Saturday, April 28, 2007

Does Chicago forum deserve a "skybar"?

I just notice L.A. got the Interchange and NYC got Grand Central Station. Could the Chicago forum support its own skybar?

I am just wondering and how does a city get a "skybar"...>

Does concept of "trendy" exist in suburbia?

Our "what is the next trendy Chicago neighborhood" asks a question that keeps speculators and realtors up all night thinking about. Gentrification can take place in any area...even ones without blight that suddenly get "hot" and the nature of their mix of stores, clubs, bars, gyms, etc., begin to change.

But does "trendiness" stop at city limits? Is there trendiness out there north of Howard or west of Austin? Can suburbia generate "trendiness", places that get hot not because of their location on the fringes of the metro area as row after row of houses go up on former cornfields, but smack in the middle of the most established communities in suburbia?

Does suburban Chicago have the ability to generate a trendy setting within itself or is that something that requires a true big city and true urban lifestyle to accomplish???>

Lake Geneva: how important to Chicagoland?

Lake Geneva: how important to Chicagoland?
Whether vacation or day trip, possessor of the summer homes of the ulber-weathly, the tradition of the society resort, and some of the most gorgeous scenery in the Middle West....

how important do you think Lake Geneva is to the Chicago area???

I know this is something we don't think abou often, but Lake Geneva has always been a Chicago resort and now with the spread of the metro area northwestward, it is literally become a part of Chicagoland itself. And within our area, there is nothing quite like it.>

Chicago and its Grand Ol' Business

Chicago is a city that revels in the "idea" of greatness. In the end, that is one of the qualities I love most about the city. It always strives to be GREAT, GREAT, GREAT! Even its most famous motto is "Make no small plans".

One of Chicago's greatest assets is something less tangible than its neighborhoods and its skyline--it's Chicago's role as an international business powerhouse. Sure, it does not hold up to NYC, but Chicago has slowly been converting itself into the nation's second headquarters city. If you liken it to the human body, NYC is the cerebral cortex and Chicago is the cerebellum (LA is the skin haha )

Anyways, one thing Chicago does to maintain and enhance this status is to fight to keep corporate HQ. An abundance of Fortune 500 companies has a lot of face value, but in reality Chicago's enormous importance in finance and in those midde-sized companies is really what defines this city's sphere of importance. Nevertheless, Chicago has a good chunk of whales as well. But how does Chicago stand on this issue?

For now, Chicago has continued to maintain its dominance as the US's 2nd metro for Fortune 500's. Despite a loss of HQ due to mergers or relocations, it has always managed to pick up a couple more. Chicago lost Bank One but is now gaining BP's subsidiary. Chicago is now JP Morgan's midwest HQ, and even though that sounds wimpy, in reality with William Daley as the head of the division you can be sure a lot of corporate money will be doled out for the city's benifit (lastest news, $1 million is already being given to the City of Chicago for a neighborhood development fund). The Chicago metro also gained the HQ of Office Max as well as a large amount of its assets. Cosi, our favorite little urban diner, recently moved to Chicago from NYC. Eurex created their North American branch in Chicago (although, thank God, it has failed to steal any market share). And I cannot discuss this issue without mentioning Boeing! Nevertheless, the list of losses and gains go on and on .

So where is this whole trend going? Will Chicago continue to have this level of dominance? Is the process of globalization eventually going to leave Chicago behind or catapult it to a new level? Early signs show the latter, but what about 30 years from now? If we always have Daley, surely Chicago will reign supreme, but who knows what jackass will take his place in the future?

And my final question, focused more on people who REALLY know the financial situation in the city. Are their any big companies already headquartered in the area that are close to becoming Fortune 500 companies? What are they?

I am excited to see you guys give your input on this topic. Whether you know anything about business or whether you're just an architecture geek, I look forward to any opinions you can offer.>

Off topic: Chicago Chef creating style his own.

When the Sous-Chef Is an Inkjet
By DAVID BERNSTEIN

Published: February 3, 2005

CHICAGO

HOMARO CANTU'S maki look a lot like the sushi rolls served at other upscale restaurants: pristine, coin-size disks stuffed with lumps of fresh crab and rice and wrapped in shiny nori. They also taste like sushi, deliciously fishy and seaweedy.

