Sunday, April 15, 2007

Gift to Chicago by people of Poland

Just picked this up off a post by SharpTent in SSP:

Please join us and the Chicago Park District in a presentation of a major new sculptural installation—Agora - by world-renowned, Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. One hundred iron figures, nearly nine feet tall, will be created in Poland as a gift to Chicago, a Sister City of Warsaw, the first international city to become a Â"sister cityÂ" of Chicago. Agora, will consist of figures walking in multiple directions or standing still. Like individuals, each will be uniquely created.

Mary Jane Jacob, Chair of the Sculpture Department and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will give a slide presentation on Magdalena Abakanowicz and the Chicago Park District's Department of Planning will present the siting, design and planning for the park space.

The artist has donated the design and is fabricating the sculpture in Poznan, Poland, with Polish artists who are generously volunteering their time. Today, Chicago is the largest city of Poles outside Warsaw.

The prominent location of the northeast corner of Michigan Avenue and Roosevelt Road is being considered for this public sculpture. This corner is one of the last remaining, unfinished landscaped rooms envisioned by Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett for Grant Park. Starting from Millennium Park at Randolph to Roosevelt Road along Michigan Avenue there are several defined, landscaped rooms with art, culture, activity, and beautiful landscaping creating Grant Park destinations. This location is a gateway to the South Loop and Near West Side as it is connected literally and figuratively ( sculptures on the bridge represent UIC) by the Roosevelt Road Bridge to the UIC community and campus. It is also the site of one of the cityÂ's historic entry points for immigrants and migrants during the much of the 20th century.>

Going to Chicago.. what to do?!?!

Alright Chicagoans! I am coming to your city at the end of september to party and see the sights. I am bringing along my fave forumers with me, Dallas Texan and CityGod5. Our main objective is to party, but since I have never been to this city, nor seen a skyscraper close up, I really want to take it all in.

So what should I do? Where should I go? I want to see the razzle dazzle of the city, and I want to see the grit. Please let me know, I dont want to miss a thing. I think we are planning on having dinner on the 96th floor of the Hancock building (yikes!).

And if any of you forumers want to join in on the party, let me know!! I am very excited about this trip!!!!!>

What is Chicago's greatest commercial boulevard?

Of course, outside of downtown... >

Question for NWside and others who might know

Hello, I would like to revisit a question I asked you guys earlier. Has there been any new construction yet on that parcel at Armitage and California? I am still wondering if Smithfield properties is building a strip mall there>

Metra extensions/ RTA expansion

OK, I just thought it would be interesting to see what other forumers thought of Metra extensions and/or possible RTA expansion into surrounding counties to service other metro areas with Metra (and also Pace, but for this thread lets just stick with the trains.) Also, lets hear some opinions how extensions and expansion would effect Chicago area tourism, business, retail, housing, traffic, thoughts on reverse commuting, and even urban sprawl.>

Chi-ching! $$

Alright, guys, the city just leased the Skyway and is getting an instant injection of 1.8billion dollars in cash! The city has a 200+ million dollar hole in its budget that can easily be plugged. Also, the city could easily plug the CTA's budget hole next year, especially if the CTA raises fares.

But why do I get the idea it is not as simple as that? Will this $1.8 billion dissappear into a black hole? Can't the city just use its money to help patch these problems up?>

Pullman and others

Have any of you guys ever visited Pullman or the Pullman historic district?

I have gone there just once--it's really nice but it needs some renovation.

Interestingly, Pullman is SO far south that it almost feels like it's in another city. I would love to see south side neighborhoods get more attention on this forum. Pullman and other somewhat "distant" neighborhoods like Hegewisch and Beverly are actually VERY nice, albeit kind of family-oriented. But all of them are historical and urban, with an incredibly beautiful housing stock, as well as some nice (but smaller-scale) urban shopping strips, including Commercial Ave between 98th and 103rd st (being placed, by the way, on Chicago's list of pedestrian streets in the new Zoning Ordinance). I wonder why people don't visit them as much. Do any of you guys see any of those 'hoods coming into the limelight in the near future? What do you think is holding them back? From my understanding, all of them have good Metra access.

What they lack, however, is CTA 'L lines.

Does anybody have any more interesting info about these neighborhoods, or pics, that they would like to share?>

Britannica bound for old Traffic Court site

Britannica bound for old Traffic Court site
Costly restoration project gets boost

By Thomas A. Corfman
Tribune staff reporter
Published March 31, 2005


Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. is moving its offices from South Michigan Avenue to the riverfront Reid Murdoch building, giving a long-awaited financial boost to the redevelopment of the landmark structure.

Owned by Swiss investor Jacob Safra, the longtime Chicago company has signed a 10-year lease for 75,300 square feet of space in the 11-story structure at 325 N. LaSalle St., which many Chicagoans remember as the former home of Traffic Court.

Despite a time-consuming and costly restoration by River North developer Albert Friedman in 2002, the 310,800-square-foot building has been slow to attract tenants, partly because of the weak leasing market and partly because even top-quality renovations appeal to a select audience of companies.

"We would have preferred things happen sooner, but by the very nature of the challenges of doing a historic building, it takes a little longer," said Friedman, president of Friedman Properties Ltd.

In August 2003, real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. took over leasing of the building, which is now about 60 percent leased.

Britannica's pending move from 310 S. Michigan Ave., where it has been a tenant since 1982, was prompted by a plan to convert the building into residential condominiums.

"If you're a tenant, it's a fabulous time," said William Bowe, general counsel with Britannica, which was advised by Chicago-based MB Real Estate Services LLC.

The Reid Murdoch building seemed to suit Britannica. "There is a style and grace about this landmark building that fit our company's history," Bowe said.

The encyclopedia was first published in Scotland in 1768, moving to the U.S. in 1901 and to Chicago in the 1930s. In 1993, the company was one of the nation's largest privately held firms, with estimated revenue of $591 million, according to Forbes magazine. The firm does not disclose revenues.

Safra's acquisition in 1996 was followed by a costly attempt at a major Internet play. After a dramatic downsizing, Britannica has seemingly become a steady publisher of electronic and printed reference works and educational materials.>

What does Chicago offer architecturally?

What is Chicago offering the world of architecture right now? This city has for most of the last century been on the vanguard of that field--the first skyscraper, the first modernist skyscraper, the tallest building in the world, etc, etc--but for about three decades, it seems as if we've been sleeping. The 90s saw the cutting edge of architectural design move to Asia and the Middle East; within the last few years, some Western cities have picked up too. (London and New York come to mind, two cities with several absolutely breathtaking projects proposed or underway.)

Where does that leave us? We're just beginning to emerge from the period in which we scarred River North with a few dozen concrete cookie-cutter condos. Is anything going on right now in this city that the world is looking at and taking notes on? Will there be in the near future?

Millennium Park certainly comes to mind. Maybe the rest of the forum can add to that list.>

Daley: Raising CTA fare to $2 a 'good idea'

Mayor Daley on Friday said it's a "good idea" to raise CTA fares by a quarter to $2 and scale back the drastic service cuts planned if state lawmakers don't come up with more transit cash this year.

The mayor denied CTA officials have been crying poor and blaming the Legislature just so riders would beg for a fare increase to save service.

"This is a real issue. It's not going to go away. It's not orchestrated," Daley said. "They have explained it truly, honestly and forthright earlier than they have ever been before."

Without additional funding, CTA boss Frank Kruesi's bad-news budget calls for reducing service by 20 percent and holding the line on the $1.75 base fare.

Before Kruesi made that decision, CTA financial experts determined combining a fare hike and service cuts would create a "downward spiral" of ridership leading to more severe cuts.

