Two curious things going on along the waterfront in Chicago, which Mayor Richard Daley envisions as the "greenest city in America": a brouhaha over plans to relocate the children's museum to Grant Park, and a billion-dollar dream of a semicircular Eco-Bridge in the same area.
The $100 million museum plan was handily passed yesterday by the city council in what sounds like a stereotypical example of Chicago's sausage-making politics. The plan's foes have argued that Grant Park is intended to remain "forever open, clear and free," while museum supporters say the facility will be largely underground; those involved expect the fight to move to the courts. Then there's this practical-minded alderman: "There's violence all over this city -- and we're fighting over a children's museum," said Ald. Ed Smith. "If you don't have children, you don't need a museum." Wha-bam.
Meanwhile, two architects have spent the last year talking up a two-mile-long land bridge arcing out along the same stretch of waterfront, complete with wind turbines. They say it would create a "grand civic space," provide room for recreation, and attract tourists. "Everyone has been conceptually for it," said architect Adrian Smith. The next step is "talking to the Corps of Engineers and then finding a billion dollars."
Also, considering that the rich residents near Grant Park were worried that the underground children's museum would "threaten views of the lake," it should be fun when they turn their steely gaze to this one.
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caniscandida Posted 9:55 pm
13 Jun 2008
The recently opened Millennium Park, not far from the location of the Children's Museum in Grant Park, looks dazzling:
http://www.millenniumpark.org/.
And the Art Insitute of Chicago has commissioned Rienzo Piano to build a new Modern Wing, to open in 2009. From the drawings it looks glorious.
As for the proposed Eco-Bridge, it is a curious project; and I would need to learn more about it before I make up my mind. In principle, it sounds great. Certainly, wind turbines in the Windy City make a great deal of sense.
Mayor Daley's vision of Chicago as leading-edge green city is admirable. Certainly we in New York need to learn more about Chicago's progress with rooftop greening, and take the lesson to heart. Michael Bloomberg seems to be in favor of retrofitting buildings, but there is not a sense yet that that should be a vast civic enterprise touching everybody who lives here.
Also we could certainly use here a project like the one that Van Jones has got going in Oakland, to educate and train a strong corps of workers to fill green-retrofitting jobs.
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:54 am
14 Jun 2008
This is the sort of project the dimbulb limboob right will never allow. Like building a huge wind farm on the windy city's rooftops.
Until they die off from their (often secret) infatuation with every vice they can afford (or rather taxpayers or shareholders can afford, it's all on the expense account), these kinds of innovations are dead in the water.
Think Scalia (a sex and the city fan?) chatting up and having a smoke with Sarah J. Think about it. Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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ids Posted 4:03 am
14 Jun 2008
I think there's a particular comfort people have in strong, autocratic leaders.
which is Grist's idea of fun.
Can's view of green roofs and the sparkly things in Chicago downtown is rather romantic. Chicago's founding fathers preferred to reverse a river and dump its shit down the Mississippi rather than clean it at its source, and nothing has changed. City of the Century by Miller is a good take on past and present if interested.
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caniscandida Posted 5:35 am
14 Jun 2008
I had indeed read about the recent overturning of the ban on foie gras, a most unfortunate development. The mockery that was poured on those who supported the ban will now offer a very bad precedent for other places where bans on foie gras are being considered. But I did not know about the political irregularities, discussed in the blog to which you provide a link.
We might very well consider Chicago the most hateful city in the United States, since of course it was for a long time the slaughterhouse center, and the scene of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."
Also, regarding civil rights in America, we cannot forget that Martin Luther King Jr. chose to live in Chicago for a reason. And not for nothing did those two bright kids from Harvard Law School, Barack and Michelle, perceive that there was lots and lots of work to be done for the sake of social justice, in Chicago.
Nevertheless, alongside the various evils that we can point to plainly in Chicago's history and sociology, rich patrons managed to construct some magnificent buildings; and to acquire world-class collections, in art (especially in the Art Institute) and in the natural sciences (in the Field Museum); and also to support a leading symphony orchestra (the Chicago Symphony), which has just managed in fact to steal the celebrated conductor Ricardo Muti away from NYC.
So, ethically, we are faced with what we might call the Roman Polanski Question: Can a perpetrator of evil fairly be praised for having also created something of great beauty? Or will the evil action always contaminate the object of beauty, without hope of redemption?
