The green, 2011

A few scenes--a very few scenes--from the extended St. Patrick's Day week in Chicago:

Saturday, March 12: the Chicago River is dyed green. Too early in the day for me, but I did see it live for the first time in 2009. I went by in early afternoon, and as always completely missed the parade downtown. No signs of it at all except vendors, and teens on the way to drunkenness.

  

I guess I wasn't in the right place to see the river bright green:

But Monday the 14th (no longer any South Side Irish Parade on St. Pat's Sunday to endure), I heard from someone on Twitter that the river was still green, so I biked the miles downtown and back just to check it out. Taken from a little west of the previous shot, it's greener. I don't get it...more sunlight? The dye shifted in the river?

I had my first visit inside Hoosier Mama Pie Co. on W. Chicago on the way back (though I had had their pies before), a rare time they were open on a Monday, for Pi Day (3/14).

On St. Patrick's itself, I checked my Twitter list of Chicago businesses to see who had good specials. Swim Cafe on W. Chicago, a place I don't get to nearly enough (especially since they have the lowest-priced bottomless coffeeshop coffee I've seen in the greater West Town/Wicker Park/Logan Square area--$2.25 when I've seen $3, $3.50). I had the Irish stew I'd read about, a creamy vegetable soup. With bread: this was a lovely presentation. Breaking the square format here:

I biked home with a couple goodies for later. This was the only overt sign of the day, seen on Milwaukee Ave. around 3:15 pm:

I stopped at the local liquor store later. Guinness seemed too obvious so I picked an Irish cider. This is the corned beef and cabbage hand pie I got from Hoosier Mama before the Swim visit, and a green velvet cupcake from Swim. There was a chocolate-beer one, but I'd had a Guinness chocolate cupcake from Milwaukee last week. And a vegan one; I was curious but only wanted to buy one, and I've been hooked on red velvet for a couple years now. (I'm sure someone somewhere does a blue velvet cupcake...)

The hand pie was fantastic. Notice you can almost see through the bag. The cider was fine and cupcake delicious. Beyond that: completely avoided bars, all week. I'm curious about Irish soda bread and wondering if I can still find some post-March 17...

The Chicagoversary

As someone who watches/listens to a LOT of news, I've spent the summer debating which new media favorite word is more annoying--"staycation" or "veepstakes." I'm guessing "Chicagoversary" is worse than either. That's what August 11 is for me, the anniversary of the day I moved to Chicago (from Iowa City, where I lived nearly a year), some years ago.

Monday I put the Lil Wally's photo, in a previous post here, up as my anniversary shot on Flickr (and it made Explore, which is cool). I eventually made it out of the house to try to do something new in Chicago. (Which overlaps with my idea to do something new on each of the 30 days leading up to my birthday, 8/29.) I ate at Top Notch Beefburgers on 95th. That wasn't new for me, but actually having a sit-down meal, and something besides a burger (a tuna melt) was. I had a vanilla shake as well. Even though I was about to go to my "real" new thing for the day--The Original Rainbow Cone, around 92nd & Western. I had a large rainbow cone, which is a pastel concoction of a bunch of flavors in the same cone. I knew having a shake and then ice cream for dessert was a dubious idea and I'm a tad embarrassed to admit I did it anyway, not for ZOMG FAT AND CALORIES! reasons, but because I thought I'd feel queasy from that combo later. Ooops.

I was pleased that the Gapers Block Book Club, which discusses books with Chicago authors and/or content, was meeting on this day. Except I hadn't finished the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Which was written three blocks from where I've lived in Chicago for years now! (The exact location of the house is hard to pin down, and I couldn't find a good link for this either.) I might have read it as a kid, and I certainly knew most of the plot. It was so crowded by the time I showed up, I sat in a cushy chair and observed, not participated.

I'll definitely read the next one, Native Son. And I haven't read it before. Now is as good a time as any to point out how scandalously ill-read I am in the classics, and the modern classics, even though I've read over 1000 books in my adulthood. Don't get me started on what movies I haven't seen, that's mind-boggling. (Perhaps I am dateable for the sheer thrill of dates being able to show me movies they can't BELIEVE I haven't seen.)


