On how I was locked inside an alley in Uptown, and more!

So much stuff has happened since before Christams. I want to cover it all so I have remembrances here, but it's hard.

I was done with work for Christmas Week on Wednesday. I stayed in Chicago through to Friday though. I got up early on Friday because I wanted to take pictures. I then hit the snooze button three or four times and finally turned off the alarm clock because, apparently, I wanted to sleep more than I wanted to take pictures.

I got out of bed around eleven, bundled up against the cold, and took the El to the Lawrence stop where I spent a while with my camera photographing a few things. I was particularly interested in the Uptown Theatre, the Riviera Theatre, and the Aragon Ballroom. Each of them is a beautiful performance venue that I'd seen many times on my trips to and from work, and I wanted to spend some time on each of them.

After getting some pictures from the platform of the El station, I went down to street level and approached the Uptown. I got some pictures around the side and back as I watched some workmen who were up in a very tall manlift doing some work on the roof. There was another guy watching them work and I joined him and started a conversation. He didn't speak a great deal of English, but it turned out he was a friend of the guys working. I hung out with him 'till they came down for lunch and chatted with them a bit too about whether they'd been inside the building and what it looked like. They only spoke limited English too though, and conversation was difficult.

I moved on to the restaurant on the corner of the block and got some pizza for lunch. Going back out, I noticed that there was an open gate to an alley that had a bunch of door facing into the theatre auditorium. Hoping one of them might be ajar or unlocked, I sauntered through the gate ready with the pretext of taking pictures of the interesting metal fire-escapes overhead. None of the doors were passable. Unfortunately, I found when I got back out toward the street, that neither was the gate to the alleyway. I'd been locked in! I considered options. Climbing out didn't look possible. I started to Google the name of the restaurant on my phone so I could call them and ask them to let me out, but before I got far an employee came back with more garbage. He was very surprised to see me and let me back onto the street. Yay!

Where would we be without our phones these days? And what a great conversation that would have been! "Hello! Can you help me, you ask? Well, I hope so! See, I'm trapped in an alley behind your restaurant..." That needs to go into a story I write at some point.

I shot more pictures of the Uptown facade, breaking out my tripod and remote shutter release. I chatted with one of the gas station attendants, the sidewalk in front of which I was setting up my equipment on. I asked whether they get a lot of people coming by to photograph the old girl. "Just about every day!" he told me. I'm glad people are still interested.

From there, I went back across the street to the neat-looking bookstore next to the Uptown, a place called Shake Rattle and Read. It's a really neat place; the positive reviews at that link are earned. All sorts of great books and music were all over the walls, packed into the little corridors of bookshelves that are a requirement for that magical used bookstore environment that I love so much. I chatted with the owner, Rick, about the the theatre. I told him I was there photographing it and he told me about the shows he'd seen there when it was still open. His bookstore has been next door since well before the Uptown closed down. I'm envious. He gave me his card; I need to send him a link to the pictures when I get them up. I'm going to be working on them tonight or tomorrow.

From there, I walked a block south to the Riviera theatre. Older and smaller than the Uptown, it's size has helped it manage to remain a viable performance venue. The Uptown is so gigantic that it's hard to keep up, whereas the Riv leads a very active life as a venue for local and national acts.

Across the street from the Riv, I found myself admiring the Uptown Bank building. Originally, I just wanted to get some shots of some exterior elements, but I found myself wandering into the lobby and was floored by the sweeping staircase up to a great open area with an ornately painting ceiling. A guard warned me that I could only take pictures from the bottom of the stairs, but then a bank employee told me I could go up to the main floor as long as I didn't take pictures of offices. So, of course, I did!

After getting some pictures there, I moved on to the east side of the El tracks to photograph the Aragon, another gem of architecture. There was so much beauty here! I need to spend some more time in Uptown when the weather is warmer, and hopefully see the insides of some of these places.

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Finally, I got back on the El and went downtown to the Christkindlmarket in Daley Plaza. It's a yearly Christmas event in Chicago that involves a large number of vendors setting up stalls in downtown Chicago to sell everything from Germen artisan breads, cakes, and stollens, to Nepalese woolen goods, to hand-made glass ornaments and cuckoo-clocks. It was my second visit in December, having gone there first when I noticed it was right near where my Japanese class is. This time, I bought a couple of super cute wool hats with animal faces and ears on them. I bought a kitty-hat for danaeris because it was too cute to pass up. As it turns out, wool isn't a good idea for her. "I'm sure you know somebody else who'd appreciate it!" she commented. A couple of days later, I found that I did. Myself! It was cold out, and the hat was warm, so it's become mine. I rather like it, and I think it makes me look kind of harmless, which could be a good thing for someone who likes to wander into places he shouldn't be while carrying camera equipment.

