the view of the average automobile driver trying to make a turn. These planters have since been scaled back enough so you can see around them.
Of course, once you find the street you’re looking for and navigate the turn, you may very well discover that the street is blocked off for one of the dozens of street festivals Chicagoans enjoy each year. From the Taste of Chicago to the to the Gay Pride Parade you just never know when you might turn a corner and be confronted with ranks of sawhorses closing off blocks of surface street for some sort of festival or so that several hundred men in hot pants or assless chaps can parade down Halsted Street.
One piece of good advice I can offer is to lock your car doors when driving downtown. Once I was sitting at a traffic light in broad daylight and someone approached my car from my blind spot and tried to open my passenger side door. Luckily my doors were locked. I never actually saw the face of this would-be intruder—he retreated away from my car, still in my blind spot, and the traffic light changed so I never saw which direction he went.
Another memorable driving experience I had while driving in Chicago happened on the night the Bulls won the NBA championship in 1991. Half the city poured pell-mell into to the street, yelling, honking horns, blaring music, cheering, waving flags, overturning vehicles and shooting into the air. But don’t worry suburbanites—this probably won’t happen again for years---
Now I know that driving in the city does require some specialized skills. It’s not easy to ignore speed limits, traffic lights and lane markings all at the same time. It can be hard to decide which of many obstacles to avoid: garbage trucks, bike messengers, pushcart vendors, or tourists from Germany and Iowa who have staggered into the street, agog at the tall buildings.
Driving in the city also requires split-second decision-making. The sound of an ambulance siren bounces off the buildings, making it impossible to figure out which direction it’s coming from. The omnipresent scaffoldings and the stanchions for the el trains often make it impossible to see around corners, so an ambulance may seem to suddenly appear as if from a trap door. Your lane may suddenly disappear. The directional signs giving you advance warning of your turn may have disappeared months or years ago. Street signs can be a luxury item in some neighborhoods: sometimes you have to go through an intersection and then crane your head around backward to try to see what street you just went past. A city bus may move into your lane without so much as a turn signal, and then stop dead at an intersection for up to ten minutes, taunting you with that “Do NOT turn right in front of bus” sticker.
The places in Chicago where three streets cross, creating six-way intersections, are more thrilling than any roller coaster at Six Flags. Those with traffic lights are fun enough, but the ones without are a white-knuckle thrill ride not to be missed—especially when you mix in a semi tractor-trailer truck , bicycles, strollers, drunks and the man pushing the paletta cart. Since the concept of taking turns is anathema to most humans, sometimes you just have to grip the wheel, grit your teeth, and floor it.
Chicago also has a big river running through it. This means that a lot of streets end abruptly with no option but to turn around (if you’re lucky) or back out (if you’re not). Chicago also has a lovely variety of drawbridges that alternately allow street traffic to pass over them and river traffic to pass under them. My family and I were on a water taxi on the river one day and saw a large barge go through out to Lake Michigan past the Lake Shore Drive bridge, a truly wonderful thing to watch. Drawbridges are amazingly cool devices, and they make for great film locations.
Unfortunately one thing that happens to drawbridges is that they can get stuck open. One of the largest and busiest Chicago River bridges, the Michigan Avenue bridge, was stuck in a raised position for two months in 1992, as a result of an accident involving a construction crane. Traffic was backed up and snarled for blocks around.
One of the most fun parts about driving in downtown Chicago are the many ramps leading to fabulous underground locations. Lower Wacker Drive (featured extensively in the Batman movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smwyiIIImhA&feature=related, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZEOkPPn214&feature=related ) is a city unto itself. This spooky, winding, constantly dripping route that follows the river for about 2 miles is like the servant’s stair of Chicago. Most of the big buildings on Upper Wacker have their loading docks down here. For years it has functioned as an enormous open-air homeless shelter (although many people say they were rousted with fire hoses when Daley decided to clean up the city for the 1996 Democratic National Convention).
Another of Mayor Daley’s bright ideas was a number of enormous concrete flower garden/planters the size of a single car garage. When they were originally unveiled, it soon became apparent that although undeniably beautiful, they were so grand that they completely blocked the view of the average automobile driver trying to make a turn. These planters have since been scaled back enough so you can see around them.
Of course, once you find the street you’re looking for and navigate the turn, you may very well discover that the street is blocked off for one of the dozens of street festivals Chicagoans enjoy each year. From the Taste of Chicago to the to the Gay Pride Parade you just never know when you might turn a corner and be confronted with ranks of sawhorses closing off blocks of surface street for some sort of festival or so that several hundred men in hot pants or assless chaps can parade down Halsted Street.
One piece of good advice I can offer is to lock your car doors when driving downtown. Once I was sitting at a traffic light in broad daylight and someone approached my car from my blind spot and tried to open my passenger side door. Luckily my doors were locked. I never actually saw the face of this would-be intruder—he retreated away from my car, still in my blind spot, and the traffic light changed so I never saw which direction he went.
Another memorable driving experience I had while driving in Chicago happened on the night the Bulls won the NBA championship in 1991. Half the city poured pell-mell into to the street, yelling, honking horns, blaring music, cheering, waving flags, overturning vehicles and shooting into the air. But don’t worry suburbanites—this probably won’t happen again for years---
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
