Apple Store Chicago: Steve Jobs Tribute

Last week we were downtown for no particular reason and we drove by the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue. The front windows of the store were plastered with Post-It notes of every color imaginable:

We parked the car and walked around to look. Each note was a tiny tribute to Steve Jobs. The most interesting thing to me was the array of languages the "posts" were written in: English, of course, but also French, Spanish, Tamil, and both Japanese and Chinese, along with more I didn't recognize.

Inside the store looking out:

Lego 'Dub

Here is a Volkswagen Camper Bus made entirely of Legos:

In the window of the Lego Store at Woodfield Mall.

Cool, huh?

What Is IN That Lake?: “Sunken Warbirds”

Here’s something I find to be equal parts really cool and really creepy: in addition to the various shipwrecks, Asian Carp and junk bulldozed into the lake after the Chicago Fire, the Navy estimates that there are between 60 and 80 WWII era US Military airplanes in Lake Michigan.

This is in fact pretty awesome. During WWII, the Navy commissioned two passenger steamers and turned them into fresh-water aircraft carriers: the USS Wolverine and USS Sable. These ships were used exclusively in the Great Lakes for training Navy pilots. Their flight decks were somewhat shorter than a regular aircraft carrier, so the Navy figured that if the pilots could take off and land from them, real carriers would be easy!

Another advantage to training over Lake Michigan was that recovery operations were much easier in the relatively shallow water, and if a pilot did end up in the drink, he was unlikely to get eaten by sharks.

Between 1942 and 1945, as many as 35,000 pilots trained and qualified over Lake Michigan, flying between the Naval Air Station in Glenview and Wolverine and Sable. In fact, the majority of carrier qualifications during World War II occurred over Lake Michigan. Pilots trained on these carriers played a critical role in helping American forces win the Battle of Midway. Navy pilot George HW Bush trained aboard the Sable.

During this time there were over 200 accidents and as many as 128 losses. Eight pilots were killed. Six of the crashed aircraft were recovered during the war.

Every so often one of these old planes gets pulled out of the lake and restored. Because the water of Lake Michigan is cold and fresh, they are very well preserved. Aircraft have been found with tires inflated, parachutes preserved, leather seats maintained, and engine crankcases full of oil. The paint on the fuselage is often still bright, allowing for easier identification.

On April 24, 2009 an SBD Dauntless dive bomber, similar to the one on display at Midway Airport, was salvaged from 315 feet of water about 27 miles out from Waukegan. On November 8, 2010 an F4U-1 "Birdcage Corsair" fighter was retrieved from about 250 feet of water approximately 33 miles out, and the Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat at O’Hare airport was recovered from the lake, as well.

So! The next time you are out enjoying that Great Lake we keep so handy, imagine that old airplane graveyard, and think about  the part it played in winning World War II!

Recondite? Random? Both? Lake Michigan Water Cribs

This is the type of esoterica (NOT the skin lotion) that I absolutely adore:

Did you know that those funny little squat structures out in Lake Michigan near Chicago are water intake “cribs”? They kinda look like boats or short stubby lighthouses.

There are four of them: the Wilson Avenue crib, the Four Mile Crib, the William E. Dever Crib and the 68th Street crib.

The Dever Crib is named after William Emmett Dever, who was mayor of Chicago from 1923 to 1927.

What is cool about these structures is that they are the source of fresh water for Chicago. They are each connected to a really long underground pipe that brings water into the city from out under the lake.

The very first crib built was the Two-Mile Crib, in 1865. Ellis Chesbrough came up with the idea in 1863 to solve the problem caused by everybody in Chicago dumping their wastewater into the river and therefore into the lake.

Chesbrough’s plan called for a two-mile-long tunnel under the lake out to the crib. The tunnel was five feet wide and lined with brick. It took several years to complete and here, for me, is the kicker: a couple of guys digging, a couple of guys laying brick, and two small mules, working six days a week for about three years, dug a tunnel 10,567 feet long UNDERNEATH the lake.

Oh my gosh does that gives me the heebity-jeebities. I get claustrophobic if my sheets are tucked in too tightly.

Can you imagine digging a tunnel two miles long and five feet wide, 200 feet under the lake? Just you and a couple other guys and two mules?

Anyway, the original Two-Mile Crib was replaced by the Carter H. Harrison crib in 1900. Carter H. Harrison was mayor of Chicago from 1879 to 1887. The William E. Dever Crib was built in 1935 as a replacement for the Harrison crib, but the two cribs ended up working side-by-side until 1997 because of increased demand for water.

As demand grew, three more cribs were built. On January 20, 1909 a fire at the 68th Street crib killed 70 workmen.

Originally there were "Crib Tenders", like lighthouse keepers, that stayed on the cribs. The four-man crews worked week rotations, changing light bulbs, doing water testing and breaking up ice dams.