But the sushi made by Mr. Cantu, the 28-year-old executive chef at Moto in Chicago, often contains no fish. It is prepared on a Canon i560 inkjet printer rather than a cutting board. He prints images of maki on pieces of edible paper made of soybeans and cornstarch, using organic, food-based inks of his own concoction. He then flavors the back of the paper, which is ordinarily used to put images onto birthday cakes, with powdered soy and seaweed seasonings.

At least two or three food items made of paper are likely to be included in a meal at Moto, which might include 10 or more tasting courses. Even the menu is edible; diners crunch it up into a bowl of gazpacho, creating Mr. Cantu's version of alphabet soup.

Sometimes he seasons the menus to taste like the main courses. Recently, he used dehydrated squash and sour cream powders to match a soup entree. He also prepares edible photographs flavored to fit a theme: an image of a cow, for example, might taste like filet mignon.

"We can create any sort of flavor on a printed image that we set our minds to," Mr. Cantu said. The connections need not stop with things ordinarily thought of as food. "What does M. C. Escher's 'Relativity' painting taste like? That's where we go next."

Food critics have cheered, comparing Mr. Cantu to Salvador Dali and Willy Wonka for his peculiarly playful style of cooking. More precisely, he is a chef in the Buck Rogers tradition, blazing a trail to a space-age culinary frontier.

Mr. Cantu wants to use technology to change the way people perceive (and eat) food, and he uses Moto as his laboratory. "Gastronomy has to catch up to the evolution in technology," he said. "And we're helping that process happen."

Tucked among warehouses and lofts in the Chicago meatpacking district, Moto attracts a trend-conscious crowd. Some guests leave scratching their heads; others walk away spellbound by a glimpse of Mr. Cantu's vision of the future of food.

William Mericle, 41, described recent meal at Moto as "dinner theater on your plate." He did not care for all 20 small dishes he sampled, but he said he liked most of them. He found Mr. Cantu's imagination appealing. "He's mad-scientist-meets-gourmet-chef," he said. "Like Christopher Lloyd from 'Back to the Future,' if he were more interested in food than time travel."

Mr. Cantu believes that restaurant-goers, particularly diners who are willing to spend $240 per person for a meal (the cost of a 20-course tasting menu with wine at Moto) are often disappointed by conventional dining experiences. "They're sick and tired of steak and eggs," he said. "They're tired of just going to a restaurant, having food placed on the table, having it cleared, and there's no more mental input into it other than the basic needs of a caveman, just eat and nourish."

At Moto, he said, "there's so much more we can do."

Mr. Cantu is experimenting with liquid nitrogen, helium and superconductors to make foods levitate. And while many chefs speak of buying new ovens or refrigerators, he wants to invest in a three-dimensional printer to make physical prototypes of his inventions, which he now painstakingly builds by hand. The 3-D printer could function as a cooking device, creating silicone molds for pill-sized dishes flavored, say, like watermelon, bacon and eggs or even beef Bourguignon, he said, and he could also make edible molds out of cornstarch.

He also plans to buy a class IV laser to create dishes that are "impossible through conventional means." (A class IV laser, the highest grade under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's classification system, projects high-powered beams and is typically used for surgery or welding.)

Mr. Cantu said he might use the laser to burn a hole through a piece of sashimi tuna, cooking the fish thoroughly inside but leaving its exterior raw. He said he would also use the laser to create "inside out" bread, where the crust is baked inside the loaf and the doughy part is the outer surface. "We'll be the first restaurant on planet Earth to use a class IV laser to cook food," he said with a grin.

He is testing a hand-held ion-particle gun, which he said is for levitating food. So far he has zapped only salt and sugar, but envisions one day making whole meals float before awestruck diners.

The son of a fabricating engineer, Mr. Cantu got his start as a science geek. "From a very young age, I liked to take apart things," said Mr. Cantu, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest. "All of my Christmas gifts would wind up in a million pieces. I actually recall taking apart my dad's lawnmower three times to understand how combustible engines work."