"We are not getting over a [financial] hump for a year. This is a structural problem and will continue to be a problem unless something is done to address it," CTA spokeswoman Noelle Gaffney said.

CTA board members on Thursday opened the door to the fare increase, asking staff to brief them on whether a fare increase and lesser service cuts could fill the projected $77 million budget gap in 2005.

In coming weeks, CTA staff will detail their previous fare hike study and the board will consider it as part of their deliberations," Gaffney said.

CTA board chairman Carole Brown has said the board will consider modifying Kruesi's budget proposals as they have in the past.>

Quality aerial maps

http://maps.cityofchicago.org/kiosk/...action=fullext
Has anyone else seen this?
The zoom in quality is better than I've seen on most of the others sites and it was done only a year ago.>

Chicago Skyway toll...good idea?

Chicago toll sale leads way
By Jeremy Grant in Chicago
Published: October 17 2004 18:22 | Last updated: October 17 2004 18:22

Chicago has become the first US city to privatise a toll road or bridge in a landmark $1.8bn project involving Spain's Grupo Ferrovial, one of Europe's largest infrastructure groups, and Macquarie Investment Group (MIG), a unit of Australia's Macquarie Bank.



The deal, unveiled on Friday, is a sign of the increasing appetite among European toll road operators for projects in the US.

Â"Europe has well-capitalised toll road companies that have become more aggressive about looking for new opportunities around the world,Â" said Mark Florian, a managing director in the municipal merger and acquisition group at Goldman Sachs, which acted as financial adviser.

The transaction could also serve as a model for further privatisations in the US, where many budget-strapped cities and states are under pressure to raise cash.

It involves a 7.8m (12.55km) toll road known as the Chicago Skyway built in 1959 and owned by the city. The road will now be operated under a 99-year contract by a consortium involving Cintra, a toll road operator and construction group jointly owned by Ferrovial and MIG. Cintra is set to be spun off this year. The city of Chicago will receive an immediate payment of $1.82bn, some of which will be used to repay Skyway debt, other city debt and create a Â"long-term reserve fundÂ" for Chicago.

Chicago, the third largest city in the US after New York and Los Angeles, has total outstanding debt of $5.4bn and has projected a budget shortfall of $220m for fiscal 2005.

City officials this month delayed finalising the city's budget, saying Chicago's financial situation was the most serious in 15 years.

In August, credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service revised its outlook for the city to negative from stable.

Richard Daley, Chicago's mayor, said: Â"I'm sure that some people will be demanding that we use all of the Skyway proceeds to eliminate the shortfall and maybe even some new spending programmes. I believe it would be fiscally irresponsible to use all of the money at one time.Â"

The only other suchtoll road deal in North America was done in 1999 in Toronto, Canada, also involving Cintra.

Â"Every US governor is going to be looking to see what assets they can now monetise as a result of this [Chicago deal],Â" said John Schmidt, a lawyer involved in the deal at Mayer, Brown Rose & Mawe.>

I know it’s a wrong forum, but…

Hi guys,

I know this isnÂ't the best place to ask, but IÂ'll give it a try anyway. IÂ'm looking for a foreign movie rental. It can be a VHS or DVD, it doesnÂ't matter. The movie IÂ'm looking for in particular is a polish comedy Â"KillerÂ" (no idea on the year of production). I know I could probably visit a polish rental on Belmont/Harlem/Irving Park, but I need the movie to be with English subtitles, and so far I have no luck finding one. If any of you know a place, I would appreciate all the information.>

chicagobusiness.com

There is a new article in this week's Crain's Chicago Business about the new zoning code. I don't have a subscription to Crain's. Does anybody else? I would love to read what they are saying about it. The article is titled "Do's and Don'ts" or something like that>

Damnit. Freescale to stay in Austin, TX

From the Crain's "ticker"

Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., the Motorola spinoff that had narrowed its list of potential headquarter sites down to two, instead has decided to stay in place in Austin, Tx.>

Park Tower

I love this tower. I have visited Skyscrapers.com for info and photos but is not enough. Have anybody any kind of info and photos about this magnificent tower. Thanks .>

The media overlooks Chicago by choice, not by ignorance

The media centers on the coasts are trying to ignore Chicago, that is obvious. I fully believe that it is intentional. They DO NOT want Chicago to be over-advertised because they know it will pull business, people, and vitality away from themselves. Lets face it, NY and LA have a lot of civic-minded people in their local medias that have a vested interest in keeping the world interested in their own cities, and thus Chicago has always had to find other ways of getting exposure.

I believe that Chicago is intentionally being ignored, and this is based on some degree of insecurity. New York is where all the media companies are headquarted (except Tribune), while LA is where all the studios are. Like Macy's taking over Marshall Field's, it's easier for the media to designate 2 basic media centers for the sake of saving money and resources. New York has less to lose by allowing LA to become a dominant media center, since it is so different from New York and so far away from it. Chicago, on the other hand, is more like New York in its urbanity, plus it is much closer to the east coast; thus, leaving Chicago out of the limelight is in New York's interest.

LA? A lot of people in LA hate everything east of California (except Vegas). But they can't ignore New York because New York pretty much owns their entire city. But that is why LA refuses to acknowledge other cities--there is no respect for anything urban among people in LA; in fact, really there is only respect for one thing: good weather. Plus, giving attention to Chicago would only hurt LA, which often competes with Chicago for "second city" status. Despite Chicago's clear economic and financial importance, to LA's derived concious there is no Chicago--there is just LA and NY. I might add that Chicago tends to ignore LA in a very similar way, but it lacks the benefit of a strong media presence.

I honestly believe that NY and LA are going out of their way to keep the media spotlight on themselves and are intentionally trying to leave Chicago in the "cold" (okay, bad pun).

I believe that this has been going on for a very long time>

Should Chicago annex Evanston?

Okay, lets face it. Evanston has WAY more in common with Chicago than with the other suburbs (with several notable exceptions). So why not join the family and become one of Chicago's famous neighborhoods? One, it will add to Chicago's tax revenue, plus, it will add to the population. Plus, it has good CTA connections.

In turn, Evanston can tap into Chicago's spending power to improve its streets, parks, public spaces, etc>

A cold Thanksgiving day in DC--a thought about Chicago

Like any yuppie, I was walking home from Starbucks in DC and sipping a peppermint mocha, enjoying the stroll in my highly urban Glover Park neighborhood, when I smelled the diesel of a passing bus, heard the honking of a few cars, saw people walking on the sidewalk huddled due to the cold, and felt a few snowflakes land on my face.

That's when I realized, this is very much a CHICAGO moment.

What often defines the blunt, in-your-face urban experience of Chicago is often what many of us, whether we realize this openly or not, love about the city. It's this antithesis of the yawning sunbelt realm that drives us to love the city even more. But Chicago takes industrial/cold/urban misery to the extreme that no other city can match, and that is what many of us, including me, love so much about it.

My girlfriend is from California and knows how much I love Chicago, and I have made it clear to her that Chicago is one of the places we'll eventually live. She is going there in January to interview for jobs, and I find this to be a peculiar situation. On one hand, I dread the fact that it will be so cold, and surely this will kill her desire to EVER come to this part of the country. But another part of me takes a dark pleasure in the fact that here is a sheltered California girl who will be subjected to the bone-chilling ice cold, the smell of diesel and exhaust, the bustling streets, and the roar of the unforgiving El while walking to and from her downtown interview. Nothing pleases me more than the thought of one of those comfortable sunbelt-types being forced out of their car and being subject to a real northeastern-style urban environment.