Each crib had a bunkroom, shower, and kitchen.

Kinda like a tiny, weird summer camp.

Nowadays the cribs are monitored by computers and cameras, and a crew goes out about once a week to do chores and then comes right back.

In 1998 the city decided to empty the tunnel leading from the Carter Harrison Crib to shore in order to inspect it. Part of the tunnel collapsed and had to be rebuilt.

So next time you are down on the beach or cruising Lake Shore Drive, squint a little out to the east and see if you can spot one or more of the water cribs, now that you know what they are.

Recondite? Maybe. Random? Probably. Awesome? Definitely.

Crib tunnel images from:
The Tunnels and Water System of Chicago: Under the Lake and Under the River. Chicago: J.M. Wing & Co., 1874.

A Love Letter From The School Bus Driver

Dear Neighbor:
I call you neighbor, in the friendliest possible way, because you are driving so close to the bus. I can see you, but just barely. I know you are there, but I’m not sure of your intention.

Please don’t pass the bus on the right, if you can avoid it. If you are in my blind spot, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island, you may find yourself flicked off the roadway like a paper football in study hall. I really don’t want to hit you. It would ruin everyone’s day.

Please don’t cut me off in traffic. This vehicle is not nimble. If you don’t leave me enough room to avoid you, you may find us conjoined.

Please stop at the painted stop line when you come to an intersection. If your rear wheels are in the crosswalk, I may have to get VERY close to your vehicle as I turn onto your street.  

Please don’t tailgate the bus. You’ve seen the signs on the big rigs: “If you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you.” This is also true of the school bus.  If I can’t see you to wave you around, you may have to stop at every other block with me. And if you are too close to the back of the bus and I have to stop short, those big tow hooks under my bumper are going to open up your hood like a can of tuna.

Please don’t drive through my stop arm. If my red lights are flashing and the stop sign is out, a child may suddenly cross the street in front of the bus. What if you hit him? Would that work with your schedule?

Please be just a little patient, neighbor. Your convenience is not my priority. Getting these kids to school safely and on time is more important to me than anything you have planned for today.

Why are we all so impatient?

My latest theory is that road rage is a result of tight pants, uncomfortable shoes, and too much coffee.
Everywhere I go, I see drivers who are in a desperate hurry. They can’t bear to wait for traffic lights, can’t bear to drive the speed limit…does everyone need to pee really bad?

Can't Wait to Love the Eye

(Photo by Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

Oak Park artist Tony Tasset just finished installing his "Eye" sculpture in Pritzker Park at the corner of State and Van Buren in Chicago.

I already love the Bean and the nearby fountains over on Michigan Avenue -- I can't wait to love the "Eye"!

Get more info at ChicagoNow.com.

It Happens Every Year

Every year in the tidy little suburb northwest of Chicago in which I live we have at least two fabulous parades: Memorial Day and the 4th of July (or the 2nd, 3rd or 5th, whichever is most convenient). We have two large high schools in our town, and the school marching bands get to take turns “headlining” the parades.

The parades are great without fail: we always have boy scouts, fire trucks, tumblers, the VFW, the Corvette club, wagons with bunting, the local church rock band, bicycles with flags, and at least one of the area martial arts academies always participates. Shriners, snowplows, school busses, dogs with bandanas, and political candidates abound. The parade always takes at least an hour to pass you, no matter where on the route you’ve set up your folding chair.

And every year without fail, one of the most reliable parts of the event is the five-to-ten minute gap in the middle caused by a train.

You see, we live in one of the many towns that sit astraddle the Union Pacific / METRA railway line that shoots out of Chicago straight as a string headed northwest. The only area in town big enough to form up this fantastic spectacle is on one side of the tracks, and the only park that is both big enough to contain the “Hometown Fest” carnival and adjacent to an area large enough to set up the firework cannons safely is on the OTHER side of the tracks. So every year the parade gets stopped by a train.

It’s easy to pick out the newbies and out-of-towners because they stand up and crane their heads to look back along the route, asking, “What happened? Is it over? Is that the end?” while the locals watch them with a smile and prepare to settle down for the second half. Hometown folks are used to it-- most regard it as kind of a “seventh-inning stretch” or intermission-- a chance to stand up and move around, visit the Porta-Potty, or step inside quickly for another cold beer.

Chicago Blackout and Heat Wave

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.

