Lollapalooza

Sunday in Chicago meant heading down to Grant Park for the final day of Lollapalooza. Initially my friend and I talked about going Saturday and Sunday, but I told him that just Sunday was fine with me. I figured that otherwise we'd have no time to catch up and take it easy, particularly the last part. I wouldn't have minded attending the whole thing, but I figured one day would be plenty, especially since it would allow me to catch the band I wanted to see most out of all of the acts playing the festival. Let me say it now: that was the right call.

(If this fountain in the middle of the park looks familiar, I'm told it was in the opening credits to Married with Children. I've not fact checked this, but it seems true.)

On Monday the newspapers reported 240,000 attended the three days of the event. Assuming an even division among the days, that puts 80,000 there Sunday. Needless to say, that doesn't make for the easiest movement from stage to stage. We ended up alternating between the two facing each other and then just staying at the bigger stage in the hope of getting a decent vantage point for the last two acts to play on it.

This is what I mean by a decent vantage point. Oh my, was it a tight squeeze. I'm not claustrophobic, but I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack or something during the first portion of MGMT's set. Granted, it had already been a long day and it was hot and more people than should have been were pushing their way toward the front. The feeling passed, perhaps due to some hydration, and I was good for the remaining three and a half hours. Seriously, though, there were a lot of people.

Lollapalooza was about music, but the organizers didn't mess around when it came to dining options. Noted Chicago chef Graham Elliot was the festival's culinary director. I ate at the stand for trendy hamburger spot Kuma's Corner. (Side note: I ate at more foodie-approved places in these two days than I probably have in a lifetime. This was not a bad thing.) I went with the Judas Priest burger, which was a massive 10 oz. burger with bacon, bleu cheese dressing, apple, walnuts, and dried cranberries. I did not need to eat the rest of the day.

Being in Grant Park for the festival afforded some nice views of the Chicago skyline, although since I stuck primarily to the Budweiser stage, pictures such as the one above had to be taken by turning around. There was another stage parallel to this one across the way, but negotiating one's way between the two just meant being smack dab in the middle of both. In the end it made more sense to pick a side.

With Blitzen Trapper, Yeasayer (pretty terrific in this setting), MGMT, distantly heard sets by The National and Mutemath, and a sampling of Mumford and Sons (and, accidentally, Switchfoot) out of the way, it was time for the band that had everyone hyped, including me. I wouldn't have minded seeing the reunited Soundgarden all the way at the other end of the park, but I came to see The Arcade Fire. This was just a little different situation than the one other time I've seen them.

Their 90-minute set was marvelous. Arcade Fire play big, majestic rock that is well-suited for a field of tens of thousands to sing along with, and did the crowd ever participate. The band played a lot more from their first LP Funeral than I expected, especially since The Suburbs was released the previous Tuesday, and the audience, myself included, ate it up. The crowd was completely into the performance, but at least where I was it was a much better behaved one than there had been for the previous group.

The night was finished off with "Wake Up", an anthem that would have blown the roof off the place if it had been indoors. Being amid that many people singing every word, especially the opening (and repeated) refrain, was the kind of hair-raising experience you hope to, but rarely get, at a concert. The enthusiasm even carried over as people sang it on the slow path out of the park and picked it up again on the blocked off downtown Chicago streets. My friend said something to the effect that Arcade Fire won the game. There was definitely a celebratory feeling spilling into the streets, as though our team had claimed the championship.

Catching a train back was a slow motion adventure that took about an hour and a half--metropolises!--but yeah, I was still humming with the energy of an exhausting but pretty terrific day of music.

The Windy City

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Columbus is a pretty sizable city. According to this list, it's the 16th biggest by population in the United States. I'm sure it slides down the list when taking the greater metro area into account, but let it be known that it's not a podunk college town, which seems to be the general impression people have of it.