Anyway, I at least wanted to stick around to maybe meet some of my Goodreads friends, but didn't recognize any. During the introduction, this guy introduced himself as "Jack" and despite Chicago having, you know, millions of people, I thought it could be Jack Cantey from Flickr, and wondered if I should say something. Then I ran into him in the store afterwards, and got "Are you Katherine from Flickr?"




Hmm, I didn't realize I was so old-fashioned, you know, waiting for a guy to recognize ME from Flickr. Anyway, nice little discussion about abandoned buildings, and the advantages of using a small point-and-shoot instead of SLRs, not that there's anything wrong with, say, bringing four cameras to shoot an abandoned building...He gets really great photos with a Nikon Coolpix. I loved using the hand-me-down Coolpix my dad gave me in December. Then I was bicycling around St. Louis in June with it in my pocket. A short story: "This is probably a bad idea." *CRASH* "Lens error." (The end.)

Flickr stats: by meeting Jack, I've now met exactly 25% of the people I have as Flickr contacts. As of Sunday, over 25% of my photos have been favorited (JoeM500 favorited my 666th photo). As of Sunday--and if you think it took me a while to get out of the house because I wanted to see this happen, you are sadly correct--my Flickr page had 25,000 views. (Which means I don't have another number to really look forward till until 50,000.)



Sorry to be so immodest with all this; it's the meeting contacts one I'm by far the most interested in now. These photos are from a Southwest Side excursion in early June, mostly Back of the Yards. I wondered if the "Erectors" one would get any silly comments on Flickr, but no, clearly my contacts there are too polite and demure for such remarks.

A festive, booze-soaked ordeal

I hope you don't expect this blog to conform to notions of "timeliness," after all, I still haven't posted my Christmas-trip-to-Iowa and exploring-adventures-around-New-Year's stories yet (and now those photos are stuck somewhere on my computer, not in my active photo library). Why look here, it's my St. Patrick's Day post, after Easter (it WAS an early Easter), so far after Easter that I bought a small boxful of various chocolate eggs tonight at Walgreens for 75% off, and I'm enjoying some dark chocolate peanut M&Ms (the existence of dark chocolate M&Ms was utterly hidden from me until I saw that bag 50% off this week). And last night I finally opened the bottle of glogg I bought in Andersonville in December...

Anyway, I've ignored most St. Pat's festivities in Chicago all these years--never been to the downtown parade, never seen the river dyed (they say it's environmentally safe) green. Nor had I ever seen the South Side Irish Parade, held earlier than downtown's. This year, March 9, so it wouldn't be on Palm Sunday (the 16th). It was an exciting Metra pass weekend for me. That Saturday I took my first Metra trip to the North Shore (its own story, uh, soon!), and I knew the best way to get to Beverly would be taking the Metra from downtown Sun. morning.

As soon as I got to Van Buren Station, I was worried. The masses were there, in ridiculous festive outfits, already drinking (I saw a beer can on the ground) and goofing around. It looked like every white college student in the 6-county area was heading to this thing. It couldn't have seemed more pathetic to be riding the Metra and going to a parade on my own, but that's what I did, scoring a nice upper deck seat to myself on a less crowded train, reading the new issue of Bitch magazine, observing some great future exploration/photo opportunities out the window. As if you weren't getting enough green in this post, here's a shot of the abandoned Kennedy-King college campus (the new one replaced what used to be Chicago's third-biggest shopping district, the 63rd & Halsted part of Englewood) with that lovely Metra window tint.

Though the parade started at 103rd, I got out at 95th. East of Damen, so I had nearly a mile to walk to the parade's start. I'd meant to eat at Top Notch Beefburgers, but they turned out to be closed on Sunday, and I wasn't sure if a shake for breakfast would have been a good idea anyway. I bought a book at Borders (for a book club the next night I missed anyway) and ate at Theodore's, on 95th west of Western. It's a bustling (well, both times I've gone on a Sun. morning) family restaurant place with a huge menu, and cocktails, and since my previous visit, is the only place like this I know of with an all-you-can-eat buffet. Good knowledge for the future, but I stuck with a traditional hearty breakfast. I walked down Western getting a few photos of the signs--The Plaza, various neon delights--but those didn't turn out.

