A bit of a Chicago Boy, as it turns out. Thanks to Pejman for the tip. Requiescat in pace.
Chicagoania
Your (Wasted) Federal Tax Dollars At Work
One of the most basic concepts in real estate is TIMING. There is a time to buy properties (when the costs are low) and a time to sell properties (when the prices are high). This is such a basic concept that even a third grader could recite it.
How you can tell the difference between how the GOVERNMENT operates (with your tax dollars at risk) and how an INDIVIDUAL would choose, if it were their own money? Here is a classic example.
The old US post office in Chicago is a giant structure rising over I-290 (the main highway into the city coming in from the West) that has been abandoned since 1995, when a new post office was built.
While the Chicago real estate market absolutely boomed through the period from perhaps 2000 through the 2007-8 crash, the US government was unable to execute a deal of any sort. There were various plans to do so, but they didn’t reach a deal, and anyone who knows a government bureaucrat knows it is better to be “safe than sorry”. If the terms weren’t perfect and there was some controversy, just let it lapse, and who cares, your pay is the same, either way.
Weird Chicago
I usually carry my camera as I pass around Chicago on foot and try to capture anything that seems different or odd. Since my photos are famously low quality I try to make up for it with a high quantity.
In the upper left – this is a photo of a house in a VERY expensive part of River North, an old brownstone. But looking in the window I see… one of those “skull” vodka bottles – It is called “Crystal Head Vodka” and the link, strangely enough, comes to a sales pitch by Dan Akroyd.
In the upper right, a photo of Coyote Ugly, in River North, now defunct. Their web site mentions that many of their bars closed across the USA, but they still seem to be around in others. Strangely enough, someone walked up to me on the street and asked if I knew where Coyote Ugly was, and I did, and I also told him it was closed and directed him and his buddy to Hooters nearby. Very odd that I was the one of one thousand people who would know the answer to that question. Even funnier is the fact that at first the Coyote Ugly sign in the window said it was “closed for remodeling” – Ha Ha how would you even remodel that crappy place? Would you perhaps clean the floor or something? It was just benches and a bar. Maybe they’d fix that dentist chair that the girls spun guys around in.
In the lower left, a photo of perhaps the worst remodeling job I have ever seen. This is a main street, Ohio in fact, and someone put the crappiest addition ever atop a brick building, and then festooned it with antennas. Why do we even pretend to have zoning laws? Worst yet, it looks awful from above, and unfortunately I can see it in all its glory every day right outside my balcony.
In the lower right, we walked by the Lincoln Restaurant, on the corner of Lincoln and Irving Park Road, and they have BANJO MONDAYS! Now that is a demographic I didn’t think was that popular in Chicago, but what the heck do I know, after all people drink PBR, too, and think that is cool nowadays.
Cross posted at LITGM
Feelies, Live, Millenium Park, Chicago
I did not even know the Feelies were playing in Chicago tonight. The boss was on the way out of the office, and said he was going to walk over and see them. I said, “tell me about it tomorrow”. I wanted to finish something up, and I was working away. The phone rings. The boss says, “you should come over here”. Groovy.
They were excellent. I never saw them play before, but I had their first album, Crazy Rhythms, which I probably got in 1981 or 1982. “Have”, actually. It must be in the basement with the rest of my vinyl.
They played mostly songs from later albums which I did not know. Then, for an encore they did “Boxcars” by REM, “Fa Cé-La” off of the first album, then a killer cover of What Goes On by the Velvet Underground. I was thinking, the only way they can top that is with a Stones cover. What a musical genius I am. The crowd shouted them back for a second encore and they did “Paint it, Black”.
I was hoping they would do Moscow Nights, but I cannot complain.
The crowd was sitting down in the seats. Then near the end of the set, this skinny, intense, young guy comes running down front and starts dancing frantically all by himself. The ice is broken, the space in front of the stage and the aisles fill up with people.
A beautiful, cool evening in Chicago, at the Pritzker Bandshell in the very lovely Millenium Park. It was a large, happy, well-behaved crowd. It is good to see a band like the Feelies getting that much love. They were never big “back in the day”. They are a great band and they deserve the affection and the big turnout.
UPDATE: Greg Kot’s review from the Trib.
UPDATE II: Thank you, mysterious gangly kid! — Agreed. (Lots of photos)
Soccer vs. Baseball
When I grew up I played a little bit of soccer. This was a long time ago and I was not particularly talented. Our team was better than most in the Chicago area because two German-born children of the coach of the long-defunct Chicago Sting also played alongside us and clearly led the team. I’m sure as actual German soccer players 30+ years ago they must have thought our soccer skills were absolutely pathetic, in contrast with European standards of the day.
There have long been debates on the (low) popularity of soccer in the United States, along with hand-wringing about the cause and various opinions on all sides. I haven’t paid too much attention to the debate but I was on vacation in Italy when the US team tied Italy in 2007 and I did feel good at the time (it was quite a shock to the locals, I’ll tell you).
Over the years soccer has grown as a youth sport and also as a competitive sport. The Chicago Fire soccer team actually is able to draw a decent crowd. In Chicago we have a vast foreign born population and whenever there is an important match on overseas our local bars pick up the games on satellite and are packed full of hard drinkers in bar wear for their favorite team.
The US beat Spain recently in a huge upset that did get some press. To say the team from Spain was favored is to vastly understate the scale of the upset; some compared it to the US defeat of the USSR in 1980 in ice hockey.