Today’s post brought to you by: The Red Line to Chicago and State station
Grateful for: Bockwinkels grocery store
Trying hard to accept: I used to think Martha Stewart was the best thing since sliced challah
After another insomniac night of watching:
- Leave it to Beaver (that’s actually a great show)
- Martha Stewart showing me how to make choux pastry (that’s not)
- Escape to the Country (the UK one unfortunately; was hoping for an American version where they set up a bootleg moonshine operation in the back blocks of Tennessee
- Yet another doco on the marriage of Queenie and that ratbag Phil (with all the usual royal commentators telling us stuff we already knew)
I finally fell asleep at 4.30am.
Well I presume it was 4.30 because of course I was asleep.
News headlines upon waking: teacher stabbed in Chicago neighbourhood, sub-zero windchill on its way, Uber passengers getting sexually assaulted.
If it wasn’t so painful to move after lying down I would have stayed in bed all morning.
However, being the brave soldier that I am (read as: couldn’t work out how to use the coffee machine) I caught the L downtown.
Before the train gets to the underground downtown stations it passes through neighbourhoods of rows and rows of decrepit brick apartment buildings.
Not high-rises, but what would be called ‘townhouses’ if they were in neighbourhoods where people don’t tend to get shot.
My god, they were so depressing. And they weren’t even anywhere near the worst of Chicago’s housing.
Tiny dirty apartments with back balconies that looked like they’d collapse under a dumping of snow, and dodgy-looking staircases so steep and narrow I couldn’t imagine how anyone gets a sofa up them.
I imagined how residents probably catch the 5am train to some below-minimum-wage job for 12 hours a day just to afford to live there. It made me sad. And incredibly grateful I wasn’t born into that.
Emerged onto the main drag, Michigan Avenue, and was once again left cold.
It could be Park Avenue, NY. Looks exactly the same with all the same gold-plated, massive and massively overpriced stores. And sticky trees draped in Christmas lights.
And gawping tourists everywhere.
I tried to join in the spirit of things. Ducked into the three-storey gold and marble Banana Republic store because it’s my favourite brand. And because it had 40% off storewide.
The ear-pieced, mouth-pieced, tablet-toting sales associate was so bored she probably would have thrown herself down the fancy staircase if I hadn’t walked in.
She followed me everywhere – in that discreet Banana Republic way – and told me over and over again that she was there to help me when I was ready.
I almost pushed her over and over the bannister myself. Wonder if I would’ve gotten 60% off if I’d done that.
Ironically homeless people live on this patch of faux grass outside Neiman Marcus
Then joined the 47 other people in the airport-like queue to get into the brand spanking new, four-storied, biggest in the whole wide world (!!) Starbucks Reserve Roastery.
Not just Starbucks. Starbucks Reserve Roastery.
Outside. Did you guess that?
After 16 minutes out in the cold, I then queued for another 23 minutes in the café to order from a menu that naturally didn’t include prices.
Inside. Did you guess that?
After getting to the front of the queue and seeing how much stuff actually cost I fled back onto Michigan Avenue and Google mapped somewhere I could go that wasn’t going to cost me a week’s groceries just to buy the cheapest thing on the menu.
Went down a side street and sat in Bockwinkel’s grocery store salad bar café, charged my phone, ate lots of raw veg and sneakily made my tuna and pumpernickel sandwiches.
I had planned to go to carol singing in Millennium Park tonight but it’s not worth getting hypothermia for.
I could have killed time in one of the many art museums. But add 25 to the $0 Baltimore museums entrance fee and you can see why that idea lasted all of 0.000657 seconds.
I’ve always loved Chicago, still do. But if I lived here I’d never go downtown. There’s so much to see and do and eat and drink in the eclectic neighbourhoods. Seen one Saks 5th Avenue, seen them all. Know what I mean?
There’s no warmth downtown and I ain’t referring to the weather.
A long trudge away from downtown later my spirit was restored.
Get away from the main drag and you find the architecture that made Chicago great.
Bloomingdale’s. Doesn’t show you how magnificent the building was. I love those window panes.
You also find the gorgeous late afternoon sunlit paths of Millennium Park and the path along the magnificent Lake Michigan, except you only get 16 metres along it ‘cause it’s so bitterly cold out of the sun you start walking like a Thunderbird.
Chicago Public Library in all its Christmas glory
The buildings, the park and the lake, and another walk around my neighbourhood later, were all I needed to remember what it is I love about Chicago.
Look! I’m skating! Look again! I’m lying!
Off to the Rudolf Steiner school fair tomorrow morning, just round the corner from home. A Steiner school fair is worth going to any time of the year but you can just imagine how wonderful a Christmas one is going to be.
I’d better chop down a pine to hang all the felt Christmas decorations there’ll be. And skip breakfast to eat all the wholesome German baking there’ll be.
Her damit, meine Freunde!!!
Every tourist in town was taking a selfie here. Except sophisticated moi of course.
Then they all went in here. Can’t think of anything worse. Yes I can. The previous photo.
Just for you Miranda. A NZ girl outside a British chain in an American city.
You’d live in fear of fire drills if you worked here
See that W behind me? That’s the Wilson station on the Red Line. According to Google you’re gonna get mugged or worse the minute you step on the platform. Looked the same as any other station to my untrained eye.
More of my beautiful Edgewater neighbourhood