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Wolverine Posted 8:06 am
14 Jun 2008
I was born in Chicago and lived there till high school, my parents moving to the bordering suburb of Evanston in order for us to attend an academically superior public school. Aside from a couple of years spent about 40 miles away in a rural area to be near my horses, I lived in the Chicago area till I was 28, when I moved to Berkeley in 1983. I've been in the SF Bay Area since, with the exception of 14 months spent in the Tampa Bay area to do some sailing on a daily basis.
I left Chicago because it's too conservative, both politically and socially. Regardless of what you think of the architecture, I Chicago can't hold a candle to New York or San Francisco in any important way. For such a big city, Chicago is extremely backwards and lunk-headed. You should appreciate New York more; it's the only other place in the U.S. I'd even consider living.
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caniscandida Posted 5:21 pm
14 Jun 2008
While it seems not easy to find a good etymological discussion (a variation of "lump head"?; "punkin head"?), there is this cute thing from 2006, from an all-tough-guy, down-with-chattering-women site, which refers to "lunk" and "muscle-headed":
http://news.mensactivism.org/node/6349.
(But generally there has long been a problem with the sociology of gyms/health clubs in which men and women are working out together, and using the same equipment. Both groups tend to feel a bit uncomfortable, though for different reasons.)
Anyway, sorry if your experiences earlier on disappointed you. I am happy you found yourself in SF, and that you think highly of NYC -- which I by no means think little of, mind you.
Never having lived in Chicago, I could not say. But there are some fine schools in Chicago: University of Chicago in the top rank, Northwestern in the second, then University of Illinois, Depaul, and Loyola; so one would like to think that that corresponds with a community of progressive-minded people.
Why, our own Jon Rynn is in Chicago! -- who could ask for anything more?!
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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caniscandida Posted 6:22 pm
14 Jun 2008
"Some Like It Hot," in which Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis witness a gangland massacre (in Chicago, of course), and flee to Florida, in clever disguises, and in such circumstances as to bring them into close association with Marilyn Monroe;
"Victor/Victoria," a Julie Andrews masterpiece, which takes place in Paris, but the Chicagoans of questionable virtue, James Garner (bewitched, bothered and befuddled) and the over-the-top moll Lesley Ann Warren (plainly an immigrant to the Midwest from Brooklyn, metropolis of American culture!), make this a story sans pareil (not to overlook the crucial contribution of the Chicagoan bodyguard Alex Karras);
"The Untouchables," Kevin Costner's break-out movie, with charming (if that is the right word) performances by the ever lovely Sean Connery, and the ever fascinating Robert de Niro (as Al Capone, another beloved son of Brooklyn!); lots of great Chicago locations, including the grand neo-classical side staircase in Union Station, in which director Brian de Palma paid a fine hommage to Sergei Eisenstein's classic panic-and-massacre scene at the Odessa Steps, in "Battleship Potemkin";
"Chicago," definitely one of the greatest movie musicals ever made (up there with "Cabaret," by the same team, John Kander and Fred Ebb), starring Renee Zellwegger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Queen Latifah, and Richard Gere: not about gangsters this time, but about a corrupt justice system in which it is possible to get away with murder.
Of course, dear Wolverine, one does not need to have grown up in Chicago, to appreciate those stories. Unlike the physical works of art to which I referred earlier, Chicago is also a literary creation, a nearly mythological place in mythic narratives, of the 1920s and 30s.
You and I are very very close in age, it turns out. And I could easily have found myself at home in California, from what I have seen of that state, especially the SF Bay area -- but the right circumstances were simply not there.
Meanwhile, I hope you will be encouraging all your same-sex-couple friends thereabouts to get married, pronto, as well as (though it is of lesser importance by far) to see my recommended short list of Chicago-related movies. (Though they all probably have already -- with snide comments here and there to boot; -- ain't gay criticism fun!)
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Wolverine Posted 4:46 am
15 Jun 2008
The University of Chicago, mainly through its business school, is one of the leading fascist institutions in the U.S. It was also largely responsible for the original atom bomb, which has been a major scourge on the planet, regardless of the necessity of defeating the Nazis.
Chicago is a "big" city, on the level of New York and Los Angeles in population. Of course it has some positive cultural aspects, such as the ones you've identified, but that has nothing to do with the fact that it's disgustingly conservative for such a big city. And don't be fooled by all the schools; that doesn't necessarily make a progressive community, as Chicago proves (see No. 1). In Berkeley, the University of California is one of the major conservative influences in town. You're thinking of places like Madison, WI, Ann Arbor, MI, Austin, TX, and Lawrence, KS, where the university provides an island of sanity surrounded by conservative/right wing crap. But this is not universal, and universities have far less progressive influences in big cities like Chicago and the SF Bay Area.
