What I learned about Chicago today June 6, 2008
Posted by faranaaz in Cities.Tags: Chicago, heat, humidity, summer, weather
1 comment so far
Summer is creeping up in Chicago and yesterday Sameer and I were given a taste of what’s to come. It turns out summer here is like summer in Durban – insanely hot and humid beyond belief.
When I stepped outside the building yesterday, the heat was so cloying, I had difficulty breathing. It was completely unexpected because the sky was still overcast as it has been all week. Considering that we’d had rainstorms on Tuesday, when I looked out the window yesterday morning, I had no idea that it would be that warm. It felt like being in a sauna and I couldn’t wait to get back indoors.
Falling asleep last night was a mission because it was so uncomfortably hot. The apartments in our building have heaters but no air-conditioners. I spent ages tossing and turning. At about 1am, I suggested that we open a window and Sameer said “Are you crazy? Do you know how hot it is out there?”
I find it incredible that this city can go from freezing cold, chilly winds and snow storms to this in ten weeks.
Cycling along the lakefront June 5, 2008
Posted by faranaaz in Cities.Tags: bikes, breakfast, Chicago, Lake Shore Drive, Orange
add a comment
Sameer had worked well last week and had some free time on Sunday. So we went to the LakeView part of town for brunch at a place called Orange. This place is so trendy that the young and hip patrons have to queue outside for a good half hour before getting a table. It’s no Bongo Room in that, when breakfast comes you’re quite happy to eat it rather than just stare at it. But still the menu is enticing.
Orange is famous for their Frooshi (sushi in which the fish has been substituted with fresh fruit) and their Pancake Flight which is a platter of four pancakes built around a theme. The theme on Sunday was chocolate so you’d get a chocolate chip, chocolate mousse, mint chocolate, and chocolate pecan pancake. I wasn’t in such a chocolately mood, so I settled for the Jelly Donut Pancakes – two plate sized pancakes with a homemade jelly between them (Sunday’s jelly was a stewed apple preserve), sugar sprinkles on top and a dollop of citrus butter creme. So simple but yet so yummy! The other thing I liked about it was the pitcher of coffee they bring to your table. You have a choice between regular coffee and orange coffee. I went with the orange infused coffee which tastes like a mixture of coffee and orange juice. Sameer wasn’t too keen on it but I liked it.
After breakfast we had to waddle out of there and onto the street. There a couple of nifty clothing stores and comic/gaming stores and we went into a few of them to look around. The comic store was a mistake coz of course we ended up buying something. I got the second Buffy season 8 graphic novel, which is called No Future for You. It’s Faith-centric, which is awesome. Can never have too much Faith. 
And Sameer got Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
Then we walked towards the lake. The reason we came to Lakeview in the first place was actually to hire bikes so we could cycle along the lakeside. This is one of those “things to do in Chicago”. We’d accidentally left our Real City Chicago book at home so we didn’t have any maps to go by and weren’t exactly sure where the bike rental places were. But we realized that since biking in this area is so popular, we could just keep walking and would in all likelihood just stumble across one. And so we did. We rented two town bikes and we were off.
Along the way, we saw
load of kids playing soccer along the way – little boys and girls and teenaged boys and girls and all their parents and siblings cheering them along.
people taking their dogs out for some fun and exercise, letting them run along the lake and swim through the water.
walkers, joggers, runners, skateboarders, rollerbladers, and cyclists of all ages along the path. This was one of the less crowded parts. There were other parts where all you’d hear was “On your left, on your left” every five seconds as someone tried to overtake you without veering into oncoming traffic.
the beach at last. The water was nice and warm but for some reason there were hardly any people swimming. So we just sat for a while enjoying the calm, laid back vibe.
We had a really good time cycling along the lake and probably could have stayed out longer and followed the bike path further but we’d only rented the bikes for an hour and had to return them on time. Afterwards, we caught a bus back into town. Along the way we saw more and more people flooding the parks, paths, and beaches. We got off on Michigan Avenue to mosey around because the weather was good and everyone seemed to be in such a summery mood. With the amount of people on the streets you would have thought that there was some event on but there wasn’t. I think Chicagoans are so good natured and outdoorsy because the weather is so awful for six months of the year, that when it’s dry, warm, and sunny they have to go out and make merry.
Breakfast at the Bongo Room May 31, 2008
Posted by faranaaz in Uncategorized.Tags: Bongo Room, breakfast, Chicago, eggs benedict, french toast
2 comments
Early morning breakfast at the Bongo Room. Deceptively small breakfast place out near Wicker Park, with olive and brown walls, rotating stainless steel ceiling fans, and an exposed brick wall with a retro poster painting on it.
I had the Chocolate Tower, which is a slightly chocolatey, malty tower of french toast, with maple syrup/mascarpone sauce, chocolate shavings and slices of banana.
This was how far I got with the french toast before I ground to a halt.
Sameer had the Eggs Benedict – perfectly poached eggs on an English muffin with roasted red peppers, spinach, and a hollandaise sauce served with roast potatoes in a sour cream and herb sauce. Hmmmm… I ate about a quarter of that too. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t get very far with the french toast.)
It was divine. Next time I’ll try the key lime cheesecake pancakes…
Delayed ass post May 30, 2008
Posted by faranaaz in Sightseeing.Tags: architecture, boat tour, Chicago
1 comment so far
Yes, I know I was supposed to do my day by day thing and didn’t. I suck. But I have an excuse. Oh, actually I don’t. Meh…
Behold ye olde picture of us on a riverboat tour.
Aside from giving us a totally new perspective of the city, this tour taught me a lot about architecture. Well maybe taught is the wrong word. More like it piqued my interest. Now I want to get a coffee table book with a title like “Skyscrapers of the World” or something.
