I was thinking of waiting...

...until October 29, 2018, but now seems as good a time as ever to end this blog. In short, my heart just isn't in it anymore. (Why October 29? That's when I began writing this, almost ten years ago.)

Why is my heart no longer in it? I don't know; maybe I'm just tired of writing. I've lost interest in high school sports and the Trump Era has been positively demoralizing. But I find I even have less enthusiasm for such regular features as the Name of the Day and notable obituaries.

I remember when my friend Kevin shaved his mustache one day and explained that mustaches were "an eighties thing" and he was just plain tired of having it. I thought he was crazy but a few years later I felt the same way and shaved mine after having it for about 25 years. Now I can't imagine anyone wearing a mustache! Similarly, I couldn't understand how my blogging idol, Andrew Sullivan, could stop publishing the Daily Dish three years ago. Why would anyone stop blogging? How could you? Who would ever run out of things to say? Well, I guess I understand now. I've been doing this for almost a decade now and I think I'm just burned out.

Thanks to all of you for reading and commenting. It's been a real fun experience for me. I'll leave the blog up and -- who knows? -- if the spirit moves me maybe I'll post again from time to time. But I think I'm pretty much done.

Oh, you can still follow me on Twitter @BoringOldWhtGuy. Heck, I'm not dead.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Michael Tree, a violist who died at age 84.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Tree" isn't so unusual for a last name. But consider this from his obit in the Times:

Mr. Tree was born Michael Applebaum on Feb. 19, 1934, in Newark. His wife said he adopted the last name Tree at the suggestion of Efrem Zimbalist, his principal teacher at Curtis.

And that's it. Why "Tree"? It doesn't say. How about his Wikipedia entry?

Zimbalist insisted that Tree change his name from Applebaum to advance his career.

How would changing his name to "Tree" advance his career? It doesn't say.

Of all the names in the world, why did he change his to "Tree"? Why not Smith or Jones? Well, for one thing, "Baum" means "tree" in German. Is that why he changed it, to Anglicize it? I still don't get why that would "advance his career."

Delores Taylor, who wrote...

...and starred with her husband, Tom Laughlin, in the Billy Jack movies, died at age 85.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to John Elton, a partner at Greycroft in New York.*

I wonder if his parents ever even heard of Elton John? And while I'm on the subject, when the singer was a young boy did his teachers ever think his name was Elton, John?

* Hat tip: Kevin G.

Whenever I walked past this sculpture...

...on the wall of an engineering building at the University of Illinois at Chicago all I could ever think was, I wonder if the artist ever thought this piece would become a home to so many birds.

But in January one of my favorite shows, Chicago Tonight, ran a segment on the Italian-born local artist, Virginio Ferrari, who completed "Super Strength" (above) in 1996. When we hiked miles 17-20 of the Chicago Marathon course last night I was able to capture it in the golden hour just before sunset.

Before we got there we ate dinner at Carm's on Polk Street just a few blocks from 1212 W. Flournoy. After dining on hot dogs, cheeseburgers and Italian beef the nine of us set out on the eighth leg of our journey. (If we complete the last six miles in the next two weeks that will make ten legs, not nine as I had originally planned. Where did that extra leg come from?)

When you get to the East Campus of UIC at the end of Polk Street you come upon another sculpture known as "Slabs of the Sunburnt West" (1975) by another local artist, Richard Hunt. Inspired by a 1922 Carl Sandburg poem of the same name, it's made of welded bronze and measures 30 feet by 30 feet.  

Mile 17 of the Marathon course is on Halsted, right in front of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. (That's actually the Student Center right next to it.) The building, which was originally a three-story Italianate mansion built by real estate tycoon Charles Hull, is the only remaining structure of what was once a 13-building complex.

We had left off there last week and resumed our trek south on Halsted to Taylor. After turning right (west) on Taylor we encountered "Super Strength" before entering the Little Italy neighborhood which begins at about Morgan. On this stretch of Taylor Street can be found Tuscany, Mario's Italian Lemonade, Al's Italian Beef, RoSal's, a podiatrist named Frank Zappa (I kid you not), Scafuri Bakery, Gallucci Realty, Davanti Enoteca, Francesca's, Chiarugi Hardware, Bacci Pizzeria, the National Italian American Sports Hall Of Fame (which, contrary to what some local non-Italian said, is not in fact a small building), the Piazza DiMaggio (complete with a sculpture of the Yankee Clipper himself), Conte Di Savoia Italian grocery store, Rosebud (where you can often see goodfellas and wiseguys at the next table), and finally Pompei, just before Ashland. They don't call the neighborhood Little Italy for nothing!

We turned left (south) on Ashland and walked a pretty nondescript mile or so to 18th Street in Pilsen. The Illinois Medical District was to our right (west), Adams/Medill Park was to our left (east), and the twin towers of St. Adalbert's Catholic Church was off in the distance to the southwest. When we turned left (east) on 18th we entered the Pilsen equivalent of Taylor Street. I told the guys that the neighborhood was originally Bohemian (hence the name Pilsen), then became largely Mexican, but is now turning bohemian again, only this time with a lower case "B." (What were once called "beatniks" in the 1950s and "hippies" in the 1960s are now known as "hipsters." But they are all "bohemians.") Rather than list all the Mexican establishments along 18th Street, allow me to recommend Taqueria Los Comales, Coyotes, the Frida Room, Cafe Jumping Bean, Azul 18 and, farther down the street, Dia De Los Tamales.