I think my favorite part of a parade is catching moments of setup and rehearsal and then the aftermath, so that's most of the photos here; shots of floats and bands blocked by crowds don't tend to turn out as well. So, there's the pink city truck (above) and shamrock-hoisting and whatnot. And the special Daley family trolley--I never actually saw the mayor, though.



This stretch of Western has a couple pancake houses I've never visited; here's the Original P.H. I don't have much to say about the parade itself. It was fine. Music, dancing, community groups, unions, politicians, TV stations, etc. But now...I've got to start ranting about the crowd. OH MY GOD THE HORROR, THE HORROR OF THIS. I won't say anything so brash as "I'll never complain about drunken Cubs fans again," but henceforth any complaining about them will be tempered with "Hey, at least they're not as bad as the South Side Irish Parade spectators."

I expected drinking, despite all the reports that the police would have zero tolerance for drinking outside (zero meaning 99.5%, apparently). I expected young, boisterous people, though I admit I had a terribly quaint idea of the Beverly/Morgan Park neighborhood as all tight-knit and family-oriented and ethnic and whatnot. ("Tight-knit" and "ethnic" has some historical implications, certainly in Chicago, of a rock-throwing and firebombing against "outsiders" variety, but I won't get into that now.) And maybe it is--note the "Hughes Clan" in the photo, they look like actual residents--but this parade is basically an excuse for North Side/suburban yahoos to clog up the streets with obnoxous drunkenness.

And public drunkenness is much worse when you've had nothing to drink yourself. All the young people with their silly green accessories, and how interminably long it was taking to walk down the street, and the beer and cans and bottles on the ground, and cigar smoke everywhere (is that a big Irish thing?) were wearing me out. It was like being at Spring Break, except in the middle of the Midwest on a cloudy cold day so you weren't even seeing any skin (excepting the few idiots wearing shorts or flip-flops). After a few minutes, I'd had enough, but since I was on the wrong side of the parade route, I couldn't get over to the Metra or buses. I just kept walking.

I walked from 95th to the start at 103rd past the worst clog of people at 111th to the end at 115th. It was a relief to get out of there. I wasn't sure what extra trains Metra was running, and I knew there was more than an hour till the train I knew of, so I puzzled over whether the 111th, 115th, or 119th buses to the 95th Red Line were my best bet. I walked to 119th. The final shot's a glimpse out the bus window at an Irish immigrants' group float heading to wherever floats go after parades. On the bus ride I spotted a "new" exploration site that I got to the day before Easter (an old one to many explorers I know, as it turned out). The sun finally came out and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting CTA shots and visiting the school getting demolished. I've still got nothing against the parade itself, or the neighborhood, but though I'd missed this my previous 12 years in Chicago, this visit was enough to satisfy my curiousity about how Chicago celebrates St. Patrick's Day for a long, long time.

Thriftiness

It's been quite a good week for several reasons (including the previous post) though I'm fighting off a bit of a cold and it's sad to have to consider above-30-degrees-and-partly-sunny (predicted for this weekend) as "wonderful weather." You were, at some point, promised this blog would mention thrift shopping, so I'll say a few words here. This first photo isn't where Village Discount's castoffs go to die, it's a shot from my second visit to this abandoned factory in Gary, Indiana, last Sunday.

Sure, that's the kind of goofy photo an annoying quasi-hipster would put on Flickr with a title like Perhaps I've gotten a bit behind with the laundry, but it's actually a serious story; a scandal in Gary involving these clothes that were supposed to be donated to the needy, but are rotting here instead. People in poor countries would probably prefer nice new Patriots Super Bowl shirts...




Anyway, thrifting: I've been to every Village Discount Outlet in Chicago (I made a point of that the 2nd or 3rd year I was in Chicago) and I'll try to hit all their Chicagoland stores this year. I started last Friday with Store #12, 4635 N. Elston, as an excuse to visit a nearby 24-hour restaurant; I'll write about them when I've made it through all 12 of their daily specials (a $5.25 dinner everyday, $4.25 soup & sandwich every weekday).