Here are some things I learned.
1. If you have a big X shape in a building you don’t need any interior support structures — the whole thing just stands up on the basis of that X.
2. Skyscrapers are all shiny and glossy so that they actually look like something other than concrete. Many Chicago skyscrapers reflect the buildings and environment around them, which is really quite beautiful.
3. Railway companies in the US own the space above the railway lines and can sell or rent out this space. As two of the major train stations are pretty much on the river (Union Station and Ogilvie Station), many of the riverside buildings in Chicago are actually owned or built on land leased from the railway companies.
4. Art deco buildings can often be identified by the use of geometric shapes and color in the facade.
5. Contextualism is where a building is designed around the space it occupies. The building below curves along with the flow of the river on one side, and aligns to the city’s street grid system on two other sides.
6. The Dark Knight returns was shot in the abandoned US Post Office down the road from us.
Okay, that last part wasn’t really about architecture at all.
Some other interesting things we saw were that Chicago has more movable bridges than any other city in the world. Also, many of the flashy loft apartments along the river were actually warehouses in the old days. The windows have merely been punched out and the interior redesigned as living space. In addition to this, the city requires a green strip along the riverbank so organizations plant trees, shrubs, flowers and grass along the area between the building and the river. So you have these plain, old, squarish buildings with all this greenery along the riverbank and it’s actually really pretty.
Another funny story we heard was about a fountain that was built along the river. The designers didn’t account for gravity and wind resistance so instead of forming an arc across the river and pouring water safely on the other side, it just drenches anyone who passes by in a continuous sheet of water. Dumb ass designers… How did those designers get through university?
Oh, and I also liked the story about the CEO who felt that all employees should be treated equally and no-one should have a corner office so he had his building designed in such a way that the corners are all solid concrete, with no offices in them.
So that was our architectural boat tour in a nutshell.
Green City Market May 25, 2008
Posted by faranaaz in Cities.Tags: Chicago, Green City Market
3 comments
Since realizing exactly how short our time in Chicago has become, Sameer and I have been trying to squeeze in all the things we meant to do in the early weeks here but never got around to. We’ve been quite busy the last two weekends but I haven’t been blogging to keep pace. So what I’ll do is blog on one thing each day for the next few days and hopefully I’ll eventually catch up.
I’ll start with the Green City Market., a farmers’ market we read about in our trusty DK guidebook. We tried to go to the market before, two weeks ago. We did the whole trip out there to the other side of town, and found the spot and everything but instead of a market there was a big sign that said “Farmers’ Market begins May 14th”. How disappointing. Our second outing was much more productive. This time, the market was actually on. And there was sunshine and everything so I guess missing it the first time round actually worked in our favor.
There weren’t very many stalls but the atmosphere more than made up for the limited size of it. It was crawling with really laid back people, kids and dogs. Most of the vendors were selling foodstuffs such as organic, free range chicken or homemade preserves and freshly baked bread. We’d skipped breakfast so we were ravenous by the time we turned up. Once we’d wandered around and isolated the instantly edible stuff, we put in our orders for cheese and herb crepes and then realized that there as no beverage stall – catastrophe! Well not really, because we ended up walking to Old Town for drinks, and that was great just because we got to wander down these little streets with people from the area and it made us feel like locals.
In Wells Street there were people walking alongside their kids who were biking along or riding scooters, there were adorable little kiddies in full baseball kit and there were runners – loads of them. And all of them ended up in Starbucks for some reason. 
Well, we were in Starbucks too and Sameer (eventually) got a huge mocha frapuccino which is really a big coffee flavored, cream covered milkshake. And I got the most divine iced tea. They call it a passion flavored shaken iced tea lemonade. The name is a mouthful but it’s worth learning. The taste is so sweet and tart, it’s my new favourite drink. Anyway, we made our way back, dodging more parents with their kids on their shoulders or in strollers. There was one kid who was cycling along on his little bicycle and he stops dead, drops the big to the pavement, hops up onto a low retaining wall and walks in a circle with his one arm hugging the tree in the center. Then he jumps down, gest back on his bike and pedals off. Totally random! I had to laugh. Things like that just make me more broody. Children are like little aliens living among us, I swear.
When we got back to the market, we passed a woman walking with a triplet stroller — three babies in a row. Oh my gosh. She must have nerves of steel to take three tiny babies out like that. (They looked to be only one or two months old). But I guess it was nothing compared to the other woman we saw, who had a quadraplet stroller. I didn’t even know those existed! I saw two of the babies with her, someone else must have had the other two. My god…
Anyway, the cheese and herb crepes were divine. Soooo tasty and herby and good. We wandered off to the other end of the market and camped out on some benches and then we just watched the people around us. There was this one little boy whose parents had pushed him in in one of those car shaped buggies. He was little, probably just over a year old, and he while he was playing catch with his dad, little girls kept wandering up and trying to play with his car. And each time he saw them, he’d climb into the car, and just sit tight until they lost interest or their parents came to fetch them. Then he’d get back out and play catch with his dad again.
After that we wandered around a bit. It’s a really green part of town so lots of families come that way to walk or cycle and when you’re there you just generally feel really laid back. When things started to die down a bit, we caught a bus home and logged on to the internet to plan for the next event of the day — an architecture boat tour and dinner at an Indian restaurant. More on that tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, tomorrow is Memorial Day in the States. It’s a day of remembrance for those lost in miliatary conflict, sort of like Poppy Day in the UK. It’s a public holiday and there are military parades, services, and of course big sales. We missed the big parade yesterday coz we went to a sale. Poor form, I know. I don’t really have an excuse but next time we see each other I’ll model my Sketchers for you.