Still, there's an enormous difference between #16 and Chicago's spot at #3, starting with the fact that Chicago has around four times the population of Columbus. Walking up to the street from Millennium Station to find the skyscrapers and elevated train platforms is like stumbling into a whole other scale for a city. It's huge...and I kind of love it.

I was a little intimidated about venturing into Chicago alone and navigating public transportation to meet up with an old friend. It's not that I think myself incapable of doing it or have never done it in a big city. I'm just out of practice...not that I ever really was in practice. Honestly, though, riding the 'L' was some of the most enjoyable parts of the trip. (Exempt from that: piling into a train after the Cubs game and having to stand post-Lollapalooza on the way back to where I was staying.)

I guess I've never seen Chicago that way, so I thrilled at the sights of being up so high among the towering structures and weaving in and out of the grids. You can get some pretty spectacular views of downtown from the train. The expansive perspective drives home how big of a place, vertically and horizontally, you're in. While I don't know that it's where I'd want to be every day--I prize the ease of movement around Columbus, which isn't exactly something Chicago has even with the trains and buses--I do find it enervating to be swallowed by a metropolis from time to time.

When it was time for me to leave, I mentioned to my friend that it felt like my short visit to Chicago had gone so quickly. In part it's because everything was bigger or took longer, thus blowing things out of proportion. After I was picked up, we went to Hot Doug's, a sausage store whose extreme popularity entailed waiting in line for two and a half hours to order. It's a trendy spot for foodies, but for what it's worth, my order--the blue cheese pork sausage with Sir William pear cream and roasted almonds and ribeye steak sausage with black garlic aioli and double crème brie cheese--and a shared basket of duck fat fries were awfully good.

Going to the Gene Siskel Film Center, seeing parts of downtown and my friend's neighborhood on foot, and popping into a large Middle Eastern restaurant later at night also reinforced how packed with options this city is. (Sunday was attending Lollapalooza, which is another enormous thing that I'll hold off writing about until tomorrow.) Forget about being bored in a place like this. How does one control oneself from always being on the go?

With all that time spent waiting and going to places, there was plenty of time to talk, which I hadn't done at length with this friend for years. Nowadays it's a given for childhood friends to still be in close contact when they go their various ways. (This is a development I'm not sure is entirely positive, but that's a topic for another time.) While I stayed in touch with this friend through college and a few years out of it, inevitably we lost track of each other. I last saw him at his wedding in 2002, but that situation didn't present the opportunity for much substantial one-on-one conversation. So, for as exciting and fun as it was to be in Chicago and soak up what it has to offer, it was also very satisfying to catch up with someone I've known since junior high and his wife.

Chicago did things up in a big way, and I certainly enjoyed the magnitude of my experiences there. Still, there's something to be said for one's own small corner, like a late night dinner with friends, to put everything in its proper context.

The Friendly Confines

As a lifelong baseball fan, I'm very familiar with Wrigley Field. The stadium, built in 1914 and home of the Cubs since 1916, is hallowed ground among fans of the sport. The ivy-covered outfield wall, the mostly manually operated scoreboard, day games, and bleacher bums...they're all part of the place's rich lore.

I've seen Wrigley Field countless times on television, but until last Friday I'd never set foot inside it. The strange thing is that after all this time peering into the home of the Cubs via telecasts, looking upon the field from the stands felt like something I'd done hundreds of times before. I guess it was kind of a deja vu moment. Here I am again for the first time.

My dad and I began our journey from the South Bend airport, which is where we picked up the South Shore train. About two and a half hours later we arrived in Millennium Station. Emerging from the train station, it felt like walking onto a movie set with tall buildings towering over us and the tracks and platforms for The 'L' framing some streets. Not entirely sure of which way to go to catch the red line train to the stadium, we followed people in Cubs jerseys based on my assumption that they were probably going the way we needed to be headed.

Within another fifteen or twenty minutes we walked out of the next station, turned to our left, and there was Wrigley. As you would expect, plenty of people were congregated outside the stadium, whether they were taking in the sights or hawking tickets and other items. And this was two hours before the game's first pitch.

