Archive for the 'Chicagoania' Category

Below is parade organizer Andy Thayer (the white guy on the right side). Conveniently for him a smiling photo of Chairman Mao is going right past him, he’d be proud. I’ve seen Mr. Thayer on the news (that’s how I recognized him) and at least he talks about non-violent protests a lot.

A little bit of humor – “Don’t Bomb Me, Bro” is a take on the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” internet meme. Also check out the sign linking LBJ, Nixon, Bush & Obama. In general I didn’t see any of the traditional “Bush = Hitler” type signs nor did I see any particular anti-Republican signs. These protestors were mostly against everyone and they did not like Obama or the Dems, either.

Look at this completely ridiculous sign of some sort of Iranian scientist with his child (probably an actor) saying stop the US and Israel from murdering Iranian scientists. The group pledges solidarity with Iran. There hardly is a less popular group than Iranian nuclear scientists but in the US it is his right to pledge allegiance to Iran, I guess.

As I said above I was surprised about the vitrol that the protestors had for the Democrats. This guy couldn’t make his distaste for the Democrats any clearer.

These 2 with the bandanas and the one with the Guy Fawkes mask backwards on his head are the ones that the authorities are keeping their eyes on as likely troublemakers. I would not bet against the police they are out in massive force and seem organized and with high morale.

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Went down into the loop to patronize a local business for lunch. By most accounts business has been bad because the city is on lock down for these protestors. The streets did seem very empty for a beautiful sunny Sunday in May.

The police had a base on the north side of the new Art Institute Wing. They blocked the entrance with city snowplows and left a car in the front in case someone wanted to enter or exit.

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They had the streets in River North blocked off (Ohio) in order to let the VIP’s come in from the airport. They mainly came in long white vans with black Chrysler 300 cars, and some other high-end ones mixed in as you can see below.

A bentley! Must be someone important.

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It has been quiet but tense here in Chicago awaiting the NATO protests now that the G8 is being held at Camp David. There hasn’t been a lot of action but the police presence is heavy.

Here is a view of the Boeing HQ that has been boarded up with fences setup. I think that our Mayor didn’t approve of this because he wants to see “business as usual” rather than everyone hunkering down for a riot but there will be some sort of protest here on Monday due to Boeing’s role as a defense supplier for NATO (or whatever the “rationale” is for the protestors).

I was driving back to Chicago from Champaign (located in the middle of the state) last weekend when I saw boats exactly like this (with the red Coast Guard logo on the side of them) coming north on I-57 on the back of a truck. I did not see the machine gun in front, however. These boats are patrolling the Chicago River and a couple of times I saw the machine gun up front manned. It would be interesting to determine what you’d do with a heavy machine gun in a crowd control situation, but that likely is for a more formal threat to NATO.
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Recently I was walking in River North and a restaurant was touting their “local farming” element. Fine but that hay bale seemed to be sprouting some extra fungus. I don’t think Dan would feed it to his animals.

I liked this gull on a lamp.

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I was reading about an aspect of the composite New York girlfriend which our current President incorporated in that gracefully luminescent autobiography which apparently very few people read, when I was reminded yet again of how much I despise Bill Ayers. Yep, that Bill Ayers, wanna-be terrorist, influential educationist, neighbor and apparently BFF with said president. My daughter has a word (or several, actually) for people like him, of which the mildest is ‘hipster douchbag.’ It seems that some of the elements of the composite girlfriend have something in common with the girlfriend of Bill Ayers in his bomb-throwing days … the one whose skills at bomb-making were – shall we say – somewhat less than skilled?

Diana Oughton – like Mr. Ayers and some of his other confreres – came from an embarrassingly well-to-do family. They pleased and amused themselves four decades ago by messing around with violent revolution, bank robbery and the inexpert assembly of high-explosive devices, presumably for the benefit of the working class, the poor, the proletariat, or whatever Marxist euphemism it pleased them to label the recipients of their beneficence. The bomb, which exploded prematurely in March of 1970 in a Greenwich Village townhouse, was made of roofing nails and dynamite stuffed into a length of water pipe; the intended target was a dance at the Fort Dix NCO club.
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In Chicago a new real estate boom is occurring. There are 3 large hotels and 2 major apartment skyscrapers being built in River North.