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---

This Tickles Me - Finding The Perfect Parking Spot

Here’s something that was tickling me the other day. A fair amount of my leisure time is spent in my car looking for a parking spot. When we lived in Chicago, of course, this was a really involved process, and we would often just walk or take the train or bus instead of using the car. The odds of finding a parking spot within six blocks or so of our apartment were just too close to those of getting attacked by a shark while simultaneously being struck by lightning. I must say, however, that the parallel parking skills I acquired while living in the city are pretty much unrivaled in the suburbs. Few people out here know the rush of pleasure achieved by squeezing your stick-shift vehicle into a parking spot on the left-hand curb exactly four inches longer than the car itself without setting off a car alarm either in front or behind. Most folks here feel nervous if they have to park their minivan parallel to the curb at all, let alone with another vehicle on the same block.
Anyway, when we moved out to the suburbs, it became necessary to drive just about everywhere. First in the little compact car we brought from the city, but of course after awhile we did get the minivan. And we drive to the mall, to the theater, to the grocery store, to the swimming pool, to school, to work, and on and on. In most of these parking lots, it becomes necessary at times to “shark” for a parking spot. This means, to those of you unfamiliar with the process, cruising up and down long lines of parked cars on a city street or in a lot roughly the size of Rhode Island, watching eagle-eyed for a person walking to their car, keys in hand; or the folks loading their stroller into the van; or best of all, the sudden appearance of back-up lights only a quarter of a mile ahead. Reaction time is of the essence. If you don’t immediately swoop up as close as possible to the soon-to-be-vacant slot and snap on your turn-signal, someone will invariably jump past you and snag the prize, leaving you to resume your quest, seething. Of course, in the city, the offended party would almost always exit their vehicle and begin yelling and throwing empty fast-food containers at the interloper, but in the suburbs we usually only honk, glare (occasionally there are hand gestures involved) and move on.
So all this leads to the observation that has me tickled. A close relative to the chore of “sharking” for a spot is the practice of waiting for the spot closest to the door of the grocery store, or Target, or whatever. On those days in the lovely Midwest when it is in fact sleeting sideways, the spot closest to the door could well be a matter of life and death. However, on your average lovely spring day, the additional five or six feet of walking could in fact do a body good. By law, the very closest slots are reserved for those with “Handicap” plates. But the spots on either side of those—boy oh boy. Glory untold. Nirvana.
So people being what they are, there will always be someone (usually in a large vehicle, windows up, climate-controlled, often 4-wheel drive) that insists upon waiting for that primo spot, even if there is another one open ten feet further along. I have seen folks wait for that spot when the very next spot is open.
The aspect that is both humorous and mildly aggravating is that this waiting must be done exactly in the center of the lane. Not slightly to one side or another, so that neighbors can slide past and use that incrementally less convenient spot. I have seen half a dozen cars lined up behind one stubborn individual who was by gosh gonna score that best spot, and to heck with everyone else’s schedule.
But here’s the kicker (so to speak, although I swear I have never actually kicked anyone doing this, or even their car), here’s the epitome of egregious: when you see someone waiting for that closest, most awesome spot…in the parking lot at the health club.

This Tickles Me - A Wonderful Fall Tradition

Here in the lovely suburbs northwest of Chicago we have a really wonderful fall tradition. In our town we have many large and beautiful deciduous trees. Because we are not permitted to burn our leaves anymore, the local government harasses the hapless citizens into raking the fallen leaves from their yards tidily into piles in the gutter in front of their houses to be collected and recycled as mulch.
Some years this works fine, if there is just enough rain and not too much wind. Not enough rain, and the leaves all blow into the yard across the street. So your leaves are now in the neighbor’s yard, which is good, but everything from the yard behind you now has to be raked out of your yard. (Ideally, if there are enough windy days, the leaves eventually end up in the next town over and become somebody else’s problem altogether.)
Too much rain, and the piles of leaves become clumps of goop resembling papier-mâché. Leaf-mâché, possibly. Or foliage-mâché.
This ick basically stays glued into the gutter until a good hard spring thunderstorm (or “gully-washer”, in the parlance) washes it down into the storm drains and floods the street. Then begin the grand spring traditions of kids riding bikes through the flooded intersections trying to hydroplane and crash dramatically, and the time honored poking of rakes and brooms and hockey sticks into the storm drains to try to get them unclogged.

Anyway, most folks obediently rake their leaves into the gutter, and on the big day, a huge leaf rake truck comes through and sweeps all the little piles down the street (along with the occasional forgotten Herbie-Kerbie recycling bin or poorly anchored mailbox). The rake truck is a snowplow with its blade removed and a huge three-sided basket contraption in its place that pushes all the small piles into fabulously ENORMOUS piles at intersections all over the neighborhood. These piles are so large that when driving in your car you absolutely cannot see over or around them and have no idea whether a kid on a skateboard or a UPS truck will meet you on the other side.

Next, along comes a front-end loader and a pretty red village dump truck. The ENORMOUS piles are scooped up and into the dump trucks, which then zip gaily off down the road to the village's recycling center, sprinkling leaves behind them as they go, like confetti in Mother Nature’s Mardi Gras parade...yay!

This process tickles me every year.