While waiting for the aforementioned Danae to pick me up (she told me by phone she was getting close to the Loop), I got a few pictures of the James R. Thompson Center, a very sci-fi looking building that looks like a glass-clad flying-saucer on the outside. On the inside, well, I'll post a few pictures.

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So Danae kidnapped me at the corner of Clark and Randolph and we spent the rest of the day in each other's company. I'm enjoying the time I spent with her very much indeed. So I was happy that she elected to stay the night in preparation to catching a flight out of O'Hare the next day. There were a couple of things that we'd talked about doing prior to that, but ended up passing on some because she wasn't feeling well (for reasons that turned out to be related to some major stupid happening, and none of it on her part, but I won't get into that). Instead, I was introduced to some TV shows that I've been enjoying watching with her; Numb3rs especially! And when Friday evening came around, I drove her out to the airport to see her off before heading up to the great white north, and my family, for Christmas.

More next time!

(no subject)

I got up to Kenosha in the mid-evening on Christmas Eve. My family got organized (not the fastest process for us) and went out for our traditional Christmas Eve meal at the Chinese buffet. Regrettably, Lara's parents and family couldn't make it. I always like seeing them because her dad, years and years after my performance as Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, still greets with "Hi Chief!" every time he sees me. It makes me smile.

I stayed up late with akreaveter, as usual, and finally got to bed sometime on the same day that my parents woke us up for the annual Christmas breakfast.

My dad loves making this huge meal on Christmas morning. He says that, every year, his Christmas present is having all of us together in one place, and he celebrates that by having a meal together. There was so much good food. After that, I was surprised with a couple of Christmas presents. I really wasn't expecting anything as I hadn't done any shopping myself. My family is not picky about this sort of thing. (Really, we're not picky about much of anything.) But regardless, my parents bought me a copy of Arkham Horror, a huge epic board game that I'd played two partial games of and really wanted a copy of, but had decided was more money than I wanted to spend. It is a thoughtful and generous present.

As well as that, there was a book that my mother came across working at the library that she said made her think of one of my bumper stickers ("Something wonderful is about to happen"). So they gave me a copy of Something Wonderful Happens, a children's book that's terribly sweet and oddly a little zen, and probably isn't to everyone's taste. It made me cry.

My brother, No-LJ-James, bought a copy of Dominion, a very cool non-collectible card game. Oddly enough, danaeris had taught me how to play just a few weeks ago when I was visiting. My brother had never seen it before, but thought it looked interesting and wanted something to play with Ak and I. Win-win! We played through a couple games before the whole family left for my grandparents' house.

It was great to see the whole extended family again. I was sad to find out that my grandfather had had to be admitted to the hospital the night before and wasn't there; he came down with pneumonia. Clearly a visit would be in order later on. But for the present, I saw my grandmother, both uncles and my aunt and their kids, and even moiracoon, who was there for dinner. It was nice. I talked to my aunt more than I've done for a long time. I used to be really shy and quiet when around my extended family. I was scared of, or didn't know how to, interact with them. Along with the major improvements in the rest of my social habits, I'm doing better with them too and I really enjoyed talking to everybody there. I took some pictures, too, of people together at dinner, kids opening presents, that sort of thing. Happy family time. It's good.

Later in the evening, my immediate family drove out to the hospital to visit Grandpa. The five of us spent a while talking to him, and I was glad to see he seemed a lot better than I was told he had been when he was brought in. After a while, the rest of my family left to get home ahead of the snow and James and I stayed to talk a while longer. Grandpa says some things that make me worry a little; talking about how old he feels these days. At the same time, he's not too old to tell stories about going out to the zoo with all his highschool friends back in California and teaching all the monkeys to make wanking motions at the other visitors! He's got some fantastic stories.

At one point, he made a comment about knowing lots of weird people. I said that I knew some pretty weird people too. I talked about some of the interesting things my friends have done and the way they live, and eventually came back to me. Following up on his comment about how he 'didn't understand my family sometimes', I came out as poly and talked about how my partner has other partners who I know and am friends with, and that that must be pretty weird. "It's not weird if it's not bad." he responded.

"Well, I think it's pretty good."

"Good."

My family is wonderful. Just wonderful. I'm planning to go out and visit him again soonish. Probably in a couple weeks once I"m not working anymore.

Another thing that made me think a bit while I was there was how older people have so much social leeway in their interactions with other people. Grandpa made an innuendous comment about the nurse who had just left the room, and who I think could probably overhear, that made me feel a bit embarrassed. I have a feeling that that sort of thing is put up with much more readily from older folks for a number of reasons. It would make for some interesting investigation into that kind of social interaction. For my part, I love my grandpa and I'm glad at least that he's feeling up to making that kind of comment! Though if I'd known which nurse it was, I might have found her and apologized. I don't like feeling so male-privileged.