There is also some good news on the “abandoned building” front. At 111 W Wacker, there is an abandoned, partially finished skyscraper that was going to be an 80+ story condo / hotel. They recently changed the facade in the front of the building as you can see in the photo above and claim to be working on completing the building, sitting idle since the 2008 crash. According to this article, it is to become a 65 floor apartment building, apparently satisfying an insatiable demand for high end apartments in the city (also due to the fact that people were having trouble selling condominiums in this real estate market). We’ll see if it actually gets built but this is a good start nonetheless. I wonder if it hurts a building to sit out half-finished, exposed to the elements all winter, but apparently this isn’t stopping the new owner. Doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

On the other hand, there is a Staybridge Suite building in River North that has been covered with some sort of strange tarp for years. If you go to this link you can see the odd shape that the building was supposed to have. I will believe that they finish this damn thing when I see actual construction, although they do keep the lights on at night. The f’d up part of this is that Staybridge is an actual company – I hope that this leads to some bad publicity or something for them, leaving a giant half built eyesore in the middle of Chicago. Hopefully they make some headway on this before the current mini real estate boom ends in dust and misery like the last one.

Cross posted at LITGM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2012

Contact: Eric Kohn
Communications Director, Chicago Tea Party
eric@chicagoteaparty.org
773-209-3435

TAX DAY TEA PARTY PLANNED FOR CHICAGO

CHICAGO – Concerned citizens are set to gather at noon on Monday, April 16 at Daley Plaza at 50 W. Washington to protest out of control spending, unsustainable deficits and the unprecedented growth of government. People will come together in downtown Chicago, where the tea party movement began, to hold politicians of both parties accountable, stop runaway spending and defend individual liberty and free markets.

“We are concerned with the direction of our country and our state,” said Chicago Tea Party Communications Director Eric Kohn. “The only solutions being offered from politicians in Washington and Springfield are higher taxes, more spending and massive debt. We will continue to fight for less government, more freedom and fiscal responsibility on tax day and every day through the November election.”

EVENT DETAILS

What: Chicago Tax Day Tea Party
Where: Daley Plaza, 50 W. Washington St., Chicago
When: Noon – 2PM, Monday, April 16

FEATURED SPEAKERS:
U.S. Conressman, Joe Walsh, IL-8th District
Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch
Dana Loesch, CNN Contributor, Co-Founder St. Louis Tea Party
Denise Cattoni, State Director, Illinois Tea Party
Joel Pollak, Editor-in-Chief, Breitbart.com
Dan Proft, WLS-AM 890 Host
David From, State Director, Americans for Prosperity Illinois
Contact Eric Kohn at 773-209-3435 for press availability with the speakers.

There will be shirts for sale at the 4th annual Tax Day Tea Party Rally, including the above design from Bob Black.

A view of Trump and the IBM building on a clear spring day.

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Recently Bloomberg had an article about Italian gas prices exceeding $9/gallon.

Austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government have pushed Italian gas prices to the highest in Europe, an average of 1.82 euros per liter, or $9.17 per gallon, with taxes accounting for about 54 percent of the total,

The article goes on to talk about how this price increase impacts ordinary Italians just attempting to get around and go to their job.

The Italians hit hardest by higher gas taxes are those like teacher Cioni — working people who live in areas poorly served by public transportation.

Even in the US, where taxes on gasoline are high but do not comprise 54% of the total cost like they do in Italy, driving now requires actual trade-offs as you near $5 / gallon gas.

In the suburbs of Chicago you typically drive long distances during the normal course of the day. For instance it is over 30 miles from the Chicago loop downtown to Naperville each way. Since you probably will be driving around a bit when you get there, it is reasonable to think that you might burn 3-4 gallons of gas depending on traffic and mileage, along with $5 in tolls (depending on the route you take). If you figure that gas is $5 / gallon, then that round trip just cost TWENTY DOLLARS. Note that this analysis doesn’t consider the wear and tear on your car… this is just the incremental cost of the journey.

I remember growing up that $20 was a lot of money. You could live for a few days with $20 in your pocket (just the occasional fast-food meal, some gas, etc…). Now you spend $20 EVERY TIME YOU GET IN THE CAR.

This type of taxation does severely punish the “working” poor. It doesn’t punish the poor who aren’t working nearly as much, because they can take the laborious time to use whatever public transportation is available. The working poor, on the other hand, are essentially “on the clock” and if you are near or a bit above minimum wage you are probably taking home maybe $10 / hr after taxes. Thus the trip from Naperville (or a nearby suburb) to and from Chicago just took up TWO HOURS of your working time.

A family member who lives in Naperville talked about a neighbor who works at a popular (casual) restaurant in the city as a waitress and I started doing the math in my head… the money would have to be significantly better than from a local restaurant just to make up for the difference in gas prices and tolls alone.

I expect that over time gas prices at this level will significantly impact car-buying behavior.  When I purchased an Altima in 2010 (which I subsequently sold to a family member because it was too big for my parking garage and accumulated wear and tear) I bought a 4 cylinder engine, which made me seem like a minority on the highway because everyone else seemed to have a 6 cylinder.  However, the 4 cylinder engine (which is fine for a cruising car like the Altima, it isn’t a sports car after all) gets better gas mileage which will pay off very quickly with gas at $5 / gallon.

