Of course, not everyone in Chicago is excited about the idea of Chicago hosting the Olympics.  Like the people whose houses are going to be torn down to build the Olympic Village, or the people whose taxes are going up to pay for the houses being torn down… the police are actually leading the protests, if you can imagine that, taking advantage of this opportunity to highlight their discontent over contract negotiations with our fair mayor, Mr. Daley.  Others simply say they would really like it if Chicago spend money on things like education and housing before taking on this additional responsibility.  I wonder how the protesting in Chicago compares with the reaction the other bid cities (Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro), and if this is pretty common when a city considers hosting a major international event involving lots of capital and infrastructure investment… 

I was actually in Beijing in the late fall of 2005, as they were really getting going on their Olympic prep work for 2008.  They were already selling t-shirts and were halfway through remodeling national landmarks, not to mention tearing down hutongs and the like.  China tried for a whole etiquette makeover too – when I was there, they were handing out brochures to locals to teach them about Western manners so as to make a good impression – things like shaking hands and not spitting all the time and the like.  Very interesting.  

November 2005, off Tiananmen Square

Anyway, the IOC is coming to town, and with such sports heros as Michael Jordan and Oprah (?) on their side, the Chicago 2016 folks are all geared up to show the boys around town and see what they think.  Everything downtown is covered in Olympics ads or protest flyers.  With all this tension in the air, all the e-mails and news articles flying, I don’t know how much longer I can take it til someone makes a decision!  

Sadly, here’s the news on that front: 

(minus however many seconds/minutes/hours, etc, it’s been since 8:56pm on Thursday)  Aaahhh!!  

Fortunately, Mac and I came up with an impromptu song for the day to help cut the anticipation, and it goes like this: 

Shana: Oh, you better watch out, you better not cry

Mac: Cry! 

Shana: You better not pout, I’m tellin’ you why

Mac: Why!?!

Shana: The IOC is comin’ to town.  

Still Shana: They’re makin’ a list and checkin’ it twice

Mac: Twice! 

Shana: Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice

Mac: Nice! 

Shana: The IOC is comin’ to town! 

Mac: Hey, hun?  I’m actually on the phone… 

It was actually reported a couple weeks ago, by Combos (yep, those weird stuffed hard pretzel things, and no, I’m not sure why), but apparently it’s taken the RedEye, the Chicago Tribune’s free daily paper, until now to dig it up.  And here it is: 

We’re ranked 47 out of 50 cities across the country, behind Dayton, behind Milwaukee, behind Buffalo, just barely behind DC, and ahead of NYC, LA, SF, and Portland, Oregon. The article itself is not really worth reading, unless your bus is stuck in traffic and your forgot your book at home… and you’ve already read all the other things there are to read on your phone and checked the weather twice… 

Somewhat interesting, however, are the little factoids of information you can gather from the “man-o-meter” rankings… yeah, there was a man-o-meter.  Things that worked in our favor?  There are obvious ones, like the Sears Tower (though I think we lost some points for the recent “Willis” development) and all of our sports teams… but did you also know that it is a Chicagoan who holds the International Federation of Competitive Eating’s record for hands-free blueberry pie?  9.17 pies in 8 minutes!  (Just so we’re clear though, as impressive as this surely is, if I ever bake you a blueberry pie and you consume it in its entirety in less than a minute, “impressed” is not what I’ll be feeling.)  The same guy apparently also holds the record for chocolate hearts, corned beef and cabbage, grits, and more… I’d imagine some of the blueberry pie skills cross over to other food types.  We also eat a lot of hot dogs – about 100 million Vienna beefs alone are produced and sold in Chicago each year. Apparently – this was one of my favorite tidbits - 

“travelers at O’Hare consume six times more hot dogs than Los Angeles International Airport and New York’s LaGuardia Airport combined.”

Thankfully, all of this bodes well for our manliness ratings.  All you aspiring manly men, eat up!  

Things that ranked against us, however, were our Starbucks-saturation levels (114 in the city), our low numbers of fishing licenses, Hummers, and Harley Davidsons per capita, and our smoking ban.  

Of course there are things to be said about gender stereotypes and the impact these have on the health and well being of not only the readers of the RedEye, but the overall subconscious of society and its institutions… honestly though, I would’ve guessed there were more than 114 Starbucks in Chicago.  Maybe that’s the really disturbing part…

And just so you all know, Mac totally instantly recognized Mike Ditka in that picture from the RedEye, I definitely didn’t have to explain to him who it was.  ;)

A day late, perhaps, but not short on anything, and it almost makes having to go into work at 6:30 AM seem ok.

sinking in yet? 

no? 

Built in 1973, Chicago’s iconic Sear’s Tower stood as the tallest building in the world until 1998 (damn you, Petronas Towers!) – that’s a run of twenty-five years, an admirably long time, considering that the six taller buildings in the world have each only held their titles for a couple years.  The poor Shanghai World Financial Center was tallest for only a few months in 2008.  Bummer.  To this day, at 36 years old, the Sears Tower remains the tallest sky scraper in the entire western hemisphere. 

