JoelNothman.com

So I of course arrived an hour and 15 minutes late to Chicago. Not because of my regular impunctuality, nor from major traffic, but because we had climbed onto the bus most of an hour late in Memphis. Leaving people still standing at the departure gate, the bus was nearly full when I climbed on. A woman who looked like she had been hoping no one need to sit next to her gestured for me to take her neighbouring seat. She was able to pull this off in a packed bus because she was large enough to take up a quarter of the seat that was (the remainder) now mine. She clearly saw me as the most likely contender (skinniest?) of those still being squeezed onto the bus. So the night-ride wasn’t quite so comfortable, especially considering the air conditioning not really working.

Arriving in the morning, I had some morning prayers to do, so I turned the bus station into a house of worship (public telephones are good places to mumble words without getting strange looks), then a kitchen (cereal, banana, yoghurt), then a map-room while I navigated the streets outside (as per Lonely Planet) in my head. That clearly wasn’t good enough, because when I got outside and started trekking towards my destination, I stopped to look at a bus sign to see whether this wheeled beast could help me. As I began to walk on, the man inside was the one to help me, ushering me in. He told me I was walking west when I meant to be going east, explained how I should get there and, while being a good citizen became a good salesman, realising I’d get most of the way there on his bus. So there went my first two dollars of the day.

Where was I headed anyway? It was a Friday, so I had no hostel to check into (I booked too late, as well, so there were no weekend vacancies around anyway). And this Friday I hadn’t done with others and called a synagogue to find a family. I was firstly overwhelmed by the number of congregations, and then the number of offers for Chicagoan contacts that came at me in Memphis. So I took one up from Ofer (who was staying with the people I stayed with in Memphis) who gave me the number of David who would sort me out the rest of the way. That was where I was going: to a downtown jewellery (jewelry) where there was some office-space for my bags.

I began to wander around the city (Cultural Center, Visitors’ Information, Millenium Park) and ended up sometime later having a nap outside the kids’ stage of major (a long strip of parks fenced off) rock/music festival Lollapalooza (which I didn’t know coincided with my being in town). Suddenly I got a call. It was David, telling me that I’d be spending the evening / staying with someone else and that they brought in Shabbat early. So I went back to get my bags, found a train and climbed aboard. A few stops in another kippa sruga (like what I wear on my head) my age climbed aboard, and I asked “Are you getting off at Howard? Will you be able to show me to the right bus?” Instead he gave me a lift to my destination.

There, Chaya Wolf opened the door and was surprised to find me carrying my big bags. I realised soon that making Friday night arrangements myself (instead of via Ofer and David and Moshe) is good and avoids miscommunication: Chaya knew an Australian was coming for dinner, but had no idea he was coming for sleep. She cleaned the papers off a bed in her office and put me in their place. I shaved off three weeks-worth of beard, showered and was ready, refreshed.

Shabbat was very nice and relaxing, spent (as would be the next few nights) in one of the Jewish neighbourhoods of Greater Chicago, West Rogers Park. The evening was with the Wolfs, and the day with the Rosenwassers (David’s family). In between the two was a sleep that went on too long. Or rather, I woke up and didn’t realise that the room I was staying in had no natural light, nor a clock, and slept again.

Lunch with the R’s (for brevity), apart from being delectable, was a competition between most of their 6 young children for the attention of the guest. The oldest girl was 13, the second a little younger, and the final four (one not in fact a girl) born on the same day, only two of them one year after the other. That is: אביה, אלישבע, (איילת & אפרת), (אביגיל & ידידיה). When later asked about all the girls having names starting with the same letter, David’s response was basically a shrug. Very adorable kids, but, of course, equally annoying. And because no fence separated the backyards of the R’s from their neighbours, their kids are often found intermingled. The kids’ mother (and David’s wife), Miri, is an Israeli of Moroccan background, with her family being singed by missles in Karmiel (or having escaped). David has a strong voice and enjoys his singing, so our shabbat day had plenty of it, and we had a very nice seuda shelishit together with the neighbours and some friends in anticipation of a wedding in the neighbour’s family. There I got my second job offer of my travels (if only in jest) to replace the singer at the groom’s upcoming celebration in New York. It turned out I would be in town, yet would have to hire a suit, but either way they didn’t pursue the joked idea.

