From On High

So worry not
All things are well ~ The National

Zoom, where did those six days go?

I know it's lazy that I'm copping to a highlights reel today, but I've only been back in the Ward for a few hours and that laundry isn't going to do itself. So here goes, with digressions.

Best place to be on a record-breaking hot Chicago day: on the bow of the First Lady, listening to a volunteer docent with the Chicago Architecture Foundation try to condense his encyclopedic knowledge about the buildings we're ogling from the river into 90 lively minutes (albeit with 2 breaks to cool down). His best anecdote involved recently seeing two coyotes on the sight of a cleared lot he'd shown us. As long as I've got my wide-brimmed hat on, I'll listen to the professor nerd out, watch powerboats full of scantily-clad millennials pass by and just bask in being on the water on such an uncharacteristic May afternoon here.

Best impromptu picnic: on lime green chairs in the courtyard of the Art Institute next to a Yoko Ono sculpture, but only after being told we weren't allowed to eat the museum's food outside. Pshaw, rules are for young people. Almost everyone who came in stayed only long enough to take selfies with the wall-hung sculpture we already had a seated view of. Amateurs.

Best urban walking bonuses: Because of a Memorial Day parade Saturday, many downtown streets were closed, meaning a dedicated walker and a native son had no problem taking it to the streets. Sans cars, they were a walker's paradise. Headed to the Girl and Goat Bakery for bagels (rye-onion) on the Sunday of a holiday weekend, I was more than a few times the only person walking the block and it was 10:30 in the morning. I saw traffic lights as no more than suggestions.

Best melding of food and art: brunch at Marisol at the Museum of Contemporary Art, with a booth that offered prospect and refuge (so important to some people), pale-as-Provence Rose from Veneto Italy and the opportunity to consider the art we'd been looking at for the past few hours. For guilty pleasure, there was "Heaven and Earth: Alexander Calder and Jeff Koons," although I question the curatorial choice not to use the word "stabile" to describe sculptures that weren't mobiles. Don't get me started on the dumbing down of museum signage. On the other hand, Otobong Nkanga's "To Dig a Hole that Collapses Again" combined political commentary about stripping third world countries of natural resources with tapestries and with a wave-like wall sculpture that incorporated materials and crops from those countries (tobacco, coffee, spices) and were intended to be smelled as you walked along it. Serious mind art.

Best backdrop for a meal, best breakfast eaten in a park on Rush Street, best drive through Lincoln Park...

Obviously I could do this all night, except I can't do this all night. The Purple Pig dazzled with cheese, swine and wine in a room full of community tables and serious food lovers and featured an offal menu. 'Nuff said. That seafood saganaki was so good I wanted to marry it. The couple next to us were from Kansas City and said they'd come three nights in a row last time they were in Chicago. Now they were back for more.

Food aside, who wouldn't keep going back for more when things are this good? I'm just trying to keep my head from exploding and not be too effusive but it's challenging. I know, I know, first world problems.

But also first time in a lifetime problems. Desert, meet the rain.

Hey, Batter, Batter

I have been to Wrigleyville and it was berry, berry good to me. Look it up, kids, it's vintage SNL.

Yes, my Dad had supplied several pertinent facts for me to toss out in conversation - among them that Bryant is a real looker and Rizzo plays a mean first base - and my partner-in-crime had made certain we'd made a Cubs t-shirt purchase the day before so I'd fit in, so I was as ready as I'd ever be for my first trip to the ivy and bricks.

See what a quick study I am?

Mind you, it wasn't just my Chicago-born partner I had to impress at the game against the San Francisco Giants, it was also three of his associates from Milwaukee, all of them die-hard baseball fanatics lovers. As it turned out, they were a cinch to dazzle, far more curious about me and how we'd met than batting averages.

And while I'm no sports fan, I'd be the first to admit that a pilgrimage to Wrigley Field is a cultural experience as much as an athletic one and heaven knows I'm all about the culture. A Friday afternoon game meant that from the time we left the hotel, we were caught up in a sea of blue and red-clad people and while I'd never claim to say I could pass for a Chicagoan, I certainly fit in.

Sort of anyway.

Besides, it was a gloriously sunny, blue-sky kind of a day and our seats in the fourth row on the first base line ensured that we were right up in the action. The only ball that came our way, though, hit a woman in the second row in the head before being nabbed by a nearby man and handed off to a kid who looked like he'd won the lottery: out of school, in possession of a Cubs baseball and the three-day weekend hadn't even started.

Of course I had to have a hot dog and peanuts - I'm not a complete baseball idiot - and the afternoon passed in a blur of personal questions, baseball commentary and Cub mania on all sides. The few Giants fans were pretty much ignored, though I admired them for their bravery in showing up with this rabid bunch.