Sunbelters aside, there is so much to enjoy about real northeastern/old union style urban environments, but Chicago really takes it to that next level. It's even a bit colder than New York, and its downtown trains mostly run above ground. Downtown Chicago in the winter exemplifies the urban experience to me better than any other place I can think of. And that is why, walking in the cold this morning and smelling those diesel fumes, I could think of no other place.>

Praise for Chicago Restaurant Scene

Taken from Conde Nast

Around The World in 80 Meals
by Susan Hack

One week, 32 countries, and an eyeball taco later, Susan Hack discovers that Chicago—not New York or L.A.—is the real culinary crossroads of the world


La Unica Grocery, Chicago, United States

Launch slideshow
At Tito's Tacos, a food stall in a gritty industrial zone next to the south branch of the Chicago River, a caballero in a white Stetson is ladling pieces of steamed cow's brains onto fresh-grilled tortillas. Despite lacking a press agent, a restaurant consultant, a TV show, a spin-off bistro, or even a proper building and regular hours (it's open only on Sundays), Tito's has managed to develop a cult following on dozens of Web message boards dedicated to celebrating America's ethnic food. Its house specialty is the $1.25 taco de ojo, the eyeball taco.

I'm not a professional gourmet or even an especially inventive cook, but two decades of journalistic life overseas (I live in Cairo now) have presented plenty of opportunities to conquer my gag reflex and broaden my palate. In South Africa I ordered—and enjoyed—mopane worms stewed in tomatoes (they look like white asparagus tips and taste like artichoke hearts). While in a Hanoi produce market, I resisted the temptation to barf while sampling a morsel of barbecued dog (think a combination of Peking duck and roast suckling pig).

Then again, I've always had an adventurous palate. As a kid growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and '70s, I once accepted my best friend's dare to try a spoonful of canned cat food (it brought to mind ham mixed with sawdust). In addition to a cast-iron stomach, I also had a big appetite, along with the eclectic eating habits of a Jewish-Lithuanian/Christian-Filipino household. The American-born children of immigrants, my parents belong to a generation that was encouraged to assimilate. Yet gefilte fish and pork adobo both appeared on our table (along with TV dinners), and I was raised to believe that no food was out of bounds. The Chicago of my childhood was hardly a culinary beacon (the city's most famous celebrity chef, Charlie Trotter, opened his eponymous restaurant in 1987), but it had its own specialties: Polish sausages from the pushcarts in Grant Park; whitefish from Lake Michigan, smoked or boiled Norwegian-style; and buckets of spring-running smelt caught, fried, and eaten by the lakeshore. Compared with New York and Los Angeles, Chicago had (and still unjustly suffers from) a reputation for Midwestern provincialism. But no matter: The nation's original multicultural city has always produced fresh generations of ethnic cooks and enthusiastic eaters.

So I'm taken aback when, in my own hometown, I end up meeting my Waterloo: Tito's ojo taco platter. The garnish of grilled onions, green chilies, and stringy shreds of brain looks appetizing, but the jawbreaker-sized mammalian orb, enveloped in gelatinous white tissue, turns out to be more than I can chew.

I change my mind and order something I think I'll actually like, a carne asada taco filled with grilled skirt steak and followed, on this crisp October day, with a champurado, that delicious Mexican hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon, almonds, vanilla, and brown sugar, and thickened to a near pudding with cornmeal. People of Hispanic origin now make up 27 percent of Chicago's population of 2.9 million, which means that the New Maxwell Street Market, southeast of the Loop and originally a bazaar for nineteenth-century stockyard workers, is evolving again. A former stronghold of Eastern European immigrants, it became a popular shopping destination for African Americans in the early twentieth century. Today, it resembles a Mexican carnival, one whose street stalls offer a south-of-the-border smorgasbord: goat soup and barbecued goat, Oaxacan tamales wrapped in corn husks and banana leaves, and churros filled with goat milk caramel. Around me, women pick over tomatillos, cactus paddles, and a rainbow of aromatic chilies at produce stands, while men bargain for tools and car parts and kids browse tables laden with plastic toys, hard candy, and pirated CDs.
I've never been to El Salvador, let alone Bosnia or Pakistan or Nigeria. But standing in the market, I marvel anew at how my old stomping ground, which I left at 18, now contains a world of dining possibilities. I set myself a mission: I will eat a different ethnic cuisine at each breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week. Other towns have their Chinatowns and Little Italys, but Chicago's 172-year history as a magnet for foreign labor has created a United Nations patchwork of ethnic enclaves. For new arrivals as well as deracinated fourth-generation residents who have intermarried and moved away from the old neighborhood, food is the amber that preserves languages, cultures, and family traditions.

Indeed, Chicago's history and gastronomic diversity make one wonder how the stereotype of the bland Midwestern city began at all. America's third-largest metropolis has been a culinary crossroads since its earliest days as a Great Lakes Indian trading post whose first permanent foreign settler was a Haitian fur broker, Jean-Baptiste Point du Sable. During the Civil War, Chicago's vast stockyards provided leather and wool for the uniforms of the Union army; the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and textile factories attracted legions of Poles, Germans, Russian Jews, and others fleeing economic trouble or persecution in Eastern Europe. When the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed the city's business district, it was foreign labor that built the nation's first skyscrapers. Waves of African Americans arrived in the 1920s and the 1940s, bringing Southern soul food and creating a new musical genre, the Chicago blues. In the past 30 years, war and political unrest in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and, lately, the Balkans has added new immigrants to the ethnic mix.

Soon after my encounter with the eyeball taco, it becomes clear that a week is not nearly enough time to explore the culinary prospects. How shall I structure my remaining meals? I've Mexico and El Salvador under my belt—should I continue to explore Latin America (Belize, Peru, Colombia, etc.) or should I switch gears and go by foodkoldunai, and Shanghai siu loong bao)? I could travel the world in 80 stews (Nigerian ojojo, Hungarian porkolt, Indian vindaloo, etc.) or drink a universe of coffees: Turkish, Greek, Arabic, even an Indonesian brew "predigested by civet cats." Bread alone could take up my week: The Yellow Pages lists Georgian, Ukrainian, Czech, Vietnamese, Thai, Israeli, and Swedish bakeries, to name a few.

So where and how should I continue my food odyssey? When it comes to important things in life, I consult Mom and Dad. A retired librarian and a theoretical physicist who have lived for 50 years in Hyde Park, the southside neighborhood that borders the University of Chicago, they never throw anything out, whether it's my kindergarten report card or piles of newspaper and magazine restaurant reviews.

We begin by comparing notes and maps over a breakfast of Swedish pancakes, something we've never tried. At Svea, a blue-and-white storefront tucked between the Victorian-style houses in the old Swedish enclave of Andersonville, the pancakes are thinner than the American buckwheat version but thicker than a French crêpe. They arrive folded into half-moons, sprinkled with powdered sugar, and accompanied by a paper cup of lingonberry jam.

Over chunks of Svea's Falukorv sausage, which resembles a more flavorful ancestor of an Oscar Mayer's, my parents and I decide on a methodology: We will eat pancake dishes all day. First, though, we stop a few doors down, at Erickson's, where Anne Britt-Nilsson is serving fresh potato sausage, glogg mix, and cardamom-spiced julekake cake in an 80-year-old deli that her mother bought from the original owners in 1978. At Christmas, the line goes halfway down the block as Britt-Nilsson feeds homesick Swedes from all over the country, including one man who flies his own plane here from Alaska every year just to pick up his holiday smorgasbord. Britt-Nilsson has been resisting an online store. "I need to see people taste things," she says, handing us bitter, gingery pepparkakor cookies and slices of hard, tart Vasterbotten cheese.

From Andersonville, we take buses across Goose Island and the north fork of the Chicago River, passing Greektown on our way to the border between the old Irish neighborhood of Bridgeport and the former German, now Mexican, neighborhood of Pilsen.