If I'd been better prepared, I might have had a better idea of where we'd eat. Instead we popped into a pizza place across the street from the stadium and each got a single huge slice and pop for $5. As far as cheap, unpretentious eats by a ballpark go, this got the job done and was more localized than the Subway my dad initially suggested. Plus, I suppose it conveyed the big city experience and the neighborhood one that's unique to Wrigley.

Once inside the differences between it and pretty much any other stadium one will visit were immediately apparent. The concourses and ramps aren't as big. There are few concession and restroom facilities in the upper deck. All video highlights and replays must be viewed on monitors hanging in the stands. The seats themselves are a little narrower than those found in modern stadiums. Oh, and there are a fair number of columns to obstruct views. (I thought I'd be smart and buy tickets on the end of the row, which turns out to be where columns are placed. The two seats next to us were empty, so we didn't have to put up with a severely obstructed angle.)

Even without many of the modern stadium amenities, I really enjoyed being in this cozy little ballpark. All I really missed was being able to see replays and the radar gun readout. I appreciated the lack of elements that try to make a ball game the full entertainment experience. Who needs t-shirt cannons, dancing mascots and prize patrols, loud music, kiss cams, and the like when the game itself will do? I'm not completely opposed to all that other stuff, but the sheer volume of it becomes suffocating and detracts from what you are, in theory, there to see.

Wrigley's charms are from another era, and it benefits from its seats being mostly filled with enthusiastic fans. Let's not get carried away in praise of the place, though. Its specialness comes from being one of the last remaining old-time ballparks, one where you feel like you're seeing a game more or less the way that your grandparents and before might have taken one in. (My dad, who was also attending a game there for the first time, mentioned that it reminded him of the long-gone Crosley Field.)

When we arrived up top to get to our seats, the usher told us that we were free to wander around. Other than getting different perspectives on the field, there wasn't much else to see. The small patio that is underneath and behind the press box affords the opportunity to gaze out at the city and the neighborhood. A concession area with slightly more offerings than the small stands near the seats down the lines is about the only other draw.

Still, you get the sense that the team and its employees know what they have in this nearly century-old stadium even when considering its inconveniences. The spot has seen plenty of Cubs losing--which it also did on this day, as my visiting Reds won--yet its ability to function as a time machine for however much longer means more to the people walking through the turnstiles than any wins or snazzy updates to the yard could ever provide.

Sunday in the park

The majority of today was spent at Lollapalooza in Chicago's Grant Park. Between departing for the show and getting back to my friend's place, twelve hours were spent mostly on my feet. So yeah, I'm wiped out.

I've had a good time during my whirlwind weekend in Chicago. More details on the blog will have to wait until I don't feel like collapsing.

Sent from my iPhone

In the big city

Today in Chicago:

-Reunited with a friend I've known since junior high and whom I last saw several years ago at his wedding.

-Waited in line for about two and a half hours to eat gourmet sausages and duck fat fries at Hot Doug's. I've included a photo of part of the menu above, assuming it works out through the submission method I'm using. The wait didn't seem that long since there was plenty to talk about and the weather is fairly mild for this time of year.

-Visited the Gene Siskel Film Center to see a re-released classic that is coincidentally getting its only Columbus screenings this weekend.

-Saw a decent bit of the city by train and on foot.

It has been a pretty great day. Now to get some rest for what should be a jam-packed Sunday.

Sent from my iPhone

End of the line

The good news:

-I eliminated the virus from my computer, even though it required staying up a lot later than I intended.

-The Reds won 3-0 over the Chicago Cubs as my dad and I visited Wrigley Field for the first time.

The bad news:

-That's all I have time for today. I'd like to spend more time to write about the Wrigley experience, but I need to do some packing to go back to Chicago first thing in the morning. (We took the two and a half hour train ride to the Windy City and came back. I'm hopping back on it and meeting up with an old friend in Chi-town tomorrow.)