In Reverse Gear in Chicago

Old Jun 20th, 2017, 07:58 AM
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In Reverse Gear in Chicago

I have been frequently visiting Chicago since 2001, not considering one visit in the depths of history, possibly in 1970 and another old one in 1986.

Many of those trips were before I earned my "Other"ness, but I have not let that prefix get to my head and can actually be quite truthful in reminiscing.

The first was because a friend was driving this way from Denver and I tagged along to experience his new Mazda with the rotary engine. However, he would not let me drive and also was adamantly against my eating anything in his new car. So I remember only the negative feelings of that trip and nothing of Chicago.

The second trip was as a friend and advisor to the GM of the national reinsurance company of Turkey, to help in negotiations with a liability reinsurance broker which had suffered and caused Milli Re to suffer due to the asbestosis catastrophe. We flew in, rented car, dove to the Drake to check in, climbed up Sears to see Chicago clouds and then drove to Evanston next day for our successful meeting to get out of the reinsurance treaty with an acceptable loss. I had a chance to show off my ability to sense places and directions by not once getting lost or missing our target even in Evanston in those pre-GPS ages.

The trip back could have been more pleasant if I had not taught a version of two handed bridge to my friend who proceeded to win $17.45 during the short flight to our stopover in London.

What does all this say about Chicago?

How do these two trips relate to the future ones?

Was that broker in Evanston acquired by a company I partnered with to open an office in Turkey, or was it acquired by another one which resulted in the forced sale of my shares in that company?

What caused me to find School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a possible university for my second daughter.

Come along, to discover Chicago, its people, architecture, life, food and universities from an alien perspective.
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Old Jun 20th, 2017, 08:16 AM
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Looking forward to your report!
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Old Jun 20th, 2017, 02:38 PM
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Otherchelibi, I am eagerly waiting to hear your impressions of a city that we also adopted as home for a while.
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Old Jun 20th, 2017, 06:33 PM
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The fact that Chicago is one of the American cities with good architecture had nothing to do with my shortlisting SAIC as one of the schools DD2 would apply.
3 schools of art and one good standard university with a well known architecture school was my solution to her desire to study in an artistic environment.

We managed to visit SAIC and Baltimore School and MICA (Maryland Institute College of Arts) in her senior year on a three day weekend with one of her like minded classmate in tow. Savannah School of Design we had seen the previous year when we were visiting DD1 at Virginia Tech and an old friend at Atlanta.

She was offered small scholarships from all three art schools and an acceptance from Syracuse. DD2 was adamant to spend her four years in a large city and Baltimore was definitely out of the question after I managed to lose my way the evening of our arrival, finding ourselves in the Baltimore zoo reading instructions for Penguin gate or orders to not feed the animals. I think a sign which said something about lions scared us enough to exit the zoo and find ourselves on Johns Hopkins University campus.

My excuse is that I could not follow my well studied plan to drive to a Hilton Garden Inn in a park just outside Baltimore because of road works which led us to a number of diversions which would have fooled a foreign army. The hotel restaurant was closed, there was very little nearby and our visit to a MacD was a disaster when the two girls were introduced to loud applause by some of the other female customers who cheered them for some reason.

The two uninterested Turkish students we were introduced added to DD's negative feelings which the great offer of the school in giving her six credits to start, couple of K per semester grant and the chance to force any class she wished could not alleviate despite the great crabs of different local species.

We also had to have time to visit Bloomingdales to pick graduation ball gowns for both girls in Chicago. They found their dresses and I found out that shopping with two females compounded the difficulty of shopping with one.

Come August of 2003 we were at Hotel Burnham (currently The Alise) and the two girls at dorms on State Street just a block over.

This was a great place because of the park in front which had a great weekly market, the monumental and mystifying department store Carson Pirie ScottCarson which was the last large commercial building designed by Louis Sullivan, a Marshall fields and a Sears.