The section of South Halsted Street running between Bridgeport and Pilsen was an enclave for the Lithuanians who arrived seeking work in Chicago's vast cattle slaughterhouses. Though the community scattered after the odiferous Union Stockyards were demolished in 1971, Chicago remains home to the largest concentration of Lithuanians outside Vilnius. "Everything around us is changing, so this restaurant is my island," says Grazina Biciunas-Santoski, who came to the United States from Lithuania in 1948 and whose family took over the Healthy Food Lithuanian Restaurant, on South Halsted Street, in 1960. Opened on the site of a Lithuanian bank in 1938, the place is decorated with 1950s retro tables and has survived the advent of fat- and carbo-phobia. Our single Lithuanian blynai pancake—nearly two feet long (the batter has been poured onto a grill)—arrives folded into thirds around a homemade apple filling. We eat it with sour cream, oniony meat dumplings, and a bacon-spiked potato pudding. The sweet-savory blend of this high-fat second breakfast constitutes enough fuel for an entire week, making me even more concerned about how we'll pace ourselves (not to mention pass our next cholesterol tests). But "the food is healthy because there are no preservatives," Biciunas-Santoski insists. "My cooking philosophy is simple: If it doesn't taste the way my mother made it, I don't serve it."
That night we have dinner at Berghoff's, the Loop landmark that has been owned by the same German family since 1898. The restaurant's old-world dark wood paneling, leaded windows, and black-coated waiters make it feel like a Germanic theme park, one from which tourists exit clutching souvenir Berghoff's beer steins, baseball caps, and gift baskets. The menu lists stuffed Peking duck and veal marsala along with Wiener schnitzel and tangy sauerbraten—a nod toward America's more global expectations, I guess. I order Rahmschnitzel, a breaded pork loin in a white wine, tomato, and mushroom sauce and, keeping to my theme, a potato pancake on the side. But the pancake comes cold and is as hard as cardboard. Not even sour cream can redeem it.

According to Rick Bayless, chef-owner of the upscale Mexican restaurants Topolobampo and the Frontera Grill, Chicago's diverse population and historic role as the hub of America's food transportation network mean that it has "perhaps the best availability of traditional ingredients in the United States." He's right: Today, Ecuadorian restaurants serve roast cuy, or guinea pig; and at least one of the remaining butchers on West Randolph Street, the gentrifying meatpacking district, supplies the main ingredient for authentic Puerto Rican bull's penis soup. But if eating a guinea pig is not to your taste (think frog mixed with chicken), you can be a guinea pig and sample the wild concoctions of what Chicago magazine dubs the "techno-chefs," like those of 29-year-old Homaro Cantu, a Mexican-American transplant from Oregon who reigns over Moto, near the old Fulton Street fish market, and 28-year-old Grant Achatz, who opened Alinea last spring. Given the city's love of eclecticism, it's not surprising that Chicago has become the American epicenter of the sci-fi cuisine pioneered in the late 1990s by Spain's Ferran Adria of El Bulli. At Moto, where the waitstaff wear black lab coats, Cantu styles himself as a "food engineer" and has been experimenting with helium to make food float in the air. His crab "chowder" consists of a mouthful of crab and four consecutive syringe squirts of Peruvian potato, cream, carrot, and garlicky leek soups. Alinea's narrowing metallic entrance hall made me think of a posh-tech Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole. Our 12 magic pill–sized courses included a deliciously geeky creation of ham, snap peas, and emulsified tofu served atop a deflating linen cushion of lavender-scented air, while diners who opted for the 25-course menu ate bison meat strips off a bonglike apparatus, which the aromatics-obsessed Achatz had filled with burning cinnamon sticks.

Places like Moto and Alinea keep you coming back to see what's new. Ethnic cuisine, by contrast, is about nostalgia, about preserving childhood memories through foods whose very tastes evokes home.
Returning to my all-ethnic mission, I head on day three for Irazu, Chicago's only Costa Rican restaurant, which opened in 1990 and is named after a volcano in the Cartago Province. When I ask what's in the yellow Costa Rican sauce on my $1.90 taco tico, my waiter brings me a glass bottle from the kitchen. "This is the key to cooking in my country," he says proudly. Lizano sauce—which contains cauliflower, cucumbers, turmeric, molasses, and vinegar—is what glues the ketchup, mayonnaise, lettuce, and juicy marinated skirt steak into its crispy shell, and gives it its subtle, almost Indian heat. I love Irazu's sunny interior, its folksy volcano mural, and its Avena shake—oatmeal blended with milk, ice, and cinnamon—which has the thickness and flavor, but not the fat, of vanilla ice cream.

Then it's off to my ethnic grocery store tour with Evelyn Thompson. A tai chi expert who teaches a course on food and culture at the University of Illinois, Thompson is the Margaret Mead of food shopping. She takes field notes and keeps a small cutting board and knife in her purse so she can dissect culinary discoveries with clients on the spot.

We follow the elevated train track running north from the Loop to Argyle Street, Chicago's new Chinatown, settled by Vietnamese, Thai, Laotian, and other immigrants who fled Southeast Asia in the 1970s and '80s. From small storefront markets, we gather steamed banana leaf–wrapped bundles of jackfruit and sticky rice (Cambodia), fried sesame balls stuffed with sweet red bean paste (China), and hot sweetened soy milk. At the Vietnamese Ba Le Bakery, we join a beat cop buying, instead of doughnuts, a sack of Vietnamese cream puffs. The grocery stores display horned water chestnuts, saw coriander, pennywort, banana flowers—produce I've seen across Vietnam but not on the tables of upscale Indochine restaurants in Paris and New York.

In the Middle Eastern Bakery, on West Foster Avenue, the chocolate baklava launches Thompson into a discussion of how traditional foods have been adapted to the American palate. "We're losing knowledge as well as authentic flavor," she says with a sigh. "Take something as familiar as cheddar cheese. Producers even out the color now, which used to be the clue to the difference between cheeses made from summer or winter grazing." Our last stop is Devon Avenue, one of the most international streets in America if not the world: Here, Orthodox Jews, Iranian and Iraqi Assyrian Christians, Pakistanis, Indians, Cubans, Mexicans, Bosnians, Croatians, Georgians, and others have colonized successive blocks. At a table at the back of La Unica Grocery Store, we sip strong Cuban coffee, thicker than espresso, and nibble on some starchy yucca that has been tossed with garlic and onion mojo sauce. After the tour ends, I lunch at a storefront on Devon called, simply, the Afghan Restaurant, where the raisin- and carrot-studded rice conceals an entire lamb shank, and the pumpkin, braised in a red pepper–parsley sauce made milky with yogurt, is its own revelation. For dessert, I pop into Ambala Sweets for Indian barfi, a cardamom-infused pistachio dessert that tastes, happily, nothing like what it sounds like in English (barfi is the Hindi equivalent of fudge).
Later, at dinnertime, my dad theorizes that Everest, on the fortieth floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, is "a place for fancy people" requiring a suit nattier than any of the ones he owns. So Mom and I ditch him. We're unable to resist a restaurant that by its mere name lays claim to the apex of Chicago's fine dining scene.