I'm talking the kind of people like the woman in front of me who was trying to rustle up some betting action, stuffing dollar bills in her cup holder as strangers around her bet on whether or not the ball would roll off the mound or stay put.

Hey, enough beer on a sunny afternoon and why not bet on the minutiae ?

Once the Cubs had put another win in their column, we walked through Wrigleyville to Uncommon Ground, an adorable, sprawling (it began by occupying one small building and kept adding others until now it's like something from "Alice in Wonderland," a series of interconnected rooms that require a step up or down) farm-to-table restaurant with a long history of live music.

We're talking Jeff Buckley dropping by with an acoustic guitar in 1994 and playing to a small crowd of gob-smacked Chicagoans. My kind of place, in other words, so I gave major props to the Milwaukee crew for the choice.

While I tucked into my dinner of spicy Korean calamari and shrimp tacos, the guys ate and regaled us with love life stories, from one's friends throwing in cash so he'd propose to his girlfriend via an airplane banner the next day to the merits of proposing via scoreboard at a baseball game and having it announced on the radio so Grandma knew about it by the time they got home.

All I can say is, who knew guys working in the financial world would be so romantic?

My Cubs t-shirt got baptized with mustard and relish and I managed to slide in all but one of my purloined baseball facts over the course of a perfect baseball afternoon in the Windy City.

We got so busy talking about travel and where we'd all been that I forgot to mention to the boys what a terrific manager Madden is. I mean, c'mon, he's got to be one of the best managers in the history of baseball.

Yea, I knew I couldn't pull that one off.

But that handwritten sign saying BRYZZO RULES I'd spotted earlier? The pure satisfaction of knowing what it meant without asking was almost as satisfying as the state of my Cubbies shirt.

I believe both are enough to qualify as a major score for this first-timer.

Only Happens in a Town Like This

No one beats a native Chicagoan for showing you the Windy City.

The funny part is that on the train in from the airport, we got to talking to a high-spirited quartet - two middle-aged brothers and the two sons of one of them - sitting nearby, only to learn that they were on a bucket list trip to see the Indianapolis 500 Sunday.

But, they added, they'd also be attending a Cubs game and hitting every Irish bar they came across, so the long weekend was a pretty big deal to them. They were also pretty sure they were going to run into us again based on nothing more than our conversation and how much we made them laugh.

Come on, guys, what are the chances?

My partner-in-crime wasted no time in demonstrating his Chi-town bona fides by advising the group not to spend all their time staring up at buildings, unless they wanted to be taken for the tourists that they were.

After checking in and admiring the view of the brilliant blue lake from the seventh floor, we set out to stretch our legs by walking the lakefront. I've said before that the best part of visiting Chicago in May is that the scores of lilacs are in full bloom and I wasn't disappointed. I leaned over iron railings and climbed concrete dividers for the sake of smelling my favorite flower every time I spotted one.

Having a native son as a field guide fulfilled every nerdy bone in my body as he ticked off the year/decade of the building, the architect/firm responsible, why it was significant when it was built and every other arcane fact he thought would interest me.

In other words, we spent the afternoon staring up at buildings looking like tourists, which I most certainly am and he could only pretend to be. It was grand.

We capped off the walk with glasses of Rose at Aire, the rooftop bar of our hotel, this time admiring the lake view from 24 floors up while a shady breeze provided respite from the unexpected heat of a late May Chicago afternoon. In between sips and conversation, I was trying to decide if Chicagoans have a "look" and I'm starting to think that they do.

Exhaustive research had resulted in a list of places I want to eat over the next five days. After a major pow-wow, we decided on a nearby wine bar, Acanto, for its extensive grape offerings and appealing menu, but nothing could have prepared me to follow the hostess to our patio table and be greeted by a server saying an exuberant, "Karen!" and throwing her arms around me. After an extended greeting, she scurried off, saying, "I'll get you a straw."

Welcome to Chicago, indeed.

The lovely C. had served me countless times at Secco and Acacia, but I'd been unaware she'd landed in Chicago last year. After dropping off glasses from a reserve magnum of Chianti Classico they were serving by the glass for the evening only, she told us to take our time because she was there all night. We were happy to settle in for the next three hours with a primo Michigan Avenue view of the promenade of humanity and cars honking/blaring music along it.

We ate through a black kale salad, tuna tartare (sublime with Fontanafredda Cuvee 157), red snapper over roasted eggplant and cauliflower, chickpea and blistered tomatoes in an olive puree, and a chocolate meringue dessert I couldn't even finish.

The additional glasses of Cuvee, however, I had no problem dispatching. We were, after all, celebrating somebody's homecoming, at least temporarily and admittedly with great enthusiasm. Even he started talking about coming back more often, so I see more Chicago in my future. Among other places.

No telling what other surprises Chicago holds, but I'm wide open to find out. I'll be the one with my mouth hanging open, staring up. Very happily.