I expect that kids learning to drive will begin to associate driving with a very high marginal cost – i.e. each time you get in the car, money is flying out of your pocket.  When I started driving insurance costs were the big barrier, followed by the price of the car and then gasoline.  Thus once you bought and insured the car, you might as well drive it. Behavior that lasts a lifetime often begins when you are first starting out, so those that are starting driving today might view it as an occasional luxury or something to do as a necessity rather than as an activity in the normal course of life.

For the working poor, high gas prices tied to high taxes (especially in Europe) make their lives much more difficult because it cuts right against their take-home pay and often they need to drive to reach their jobs.  Since the poorer individuals often live far from where the jobs are located in the service sector (i.e. downtown Chicago is where a lot of night life is but the cheaper housing is often in the far-flung suburbs) this will limit their opportunities to local employers which could cut their opportunities significantly.

For younger people starting out, the incremental cost of a trip will make driving a much more “thoughtful” experience and trips will often be combined or deferred altogether.  Since habits you develop as a teenager often stay with you for many years or even a lifetime this could cause a seismic shift in behavior, away from driving.  Whether that is good or bad depends on your position; it certainly hurts the vitality of the economy because for most parts of America public transportation is not convenient, reasonably priced, or even available.

Cross posted at LITGM

There has been a preservationist battle over the Prentice Women’s Hospital, which looks like a strange concrete spaceship from a 1950′s sci-fi movie. Here is an article from a preservationist web site describing the building and its history. From the article

A concrete, cloverleaf-shaped icon, Prentice Women’s Hospital has added drama and interest to the Chicago skyline for nearly four decades.

One of the current issues is that it isn’t adding ANY interest to the Chicago skyline anymore. The reason for this is that myriad other, larger buildings have been added all around it – the only reason that I can see this at all (other than being on the street, facing it), is that I am atop a building that ACTUALLY is part of the skyline and looking down.

While I am all for preservation in various forms it seems odd to demand that a hospital retain an old facility like this. The facility is clearly a high maintenance item – just look at it – and can’t be very practical to refit for today’s technology and practices. And there is nothing else to do with this facility – it is in the middle of the hospital campus so you can’t just turn it into some “boom boom” nightclub like you could here in River North, or even into some sort of weird shopping mecca like Bloomingdales did with the old Shriner’s building (site of the circus).

I support the preservationists but this one seems like a lost cause because it would obviously be impractical and fiendishly expensive to do anything with it, and it isn’t in a good location for alternative uses. The building is also too tiny to be called part of the skyline anymore. And plus, it is damn ugly.

Cross posted at LITGM

I am an ethnologist embedded within Chicago for St Patrick’s day. I am building the ecosystem for drunks that are the “pillars” of the St Patrick’s day experience.

You need crowds of drunks in green and the ubiquitous taxi drivers. I talked to a cab driver recently and he said that St Patrick’s day is the biggest day of the year for cabbies – bigger even than New Year’s eve. This is probably due to the fact that it starts earlier – he said he is generally picking up smashed patrons at 10am – and it goes all day and all night long.

Other pillars are porta-johns and bagpipers. While bagpipers are needed for police and fire funerals this is likely the only day of the year when playing the bagpipe gets you action with the ladies.
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Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
and the hunter home from he hill.

Lex was a sailor, and F-18 pilots are hunters, so it fits.

Rest in peace.

The 2012 Chicago Zine Fest is fast approaching. March 9-10 is the weekend for small press, self-published, and independent publishers to show us their stuff. Quimby’s Bookstore, Silver Tongue, 826CHI, Renegade Handmade, and DIYCHI are sponsoring this year’s festival of readings, exhibitions, and workshops.
 
Small press and self-publishing have become increasingly popular amongst authors of all kinds. Let’s face it: getting published by a large company isn’t exactly the easiest feat to achieve. Perhaps it’s rightfully so that writers and artists take matters into their own hands without the scary middle man. While large chains like Border’s and Barnes & Noble have been disappearing rapidly, the independent publishers and their creative authors have done a great service to our local bookstores who are very proud to carry their unique items on their shelves.

– Chicagoist

I always have plans to do “arty” things around the city and then flake out at the last minute. Maybe I’ll make this one. Or maybe not. Or maybe I will. I swear, sometimes I’m like Polly in Along Came Polly. Truth be told, I am one-half Reuben Feffer, one-half Polly Prince.

I haven’t been blogging much lately because it’s been a strange few weeks. Last week really took the cake. I had a credit card number lifted, a minor fender bender, and then got called in for a follow-up mammogram which turned out, thankfully, to be nothing. Awaiting the results while rain blurred the great glass panes of one wall of the waiting room, I thought, “maybe I should do more arty things around the city.” Enough with Reuben, it’s time to be a little Polly.

