Coffee, tea, or...

First off, in an attempt at timeliness, I'll mention that TONIGHT is the opening reception, 5:30-7:30, at 224 S. Michigan, of the new exhibit, "Do We Dare Squander Chicago’s Great Archtectural Heritage? Preserving Chicago, Making History" at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. Can't make it tonight? The show runs Feb. 7-May 9; there's also a Preservation Perspectives video website; and I'll write more about preservation soon...I've just been busy keeping up with all the people who want to go take photos with me, and my legions (legions = 5 or 6) of new male admirers on here and Flickr, so...Also, going out in the beautiful weather for cheery shots like this one.

So after making it a full month without coffee (late Nov.-late Dec.), on a whim, I thought, why not give it up for Lent? I was going to point out "and I'm not even Catholic anymore" but I just now learned from Wikipedia that Lent isn't only a Catholic thing. Tuesday (which of course was both Super Tuesday and Fat Tuesday, and disappointingly few people called it Superfat Tuesday) I was up north and had my first visit to the super-slick new coffeeshop, The Coffee Studio (people on Yelp like it), which is sort of on the Andersonville/Edgewater border and was filled with stylish, intellectual-ish guys who I don't think play for my team (uh...my championship Scrabble team). Anyway, good coffee, but I suddenly thought, I don't like how I've been mindlessly drinking lots of coffee in the morning, and I did reasonably well without it before, why not try a little longer.

My jar of Cafix nearly out, Wednesday I stopped at Whole Foods. No Cafix, but I bought Pero, which I'm "enjoying" right now. Actually, it's not bad, but Teeccino, discovered during my last coffee fast, is my favorite. Their website even has a caffeine addiction quiz; I've been in the 300-600 mg zone many days recently ("undoubtedly experiencing some degree of mental and physical addiction to caffeine"). So I won't have any coffee, caffeinated pop, or regular tea, but chocolate is okay. If Lent just so happens to coincide with the winter doldrums/perfect hot chocolate weather, so be it. Last week, I tried THREE different kinds at Moonstruck (regular, Mexican, Peppermint Patty; only 7 to go) and right after Whole Foods I tried the hot cocoa at Caribou. Not bad. It wasn't the "Smart Choice" according to their brochure (small hot cocoa w/skim milk and no whipped cream) but the dubious one (medium, 2%, whipped cream), alas. According to the quiz, cocoa beverages are 13 mg. caffeine per 6 oz., so even a large hot chocolate would be under 50 mg, placing me safely in the "highly unlikely that you are a caffeine addict" zone.

I also found this 2007 CNN article about young people giving up social networking for Lent. A 16-year-old "says she spent an average of two hours a day on MySpace, logging onto the site at least four times a day. She's using Facebook as a substitute during the 40-day period. 'Not because Facebook is special -- I think it's boring,' she said, explaining that the site helps her to still 'feel connected.'" Facebook was her Pero! I wonder how it worked out for her.

I would have been glued to the TV and radio Tues. night for election returns, but actually a couple days before, due to MySpace, I got put on the list for a concert for the first time in eons. Aleks and The Drummer were the first (and so far only) band to send me a friend request that I'd actually already heard of and heard, and they had a few extra spots for their show at the Metro opening for No Age and The Liars. I went out in the cold, got that curious shot of the Wrigley Field sign with letters burned out (I know it's the off-season, but still...), and thoroughly enjoyed the show. Aleks sings and plays keyboards and was in a wonderful shiny gold long-sleeved, high-collared dress with gold pants. (If you're wondering, the drummer, Deric, wore a t-shirt.) I never feel like trying up-close/flash shots at Metro so you'll have to make do with these.

I wore my awesome Lego shoulder bag to show it off, but was immediately made to check it ($3, they had to get money from me somehow), putting an insane amount of stuff in my pockets to get me through the evening. (Yes, I even tuned in WBEZ between sets.) I almost left halfway through The Liars' set (they were good, but I just felt like leaving. Hey, I don't have the "it's too smoky" excuse to leave shows anymore), didn't, and got stuck waiting 15 minutes in line to get the bag back. But then the Clark bus showed up almost immediately, so I realized I would have been waiting those 15 minutes in the cold otherwise...I'm sure there's a lesson to all this...

I haven't mentioned bicycles in a while (my back wheel is still stolen and I haven't done any winter biking) but on WBEZ today I heard there are new ordinances proposed by Mayor Daley to the city council; and the Sun-Times wrote this: "He has had drivers open car doors in his path. He has had cars turn left in front of him and had a car pass within three feet of his bike...All three violations were targeted by the ordinance introduced by Daley at Wednesday's City Council meeting. It's designed to reduce the number of crashes involving bikes and motor vehicles...The ordinance establishes a fine for double-parking in a marked lane that's supposed to be shared by bikes and vehicles. And it raises the fine for driving, standing and parking in a bicycle-only lane." I've still never actually seen the mayor bicycling, but apparently he's been hit or nearly hit by car doors? I have many, many differences with the guy, but that's something I wouldn't wish on anyone. These are more ordinances possibly no one will know about or enforce, but I'm still glad to hear about them.

