62: Playing Tourist

I have family in town this weekend, which means I get to play tourist a little. It's a regression of sorts, but the fun kind: an opportunity to acknowledge the fact that I'm a transplant, even as I demonstrate that I'm also a local now too. I might not be able to keep straight which interstate is the Eisenhower and which one's the Kennedy, but I can give directions around the South Side without needing to consult a map. We went for true Chicago-style pizza, which is tavern-style, not deep-dish. (I like deep-dish fine, but it's too heavy for summer.) We took everyone out to the Rainbow Cone, where the signature ice cream cone is made of five flavors sliced together into a single scoop. We grilled brats out back, surrounded by the native wildflowers I planted this spring. I'm proud of the life my husband and I have built here, and it feels good to share it.

It also feels good to go exploring. Chicago's a treasure trove of architecture, and yesterday was warm, so we spent ninety minutes on a river tour learning about the history of Chicago architecture in the Loop. I've lived here for the better part of a decade, and I used to work in the Loop, but I'd never done the river architecture tour. Our guide was excellent: she taught us the vocabulary we needed to know in order to understand the features of the buildings she told us about, without once pausing to define a word. She explained the skyscrapers in the context of the land they stood on: Fort Dearborn and the site of the homestead of Jean-Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, the first non-Indigenous settler of Chicago; she pointed out the upward thrust and optimistic lines of the Art Deco buildings of the 1920s, and the horizontal flow of the warehouses built by Prairie School architects.

I came away from the tour appreciating Jeanne Gang even more than I already did, but what truly surprised me was that I also came away appreciating Trump Tower. The building's unavoidable in River North; it's set at a crucial turn on the north branch of the Chicago River, and the streets and waterways around it showcase it from every angle. The eye is drawn to it, and to the obscenely large name at its base; it looks like a smaller version of the Burj Khalifa. What I didn't know before the tour is that the building is offset to give the other skyscrapers around it their space; the tower rises through the skyline, then narrows at crucial heights, with each offset pointing toward–and granting space within the skyline to–other buildings around it, such as the Wrigley Building and Marina City Towers. It's a more generous approach to the skyline than I've given Trump Tower credit for.

What I talked about:

For Seeing & Believing podcast, Kevin and I reviewed Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One. Kevin paired it with Satoshi Kon's Paprika, which I liked but was also disturbed by. We didn't agree on the movie, but the conversation we had about it was a good one.

What I watched:

This week's hottest show is WGN's severe weather coverage: I spent Wednesday holed up in the basement with my husband and my dog, watching half a dozen tornado warnings roll through the city. One of the weather reporters asked, on the air, "Should we be girding our loins for the rest of the evening?" as the line of storms passed over the state line between Illinois and Indiana, and that's why I love Chicago.