I had hoped to call the guy from the train to find out if there was something worth doing on Saturday night, but that turned out not to work. So I didn’t get out then, but I did get a couch to sleep on at the R’s, and found some wireless internet access on the front steps to the house. Again I had no natural light and woke up late on Sunday. And Sunday went by without me leaving for anywhere exciting. I had considered Lollapalooza, but my unenthusiasm for the acts, although they were quite good, and the expense of a one-day pass, and the fact that time doesn’t wait for decisions, together cancelled that idea; I would also have gone to a baseball game that afternoon, except that the schedule online had a game on Tuesday night when Anthony Phillips—a friend in town from Sydney, there to use sophisticated chemical analysis equipment—would be free. I found out by the end of the day that the Tuesday game wasn’t a home game, and so would be a little far to catch a local train (being a foreigner, I didn’t know how to read the schedule).

But I did spend the day with the R kids. I taught some of them (and the neighbours’ kids) to use my camera and they took photos around the backyard, of the other kids playing on the Slip n Slide, and David’s own summer fun invention: trampoline with sprinkler water coming through the side. I joined in on the trampoline and had quite a time.

It was Monday when I finally met the tourist’s Chicago. The city puts on quite a show for tourists. It is known for its wonderful architecture, which is of course free to view from the street. Buildings like the Cultural Center not only show off sophisticated mosaiced arches and stained-glass domes, but include free art galleries and small musical performances. Millenium Park has a much larger free stage, gardens, fountains, sculptures and other entertainment. Many museums have free days (which I consistently missed) and can be reached in free trolleys (not like what you find in Woolworths, more like trams without wires).

So on Monday (after buying fresh bagels at B.B.’s, which would be tastier than the packet stuff, but not last as long), I bought a ticket that would give me all the trains and buses I could ask for in 24 hours, and used it to head downtown. There I got my bearings and wandered along the Chicago River down to Lake Michigan, looking at some of the Tall Ships that were temporarily on display (free, but pay to board) and the buskers on the way.

Wandering back to the main street via Millenium Park, I decided to take a long bus ride south to the Museum of Science and Industry (not free), which David had mentioned. Not having seen much about it, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but found a large Powerhouse Museum-equivalent. I enjoyed my time there, but not as much as I would have 15 years ago. The building itself has a very impressive classical facade, but is very curvey and colourful on the inside, and filled with children exploring genetics, robots, a toy factory, electricity, and various modes of transportation (the museum has on display aeroplanes, locomotives and a submarine, as well as many toy versions of the same within the largest collection of fast food collectables, to my understanding). Some fun exhibits, but I wasn’t its ideal target.

I had been a little wary of visiting Navy Pier, too, having visited Santa Monica Pier (Los Angeles) and Pier 39 (San Francisco) and found neither one enthralling. Like the other piers, this one was a hub of commercialism, from expensive restaurants to McDonalds-sponsored ferris wheels. But it also had classier entertainment: Shakespeare Theatre, free comedy / theatre sports in the evenings, live music at the beer gardens, and a surprisingly enjoyable Museum of Stained Glass! In the end, the only thing that didn’t keep me there longer was the fact that the nearest kosher food was an hour away, while my stomach complained (I guess I could have just kept myself on with a series of Ben & Jerry’s or Hagen Daas offerings).

Tuesday was originally planned around using my leftover time of the transport day-pass to get into the city, and there buy another that would last long enough to include my Wednesday trip to the airport. Despite David being apathetic about its attraction, I decided to visit Lincoln Park, where there was a free conservatory (of plants, flowers, etc; free), a nature museum (not free) which I didn’t visit, and a zoo (free) which I hadn’t planned to visit, but which in the end captured me and had me visiting lions and apes and snakes like a 6 year-old. I also was able to guide the misguided: an ape was called “he or she” and I confirmed its he-ness by way of it having a highly attractive purple bottom (it confirmed its he-ness by soon turning around and showing us its penis); a tortoise was called a turtle but it was set on dry land. By the time I realised I should leave if I intended to get lunch, it was too late to use my ticket downtown, and maybe only just late enough to buy one that would take me to the airport. So I did that.