As it turns out, the clientele is more expense-account than fancy-pants, but the setting is certainly spectacular: Our window table has a vertiginous view of the highest skyscraper in Chicago, the Sears Tower, and, after sunset, of streetlights marching westward into the flat Midwestern prairie. Chef Jean Joho's seven-course dégustation menu is a marriage of Alsatian technique and American terroir: consommé of Michigan pumpkin; roasted Maine lobster on potato fingerling salad; paupiette of Wisconsin pheasant wrapped and braised in cabbage; artisanal Midwestern cheeses; and caramelized Michigan apples dressed up with green apple sorbet and accompanied by a hazelnut croustade. The meal is excellent, and at $89 per person a bargain compared with what you'd pay for the same cooking in France. But the real discovery here is the 27-year-old sommelier, Alpana Singh, a daughter of Indian immigrants from Fiji who began learning about wine while waiting tables in her hometown of Monterey, California. She is the youngest American (and South Asian, for that matter) to ever pass the Master Sommelier exam given by the Britain-based Court of Master Sommeliers, and her encyclopedic knowledge is exceeded only by her friendliness and ability to put customers at ease.

Originally an Indian trail and one of America's first toll roads, Milwaukee Avenue by the 1870s was the heart of a 200,000-person-strong Polish community—nicknamed Bucktown after the goats the Poles liked to keep. Since the Poles had been beaten to New York by Irish Catholics escaping the potato famine in the mid-1800s, they leapfrogged to Chicago instead, where they could find jobs—and appealed to the Vatican to send priests who could hear confessions in their mother tongue. A new influx followed the collapse of communism, and Polish is still widely spoken in Chicago today.

At the Polish Museum of America, on North Milwaukee Avenue, I learn about a colony of Polish Highlanders out by Midway Airport. On day four, at dinnertime, my parents and I pull a rope bell to enter a windowless chalet. A transplanted hunting lodge, the Szalas Restaurant is decorated with a stuffed bear, a stuffed deer, seats made from antique sleighs, and a menu of food from Zakopane, a town of 28,000 in the southern Tatra Mountains. Triangles of shepherd's bread, salty sheep's milk cheese, and a silky pork pâté are followed by cheese pierogis topped with sour cream and green onions. When I ask what's in the pâté, the waitress has to go back to the kitchen to retrieve the words in English. She returns with a triumphant smile on her face. "Lard!"
So many cuisines, so little time—and apparently so much weight to gain. While Mom and Dad sleep off the lard, I rise on day five for an early breakfast at the Georgian Argo Bakery, which I'd spotted on Devon Avenue during my tour with Evelyn Thompson. There, four bakers fold cheese into hachipuri pies, stuff lobiani rolls with red beans, onions, and garlic (the result tastes surprisingly meaty), and slap rounds of dough against the walls of a beehive-shaped oven near the cash register. The pillow-shaped wheat bread, which is pried off with hooks once baked, is fragrant, dense, and chewy. "You'll have to come back for the imeretian," one of the men says when I ask about a sign for a pie stuffed with eggs and a special sour milk cheese. "You have to order it two hours ahead of time and eat it hot. No good for taking home."

Jackie Shen, a Hong Kong–born chef whose restaurant, Red Light, is a star of Chicago's pan-Asian food scene, has recommended that I visit Shui Wah, a modest strip mall storefront in the original Chinatown, south of the Loop. Shui Wah's following stems from its "best dim sum in Chicago," according to Jackie, and its late-night menu of chiu chow dishes originating from the south Swatow district of China's eastern Guangdong Province, according to the www.chowhound.com food nerds. I make the mistake of going alone and can't read the Chinese character menu. Rather than resorting to pointing at other people's dishes, I walk across the mall to Joy Yee's Noodle, where the menu has pictures. Customers are lining up for "bubble tea," a drink that has swept east from Taiwan. Invented, the legend goes, by a street vendor who shook her tea because children liked to see the bubbles, it has evolved into a milk shake–like concoction whose bubbles are actually sweet black tapioca balls that are sucked up through a wide straw. Given a choice of 100 flavors, I decide on taro, which is slightly malty and so delicious that I never want it to end.

By week's end, I've eaten my way through Armenia and Greece, Laos and Croatia. If I throw in incidental snacks and beverages, I've tried tantalizing tidbits from 32 countries. The holy month of Ramadan enables me to sneak in an iftar dinner. ("The sun sets tonight at 5:52," advises the reservations clerk at Reza's Iranian restaurant, who recommends fesenjen, Cornish hen simmered in pomegranate sauce and crushed walnuts.) I never get up the nerve to try bull's penis soup, but I do drink a bottle of Korean "sexy drink," which has a phallic piece of ginseng root floating inside it.

For my last big blowout, I go to Arun's, which the New York Times once deemed "the best Thai restaurant in the nation." My dining companions at this 20-year-old establishment are Thai fans and food industry veterans. My old high school debate partner has managed America's largest food-testing company and knows more than most people want to about the incidence of food-borne disease. His wife, an expert on American breakfast habits, used to work for Quaker Oats.
Chef-owner Arun Sampanthavivat originally came to Chicago to study art and political science and wound up winning the James Beard Foundation award for Best Midwest Chef. He's also resolved one of ethnic dining's biggest dilemmas—what to order from an unfamiliar menu—by adopting the French dégustation concept. Before beginning the mandatory 12-course tasting menu's ornate serving process, a hostess asks if we have any food allergies and what level of spiciness we prefer. Thai food is a game of balancing sweet and salt, hot and mild, but our meal gives me a jolt—not only for its succession of unfamiliar presentations (such as the chicken-and-coconut salad wrapped in bite-sized betel leaf packages) but also for the $85-per-person price tag, which brings the tab for three (with wine) to nearly $400. Parisian chefs have begun admitting—sacre bleu!—that Asian cooking can be more complex and nuanced than French haute cuisine, but the stereotype of cheap Asian street food (and restaurants) persists. "Omigod, omigod, omigod!" we overhear a female diner wailing. It's not that she's seen her bill: A jewel box of paintings and Thai antiques, Arun's is a special-occasion kind of place, and her boyfriend has just proposed.

Despite its dozen courses, an Arun's meal leaves room to spare, so after dinner I convince my friends to join me at the Winds Café, a few blocks away, where cook Antonio Torres serves up a mean Puerto Rican jibarito, a huge sandwich of tender, garlic-marinated steak slices spread with garlic mayonnaise and grilled between sheets of fried plantain instead of bread.

Wiping jibarito juice off my chin, I reflect on the city I swore I'd quit for good. New Yorkers may have a wider variety of West African food in Queens, and Californians access to more Asian flare, but Chicagoans have a bit of everything, as well as the guts to explore it all. I'm reminded of the wisdom of the French vendor at Disneyland Paris who commented, when I bought a brownie and fresh lemonade for my four-year-old daughter, that he "would never dare eat those two things together." Not everyone would follow fine Thai cuisine with a jibarito chaser. But this is America, the land of plenty, where tradition and the boldness to throw tradition out the window exist side by side. Chef Joho has it right: Chicago is the nation's culinary Everest. We eat these foods because they're here and, just as important, because we can.
Thanks to its nineteenth-century history as the nation's rail hub and the city's post–Great Fire architectural renaissance, Chicago is home to America's highest concentration of skyscraper hotels. I liked the convenience of the elegant Allerton Crowne Plaza, a refurbished 1930s gentlemen's club (701 N. Michigan Ave.; 312-440-1500;

A fascinating look at why Chicagoans are extremely lucky people.>

River east?

yesterday i watched that river boat tour of chicago on WTTW (11) and they mention something about a river east neighborhood being constructed on landfill land near navy pier! i was wondering if this was true? i think its in the same place where they want to build the Ford spire tower>

Chicago's best hidden gem.

Where have you found your favorite hidden gem in our city? Mine is def. this little street in Wrigleyville. For the life of me I can't remeber the street name. It is very close to Clark. It is super narrow, and the houses are all attached to each other, and the architecture is unique. Does anybody no what I am talking about? Its special because it feels as if your in a colonial city. It almost seemed like it was Boston, or something like that. Anyhoo, so whats your favorite hidden gem?>

A couple adjectives...& a desire to shut up

I've been accused of trying to flame a New York-Chicago rivalry. While never my intention, I do understand what contributions to such a battle I bring to the table.