Today, Sears is Walgreens, Marshall fields is Macy's and Carson Pirie Scott is who knows what. The old ones did not grow or mature like DD but disappeared like people who have had their days. Rather sad but possibly with a moral that I cannot quite understand.

The excitement of the girls was contagious enough that we had no river cruise, On-Off bus tour or long walks to places like the Navy Pier or even Millennium park. Neither were the Blues and Jazz scene in our agenda. It was a time of rushing to a Southern Target store and the under construction Ikea and somehow putting together some furniture and things.

Eser and I loved the feeling. It was totally different from doing similar things in Blacksburg, Virginia five years before. Chicago seemed warmer and friendlier although the school building where DD would have most of her classes resembled a run down official building of Ashkabad, Turkmenistan. The large imposing building, you see, was the museum of the school and not the school itself.
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Old Jun 20th, 2017, 06:52 PM
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Fun read, OC. Hope all is well there.

I liked Chicago a lot more than I expected.
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Old Jun 21st, 2017, 11:06 AM
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Agree Chicago is a surprising place. Although many consider it dangerous, I think it depends on where you go and of course time of day. We we went for a long weekend a couple of years ago. It was fun and we felt safe other than being a little overwhelmed by crowds of rowdy young people in the streets and "El" stations on the Saturday night of Memorial Day weekend.

Sounds like you have a lot of different Chicago memories, which is really cool.
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Old Jun 21st, 2017, 06:28 PM
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Thanks and Chicago salutes to those who have pitched in or will do so.

Walking between Randolph and Monroe last week to remember the old days,
I realised what a great loss was the park on Washington street, where some new high-rise buildings clutter up the already massive concrete and glass structures dwarfing the older and friendlier ones.

I do not remember if the farmers market of over ten years ago at that space was as expensive as the Tuesday and Saturday farmers markets I visit these days in front of the Modern Art Museum and the children hospital where DD2 is employed as an assistant project manager and at Division and State just a couple of blocks from our condo.

Were we afraid to leave our barely 18 year old in the city of Al Capone and the highest number of deaths by hand guns, interesting Democratic conventions of olden times, notorious mayors, ghost herds of cattle?

No! We trusted the self-assurance, practicality and defence mechanisms of our DD2 to withstand the bohemian, mostly older, mostly semi-professional/part-time, different partner preference schoolmates she would meet. We were correct. She was among the 15% of her freshman class who graduated in June of her fourth year and went on for a graduate degree, thereby depleting most of our family nest-egg, but also finding happiness in marrying a young lawyer from Michigan and now giving birth to our grand daughter Arya.

Abandoning her dorm in her sophomore year, she moved to a large four bedroom town house in the old town with three classmates. The fame of this party house may have crossed state lines not only because of the girls but also because of the pool table in the basement.

We figured that if she could pass all her courses with the minimum B average required for her to keep the small scholarship, she could overcome any problems. And apparently it was so, because the next apartment, still in the old town, fully exposed to the EL and burgled twice stayed a favourite of hers, and would have graduated her if we had not flown in after the second burglary and forced both girls (the original two I had brought on the selection trip) to move to an apartment at Chestnut Place with its award winning lobby which fell victim to the greed of new owners last year.

Other nice things about chestnut place were, the twenty-four hour open Tempo Cafe and Potash supermarket across, two pizza restaurants, one on each side, cleaners and car rental on premises, reasonably priced parking for visitors, not to mention a sex shop very close but absolutely ignored by all of us. One pizza restaurant and the cleaners are gone now but the others are staunchly in place, although the entrance is now on Chestnut rather than State and the lobby looks like any other.

DD2 now lives in their own townhouse half a block away, enjoying her big city with all the conveniences of her location.

I think we were there for all her moves as a student, but fortunately not the two after her marriage.

We suffered Summer heat and Winter glaciers and even renting a U-Haul to move some of her stuff a few days before we drove to Cleveland for my cardio-thoracic surgery. We were gone less than two weeks, flying back on the seventh day after my double by-pass, to spend three weeks recuperating, walking a minimum of two miles a day, before I would fly back to Istanbul.

