Tree installation!

So this is happening already, if you're the type who freaks out about how early Christmas/winter holiday things appear. Once it's less than two weeks before Thanksgiving, I'm not too bothered by it, though I was taken aback on this visit when listening to WBEZ and they mentioned a certain FM station had switched to its all-holiday-music format that day (and given the problems with reception downtown, it was bleeding into WBEZ on my radio at that very moment).

I'd come downtown to catch the #6 bus to Hyde Park to visit the Seminary Co-op Bookstore on their last weekend in the space they've occupied for 51 years. They move next week to a nearby spot. Even with CTA Bus Tracker on my phone, I just missed the bus I needed and had 20+ minutes to the next. So I got a few shots of the tree and Christkindlmarket getting installed in Daley Plaza.

I checked and all the signs said "NO TRESSPASSING."

I'd meant to have another pumpkin-y drink at the Joe Muggs cafe in Books-a-Million (I got pressured into buying a membership/discount card at the BAM that replaced the Borders in my hometown, and now I have to buy things with it) but ended up with a gingerbread latte, and just missed the next #6 bus. Under the excruciating circumstances of having to run down the block for one, assuming the crowd of people waiting for it will give you time, then seeing it continue on because no one else was waiting for it. That's when I gave up on making it to Hyde Park, not having time to wait for a third bus, and bought a few staple items at the City Target on State. Also decorated for holidays, but not overwhelmingly so yet.

January in Chicago

 

Anything I could say about the year past or the (rest of) the year ahead is as dated now as the scene in this photo (dying Christmas decorations), but at least the photo is recent...January 29. And this is Roosevelt Collection, a fairly new development. Late-January holiday decor tends to be confined to shabbier locales, so this was a bit strange. (Also...it's been close to 60 degrees out at the end of January.) Taken on a short, fruitful trip to a few spots along Roosevelt Road in Chicago the other day. Anyway, I haven't managed to blog at least every week of the year but at least I'm off to posting every month. It's a start! Big things ahead!

happy holidays

It's still the holiday season. It's still the 12 days of Christmas, for that matter, and thus okay to post my Christmas photo a little late. (It's on Flickr, too, with my incredulity that my transparent attempt to post a specific photo that everyone would say "Merry Christmas!" or whatever on, didn't work.)

A photo store in downtown Belleville, IL (which still has small businesses: an office supply store, a sporting goods store, a hardware store, a craft supply store--as well as chains), seen on Black Friday 2011. (There's a photoessay waiting about the gingerbread display contest there! And on the CTA Holiday Train, and on shopping mall decorations...)

Just a fond message to the many great photographers I've met through the Internet and in person (especially the one who made it possible for me to take photos in Belleville) and to anyone who supports any of the work I do.

(And now to see if I feel like writing a 2011 wrap-up piece.)

last holiday-themed post

Maybe. These photos are just too sad for my Flickr account, so here you are. The lousy weather meant I didn't try to go to Iowa for Christmas. Then my family called on Christmas to see if I'd come the next day or later, but by then I'd given up on the idea of going, and besides I'd started coming down with a cold the night before (when I had a nice night out with an out-of-state friend here to visit her family, going out for a big dinner in Chinatown and drinks in an apartment in a former paper factory, I think it was). So I didn't go to my hometown, didn't have family here, and didn't know if it was okay to call friends (some of who turned out to be here, and would have invited me to dinner and to get glogg at Simon's [which was kind of my dream day if I was stuck here] if they'd known I was also in Chicago). But I was too sick, not very sick but sick enough I didn't want to make things worse, that I couldn't have gone out with them anyway. Nor could I go out and have fun seeing what was open in the Thai neighborhood, or ride Metra when hardly anyone was on it, or check out an unguarded abandoned building.

So on Christmas I had a cold, and only went out (because I needed to go somewhere, briefly) to the 24-hour Starbucks at North and Wells (open till 7 pm on Christmas, however). My breakfast was a large venti eggnog latte and lemon pound cake, and I spent a few minutes reading a coffee-table book on the past few decades of the Boston Bruins.