Some how, some where, I have come up with a resolution of how I see this whole Chgo-NYC thing in my mind. I want to share it with you and then...hopefully shut up. My desire is just to get my ideas down on paper...er...cyberspace and see if other Chicagoans have any idea what I am talking about.

My thoughts have little to do with one city being better than the other, but how their attributes differ. Bear with me (or if you'd rather, please ignore what's ahead) and hopefully this will do the trick and finalize the way I compare and contrast the two cities....and end the whole damned thing.

Keep in mind this is all opinion.

HERE IT IS: I see New York as being the ultimate city and Chicago as being the ideal city.

New York is the ultimate because it has the most, is most awe inspiring, and is predicated like no other city on its relative position to American and global cities. New York, when looked at in terms of attributes, has no peer; however, often these attributes seem to go to the city itself and do little to relate how they affect individuals. New York has a WOW factor no city can match. It may be easier to stand in awe of New York than it is of any other city. No city has more ability to overwhelm, nor could any city throw out the statistics that NYC can.

How does Chicago differ? Chicago has little desire to be the ultimate city. Chicagoans may be blown away by the sheer density of Manhattan, but take a perverse pride that our density is far lower. Chicago is more the ideal city. OK, let's get this one out of the way first: we're not ideal. We're loaded with problems, like any other US or global city. However, if you were going to start from scratch and develop an American city that comes closest to what is ideal, my guess is you'd come up with Chicago, more so than New York or others. Why? Chicago is about putting everything into a major city that you could possibly want to enjoy urbanity, but to do so in a environment that is friendly and beautiful. Chicago is more about what it has that allows those in it to enjoy the city than New York....which tends to be more about New York than how people enjoy New York. In some sense, Chicago is about not comparing to other cities because we're happy with how our city worked out.>

zzzzzzzz.....I'm bored with these non-Chicago places



DC is one fine city, and definitely a million times more inspiring than anything west of the Mississippi (San Francisco excepted).

I don't know, maybe its just me. Nah, it's not me. Cities without a certain urban pizazz are just plain boring. All the bike trails, beaches, gardens (all of which Chicago has a ton of, interestingly) in the world can't possibly interest a city-lover.

I like DC, but I want to see a real bustling town. There is plenty of street activity in DC--equal to Chicago, in fact. But what's up with the lack of grit? I want people's conversations to be temporarily interrupted by indecent roars (the L), I want someone to slip on some ice and spill coffee on someone. I want NOT to be able to see the sun because the buildings around me are too obnoxiously tall.

I don't know. I love riding the L and literally being 5 feet away from a woman watering her plants from her 3rd story apartment. I want to drive down Western Avenue and pass an auto dealership, a bowling Alley, some 1920's brick buildings, a gas station, and then hang left and suddenly gaze upon a wall of 3-5 story buildings that go on into the horizon (save for a few vacant seedy lots that are awaiting interest from developers).

I'm not saying DC lacks any of these elements--to some degree they exist here. But this experience does not exist abundantly anywhere (outside of NY) in the US but El Chi.

All of this crap is boring. I don't want to drive on I-95 and see another forest or field. And I'm tired of everyone talking about the Tysons Corner Mall as if it's the 2nd coming of Christ. Even Wisconsin Avenue is getting old...

I want Chicago!!>

Is this forum dying?

I am shocked at how few replies there were to threads today. It has been diminishing over time. I look forward every day to interacting with you guys, but it seems like nobody is really saying anything any more. Not only that, but there are rarely ever new pics.

I guess SSP is where all the action is>

Ideas for a museum ?

just trying to get some intreasting ideas thrown around here...If Chicago were to build another grand museum what kind would you like it to be? Do we need anymore? Would you want it over by the Museum campus or somewhere else? Is there a certain architectural style you would want for it?>

Chicago: Sears Tower(1700'attenna 1450'roof) (108 floors)

i just wanted to post this because i love the sears tower. well if anybody has construction pic's Please post them. because i can't seem to find that many construction pic's of the sears tower>

SUPER BOWL PLANS!

Ok Chitown you made it You also helped me to aquire a nice new 4 figure prize with that win against the Saints

I plan on hopping over to Josie Wood's place over by the ville. It's actually a bar for Bears fans in NY.. Lots of young chicks and great Nacho's..
I'll be downing Guinesses and bareknuckles until halftime.. then I think I'll enjoy some bewbies my guy's great company ( Giants fan) and watching the Bears kick the crap out of the colts... then I will probably stagger back to my apartment ( walking distance) take a shower, sleep, wake up and collect my earnings...

Ok xcrunner's, Chi George's, Jules's, STR'S, Chi Loopers, Frumie's, Hydro's and the rest of ya... WTF are you KnuckleHeads DOING FOR SUPERBOWL>???? >

The Sears Tower in Des Moines' Downtown! NEVER BEFORE SEEN SHOT!!!!

I've always dreamed of seing the Sears tTower next to the tallest skyscraper in Iowa: 801 Grand.
Well, i decided to paste the sears (keeping the same proportions as if you were to really put the Sears next to the actual Des Moines Skyline) and see how it would look.

The comparison is a joke!



NOTICE that 801 Grand is only 630 ft high.

794 ft less than the Sears tower

making the Sears 1,424 ft high.]

This means that the 801 Grand doesnt even reach half the heigth of the Monstrous Sears! (mid heigth of the sears is 712 ft. high)

What a comparison!>>

NEW YORK, CHICAGO, LOS ANGELES: SAME SIZE; DIFFERENT PARADIGM

NEW YORK, CHICAGO, LOS ANGELES: SAME SIZE; DIFFERENT PARADIGM

Is there a different paradigm to consider in the way we view the populations of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles? IÂ'm not talking about better or worse, or any possible advantage to any of the three; just about how we organize them in our minds?

New York has more than twice the population of ChicagoÂ's. And LA has about a million more people than does Chicago.

But New York and LA may well be unique among American cities. They, more than any other city, operate on the concept of huge subdivisons within their city limits and with the concept that numerous neighborhoods function as towns and villages.

To illustrate:

New York is made up of five boroughs. There is nothing comparable in Chicago to the boroughs or the idea of Manhattan being the core and the existence of 4 outher boroughs. That Greater New York come into existence relatively late (end of the 19th c), Brooklyn never lost its sense of city status on its own, a world apart from Manhattan. Meanwhile so much of Queens (i.e. Flushing, Forest Hills, etc.) and virtually all of Staten Island developed as a series of villages or suburbs. SI is so issolated that, in many ways, it doesnÂ't seem a part of NYC. Ironically there are areas in suburban NYC and in NJ that seem more Â"New YorkÂ" than SI is. Of the five boroughs, only Brooklyn and Queens border each other. The rest are separated by water....and with the exception of the Harlem River separating Manhattan from the Bronx, the water is rather wide. Bronx alone of the outer four seems like the true extension of the northward march of Manhattan. If you send mail to Brooklyn, you mail it to Â"BrooklynÂ"...and in Queens, the name of the Â"villagesÂ" appears on the envelope.

LA has no legal divisions like the boroughs. But the Santa Monica Mountains slice through the cityÂ's core, creating Â"CityÂ" to the south and Â"ValleyÂ" to the north. There is no question that independent Beverly Hills and Santa Monica are more Â"cityÂ" than the San Fernando Valley, legally a part of LA, is. The entire Valley is made up of communtiies that are like cities and have their own mailing address. Even the elite areas of the westside (Brentwood, Westwood, Bel Air, Pac Pal) come across as separate towns. The harbor is joined to LA by a long narrow string....and its core, San Pedro, is more Long Beach than LA.