Dinner, dinner, a show, dinner

Here I am back in Chicago, just covering a few random Chicagoland things I did in December, mostly with my exploring companion DK--"proper" posts about specific explorations (including the story of how I'm now in an unofficial girl gang of explorers, who've outwitted police in two different cities) soon, of course. Here's the candle I used for the first dinner I've gotten to make for anyone in a long while (it wasn't a candlelit dinner, though), 12/13/07.

And here's the food: "real" baked macaroni and cheese, from Mark Bittman's new cookbook, sweet potato (baked) "fries," broccoli and cauliflower with lemon and butter, sauteed seitan (wheat-meat) with mushroom gravy, (vegan) chocolate cake with chocolate chips added. With fruit punch. In other words, vegetarian comfort food. It went over well, except DK had never had seitan before and found it "spongy." I want to try more from the cookbook; how exciting that the library a half-block away just got it, and the librarian (who's hipper than I realized) recommended Vegan With a Vengeance (already own it!) when I checked out.

Friday Dec. 14 I was wandering around and noticed this vacant building (actually, two attached buildings) at the corner of Lawrence and Clark looked awfully close to demolition. No workers were around that afternoon and to my surprise I was able to walk right in, but only at ground level. There was a way into the apartment parts but I didn't want to try. I could tell this was a building that used to be fairly nice but has been altered into ugliness--much like my favorite example of this phenomenon, the weird gray "castle" at the northwest intersection of Grand and Milwaukee. The only nice parts were the light green pediments--three on the building.

I came back the next day, earlier, prepared to spend a little time. I walked in and again noted the horribly warped floor, afraid I'd suddenly plummet to the basement. I was about to go three rooms in when a man--obviously not a worker or security, but a vagrant/possible scrapper--walked in from outside. Neither of us said anything; I just looked at the floor and quickly walked out.

I walked east to Broadway for what would be my third meal of the month at Golden House. I tend to neglect this place; it's one of the diners that closes "early" (6:30, which is odd; most usually close around 3-4 or 8-9; why close right in the middle of dinnertime?). I'd had a franks-and-beans dish, and pancakes with "pipin' hot pineapple" (had to try it) and whipped cream, and this time I ordered lasagna. It'd been 30 days since I'd had coffee/caffeine. The waitress asked "coffee?" and I said "no" but she brought it anyway. How cruel--I was only a few hours away from technically making it a month. So I pushed it to the side of the table, and she eventually took it away.

She brought the coffee, but forgot my lentil soup until my lasagna showed up and I reminded her. She walked away and before I could remember that I wasn't in a sitcom or a movie, I put my head down and actually (lightly) banged my forehead on the table in frustration. The hipster guys at the adjacent booth noticed. What a dork. Anyway, dinner was pretty good. I think they're the best "Golden" in Chicago.

The evening of Friday the 14th, DK took me to see Duran Duran at the historic Chicago Theatre. I'd only been there twice before (Ukrainian dancers with my parents years ago, and Conan O'Brien's show in April 2006--that merits its own story). This was my first-ever chance to take photos inside (of course I wasn't supposed to during the concert). We had seats up so high they were chairs, not "real" seats, but I didn't care, we stood for most of Duran Duran anyway (and no dilemma of sharing armrests with strangers).

This was a special show for a radio station, the opening act (the singer from Train) was mediocre (the Sun-Times review called it "housewife rock") but Duran Duran were pretty good--mostly the hits, and nearly all the hits I could think of (except "Hungry Like the Wolf"). "Rio" was especially great. I told DK how I'd bought a 7" record of "Notorious" back when I was a kid, back when K-Mart sold vinyl. I admit, getting their Greatest Hits CD and reviewing it before the show helped quite a bit. I thanked DK for this already, but here I'll say thanks again. Back to Sat. the 15th--I also checked out a candy factory I'd heard was being demolished, and got some demolition-porn-type shots outside. I had a nice surprise there the next day, but I'll save that for later.

Then I went to the Greyhound station to buy my ticket one week in advance for my Iowa trip (which I didn't take until 8 days later, that's another story)--I know it sounds ridiculous that I always go buy my tickets in person. The employee was incredibly friendly and helpful; I even learned that Jefferson runs buses out of the station as well, and it'd be cheaper to take them to Des Moines. Except it'd be a 6 a.m.-6 p.m. trip, so I declined this time around. I took the Blue Line over to my favorite underground station, Jackson/Van Buren. I seriously can't get enough photos of the shiny new tiles. Mostly because the photos I take don't turn out, so I need to keep getting more. Saturday evening is a terrific time to get photos there; not many people around but not scary either. Here's some people paying attention to the "concert" going on.

DK and I took a random driving trip the next Tuesday; I can't even remember what-all we were trying to see, but we saw a lot of Ogden and Cicero and Berwyn and went clear out to Brookfield (I've been through via Metra) where there was a nice little hobby shop (if I needed more things to collect, I'd collect the replicas of classic Greyhound buses they sold) and a family restaurant with a couple different names and a cow on the roof (who knows?). Dinner was just okay, but since I've eaten at nearly all these places in Chicago, I need to work on the suburbs.

Happy New Year everyone!