When I got around to dinner, I made some cheap staples (soup and macaroni and cheese) from Family Dollar, but fortunately I had salad ingredients from Treasure Island and a beer from Olde Main in my hometown, so the dinner wasn't too pathetic. Also, in the evening my friend in Boston called and it turned out he hadn't gone home (Albany) for Christmas either because of car trouble, so we had that to talk about, and hockey, lots of talk about hockey (I still don't have a Chicago friend to regularly talk sports with).

Dessert/late-night snack was hot cocoa (Penzey's mint mix) and cookies from another friend. I didn't get to make any cookies this year. What I didn't do for Christmas (cooking, decorating, sending cards, giving or getting gifts), and won't be doing for New Year's (though at least I'm going to the Blackhawks game, the last one I got a ticket for before the prices went absurdly high), would fill volumes. So, I'll try not to think about it too much. It wasn't a terrible day, but I can't believe I did so little. Except listen to the all-Christmas-music lite station incessantly for weeks (as noted previously). And it did switch, right at midnight, to a non-Christmas Tom Petty song.

Next up (what I should have blogged tonight, but I want to get back to that Bruins book so I can technically finish reading it in 2009): the impending closure of Standee's, the 24-hour grill in Edgewater. Which the Chicago media hasn't covered much, maybe because this happened so suddenly? And they're supposed to move across the street, but we'll see...They have amazing stories to tell there. And when I ate there with a friend the other day, the food was the best I'd ever had there. Go figure, I start to like the place right before it closes.

Rust Belt Gingerbread Spectacular 2009!

As good a time as any to explain what photos I post here and which I post on my Flickr pages. (This discussion takes place in the alternate universe where I've actually been posting 2-4 photoblogs a week here, not the real one where I'm so overwhelmed by the 1000+ photos I often take a week that I barely know where to start...) On Flickr I post images "artistic" enough to stand alone, and/or images that document an event or place I think needs to be documented in a way that will allow people to 1) easily search for it on Flickr 2) conveniently comment on it.

But photos that group well together and/or tell a story work well here (may include ones I've posted or will post to Flickr)...and that means I put some here that I don't quite want to "waste" space on Flickr for. Such as, well, a Stanley Cup in gingerbread, as you'll see later. Interesting enough to post, but I'm not putting a gingerbread Stanley Cup on Flickr unless it's one I make myself when--oh, you know when.

The first set of photos was taken in the Tower City shopping center in downtown Cleveland, after 7 a.m. on Sat. Dec. 5, after an overnight ride from Chicago on Megabus, long before the stores opened. Needless to say, this gingerbread display was a tad eerie at that hour.

After a Greyhound ride through Akron and Youngstown, both of which I once again really wished I could explore for real, I was in Pittsburgh, with all afternoon to kill in lousy weather before heading to Mellon Arena. I'd thought of going to the Heinz History Museum, but all the holiday displays downtown were tempting, especially when I saw a huge gingerbread structure exhibit. A lot of it was in window displays across from the ice rink and Christmas tree, while some was indoors with an impressive model train layout running through it.

LOTS of sports...here's PNC Park, where the Pirates play

 

And a Steelers fan

And where the Steelers play

Out of gingerbread, someone made...giant non-gingerbread cookies. Ridiculous? Brilliant?

The window display had a few trains running by

And a gingerbread trolley

And...yes. "Hail to the Chief"

And there's the Stanley Cup! But I didn't see a gingerbread Mellon Arena

But there's PPG Place, where the exhibit was

For comparison...

The Titanic? Wow. Okay, time to see the indoor display...

 "Christmas at McDonald's"

This was pretty nice

PPG Place again, this time more realistic

 

Gingerbread White House, with Santa stuck in the chimney

A diner! And other architecture, beautifully done

Gingerbread trains!

Real trains! Er, real model trains. This one, a streamliner, was my favorite.

ideas for a future Christmas/holiday post

Well, first off, Merry (what's left of) Christmas to those who celebrate. Hope all my readers (spammers who seem to be the only recent commenters here excepted) are having a great holiday season. I finally got back into blogging via my sports blog a little chippy but haven't transferred all that energy over here yet, so I missed out on the pre-Christmas posts I'd wanted, but I can throw a few ideas out here for the future and hope no one outright steals them...