Contrast with Chicago: one address....Chicago. Nobody would ever suggest that communities within our city limits are villages and, quite frankly very few (Beverly, Edgebrook, Saugansash, Forest Glenn...perhaps Norwood Pk and Edison Pk) have a suburban feel. Even the ones that do are still pretty much part of the city degree, even if to a lesser extent. Sure we have our North, South, and West sides, but in the flat grid, they seamlessly flow into each other. As they flow around the Loop and the rest of downtown, IÂ've never had an exact sense of where the North Side ends and the West Side starts; same with the West and South.

Suffice it say that Chicago, alone of the three, is the only traditional , unifiedcity concept. NYCÂ's and LAÂ's sheer size has put them in a mode where much of their cities donÂ't feel a part of those cities the way that all of Chicago does.

Population wise, if you compare the population of the city portion of LA (and lopp off the valley and harbor), and look at NYÂ's population as being Manhattan and the Manhattan extension that is the Bronx (the Manhattan numbered street pattern spreads into the Bronx), you find two cities that are comparable with ChgoÂ's population.

As I said from the start, this is not a better or worse type of comparison. I donÂ't see where the observation gives any city an edge. Perhaps my point, in the form of a generalization is that when a city gets to a particularly enormous size, it finds more meaningful ways to subdivide itself (and perhaps dilude its identity) because it is simply too large for unity.>

Field's, Macy's....and Protest!

This is an idea I expressed before, prematurely I may add, when Federated was first making overtures to acquiring May Dept. Stores...and thus Marshall Field's.

It appears that Federated is in the process of "surveying" the Chicago buying public regarding a possible name change from Marshall Field's to Macy's. Roger Ebbert pointed out in an article in the Sunday Sun Times that such sureys always ask the type of loaded questions that give them the results they seek. So you will questions such as "Does a company have the right to rename a store it owns?" rather than "Should Federated keep the Marshall Field's name or convert the stores to Macy's".

Perhaps Chicago should give Federated the real answers to its question. This is the age of the internet (well...duh...we're on it now) and people use this tool to allow them to reach the public in ways that in the past were impossible.

So I'm proposing a Keep Marshall Field's Marshall Field's Rally. Hold it downtown at the corner of State and Randolph, one Saturday in September, 10-11 am. Being a Saturday, the Loop would be less crowded and more people would be available to come. Sell t-shirts and banners that say "Keep Marshall Field's Marshall Field's" or "Field Yes! Macy's No!", etc.

Such a rally could easily be very well attended. Chicago, even in this not-department-store era, is still passionate about the store. Chicago would watch....and so would the nation and Federated. What do you think?>

Do these companies' headquarters locate in Metro Chicago?

Why don't 2005 Fortune 500 of US in Illinois conclude Kraft Food in Northfield, Mittal Steel in East Chicago, Innovene and Akzo Nobel N.V. in Chicago? >

Do these companies' headquarters locate in Metro Chicago?

Why don't 2005 Fortune 500 of US in Illinois conclude Kraft Food in Northfield, Mittal Steel in East Chicago, Innovene and Akzo Nobel N.V. in Chicago? >

CTA For Sale ?

CTA urged to sell some of its names
Is a Tombstone `L' in our transit future?

By Virginia Groark
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 14, 2005


First came the United Center. Then there was U.S. Cellular Field. Next could be a Chicago Transit Authority elevated train line named after a corporation.

That's one of several suggestions a consultant made to the CTA board Wednesday as part of an ongoing study to identify ways to cut costs, streamline operations and raise revenue.

The presentation was made shortly before the board voted to rescind service cuts and fare increases that were scheduled to take place this month to fill a $55million budget hole. The CTA canceled the doomsday scenario after the Regional Transportation Authority agreed last month to give it $54.3 million in state funds.

CTA Chairwoman Carole Brown warned the state funds provide only a temporary fix and in the coming months the board will start discussing similar budgetary woes for 2006. Preliminary projections indicate next year's budget deficit could be as much as $100 million.

Meanwhile, the CTA hired the consulting firm AECOM in March for $1.2 million to analyze its operations.

Among other recommendations, AECOM Vice President Scott Baker suggested ways to schedule workers to increase workforce productivity, proposed outsourcing real estate management and adding more automated teller machines along its system. The CTA agreed Wednesday to add another 31 ATMs.

The CTA should also more aggressively seek out advertising revenues, whether by selling corporate sponsorships of train stations or selling advertising space on the side of buildings it owns that are near major thoroughfares, Baker said.

Baker also said the CTA could seek corporate sponsorships of entire rail routes.

The CTA did not immediately embrace the suggestion, saying they needed to determine how much money it could generate.

"I think that what's being said is these are things that need to be explored further, and that's the whole point of this review," CTA President Frank Kruesi said.

The CTA wouldn't be the first transit agency to undertake such an effort. In Tampa, the TECO Line Streetcar System is named after a utility company. The line also offers opportunities for sponsorships of stations and individual streetcars.

Naming rights for mass transit systems presents an excellent marketing opportunity, said Eric Smallwood, vice president of Pennsylvania-based Front Row Marketing Services, which was involved in a deal to have an Italian food products company sponsor a Tampa streetcar.

A newspaper company, for example, could sponsor a rail route and then negotiate to have only its newspaper boxes in stations along that line, Smallwood said.

"All those commuters, that's a great opportunity," he said.

From an operations standpoint, it may not make sense, said David Schulz, executive director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University. The CTA renamed its lines after colors more than a decade ago and to change the names again could confuse people.

"A significant barrier to people using public transportation is that they simply don't know how to use it," Schulz said. "You start changing route names and it introduces another variable in there."

"I think you run the risk, that the Charter Bank Line or whatever it would be, the Sara Lee Line, runs the risk of people not being able to deal with it," he said.

In addition, some people may be offended by having a rail route named after a corporation.

"I think people at some point say enough is enough," Schulz said. "And my guess would be, my personal sense would be, that you've gone over that line if you start renaming whole CTA lines for companies.">

Speculation: World's Fair & a Chicago today

This thread is pure speculation. A real "what if".

The heart of Chicago is strong and development has been rampant in all directions outward from the Loop.

However, how good as it is, would it have been better if Chicago had actually gone ahead after it won the bid and held that World's Fair (1992, I believe) that was supposed to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage to the Americas.

If you remember, that fair was pretty well killed off by the in-fighting of the Council War era. Now I am in no way talking about the financial (or even artistic) success of the fair. World's fairs were alreay a dying instiution at the time.

No, what I'm talking about was the fair's ability to change the landscape. Massive plans wer in place for the area near the museum campus and many projects promised trmendous redevelopment opportunities for the Near South Side. These plans came before anyone knew the degree of the force of gentrication Chicago would experience without a world's fair.

But imagine, if we had one, where would we hve been today:

• would the city have been even healthier?

• would the South Side lakefront parks have developed further than they have today due to the spill over effect?

• would a blockbuster project like Millennium Park been built?

• would the South Loop have developed differently (perhaps not as residentially)?

• would the area around McCormick Place have been more lively today?

• would holding the fair and the magnificent structures left behind have made Chicago more of a tourist magnet earlier....with the result of it being even stronger than it is today?

What do you think would have happened if this fair actually took plalce?>

LSD Crosswalk Closed, with poll...