Here’s a look, by the way, at the most recent and impressive action in skyscrapers lately: 

The red buildings are the ones currently under construction – at this point, the Russia Tower is barely getting started and the Chicago Spire, as I understand it, is mostly just a twinkle in the eye of a newly bankrupt developer… the Burj Dubai actually is that tall, and was scheduled to be done in November 2008 but now they’re shooting for July.  You can watch a (pretty creepy, actually) video of it here.  It’s the music, really, and also, there’s no way the UAE has that much green space…  Also, as you can see, the Sears Tower’s antennas remain the tallest of existing, completed skyscrapers, though the Burj kind of blows everything out of the water.  Thirty-six years though…  

I’ve been pretty obsessed with skyscrapers, particularly this recent rush of supertalls, like the Burj Dubai and the Chicago Twinkle – I mean, Spire.  It all started back when I was just a little kid, and my dad took my sisters and I to climb to the top of the Sears Tower.  Never had I seen such a structure, neither in my suburban Milwaukee hometown, nor in our frequent trips to upper Michigan.  Never had I been so high up in the air.  Never had I felt so close to the heavens.  It captured my imagination for years to come – thereafter, any drawing I did of a city skyline (and there were many) included a building that looked roughly like this: 

actually drew this one just now.

I haven’t been to the top of the Sears Tower since then, but for the rest of my growing up years and through college, any time we drove through Chicago, I’d always take a moment on the end of the Kennedy Expressway to stare out the window with reverence and awe.  The Sears Tower.

Of course, as much as no one saw this coming (just last week they were talking about painting the Sears Tower silver! forget that!), there’s also nothing we can do about it.  The real question is, how will these Willis folks train Chicagoans (and, indeed, the world) to start using the new name?  Flashing signs?  Ads on el trains?  Millions of tiny implants around the city that deliver a small electric shock to anyone who uses the word “Sears” in conjunction with the word “Tower”?  Cash prizes to those who do it right? 

Thus far, Chicagoans (at least, Chicago Tribune readers) are adamantly against it, not at all surprisingly: 

It will be interesting.  This beacon of innovation in America’s heartland, source of identity and pride as the tallest building in the tallest city in the world, bought and renamed by some guys from London.  We’ll see how it goes… 

This would happen on a Thursday.  

PS…

Shana: Can you believe they’re going to change the name of the Sears Tower? 

Mac: Well, Sears hasn’t actually been there since 1992, and they gave up their naming rights in 2003, it was only a matter of time. 

Shana: Yeah, but that’s not the point.  I mean, you wouldn’t rename the Empire State Building, would you? 

Mac: Is Empire still in the building?

Shana: But you wouldn’t rename the Burj Dubai!

Mac: Well that’s brand new. 

Shana: Yeah but I’m sayin’…

Mac: (quiet, then…) I miss the Chicago Spire.

from my visit to Scotland in 2003

but it is respectably large – with almost 1200 cubic miles of water, you think you could hide a monster in there somewhere.  But try as we might, we couldn’t think of any kind of Lake Michigan Monster.  

from our apartment shopping visit to Chicago in August - Lake Michigan from the top of the Hancock Building

So today I decided to do some (quick) research, just to be sure we all weren’t missing something, and aside from this totally legitimate article, there’s nothing, nothing at all for sea monsters in Lake Michigan, or any kind of mythical monster creature at all in Chicago – the only “monsters” in Chicago seem to have to do with sports, the only “myths” in Chicago seem to have to do with the mob, and the only “legends” in Chicago seem to have to do with… yeah, sports again.  Basketball legend.  Baseball legend.  Legendary debate: Sox or Cubs?  Monster.com to find a job.  But no lake monsters.  Bummer.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the lake.  Living in close proximity to it was a priority for us on that apartment shopping trip back in August, and even for its lack of monsters, I feel a strong and almost spiritual sense of connectedness with the world when gazing out on its endlessness.

I’ve always been obsessed with bodies of water, and I like to imagine how I would trace a water route from wherever I’m currently gazing to wherever my loved ones live:

sample route home from Hong Kong, 2005, with a brief stopover in Southern France, of course, and a long weekend in the Phuket

These days it’s a pretty quick shot up the lake to Milwaukee for many (though not all) of my imaginary water journeys – heck, on a low-smog day, you can actually see Wisconsin from the top of the Hancock building.  

I really do believe that monsters help foster, among other things, a strong and active imagination, and in that respect, they’re very healthy, if not crucial, to the imaginative success of an individual and a city.  So for now, without lengthy imaginary voyages to distract me, and with this current book club book in mind, I think that when I gaze out on Lake Michigan these days, I’m going to have to contemplate the monster.  The yet-to-be-discovered monster.  The monster-that-maybe-nobody-but-me-cares-about monster.  The monster that spews ice all over the bike path.  The monster that makes the wind gust at 37 mph.  Every monster dream has to start somewhere, right?  Do you think it’s too late for Chicago?  Maybe the lake is too big, maybe it can hide too well… maybe we need a more defined body of water… the Belmont Harbor monster… I’m open to ideas… 

And in case you’re interested, the book is “The Monsters of Templeton,” by Lauren Groff, and I do endorse it, in a “Monday” sort of way, even though it’s Thursday.

That said, I’ve got to get to work.  Wow, this really has been a week of intros and teasers, hasn’t it?  So it is.  I’m closing tonight with one of my favorite work buddies, Lou.  For a couple weeks now, we’ve been saying we should go out for a quick drink after closing together sometime, since she’s a super busy student and I’m working two jobs and neither one of us would probably ever have “free time” independent from work.  Our cafe is right downtown, right off of Michigan Ave, the “Magnificent Mile,” and I thought for sure there’d be lots of places for us to go at 11:30 on a week night… but interestingly enough, no dice.  Everything closes by 11 on weeknights.  If New York is The City That Never Sleeps, then Chicago is The City That Tries To Get To Bed At A Reasonable Hour.  Catchy, isn’t it?  Our one hope is the Reagle Beagle, just a couple of blocks away and open til midnight.  If we have a fast close, we can totally make it.