When he was 12, he took a job as a cook and busboy, mainly to earn money for remote-controlled airplanes and helicopters that he then took apart. But the restaurant business rubbed off on Mr. Cantu, and after high school he attended culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland, Ore. A series of jobs followed, nearly 50 in all, Mr. Cantu said. He worked as a stagiaire, or intern, in some of the top kitchens around the country, eventually talking his way into a job at Charlie Trotter's, a well-known restaurant in Chicago. He became a sous-chef there before opening Moto last year.

Mr. Cantu has filed applications for patents on more than 30 inventions, including a cooking box that steams fish. The tiny opaque box, about three inches square, is made of a superinsulating polymer. Mr. Cantu heats the box to 350 degrees in an oven and places a raw piece of Pacific sea bass inside it. A server then delivers it to diners, who can watch the fish cook.

Assisting Mr. Cantu with what he calls his " 'Star Wars' stuff" is DeepLabs, a small Chicago product-development and design consultancy. Mr. Cantu meets weekly with the crew of aerospace and mechanical engineers, programmers and product designers at DeepLabs for brainstorming sessions.

"I tell them I want to make food float, I want to make it disappear, I want to make it reappear, I want to make the utensils edible, I want to make the plates, the table, the chairs edible," Mr. Cantu said, "I ask them, what do I need to do that?"

Ryan Alexander, an industrial graphic designer at DeepLabs, said he and his colleagues at the company, which has designed more conventional products for Motorola and Home Depot, are enthusiastic about Mr. Cantu: "We don't say no," he said.

Using engineering, graphics and animation software, DeepLabs designers have begun to turn Mr. Cantu's dreams into realties.

They have created mockups of his all-in-one utensil, a combination fork, knife and spoon, as well as utensils with pressurized handles that release aromatic vapors. The latest prototype is a utensil with a disposable, self-heating silicone handle that can be filled with liquefied or pureed foods. A carbon-dioxide-based charge heats the food (soup, for example), and the diner squeezes the handle to release it onto a spoon. Mr. Cantu envisions many applications for such a utensil, from military meals to cookouts.

Mr. Cantu said his experiments and kitchen inventions could one day revolutionize how, where and what we eat. "This will tap into something," he said. "Maybe a mission to Mars, I don't know. Maybe we're going to find a way to grow something in a temperature that liquid nitrogen operates at. Then we could grow food on Pluto. There are possibilities to this that we can't fathom yet. And to not do it is far more consequential than just to say, hey, we're going to stick with our steak and eggs today.">

Beyond Lincoln and Grant....

The Big Two (Lincoln Park and Grant Park) get the real attention and adulation among the city's park.

But other parks don't always get their due. Which parks, other than LP and GP, do you really like? Which do you think are the real majors and why?

For me, it's a no brainer which one follows the Big Two: it couldn't be anything but Jackson Park. How can you not love the place: MSI, Japanese gardens, large harbor, beaches.

The Conservatory at Garfield Park is wonderful, far exceeding LP.

Burham Park has the potential to become the South Side's version of Lincoln. I hope this gets pulled off.

I'm hoping gentrification will translate into a total revival of the inland parks.>

Cause to celebrate: Aerial Chicago is on the way!

The Trib reports today: landscape photographer Terry Evans will have a major outdoor exhibit of her airial pictures of Chicago in June at Millennium Park. Called "revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrat" will consist of

BETWEEN 80 AND 100 OUTSIZE IMAGES TO BE DISPLAYED IN THE PARK'S CENTRAL PLAZE, NEAR THE CLOUD GATE!!

The show runs June 10-October 10.

Good, huh? But it gets even better:

Henry N. Abrams Inc will publish a companion book to this event,under the same title. Amazon.com is already taking orders.

Tribune, 2-4-05, Section 2, page 2>

waterfront property/questionable shore usage

This is similiar to a thread I started awhile back, but I sort of tweaked it a bit.

Waterfront property has always been an amenity in Chicago and elsewhere. And some parts of our metro area (the Chicago and North Shore lakefronts, the Fox River) have been outstandingly developed for ages.