 

First off--has anyone done any real investigation of the popular wisdom that the Christmas season (at least from retailers, radio stations, etc.) "starts earlier every year"? I'm just not buying it. I'm sure it's changed if you go back a generation, but Christmas products in stores soon after Halloween (or often before)--that's been around as long as I can remember. Yet every year people act shocked, SHOCKED, that Christmas stuff shows up well before Thanksgiving. I wrote a paper in 8th grade where I actually spoke to people at Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Target and maybe the mall in town (this was in central Iowa). I believe Target said they put out holiday products in September. (Yes, I know that's anecdotal evidence, to put it mildly...) The earliest I saw this year--the Family Dollar store very near me in Chicago started stocking Christmas products the last day of summer. (I was in the same store the day earlier.) But I'm pretty sure I saw it that early as a kid, too. So, I'd love to see a story on "The Myth of 'Christmas Creep.'" I might not be the one to write it, but expect this little rant again next year. (I'm not saying I'm OKAY with stores doing this; I'd prefer seeing much less Christmas stuff, and not till Thanksgiving; I'm just saying I think it's been a problem for a long time, not getting worse all the time.)

The "War Against Christmas?" That's not even worth the space to refute...but, I grew up Christian in an overwhelmingly Christian town saying "Happy Holidays" (or at least sending cards that said that) because I took the phrase to mean "Merry Christmas"/"Happy Hanukkah" AND "Happy New Year" (and I was often a little late with my cards). I don't remember anyone freaking out about it then. Shakesville had a lively piece on the War on the War on Christmas, and an awfully strange reaction to the "war," Deck the Cross.

look, "Happy Holidays" in the title of a 1950s Christmas cookbook! does Fox News know about this?!

On another note...10 Things I Hate About Christmas, at Jezebel, is a reasonable, and entertaining, list, but...there's so much contrarian/curmudgeonly stuff out there about Christmas, I want to be a counter-contrarian (er, possibly not a word) and say: dammit, I LIKE cheesy Christmas music! I've been listening to the lite station since they switched to all-Christmas music, before Thanksgiving. (I wish they didn't end it right at midnight on Christmas; it should at least go another few hours...) I've grown to tolerate or like many of the songs I used to hate ("Santa Baby," even "Wonderful Christmastime," but there's no question that "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a really disturbing song). And I love eggnog! Or at least Silk soy versions or the regular kind diluted with milk. And I even love fruitcake--or at least our family recipe for it, which is lemony and slightly boozy and delicious. I keep meaning to make it myself someday; I think I bought the lemon extract and candied fruits oh, 5 years or so ago and they're probably still in the pantry. I'll make the family recipe, I'll try to make a vegan version of the family recipe, I'll try a different recipe for comparison, and I'll write a "Fruitcake Isn't that Bad" post. (I'm sure some foodie blogs and magazines have already done stories like that...)

that's "Fluffy Fig Pudding," which may or may not be that bad  

(more holiday cookbooks of decades past from my collection)

More reading: the excellent blog Sociological Images had Fun with the 2009 Target Catalog and looked at Gendered Gifts Galore, as well as Santa's Evil Side Kick, Krampus.  The Sexist reports on a story on different stereotypes of unhappy women at Christmastime.

Now, I'm off to play my "A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector" CD yet again, which, if last year is any indication, I'll be listening to every day well into January...

first day of winter

(or, it's Christmastime in the city)

all photos taken Dec. 21, 2009, posted from earliest to latest.

in the heart of the Loop

near the Sedgwick Brown Line station, Old Town. taken two weeks after this photo on Flickr...

can't believe they're still there. I didn't notice the pumpkin (hidden on the left) last time...

taken from the #72 North bus, Lincoln Park. CB2 is a sort-of hipper version of Crate & Barrel

(but they didn't add the graffiti)

Wal-Mart, west side of Chicago

bus stop across from Wal-Mart. strawberries in the snow, similar to one of the all-time great cosmetics color names (I shouldn't have to tell you, but it's Cherries in the Snow)

parking lot graffiti, bakery, Humboldt Park. there for a week now.

the city's Graffiti Busters were supposed to come out

 

Humboldt Park sidewalk

Humboldt Park alley

another Humboldt Park alley.

I would have taken more photos, but it was getting dark really early for some reason.

why, these photos seem sort of cynical...