Then, Saturday, after meeting up at the very nice bakery/cafe Flourish (spinach croissant wonderful, hot chocolate just okay), I headed out with Kate, who I hadn't thrifted with in ages, to a VDO she hadn't been to, Store #13, 4027 N. Kedzie. (The Christmas decoration above was spotted as we walked down from the Sheridan Red Line platform.) This store is IMMENSE, possibly the biggest Chicago VDO, but it doesn't seem to have a furniture department. I liked this Barbie doll with a homemade toilet-paper dress but opted to photograph it rather than buy.

My haul at Store #12 was sparse. I pretty much bought the usual at Store #13: a vintage men's cardigan, a flight training videotape, a vintage nightgown that still has its original salestags, a Sri Lankan cricket team polo shirt. I got all that and several actually practical items (pants and PJ tops) for about $20 total at both stores. I felt a little let down at finding so little; I'd once bought so much at the Kedzie store (my only $100+ thrift trip) that I had to take a cab home. But I meant to hit another VDO Monday for their half-off-everything Presidents' Day sale, then woke up Tuesday realizing I'd totally forgotten. I'm amused to see VDO allegedly has a Facebook page, but when I clicked on it from Google I got the message "Sorry, more people must join this network before a page can be created for it."

My cheap thrills for Saturday night were to be a hot drink and reading at Borders in Uptown, but I hadn't anticipated huge concerts at both the Aragon (something Mexican) and the Riviera (sold-out three-night Wilco shows). The Lawrence bus from Kimball to Broadway (22 blocks) took a little over an HOUR. It turned into one of those situations where I just decided to see how bad it'd get, rather than get out and walk. It's easy to do that when you're not in a hurry to be anywhere. I ended up with 10 minutes at Borders, and getting a shot of these dubiously parked cars in front of the Riviera.

The coffee/tea/caffeinated pop fast is going reasonably well. I've discovered that putting Pero coffee substitute, cinnamon, and cocoa in a cup, then adding the boiling water, creates something that's almost a beverage. And the "Mayan" hot chocolate at Moonstruck is my fave of theirs so far, I had to treat myself after two hours at the Apple Store Wednesday working on my photo library (which now seems even more messed up). And it's a thrill to learn that some diner/family restaurant/grill places give you a free second cup of hot chocolate (Cozy Corner in Logan Square, Michael's in Old Town).

In other cheap and chocolately news: I finally went to the Garfield Park Conservatory Chocolate Fest after years of meaning to check it out. It seems to always be held the Sat. and Sun. before Valentine's Day. That Sunday was the 0 degree/negative windchill killer day. I have a certain place that's getting demolished that I'm committed to documenting every single Sun. while it exists. And I'm committed enough to go in 0 degrees, though my exterior shots were cut short when I realized I could barely move my right hand (despite two pairs of gloves). I went into the building for "10 minutes" that wound up being an hour of sorting books that I was sure would be Dumpstered that week (actually they were still there last Sunday). I hid lots of them and took what I could reasonably carry. I'd probably have stayed a dangerously long time if I didn't need to get to the Fest at the Conservatory nearby.

It's only a dollar (suggested) to get into the Conservatory! Going directly from an hour-and-a-half in brutal cold to an overheated indoor garden was not good for me, or my camera (note foggy photo) but I endured, and was rewarded with plenty of free samples for my trouble. A few places were running out by then, and there were many sugar-saturated kids bouncing around, but I liked it. Some samples are wrapped, but at others, the gloved workers just drop a pile of chocolate pieces in your hand--so you have to eat them right away! Here's the link for the Garfield Park Conservatory; when I looked at it they note "The Conservatory Celebrates It's 100 Year Birthday!" and typo aside, it really is one of Chicago's treasures, a place I visit scadalously infrequently for how close I live to it.

The Conservatory/Central Park Green Line station, renovated a few years ago, is one of the cutest CTA stations, so I made sure to get a lot of shots of it. This one with the icicles might be my favorite winter Chicago photo this year (I thought people on Flickr would like it more, but the hand-with-chocolate ended up getting all the views). I went on, despite the horrific cold, to photograph a few other Green Line stations that day.


