Random Shit I Learned in Chicago & New York City

I had a recent trip to Chicago and New York City and learned a few things about both cities:

• Both Midway and O’Hare Airports are connected to the city’s above-ground train system. A ride from Midway to downtown Chi-town cost $2.25. I say, good for you, Chicago! Fucking BART charges a whole lot more from either SFO or OAK. (AirBART to the Coliseum station alone is six fucking dollars.)

• You can easily see the Willis Tower or Hancock Center once you board a Brown line train from Midway. That’s how gargantuan those buildings are. From afar, the Willis Tower inevitably makes me think of the Tower of Sauron. And, of course, I’m not the only one who has had this thought:

• The lowest recorded temperature in Chicago is −27°F (back in 1985). That’s just not right.

• The Art Institute of Chicago is a fucking bad-ass museum. Best museum I’ve visited in the United States. (I do need to give the Met a more proper visit). Their Modern Art collection was astounding but I was really impressed by their Modern American Art collection. (John Singer Sargent rules!)

• The Fountain of the Great Lakes sculpture in the garden next to the Art Institute is purty:

• Speaking of the Great Lakes, Lake Michigan is enormous. My friend Chris and I walked along its shore for a short while and it in no way resembled a lake. It’s the largest one I’ve ever seen—and it’s not even the largest of the five Great Lakes. (Lake Superior and Huron are larger in surface area.) Lake Michigan’s shoreline is 1,640 miles long.

• Cloud Gate, a.k.a. The Bean, is the iconic public art sculpture in Millennium Park. Off the top of my head, I’d say it’s the most impressive public art installation I’ve ever seen. I had no ambition of visiting it before I flew it to the Windy City, but I’m really glad my homeboy took me for a stroll through the park. I think it’s impossible to visit the steel sculpture without snapping a few pictures of it with either the immediate Michigan Avenue skyline in the background, or with it refracted from the steel panels. From what I observed, the sculpture produces awe and wonder from its visitors. (And a lot of selfies, but of course.) People’s reactions to it—including mine—kind of reminded me of the apes and the monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• Boystown is Chicago’s equivalent to San Francisco’s Castro District. In fact, Boystown is the first officially recognized gay village in the United States, according to the good folks at Wikipedia.

• Chicago has some seriously twisted and repressed people. Wednesday night, Chris and I headed over to the Town Hall Pub in Boystown to check out their “I Saw You” comedy show in which actors from a local theater company dramatically read personal ads from the Chicago area. On behalf of Chris and myself, I can honestly say that the words “velvet suck” are permanently scorched in our minds. And I may never look at coffee cream the same way after one of the Craigslist sex ads we heard. (Hint: the phrase “Please have a big load” and “No talking” were used in that particular ad.)

• If you have a morbid fascination with serial killers, L & L Tavern in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood is a must-visit. Jeffrey Dahmer supposedly visited the dive bar on a number of occasions to sit next to the window to chickenhawk young gay men walking down the street. Also, Chicago-native John Wayne Gacy, a.k.a. the Killer Clown, reportedly once stepped into the bar dressed in his Pogo the Clown regalia. I’m no scholar of American serial killers, but I suspect there aren’t too many places in this country—besides jails—which two super-infamous serial killers visited, but L & L Tavern is an exception! (And it’s a fairly excellent, classic dive bar.)

• Once he was imprisoned, John Wayne Gacy gained further notoriety by drawing paintings of himself as his Pogo the Clown character. He sold them for thousands of dollars. They’re deliciously creepy:

• Turns out the CTA Kimball line is not named after Dr. Kimball from the classic The Fugitive, which was partly filmed in downtown Chicago.

• In terms of aesthetic pleasure, I humbly agree with my friend, Chris, that the Brown line provides the most beauteous views along the CTA system. Riding a train along its line was an absolute treat compared to the dark, grindingly-loud assault to the senses you experience in riding BART beneath San Francisco.

• Unabridged Bookstore in the Lakeview District is a pretty fantastic store.

• My ears popped on the way up to the 96^th floor of the John Hancock Center. First time I’ve ever experienced that! (According to its Wikipedia article, the elevators travel 20 miles per hour.)

• The view from the Signature Room on the 96^th floor of the Hancock Center is incredibly fucking worth it. Shit, you can see four states from up there—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Chris and I arrived there just as the sun was setting. It was glorious (as were the Manhattans we drank):

• Although it’s 100 stories tall, the John Hancock Center is only the eighth tallest building in the United States. Within Chicago, it’s only the fourth tallest building behind the 108-story Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), the Drumpf Tower (boo!) and the Aon Center. Its construction took four years.

• Don’t pack vinyl records in carry-on luggage! TSA may thoroughly search its contents for blades.

• If you ask me, Chic’s “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” is excellent sonic accompaniment to a ride on a Coney Island-bound F train. What do you know: music indigenous to a city plays well within its environment.

• I’ve had pizza at Bleecker Street Pizza but the slices of pepperoni I had at Pizza Plus in Park Slope was right on par, especially when sprinkled with their parmesan cheese. Dear god, it was sooooooooo good. My one regret—and it’s a substantial one now that I’m back here in California—is that I didn’t eat it for every fucking meal I had during my fleeting visit.

• During this trip, I finally saw Rockefeller Center, as well as St. Patrick’s Cathedral across the street from the statue of Atlas. It’s a beautiful structure, the most impressive church I’ve seen in the United States. (I am also a huge sucker for Gothic-style cathedrals.) And whaddya know: St. Patrick’s is the largest decorated Neo-Gothic-style cathedral in North America.

• PJ Clarke’s on 3^rd Avenue in Manhattan is fucking dope. My buddy Justin and I hit it up to pay our respects to writer Frederick Exley, since it used to be his haunt. (I found out later that the bar was filmed in Billy Wilder’s classic The Lost Weekend. Charles Jackson, who wrote the novel, was a regular at the bar. Like Exley, Jackson battled alcoholism for many years.) We grabbed seats at the bar. The bartenders, dressed in button-down shirts and a simple, classy black tie, personally shook our hands and introduced themselves. After they greeted us and stepped away, I whispered to Justin: “What’s with the bartenders here?” He told me that’s just how they are at this joint. And their Old Fashioned cocktails were outstanding, as was—to my tummy’s delight—their food. It was pricey but it wasn’t your standard bar food. Their dirty fries and steak hit the fucking spot.

• During my 2015 trip to NYC, I continually had problems sliding my Metro Card at the turnstiles. It happened so often that I, in my idiocy, took it personally—as though the city was telling me I wasn’t cut out for life within it. This time around, I had no trouble sliding my Metro Card at the turnstiles. Believe it or not, this provided a great source of triumph and validation. I finally fucking figured out what speed to slide it through! Too bad I likely won’t be back to The Greatest American City for a few years (boohoohoo).

• Q104.3 FM is an outstanding classic rock station in New York City! Holy shit. My cab ride to JFK was a nonstop parade of great songs. It will be impossible to listen to The Doors “Soul Kitchen” without recalling that sunny late afternoon ride down 8^th Avenue, past the Prospect Park entrance onto Eastern Parkway for the long road home.