I will post photographs on my Otherchelebistravels blog within a few days from different visits, blues bars, millennium park, graduation, aquarium, view from the lake, buildings, parks, museums and especially the fun and joy we had in this great city.
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Old Jun 22nd, 2017, 12:16 AM
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Great fun to read your tales. I love Chicago. I visited last fall with 2 friends. One was worried about the danger but we found helpful and friendly people from the folks at the El who helped us buy passes, the air b&b owner, the bank guard who explained my friends idea of how to get to Navy Pier was not the best way, etc. Highly recommend the free City Greeter tours to anyone visiting. I've done two and loved both volunteers' introduction to the city. But I bet touring the city with you would be even more fun.

Our budget city transit pass failed on our last day trying to get us back to the airport. For some reason plus rush hour, we weren't able to board a train. We took our first Uber ride with a driver who wanted to discuss the philosophies of life. Him, about age 22. Us, well over that number. Fun ending to our visit.
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Old Jun 22nd, 2017, 07:22 AM
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Thanks Dfrost, for your great post, especially the part about the possibility of me imitating Dante's Virgil.

I just started to post this thread on my otherchelebistravels blog, adding some photos. Currently only three graduation ceremony at Millennium Park photos, but more will follow.

Yesterday, we were at the Wednesday Newberry event at Washington Park between Dearborn and Clark on the 900 block, with music, poetry reading, dog walking, prams and strollers fighting for right of way with wheelchairs and s single homeless covered up in a burka/hijab combination. Arya may have felt drugged by the central fountain rather than the music which suffered from fountain, traffic, construction and sirens.

Whisper's Cafe is back at Mariano Park in front of our building and Eser is doing her best for it to survive this time around by tasting all their smoothies, coffees and teas.

I have been using my time in a very fruitful way by adding my personal poses to city statues and exhibitions at the Chicago Museum of Modern Art. Photos later today.

DD2 will come home to breast feed at 2:30 PM and then Eser will bring Arya to me while she swims her 40 laps so that she can complain about her shoulder pain and arthritis of the thumbs which is thoroughly nurtured by record breaking use of her mobile.

Prepared fresh ingredients, shi-take, portobello, garlic scapes, spring onions, celery, small peppers, cilantro for something I shall concoct for the evening as well as some lightly steamed broccoli as side dishes for some Southern marinated chicken. My taste buds are calling for potatoes but my extending belly, unfortunately seen in mirrors, slaps my mind every time I consider doing something with them.
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Old Jun 22nd, 2017, 04:52 PM
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C invited me to lunch during a snow storm, January 2008. I could hardly see five feet ahead and walked into the wrong restaurant, all the time wondering what sort of cheapskate would invite me to the Corner Bakery to ask me for my daughter's hand.

When he did not appear to be there, my thoughts got uglier, but decided to give him one more chance and called DD2 to tell her of my displeasure; only to find out that my desire to escape the storm had pushed me through the wrong door and that I should have gone in the next one, le Colonial. Poor C was waiting with a desolate look in her eyes and all the words he had prepared dissolving into the storm outside.

Fifteen minutes later I found myself lecturing to him as I would have if I had a son, and possibly raising his levels of apprehension after trying to convince me how he would love and cherish DD all his life. I was already rather sure that they had convinced themselves and each other on that issue, so all I could do was to tell him of the pitfalls of marriage and things which should and should not be expected.

It was warm and pleasant in the restaurant. He paid the bill and rushed to his job and I waited for a window of lesser wind to brave the storm, which would actually be pushing me on the way to Chestnut Place and two laughing females.

The following are photographs from our first meeting with the in laws later that year, when I rushed before Eser and DD to knock on SIL's sister's door and closed to door immediately behind me to complain breathlessly that I was being followed by two strange women.
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