I had wanted to eat lunch from the Sandwich Club: basically, one of the few ways of getting a kosher meal in The Loop (Chicago’s downtown) is by buying it from the Loop Synagogue which brought down packed lunches daily. I had called them earlier to confirm I’d be able to just turn up and get one, but when I finally got there I was nearly brought to tears to find out I was stranded in the city without any food to hand and no sandwiches left at the synagogue. They managed to scrounge for me some bagels, and even some peppered lox, so I enjoyed my lunch in the end. But that fiasco took a bit of time and may have made me miss out on getting a ticket to a cruise I had been convinced into doing. With my day twice spoiled by “out of stock”, I spent half an hour deciding whether I would dare buy a ticket for the next morning that would require a tricky manouvre in order to wake up ontime, take all my bags to the city, go on a cruise, come back and have lunch before having to leave for the airport. I dared.

After daring, I decided that I felt like nothing more than a swim at the beach. So I found one. Being a freshwater lake, it was very different to what I was used to in Sydney. The water never got very deep, the waves were short but crashed with some strength, and the lifeguard wouldn’t let me get very far out from shore before shouting me back in. But it was certainly refreshing.

Soon after, while I was looking for something else to do downtown, I got a long-expected call from Anthony (mentioned above) who I study with at USyd. We were going to meet up for dinner, and one clump of the city’s kosher places, and many of the vegetarian places, were up north near where I was staying. So we independently made our way to Howard St Station for 7pm. He was on time, maybe early. I was, of course, half an hour (or was it forty minutes?) late. Because Anthony had no phone number, and because when he called me it was noisy, we hadn’t arranged some thnings that we probably should have, like for him to look up the address and directions. This was why I was late. With a bus and some walking we finally got to a vegetarian Indian place that was attractive enough to two very empty stomachs. I was surprised that the meals were so small compared to Australian equivalents, but it was a nice meal for both of us. We did the route backwards and parted at Howard for a good night’s sleep—for him after 3 days of very little; for me before an early wake.

I packed my bags and slept. Woke early and wandered to shacharit up the road, and stopped by the R’s on my way back. Miri was getting the kids out of bed, so I said a quick goodbye and went on my way. As the first day, I left my bags in the jewellery shop, which allowed me to go catch a cruise.

The cruise stood up to its reputation and was a great way to see the city from its river, and to view the various architecture along the shore. The architecture wasn’t always as interesting to me as the history. Like how the city was founded on the river for transport from the US East throughout the Midwest. But before long it was polluted and highly toxic (now it’s only polluted). In fact, toxins caused by using the Chicago River for private waste flowed out to Lake Michigan and the damage began to spread. So with some engineering, the river was made to be lower than the lake and it began to flow the other way (other sates on the lake became upset at this, so Chicago put a lock on its river’s entry to stop flow of water in from the lake). As a result of its use for sewage (and its toxic, unappealing nature), the riverside was not an ideal home. Instead, window-less warehouses were built along its shores. As the river was cleaned and became popular, many of these were converted into condominiums (apartments for individual purchase) through the addition of river-facing windows and the attaching of balconies (the guide called this the “balconisation of Chicago”, far from Balkinisation). And the prices soared from there.

Chicago became a hub for impressive architecture when the city was being rebuilt following a fire that destroyed it in 1871. We saw little architecture from before the 1920s (which is typically ornate), while seeing some Art Deco-style facades (focussing on vertical lines), the obsession of one architect with triangles, and another with a great opposition to right-angles, while yet another style said “less is more” and laid out all its windows along the gridded metal face of the building. We looked at some “bigs” as well, like some very tall towers (Sears tower, former world’s tallest building), a potential very tall tower owned by Donald Trump, and a biggest-commercial-building-in-the-world (Merchandise Mart).

By the time I got off the boat, I needed to hurry to get my bags, eat some lunch and catch a train. It’s a pity that I forgot that the reason that I was hurrying was not just to catch the flight, but also not to pay on the train. So I arrived at the train station 20 minutes after my card expired and had to pay $2 for the trip. Oh well.

And then there’s the Big Apple….