And that's a few cheap Chicago thrills. I've got to get out now and take care of some library business (I should have given up checking out library books for Lent; it's certainly a vice when I've got stacks of several hundred to-read books I own right here between the computer and the TV) and visit that restaurant for another daily special. (Note: this was written and posted Fri. 2/22 but says 2/21 because that's when I created the draft with the photos. I'm sure there's a way to reset the time and date and I'll learn it eventually.)

Happy 100th birthday, Leon Despres!

Today is the 100th birthday of one of my heroes (and I don’t just throw that word around), Leon Despres, who served Chicago as alderman of the 5th ward from 1955-1975. A timespan that, you might note, corresponds pretty neatly with the Richard Daley I era. And as you can learn from his 2005 memoir (which I confess I haven't read yet!), Challenging the Daley Machine, often he was the council member who didn't just rubber-stamp Daley's policies, the 1 in 49-1 votes.

As someone who believes Richard J. Daley tended to be on the wrong side of most things and handled any number of tricky situations in the wrong ways, it's thrilling to know someone challenged the racism of the way Chicago built its expressways and public housing and undertook urban renewal. (For a thoroughly researched biography of Daley I (and I HAVE read all 500+ pages of it!), see American Pharoah; for the faster, more entertaining read, see Mike Royko's classic Boss.) A New York Times article from 2005 noted, "Though he is white, Mr. Despres was known for years as 'the lone Negro on the City Council,' leading the push for housing desegregation while the African-American aldermen allied with the mayor were denounced as the Silent Six." (Of course, there were black activists working on these issues outside of city council...)

I went to Depres' recent appearance with Kenan Heise (they've collaborated on a second book) at the Harold Washington Library a couple weeks ago; you don’t pass up a chance to see someone who’s 99. Also, I wanted to finally learn how how to pronounce his name after stumbling over it so many times; say it Leon (some call him “Len”) "Duh-prey." They discussed all these big issues, of course, and told a fascinating anecdote of when Despres and his wife Marian visited Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico; Leon took Frida to a movie while Diego painted a portrait of Marian! I was intrigued to learn Despres had something to do with getting the CTA to finally allow female bus drivers. Imagine, a time when you had only ONE gender of surly, gum-chewing bus drivers who pretend not to see you as you run through traffic waving madly in a futile attempt to not have to wait another 20 minutes...Anyway, I researched this online to little avail. (Googling "CTA bus drivers" quickly turned up “CTA bus driver sued after fatal accident,” “Drug felon recruited bus drivers for CTA,” “CTA bus shooting,” “CTA bus drivers behind wheel without licenses.”) But apparently the first female bus driver here, Mary Wallace, retired in 2007 at age 55 after 33 years.

It wasn't until after the event, hearing a piece on WBEZ and seeing this photo, that I knew Despres also helped found the Hyde Park Co-op. It recently closed (to be turned into a Treasure Island, so at least the neighborhood still will have a grocery). On Gapers Block, Lindsay Muscato and David Schalliol detailed the jazz-style "funeral" for the store; see the accompanying photoessay (with music!). Recent stories on Despres also include this "848" piece on WBEZ and a "Sidewalks" column by Rick Kogan.

Leon's wife, Marian Alschuler Despres, passed away last year; they were married for 75 years. She's considered one of the founders of the Chicago Architecture Foundation (I had trouble finding specifics about its founding, but I know it got started in the successful effort to save the Glessner House.) They were both quite active in historic preservation efforts in Chicago.

Marian's father was architect Alfred Alschuler, about whom I was shockingly ignorant, though I'm certainly familiar with some of his buildings, like the London Guarantee & Accident Building (1922-23) at Michigan & Wacker, the Austin branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the Florsheim Shoe company building at Belmont & Pulaski, now The Shoemaker Lofts. Also, the K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple (1924), built in Hyde Park after K.A.M. moved from the Pilgrim Baptist Church. [NOTE: there's a correction to this in the comments.] Of course, we've lost some of his buildings, including the 1927 Chicago Mercantile Exchange Building, torn down in 2002-03; Preservation Chicago has the enraging story here. And another will be gone before long...the former Brach's candy factory. I know I'll be spending some quality time with this wonderful map of his known Chicagoland buildings and their current status.