`No' to Buckingham Fountain crosswalk closing
Vehicles triumph, pedestrians lose

By Blair Kamin
Tribune architecture critic
Published July 17, 2005


See the beauty of Buckingham Fountain, all Beaux-Arts splendor with jets of water shooting out of its sea creatures' mouths. Now see the ugly wood-and-wire snow fences that city officials put up along the curb to close the Lake Shore Drive crosswalk linking the fountain to the Queen's Landing lakefront promenade.

Wham! Bam! Thank you, city traffic managers.

You've managed, in a single bone-headed stroke, to make life supremely inconvenient for thousands of walkers, bicyclists and joggers, and to blight a lakefront landmark. Why not just take your Los Angeles-style, auto-dominated logic to its extreme and change the Drive's name to the Lake Shore Expressway? That way, there would be no doubt that the car is king and the pedestrian's status is strictly second-class.

In case you missed the front page of Thursday's Tribune, transportation reporter Jon Hilkevitch revealed that Mayor Richard M. Daley's newly created Traffic Management Authority quietly closed the crosswalk before the recent Taste of Chicago festival. Their coldly calculated reasoning: To move more cars more efficiently through downtown. Pedestrians, who for years have used the crosswalk to get from the fountain to Queen's Landing, now must schlep to alternative crossings at Jackson and Balbo Drives.

No public hearing

This isn't Queen-for-a-Day treatment. This is a bunch of city bureaucrats treating a high-profile lakefront crosswalk, one that serves an integral functional and formal role in Grant Park, as though it led across Ashland Avenue. There was no public hearing (none was required). The public lost out because the traffic managers didn't balance the needs of people on foot with the needs of people behind the wheel.

Recalling how a red carpet was rolled across Lake Shore Drive in 1959 so Queen Elizabeth II could cross from her yacht to Buckingham Fountain (thus the name "Queen's Landing"), Michael Burton of the Campaign for a Free and Clear Lakefront told Hilkevitch: "It is ironic that the queen of England was welcomed at that very spot by the first Mayor Daley, but everyday people can't get across Lake Shore Drive there under our current Mayor Daley."

Let's be honest: The Buckingham Fountain-Queen's Landing crosswalk was far from ideal. Crossing the Drive at street level required a certain bravery. We're talking ten lanes of traffic. It was a jungle out there, with the revving of the car's engine substituting for the lion's roar.

Still, the crosswalk was something, an imperfect stopgap measure that would do its serviceable best until city officials could cobble together funds to build a light-filled underground passageway comparable to the one that leads from Grant Park to the Museum Campus. Under the Illinois FIRST public works program, they reached a deal with the state in 1999 to build the underpass for $19 million. Yet construction never began, and now, city officials say, funding would have to be secured from the federal government or the state. The lack of action makes one wonder how high on the civic priority list this project actually ranks.

Not very high, it appears.

A few years ago, renowned Spanish architect and engineer Santiago Calatrava presented a plan for two pedestrian bridges between Buckingham Fountain and Queen's Landing to Daley. But that proposal was shelved. And what the mayor's people have taken now is a step backward -- a disappointing departure from Daley's recent support for pedestrian-friendly moves along the lakefront, which range from the delightfully snaking Frank Gehry-designed pedestrian bridge at Millennium Park to the city's recently concluded architecture competition for pedestrian bridges across the Drive.

The damage done by the closing of the Buckingham Fountain-Queen's Landing crosswalk, however, is aesthetic, not just practical. And it is wreaking its subtle havoc in the very heart of Grant Park.

`Site specific'

Completed in 1927 and principally designed by architect and planner Edward Bennett, co-author with Daniel Burnham of the legendary 1909 Plan of Chicago, Buckingham Fountain is "site specific," as artists and architects are given to say today. It punctuates the Congress Parkway axis, a key feature of the 1909 plan, like a giant exclamation point. It symbolizes Lake Michigan. Its four pairs of whimsical sea creatures represent the states around the lake. Anything that interrupts the openness between the fountain and the lake diminishes the power of both. Yet that is precisely what the ghastly snow fences do. Against the elegant backdrop of the formal, French-inspired gardens that form the setting for the fountain's jewel, they are about as low-rent as low-rent gets. They are, at least, temporary, according to Monique Bond, a spokeswoman for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, the agency that includes the new Traffic Management Authority. "We need to look at what is going to be aesthetically pleasing," she says, adding that some people are hopping over the snow fences in order to cross Lake Shore Drive.

Could a Daley-style, fake wrought-iron fence be in the offing for Buckingham Fountain?

Could anything be more inappropriate for a site whose very core is about the free flow of space between the fountain and the lake?

One of Daley's singular innovations has been his willingness to bring design from the fringe of public policy to the center. Despite exceptions such as the brutal high-rise condos that flank North Michigan Avenue, he has succeeded in making architecture an essential instrument, rather than an afterthought, of urban development. Yet precisely the opposite has occurred at Queen's Landing. This is a triumph of the City Functional over the City Beautiful, one that leaves Chicago's pedestrians and Grant Park's civic centerpiece in the lurch.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

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1) Do you think the crosswalk should be re-opened?


2) Do you have any other opinions about LSD?

- I've heard about proposals in the past to re-route traffic away from Grant Park to the Kennedy and Dan Ryan expressways to eliminate traffic congestion, pollution, and create a greater connection between the park and the lakefront (http://www.foreverfreeandclear.org/r...er-052804.html). Would you support "reclaiming the Chicago lakefront"?

- What merits does LSD have?

- Does LSD represent an antiquated approach to city-planning that would never be attempted in the present era?

- Does it create a psychological barrier between us and our city's most important asset, Lake Michigan?>

The crash of Chicago as a key financial center

After the merging of JP Morgan Chase and Bank One, there is no global headquarter of large bank locating in Chicago now. Chicago is not a key financial center now; even San Francisco and Charlotte are more important than it, not to say NYC.>

Red Line Extension

Good news for the CTA.

I know someone who works for the Developing Communities Project, a South Side community organization founded by Barack Obama twenty years ago. One of the issues DCP is working on right now is the extension of the Red Line from 95th to 130th; thanks to three years of tireless organizing, the project's priority number with the federal government has moved up substantially. According to DCP, currently 60% of the necessary money has been allocated and that they are expecting construction to begin in 2009.>

Is Chicago becoming its own world?

Okay, I just got back from New York, and instead of launching into a discussion about Chicago vs. New York, I wanted to ask a question/comment about something. In other words, I'm going to ask a Edsg-style question . Before I do that, I just wanted to say that whoever started that thread about Chicago losing importance as a financial center must be insane--Chicago's all over the place as a business center, and the weight it throws around economically is just plain ridiculous

Anyway, in New York I noticed a dense collection of skyscrapers that makes mankind feel like a puny little ant of no importance whatsoever. Sirens and horns echo as if you're in a narrow valley surrounded by cliffs. The only other place in the US I've ever been to that comes close to creating that effect is downtown Chicago.

But when I went to New York, I got the feeling that there were these huge numbers of people who just lived in Manhattan like it was a world of its own. It has everything--restaurants, flower shops, blah blah blah to the end of the frickin earth. It's like a whole society, all subsets included, within itself, with a screaming mad subway system.

Now when I think about Chicago, here's how I see it. There are a lot of people who live in the central area/north side hoods who live their lives almost completely in the city, and never venture into the burbs (or even to the south/west/or northwest sides, for that matter). However, this separation is not that strong, at least not as strong as it is in Manhattan, probably because Manhattan presents such a complete environment and such an encaging, enclosed space that you psychologically can't leave.

With Chicago's current condo/skyscraper/townhouse boom, is this same transformation occurring here? Is New York just at a much later evolutionary phase than Chicago, and will Chicago ever become as isolated or "it's own world" from its hinterlands? What direction is the city's "transformation" taking?>