I fully agree with gay activist Tom Avocolli Mecca: "I oppose all marriage." (See http://beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5761#more) I won't be encouraging anyone to get married. Marriage is something that made sense long ago, when that type of social bonding was necessary for survival. It makes no sense in this society, where individuals can survive on their own. Life is change and one never knows what will happen next considering all the variables, so why commit oneself to a person for life when one or both of you could easily change your mind(s)? I have many friends who have successful relationships just living together without being married, though I have friends who have successful marriages also. I just think that type of thing is deeply personal and that the government has no business being involved, one way or the other.
And despite the common misconceptions about the Bay Area, I don't have any same-sex couple friends, just a few gay friends, only one of whom is close, who are in long-term relationships.
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Wolverine Posted 4:51 am
15 Jun 2008
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Wrightsfd Posted 5:48 am
16 Jun 2008
As for the beauty of the city, yes I think it is amazing culturally and architecturally also. There is high crime in certain parts of the city and some of it is ugly as well, but if that bothers you don't live there. I can't stand the filth and homeless problem of Berkeley either. To each their own. I also lived in California for five years and find Chicago politics to be reliably and predictably corrupt in a way CA only can dream of. Just look at your governor.
If you think Chicago's downtown is beautiful, check out the neighborhoods. Take a drive up Sheridan, a walk through Old Town, or a pic-nic in one of the many neighborhood parks. The slogan is old but still works on many levels "Chicago, the city that works."
It is by FAR the greenest big city in America too. Leaps and bounds ahead of anything else of comparable size. And getting better every day. I'm thrilled every day I wake up in Chicago, as a super-green liberal guy, and as an American.
Kevin Wright
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caniscandida Posted 9:43 am
16 Jun 2008
Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.
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Wolverine Posted 12:20 pm
16 Jun 2008
As I said, I was born in Chicago and lived there the first 13 years of my life. The next eight years I lived in the bordering suburb of Evanston, a mere five mile easy bike ride from my old neighborhood. I then lived in Lake Villa for a couple of years when it was rural, then moved back to Chicago for six years before moving to the Bay Area. I visit friends and family at least once/year and know the city as well as I need to in order to form a very well-informed opinion of it. And BTW, I was a long distance trucker for five years before moving here, so I got to compare Chicago to a lot of other places.
Your claim, that "anyone who thinks Chicago is a conservative city has never been" there, is therefore clearly wrong and ridiculous. Chicago is the size of Los Angeles and New York, both of which are more progressive. I don't expect Chicago to be like Berkeley, or even like the Bay Area, because Chicago is much bigger, and because the Bay Area is a tiny island of sanity in this otherwise evil country that you obviously love. Which gets to the heart of the matter: touting Chicago's liberal qualities shows that you're pretty conservative. Being merely "liberal" in this very right wing country is still being conservative. As I said, Chicago is much more conservative socially and politically than New York, Los Angeles, or the SF Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley).
As to your claim about Chicago being the greenest compared to other U.S. cities of its size, what evidence or statistics do you have to support that? My guess would be New York, because of both better public transit -- the subway system is second to none in this country -- and because it doesn't get as cold in the winter as Chicago, so that its residents don't need as much heat. But "greenness" can be measured in many ways, depending on one's priorities and whether one is trying to prove a point.
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Robco1 Posted 3:04 am
17 Jun 2008
I moved here from the DC area five years ago. My youth in the suburbs of DC and visits to my Southern relatives gave me a good look at mainstream thinking, as well as a driving hatred of the suburbs. If you think Chicago is conservative, clearly you have never been to Halstead Market Days, or the Nude Bicycle Race. Sorry Wolverine, but I doubt there are many in the world you would find pure enough in their liberalism. Purism is a threat to progressive change because it excludes people from changing their ways and perceptions by setting up an exclusive clique mentality. "You aren't an authentic liberal, like me . . . "
Most of the protest over the proposed Children's Museum revolves around preserving the green space buffer between the city and Lake Michigan, as written into the city charter. Many here fear that this is the "foot in the door" that will bring unwelcome development to the lakefront.
The land bridge plan is interesting as it includes wind energy, which we have in abundance. As we don't have real tides and all wave action is wind-driven, I don't think wave action is practical (waves average 1-2 feet most days, with a good bit of variance as any kayaker could tell you).
Back to Wolverine: stop picking on my adopted home man! We have a burgeoning green business community, a strong and vibrant progressive community, great mass-transit, and miles of green space next to one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.
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