In other news, that isn't actually news but self-indulgent detailing of my life, yesterday I had my second visit to the Lake Breeze restarant, right next to the Thorndale Red Line station. I had an inkling, now turning into a full-fledged theory, that the smaller/cozier a "family restaurant"/diner is, the less service you'll get. Unless you grew up on the same block with the owners/servers or something. But that was okay, it's a cheap convenient place much like Standee's at the Granville stop, except they don't have a cool neon sign so no one knows about them; I didn't know what they were until a Chicago Reader section on diners. I'm also a bit cranky about this place because I'm sure it's where last winter I lost my beloved feminist winter hat. What's a feminist winter hat? Well, it was hand-knitted, lavender with the female symbol in pink, and I got it at a feminist activist conference in Asheville, N.C. in 2003. I didn't notice right away that it was gone, then I thought it might be too late to go back for it...

So I finally made it back to the Chicago-Main Newsstand (now on my blogroll) in Evanston. It was a tough trip because I finally had to acknowledge the huge old building across the street (photos here) I saw last summer had been completely demolished. So I guess everyone ran out to get The Next American City after my mention; only 2 copies were left. It's got shocking articles on--are you sitting down?--a rust belt industrial city facing continuing population loss and decline, and a trendy West coast city where racial minorities and artists are being pushed out of gentrifying neighborhoods they helped popularize. Okay, snark. It really is a great magazine.

I picked up glossy magazines on a couple cities I'd like to visit this winter/spring, St. Louis (their website is missing right now) and Phoenix. I've got to study up on the matchmakers, lawyers, and cosmetic surgeons I'll need to visit when I'm there...well, that's most of the ads...I've got Arizona links now, there are some historical buildings there, even in Tempe. The Detroit magazines were weird, just a big fashion/rich-people one and one put out by the tourist bureau, so I skipped those.



I got Vegetarian Journal, put out by the reputable vegan organization The Vegetarian Resource Group; I've got nearly all their cookbooks and I'm intrigued by the new one called Vegan Seafood. Musician Ted Leo (a friend of a friend of mine from long ago; I remember him from his days in Chisel!) is interviewed, and there's a cover story on vegan cheesecakes. That's a food where I definitely prefer the vegan version, the “regular” kind is so rich and heavy. And I got Atomic Ranch, "a quarterly magazine devoted to"...well, mid-century modern things I can’t possibly afford, except for the books about them. There's a story on Russel Wright; I saw the show "Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle" at the Cooper-Hewitt design museum in NYC in 2001. And a fabulous article on transistor radios; on my second Flickr account I've got a contact, TRANSISTOR RADIOS, who's really, really into them.

I thought I'd grab a few groceries at Wild Oats; I never made it there when that place was still called The People's Market or whatever. I'd forgotten they were taken over by Whole Foods and the store is a strange mix of both stores' signage and store brands right now. Didn't have much cash so I limited myself to my boring Whole Foods staples, probably the top 5 things I buy there: soymilk (the store brand or whatever’s on sale), plain firm tofu, organic carrots (I have no trouble going through a 5 pound bag but I just got 2 this time), hummus if it's on sale, and tortillas (I was unduly excited to buy something that's still the Wild Oats brand). And I asked for a plastic bag instead of paper, because Whole Foods has pledged to eliminate plastic bags by Earth Day 2008.

Taking a slow, scenic way home, I noticed there's a huge condo going up in the spot where half an old terra-cotta detailed building (including its center ornament, boo) was demolished last year. Why just half? Is that common? And if anyone knows what that huge newly vacant lot visible from the Loyola Red Line is, let me know. I have the troubled feeling it might be that weird restaurant-esque building (reminds me of HoJo or IHOP, but not really like either...hard to explain) that I think was an arts building at Loyola. The internet was no help with this one. [NOTE: See comments, yes, it's gone, aww.] Random fun fact: the pink sprinkles you see in the bakery supply photo above are the ones I used on the cupcakes in my previous post!