Stand Up For Religious Freedom

The Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom is being held Friday, March 23 at noon, local time, outside federal buildings, Congressional offices and historic sites across the country. The theme for the Rally is “Stand Up for Religious Freedom—Stop the HHS Mandate!”

Nationwide Rally Locations and Info

Chicago: Federal Plaza, 50 W.Adams, Friday, March 23, Noon.

Click on the link to find a location near you.

When I was a consultant I traveled throughout the US and worked in many different states and regions. I grew up in the Midwest, where my core values were shaped. A general description of these values in business would be a variant of the “golden rule” – from wikipedia:

The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a maxim, ethical code, or morality that essentially states either of the following:

(Positive form): One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.
(Negative/prohibitive form, also called the Silver Rule): One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated.

This concept describes a “reciprocal” or “two-way” relationship between one’s self and others that involves both sides equally and in a mutual fashion.

This sort of approach wasn’t out of the “goodness of your heart”, it was a fair and reasonable way to approach your customer or supplier. An example – you are working on a job at a price that you both agreed upon, and then you find that things are significantly different than planned and you will come up far short of your original profitability or even lose money on the job – what do you do?

You approach the customer, subtly, and describe some of the new or unseen events that have changed the scope of the project since inception. The customer has a few options – they can 1) give you nothing and tell you to “eat the difference” 2) split the difference on some of the unforeseen items which may not make you whole but softens the blow 3) not change the current deal at all but implicitly or explicitly tell you that there are future opportunities to make yourself whole.

More often than not, we eventually came to a #2 type resolution, although it was often linked with a #3 type opportunity. Rarely were we just told to “pound sand” and take the #1 option.

Why is it this way? On the surface it would seem that, as a customer, #1 would always be preferable. You have a binding contract, why not stick it to your vendor? A few reasons – a bitter vendor is unlikely to do good work, and will look at the contract in detail to find a way to stick it back to you by living to the “letter” not “spirit” of the agreement. An additional component is that if you behave as if life was a series of single transactions with no consequences to others (i.e. a series of #1 events), you eventually end up with a reputation as a “bad customer” and this will come to damage you in various ways; often it will get raised from the vendors boss to the customers’ boss at the golf course or some other type of less formal venue; and most companies don’t want a reputation for being difficult and vindictive. An additional element is that this type of behavior is generally not how people in the Midwest live their lives – it will probably be correlated with other types of behaviors (selfishness, not looking out for co-workers, extreme ambition) that will lead to at least a mild ostracism or at least career damage.

The second part of a series of #1 issues is that the SUPPLIER can just walk away from the job in the first place if they aren’t going to earn a sufficient profit. Sure, you can sue them, but the courts take forever and meanwhile, whatever project you hired the supplier for in the first place is languishing (i.e. a product launch, or a cost reduction project, etc…). This is a variant of the golden rule on the part of the supplier, which means that they have an obligation to do the best work possible under the spirit of the agreement to make the purchaser look good.

In my limited experience the apex of #1 experiences on all side was New York. Even the simplest item became a desperate bargaining scrum, with both sides scouring the other for weaknesses and gleefully “sticking it to them” whenever possible. If you approached a NY transaction with the attitude of a midwesterner, you were going to get screwed, because they were going to walk all over you and push for favorable terms and lord over you their advantages while you would be loathe to use the same tactics in return. Soon even the dimmest types have to take on #1 attitudes, and then regular update meetings are just taking turns throwing the other guy “under the bus” and scheming to leverage the fine print. A real joy.

The difficulty with #1 behavior is that it “negates” itself when confronted by both parties using this set of tactics. Now you get back to equilibrium, but the entire transaction and work effort is bitter and poisoned. As far as future work, you just “roll forward” your grievances into the NEXT transaction and find ever more creative ways to win with #1 tactics in the future, as both sides escalate.
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The next meeting of the Chicago Tea Party Patriots will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at 7:00PM at Blackie’s Chicago, 755 S. Clark Street. Be sure to order some food and/or a drink and tip generously.

There is an easy to find, easy to use $6 parking lot across the street and metered parking in the area.

“Our monthly meetings are open to all freedom loving Americans.”

The theme for the meeting will be: “The Legacy of Andrew Breitbart”. Further details will be announced.

We will also have as our featured speaker: Patrick Hughes, Conservative Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010.

I hope some of you will join us.

If you haven’t already purchased the Archdiocesan Directory for 2012, I would suggest you get one as a souvenir. On page L-3, there is a complete list of Catholic hospitals and health care institutions in Cook and Lake counties. Each entry represents much sacrifice on the part of medical personnel, administrators and religious sponsors. Each name signifies the love of Christ to people of all classes and races and religions. Two Lents from now, unless something changes, that page will be blank.

Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, on the HHS Mandate.

RTWT. The column from the Cardinal is very good, though too fatalistic.

This vicious thing can be stopped and rolled back.