Won over by Chicago
Travelogue time!!
Okay, so I've only been out in Chicago for a single evening for about 3 hours, and I only took in a 3 block area of downtown in that time, but the place blew me away. For those in the know of Chicago locales, I wandered out of the wondrous Palmer House Hotel noted in yesterday's entry and found my way to Michigan Avenue. I was heading north to find a pizza joint suggested by Connie which happened to be a mere half mile from my hotel. And along Michigan Avenue were some of the most astounding skyline vistas, along with street musicians, a photographic exhibition, bizarre permanent sculptures in Milennium park, an astounding architectural wonder in the old public library...in the scope of 1/2 mile, I was constantly interested in the surroundings. In the three hours spent wandering, this town easily ranks up there with San Francisco as a great place to be (while I generally can't abide most of California, I love SF dearly...).
As for the pizza, Giordano's stuffed pizza is very good. I couldn't finish a 10" pepperoni pie...wish I hadn't eaten the free lunch provided me here at the conference. Was it as good as Star (in Houston)? Hmmmm...going to have to hit Star again soon when I return to do a quick comparison...it may have been a match, though.
One of the great moments was on the way home - a photographer has an outdoor installation of images he's been taking of families all around the world. The images are very much like Avedon's images of the American public - done against a stark white backdrop...but these images are all in color, in contrast to Avedon's stark black and white. Each image has a small bit of text beneath it to describe the image and the people in it. The plain idea of the installation is to show that while we're all quite different, with different cultures and different goals in life, that deep down, we are very much the same in so many ways.
Some interesting things that stood out...one image of a family in Poland - every child had a t-shirt on that included some kind of image on it having to do with American pop culture (a Chicago Bulls T, a Tom & Jerry T) and each child was wearing athletic sweat pants...all knock-off brands (one in the Adidas script, but spelled "Aisad").
One thing that has always interested me about cultures across the world is how the smile is the universal method of showing happiness. There were lots of smiles. Some quite mesmerizing.
And one thing I loved was while I moved around the installation, viewing the images that were meant to show how all our cultures were so much the same, I never heard a bit of English spoken by the people who were passing by me (there was some nordic language, some Indian, a bit of German, and a couple languages I couldn't place...one possibly Polish). Here we were, a bunch of people NOT in the photos, of different cultures, examining the photos of different cultures...it seemed to be poetic justice as the people in the images looked directly back at us.
I'd love to kill some more time in this town - pity I have to leave tomorrow. Maybe I'll be back someday...but I think I'll keep it to the summer. I've been here in November...and I never left the hotel, for obvious reasons.
Okay, so I've only been out in Chicago for a single evening for about 3 hours, and I only took in a 3 block area of downtown in that time, but the place blew me away. For those in the know of Chicago locales, I wandered out of the wondrous Palmer House Hotel noted in yesterday's entry and found my way to Michigan Avenue. I was heading north to find a pizza joint suggested by Connie which happened to be a mere half mile from my hotel. And along Michigan Avenue were some of the most astounding skyline vistas, along with street musicians, a photographic exhibition, bizarre permanent sculptures in Milennium park, an astounding architectural wonder in the old public library...in the scope of 1/2 mile, I was constantly interested in the surroundings. In the three hours spent wandering, this town easily ranks up there with San Francisco as a great place to be (while I generally can't abide most of California, I love SF dearly...).
As for the pizza, Giordano's stuffed pizza is very good. I couldn't finish a 10" pepperoni pie...wish I hadn't eaten the free lunch provided me here at the conference. Was it as good as Star (in Houston)? Hmmmm...going to have to hit Star again soon when I return to do a quick comparison...it may have been a match, though.
One of the great moments was on the way home - a photographer has an outdoor installation of images he's been taking of families all around the world. The images are very much like Avedon's images of the American public - done against a stark white backdrop...but these images are all in color, in contrast to Avedon's stark black and white. Each image has a small bit of text beneath it to describe the image and the people in it. The plain idea of the installation is to show that while we're all quite different, with different cultures and different goals in life, that deep down, we are very much the same in so many ways.
Some interesting things that stood out...one image of a family in Poland - every child had a t-shirt on that included some kind of image on it having to do with American pop culture (a Chicago Bulls T, a Tom & Jerry T) and each child was wearing athletic sweat pants...all knock-off brands (one in the Adidas script, but spelled "Aisad").
One thing that has always interested me about cultures across the world is how the smile is the universal method of showing happiness. There were lots of smiles. Some quite mesmerizing.
And one thing I loved was while I moved around the installation, viewing the images that were meant to show how all our cultures were so much the same, I never heard a bit of English spoken by the people who were passing by me (there was some nordic language, some Indian, a bit of German, and a couple languages I couldn't place...one possibly Polish). Here we were, a bunch of people NOT in the photos, of different cultures, examining the photos of different cultures...it seemed to be poetic justice as the people in the images looked directly back at us.
I'd love to kill some more time in this town - pity I have to leave tomorrow. Maybe I'll be back someday...but I think I'll keep it to the summer. I've been here in November...and I never left the hotel, for obvious reasons.
posted by Erik | 5:58 PM
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