New year, same old me

That's a shot from my building on New Year's Day. I have certainly not become a "NEW YOU" for the new year. But January's been decent so far. I have the good sense not to make resolutions; if I did, my main ones would involve jobs, relationships, exercise, and my apartment, things I don't care to discuss here anyway. But in my nauseous and weak state on New Year's (again, from diner food; I didn't drink at all New Year's Eve) I thought of a few goals:
Take a photo of myself every day (SUCCESS!) (um, kind of easy)
Visit at least one bookstore every day (success, except on one very busy Sunday of exploring--but I saw a lot of books at that place!)
Write in my journal (I mean actual paper) every day--I did that for the first 3 days, then forgot.
If I had a list of everything I should and shouldn't do, I've already failed a bunch:
Don't bounce checks--my cable bill, I feel really stupid about this
Check and re-check clothes before laundry--oops, my state ID went through the washer AND dryer
No coffee after 6 pm--had it in the evening a few times and lost hours of sleep
Don't let a lack of attention from the general public/specific friends on the Internet make me crazy--nope, failed that (so can I blame it on sleep deprivation?)

Now to the more open-ended ones I'm making some progress on:

New friends. Yes, I got to meet/go exploring with a new MySpace/Flickr friend. We had a great time at a certain place I haven't gotten around to blogging about yet, but here's his photos from it.



Cook new things. Yes, I got past my apathy toward cake in general, cupcakes in particular to buy Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World and immediately try out several recipes (in part for a special someone, who only had 1 1/2 of them, but I brought 10 by the Chicago Architecture Foundation the next day. My roommate wasn't around, so that meant I ate 12 of them myself). My ongoing review of this book is on
Goodreads.

Visit new restaurants, including finally making it to EVERY pancake house/family restaurant/24-hour grill I know of in Chicago. I went to dozens of new ones last year; I'm probably down to 10 or 20 (I've still never been to any of the Original Pancake Houses). So far I've been to Don's Grill (around 18th and Western, very friendly). I'd made it 5 days into the new year without coffee/caffeine, but I finally broke down and had it there. And I got to the one of the 3 grills within 2 blocks around Pershing and Canal I hadn't tried yet.


And independent coffeeshops--so far, a new one on North just west of Western (I don't see how it'll succeed there, and the coffee is pricey), and Stella Espresso Company (1259 W. Devon, an interesting gentrifying section I don't get to often).

Read a lot (obviously). Specifically, work on my "I can't believe I haven't read this yet" list. I just finished There Are No Children Here. I promised myself I'd read The Power Broker before my next trip to New York, but I can't guarantee that.

Obsessive Chicago projects. I have four basic kinds:
1) Visit every location of a specific business or institution (the Chicago Public Library, Golden Nugget). I've visited every Village Discount Outlet thrift store in Chicago (I did that a couple years after moving here--that was a crash course in seeing very different areas of the city!) and this year I promise to visit every VDO in the Chicago area. Even Aurora and Chicago Heights--I'll figure it out somehow. Also, maybe this will finally be the year I take photos at every single L station in the CTA system. (One from the Pink Line above)
2) Document every example of a type of building or business I can find. I've wanted to do this for old post offices, old fire stations, fireproof warehouses, high schools, etc. I won't make any specific promises.
3) Visit and/or photograph certain places or objects in every neighborhood. I'm going to try to get shots of ruined bicycles in every Chicago neighborhood (I'm going by the "community areas" designation, not the real estate 200+ neighborhood maps!).



4) Revisit and rephotograph locations documented in older books about Chicago, i.e. all the walks in an old walking tour guide, all the buildings in an old architecture book, etc. I'll keep these secret until I actually do them (in part because people think they sound so crazy-obsessive when I mention them).



Visit the old favorite exploring sites to check on their progress and try them out in different weather and light conditions. The trade school, above--the east building is completely gutted (only the elevator was left inside) and will probably be gone soon. And the big candy factory, not the one in the recent post. This was the first announcement of an upcoming demolition I heard in 2008. I mostly agree with this friend's take on it--in fact, I was just at another abandonment and met a man who got injured there and knew the man who died.



Look for intriguing new spots. I don't know what's in here; I just really really like the sound of "Triplex Globe Ranger."







Eat better. Maybe I will...but these donuts are JUST FOR ME! How can I turn them down?

I suppose I've got goals about bicycling, writing, the Internet, art, photo skills and performing, too, but I've promised enough here already.