I wish there was a way I could travel to New Orleans with him. He loved seeing my pictures from there, and talked about how much he's always wanted to visit, but he's not up to a long car ride these days. For that matter, I wish I could even take him up to the Keweenau peninsula again, look at the copper mining ruins, the ironwork that a friend of his did on the city hall in Iron Mountain, all the stuff he's talked about up there.

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Anyway, we left around ten thirty or so I think, James and I driving an hour and a half back to Kenosha through an amazing blizzard. There was little snow most of the way home, but the lake-effect hit Kenosha something fierce. There were snow drifts in the road that were over the hood of my car; I'd drive into them and snow would fly up over my windshield as I plowed through. At least it was the light fluffy stuff. I'm surprised my car got through even that! Any worse, and I would have been stuck in my little Swift.

I don't quite remember what happened the rest of that weekend. Probably more lazing about and playing games with folks. And then it was back to Chicago on Sunday night (way too late) for work. I had to go in to the office on Monday, and then I was off the rest of the week and right on through the new year.

(no subject)

I got through work on Monday after Christmas and headed right back to Kenosha. I didn't even have to pack much because I'd left most of it up there.

I had from Monday night through to Saturday morning to goof off. And goof off I did.

I visited No-LJ-James and Lara at Big Brother House to play a five player game of Arkham Horror.

I played an eight player game of Arkham Horror with my parents and akreaveter and his friends.

I played a two player game of it with just Ak at some point. (Yeah, there was a lot of Arkham Horror happening. It's my new toy!)

I drove out to visit posicat and allysinnia. I hung out with her for a while until Posi got home, then the three of us met up with more folks for awesome sushi at Sushi Para. That was a good evening and it was so great to see folks again!

I visited Michelle, who had bought this super-cute little Doug the Dog plushie for me, who is now living next to my computer monitors. I love Doug. So much. She also gave me a comforter, just because as we were chatting, I mentioned that I have new bed clothes but I miss my comforter. She had an extra comforter she was going to Goodwill, and gave it to me. Yay!

I spent some time over at serinthia and todd_riverden's place where we watched a bunch of episodes of Clone Wars, as well as one episode of The Smoking Gun's dumbest criminals show. I don't see them enough either, so it was great to spend some time with them.

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So, after a week spent gaming, visiting friends, and otherwise being a layabout, we got up to New Year's Eve. I helped my mom do some cleaning and organizing in the living room to make room for people and my dad made food. Oh was there ever food! For the game, we had six players. My dad sat out, as he's not into Civ 4; he watched New Year's stuff happening on live feed various places on the internet and kept up with food in the kitchen. The group of us played 'till about three in the morning if I remember right. That was awesome. I wish things like that happened more often. I'm going to try to arrange some when I'm living in Wisconsin again.

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The next day, I got up and showered and on the road only ten minutes or so past my goal of noon. I drove back out to O'Hare to pick up my sweetie from the airport, and the two of us went back to Sushi Para for lunch on the way to Rogers Park. She thought of trying to connect with more friends for lunch, but it didn't work out. Oh well.

The rest of that day and the next were spent in her very enjoyable company. We got some dinner fixings at Dominick's and watched more Numb3rs over mac n' cheese. The next day involved a trip to the Fluevog store where I looked at cool shoes and she bought a pair of boots that look way cute on her. Dinner was a place called Takashi where we ate upstairs in a cozy converted house. Over dinner and the car ride to the train station to drop me off, I asked her about, among other things, her experiences teaching classes and presenting and what that's like.

I used to think that I'd never make a good teacher. I had to give a speech for one of my classes in high school and I was terrified of the idea of getting up in front of a group of people. But these days...if I can work around my problems with not recognizing people, I think I could really enjoy teaching. Especially if it's something that I really enjoy and know well and am passionate about. I think of opportunities I've had to explain things like technical aspects of photography, or the way an overhead rigging system works, and I realize that I really love sharing understanding with other people.

And, that aside, it was wonderful, as always, to have some time with Danae, who I like rather a lot. You may have noticed that.

Well, that gets me about up to the present. Which means I can stop writing and start working on editing and posting some pictures! Tomorrow, it's back to work.

(no subject)

Here are my recent pictures of the Uptown Theatre!

As the theatre's page on Cinema Treasure says, this is one of the last remaining truly great theatres with an uncertain future. Seating over 4000 people, the Uptown was built in 1925 and has been abandoned since 1981. It is arguably the biggest theatre in the country in terms of interior space; bigger even than Radio City Music Hall.


Close Up

© Stormdog 2010


I love that you can still see "Balaban and Katz", the name of the large theater chain whose flagship the Uptown Theatre was.