a proposal to move the dreary Eckhart Park library to the old St. Boniface church; Kingsbury Park for slick marketing which doesn’t mention driving, and the Lakeview Chamber of Commerce for similarly and subtly discouraging driving.
Figs, BBQ, croque
News flash! God hates figs and, like everyone else, sporks. Oh, and spring’s off for now — light snow today.
Another web find: Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, offers some tasty low sodium barbeque recipes online.
Lunchtime update: Earl’s at Gallery 37 has a ham & cheese panini which sates my taste for croque monsieurs. Still looking for a creperie and a soba shop downtown…
Fast food nation
This seals it: as evil as Starbucks might be in terms of homogenizing neighborhoods, and that’s pretty darn evil, McDonald’s and the fast/processed food scions for promoting overeating and obesity with an ad budget ($10 billion a year) as big as Detroit’s. (A Coca-Cola Barbie? Wouldn’t that more properly be a Diet Coke Barbie?) However, someone pointed out that my more personal anger at Starbucks probably says more about my social status than my politics.
In other news: “The New Yorker disdains to be a booster, of his own city or of his own culture. That is for the provinces.” Yeah, right.
16 February 2002
Several new photos under Chicagoland and Random today. Hail spring! Bulbs have begun sprouting along State Street.
11 February 2002
It is, indeed, possible to have a splendid time visiting L.A. without a car.
Yay! Got my CDs today. More mindless Francopop to keep me distracted for the next few weeks.
changing spaces
In honor of the new coffee shop opening up across the street tomorrow, I’ve (partially) revised Wicker Park Cafes. Oh, and hello to the new neighbor across the gangway — for a few months there, I didn’t have anything to stare at from the kitchen window. Now I’ve got you guys! In other news, went to the suburbs today and was once again reminded why I never go. Disappearing sidewalks, long waits for the bus, long dashes across vast stretches of forbidding parking lots, those annoying traffic signals which require pushing a button to cross, and all to get to a half-empty shopping center. Harumph.
6 February 2002
Practice saying (well, enunciating) this a few times: “this delicious, cleansing sentence tastes quite like cantaloupe sorbet.” from today’s PowellsBooks.news, quite possibly the only email newsletter that features the serialized tale of a bookstore cat whose most human attribute is a very Portland trait: riding mass transit.
4 February 2002
Wow, it’s cold out there. Been busy for the past few days, so apologies for the lack of updates — not that anything that interesting happened (except some hanging around the neighborhood), but anyhow. (On Saturday, I did participate in some neat street theatre for Lambda Legal and found a poster of my latest political hero, but is that really newsworthy? You tell me.) Amazon.fr is running a sale on CDs (at € 8-9 apiece, that’s $11 shipped to the US!), so I think I’ll try and find something else obscure enough to make me feel creative… for the next few months at least.
The first few WTBAC pages are now up. Enjoy. I’ll spend at least some of the rest of the week on a project for the Critical Mass Art Show, opening on Saturday.
29 January 2002
You know you’re a New Yorker when… what? Responses vary considerably: some apply to the anonymity and drive of any large city. One alludes to mobility (switching apartments); another to stability (having family in the city). Hm. BTW: a snow emergency will likely be declared tomorrow. Comings and goings: the new dorms and dining hall have opened at the U of C, but Bistrot Zinc on Southport (my first sidewalk creperie) has closed and will probably be demolished, since the property’s been sold.
25 January 2002
“Do we need the overkill of ribbons and commemorative quilts, haloed seraphim perched on top of the burning towers and teddy bears in firefighter helmets waving flags, in order to forget the final minutes of bond traders, restaurant workers and secretaries screaming in elevators filling with smoke, standing in the frames of broken windows on the 90th floor waiting for help, and staggering down the stairwells covered in third-degree burns?” – Daniel Harris in salon.com
24 January 2002
News: Pierre Bourdieu, whose theories on the persistence of social structures (“cultural capital”) reinforced my cynicism at a refreshingly early age, has died.
“You are ugly! U G L Y Ugly! I am a man and I am nowhere near as ugly as you!” – man on the #66 bus last night. I was listening to something else at the time but still managed to share a “what’s wrong with this guy?” suppressed grin with a fellow passenger. Oh, and it turns out that a co-worker was the mysterious person who poked me as I stepped off the train in the morning. See the joys I’m missing by not riding transit?
23 January 2002
Today started slightly damp and cloudy, with promises of more rain and stiff winds, so I decided to forego the bike commute. Bad idea. Cycling takes ~25 minutes (from locking the apartment to unlocking the office door), even without flouting the law; transit typically takes about 30 minutes. Today, I just missed a bus, only to have a pair of buses roll up 5 minutes late, then couldn’t board the first train that rolled by, since standees tend to crowd near the doors and block entry for those trying to board close to downtown. In the end, it took 50 minutes. The day was brightened by the motorman on Blue Line run 105 (?), who proclaimed his train “the happy train,” wished all aboard a pleasant day, and asked passengers to cooperate in getting people aboard – “we’re all in this together.” Thank you.
Speaking of biking to work, one of these days I’ll have to check out the little cluster of Italian shops at Grand and Noble that I’ve been riding by all these months.
west north 