Take a look at the obscene cost of Chicago real estate cost today. take a look at how gentrification has turned the quality of housing totally around in numerous Chgo neighborhoods. Then take a look at prime waterfront property whose price would go through the roof if the "facts on the ground" were different.

Then ask yourself:
1. What do you thnk would start making these places attractive?
2. When will it happen?
3. What might it look like when it redevelops?

The areas in question?

1. The Lake Co (IN) lakeshore. It may be the most extreme example of such property in the whole US: wonderful lakefront location on totally industrially scared land. The thought of clean up is mind boggling. But if it took place, the land would be worth a fortune. South Works plans on the adjacent Chicago shore might provide some impetus. A related area in this region is Wolf Lake...could it become an attractive lakeshore, too?

2. Chain of Lakes, Lake Co (IL). Lake County is as prime property as you can get. Expensive North Shore communities (Highld Pk, Lk Forest, Lk Bluff, etc.) have been there for eternity. Inland, the wealth is also considerable (Deerfield, Riverwoods, Lincolnshire, etc.). And development has taken place throughout the county. Yet for some reason, the old "summer cottages" throughout the chain of lakes and south even to the shores of Lake Zurich have never been replaced with the type of homes that would be expected on such land. Will it happen? This one is far less expensive to convert than the Indiana shore, the surrounding areas are already very expensive. I find this one a total real estate mystery?

3. Waukegan/North Chicago: some overlap with Calumet region, although not nearly as devastated. Again, this is prime lakeshore and a natural extension of the North Shore, if redevelopment took place. Waukegan is even in positon to create a more urban waterfront with the model right north of it in Kenosha. As of now, nobdoy is going to choose to be an urban pioneer here, but will it happen?

4. Chicago River, north and south branches, outside the downtown district. This one, of course, is already happening. WIll it become a trend? What effect will Bridgeport Village have on recreating the south side riverfront? will it fill in to downtown? and, in filling in, what role witll the Chinatown waterfront have in the process? Would a more promotionally conscious and tourist centered Chinatown (something we verry much see today) finally cash in on incorporating its waterfront into the community? How much devleopment do you see happening on the mid-North Side, where development has occurred in spurts at Diversey, Belmont, other spot, but no where near continuous?

5. North Shore Channel...somewhat like #4. Admittedly the least attractive one of the lot, but with Deep Tunnel, it doesn't serve its old function. The west side of the channel is McCormick Blvd and it prevents waterfront development. But how about on the east side in adjacent Chgo and Evanston neighborhoods? Could it be turned into a more desirable waterfront setting?>

Chicago Needs a Benefactor like Cummins Engine of Columbus, IN

The best (and really, the only) way to promote good architecture year after year is to do what Cummins Engine corporation did for Columbus, IN. Offer to any developer, or business that is building something money to pay the architect's fee, as long as the client chooses an architect from a list of the "top 20" in the world. What wonders this would do if done on a grander scale in Chicago. Some patron of architecture -- Cindy Pritzkers or Richard Driehaus, should take up the cause and offer a Cummins Engine like deal... Someone should starta letter-writing campaign..>

C.R.E.A.T.E.?

i've just read an interesting article in the Economist about CREATE, which is a project to untangle congestion on Chicago's railways. I've tried searching on google, and of course searching for something with CREATE in the text is not going to narrow the search. All I've found is references in the Federal Highway Mega Projects section, and various limited descriptions of the project in other websies but no detailed web sites with project outlines and maps. I thought a $1.7 billion dollar transport project would have a big website. Anyone here in the Chicago forums know more? I would be greatful if anyone knows of any decent websites or downloads.>

Chicago-Pics taken last weekend



















































I have more on my gallery, but they didn't come out as good as these.>

South Shore extention?

Does anyone know if this will ever happen?

>

This is the southside.

I thought I'd repost some of my favorite shots from various SSide neighborhoods. I'm going by the city's boundaries so there's no discrepancies. So that means no South Loop, Bridgeport, Chinatown, Chinnytown, Toenail Junction, Caccaracka Downs, etc...

fuck

lemme start you off with some pics from 3 years ago with the ol filmy










On to the 3MP




















































































































































































>