When we came to the corner of 18th and Allport one of the guys put me on the spot and asked me how I would describe the architecture in the neighborhood. On our right was Thalia Hall and to the left was St. Procopius Catholic Church. I noted the rounded arches of each which would be characteristic of Romanesque, although the spire of St. Procopius reminded me of the later Gothic style. The heavy stones that make up Thalia Hall are also typical of Romanesque so I took a chance and suggested the architect may have been Henry Hobson Richardson, who designed a number of works in Chicago. Alas, Mr. Richardson died in 1886, six years before Thalia Hall was completed.

Turns out that Thalia Hall, which houses Dusek's Board & Beer (arguably the nicest restaurant in Pilsen) was built in 1892 by the architects Faber & Pagel, who modeled it after the Prague opera house, which has been described as neo-Renaissance.


St. Procopius, on the north side of the street, was built in 1883 by a Mr. P. Huber in the -- yes! -- Romanesque style. (I actually took that picture of the church last week when the sun was still up.)

At the corner of 18th and Racine is Honky Tonk BBQ, which I understand is quite good, and a few steps down is La Vaca Margarita Bar, which may have the best tacos I have ever eaten. A little farther, just before Carpenter, is HaiSous (is that a play on "Jesus"?) Vietnamese Kitchen which has an interesting Vietnamese coffee house connected to it. With the La Catrina Cafe, just after Miller Street, and Kristoffer's Cafe & Bakery on Halsted, one notices the lack of a Starbucks in the neighborhood. Although I suspect Pilsen will eventually go the way of, say, Wicker Park, in the not too distant future, right now it is definitely pre-gentrified.

Before leaving 18th Street I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Pilsen Community Books (a very cool used bookstore), Simone's, on the corner of 18th and Morgan, where my wife and I can often be found enjoying a cheeseburger and a beer on a late Friday afternoon, and the barber shop (somewhere) where I got my hair cut once for only five dollars!

After Simone's there's a ton of empty land between Morgan and Halsted. People in the suburbs always look surprised when I tell them how much empty land there is in the city, but it's true. And if they ever build "up" Chicago will be able to accommodate many more people than the approximately 2.7 million inhabitants right now. Mark my words: the city is only going to get nicer and nicer.

At Halsted Street we reached Mile 20 of the Marathon course and caught the Number 8 bus for home. After hiking through two of the city's most ethnically identified neighborhoods -- Italian and Mexican -- next week we'll be passing through another, Chinatown. That should take us to State and 33rd, within spitting distance of "Sox Park" and the final leg back to Grant Park.

There was an interesting piece...

...in the Times yesterday about a guy in Ohio who has observed a personal news blackout since Trump was elected in 2016.

From "The Man Who Knew Too Little" (my emphasis):

At first, the experiment didn’t have a name.

Right after the election, Erik Hagerman decided he’d take a break from reading about the hoopla of politics.

Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan.

He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.

“It was draconian and complete,” he said. “It’s not like I wanted to just steer away from Trump or shift the conversation. It was like I was a vampire and any photon of Trump would turn me to dust.”

It was just going to be for a few days. But he is now more than a year into knowing almost nothing about American politics. He has managed to become shockingly uninformed during one of the most eventful chapters in modern American history. He is as ignorant as a contemporary citizen could ever hope to be.

James Comey. Russia. Robert Mueller. Las Vegas. The travel ban. “Alternative facts.” Pussy hats. Scaramucci. Parkland. Big nuclear buttons. Roy Moore.

He knows none of it. To Mr. Hagerman, life is a spoiler.

“I just look at the weather,” said Mr. Hagerman, 53, who lives alone on a pig farm in southeastern Ohio. “But it’s only so diverting.”

He says he has gotten used to a feeling that he hasn’t experienced in a long time. “I am bored,” he said. “But it’s not bugging me.”

It takes meticulous planning to find boredom. Mr. Hagerman commits as hard as a method actor, and his self-imposed regimen — white-noise tapes at the coffee shop, awkward scolding of friends, a ban on social media — has reshaped much of his life.

Extreme as it is, it’s a path that likely holds some appeal for liberals these days — a D.I.Y. version of moving to Canada.

And I've found myself, if not by design, doing something similar lately. Oh, I still read the paper and my usual websites (although less) and watch some CNN and MSNBC, but, as I've been telling people lately, I just can't follow the news like I used to because it's so depressing. (And that includes easing up a little on Twitter.) Trump and the Republicans just do something outrageous practically every day without consequences. It's very discouraging.

So, as a result I've been looking elsewhere, such as learning more about state and local politics, which I have practically ignored since I moved to Chicago 37 years ago. (Why have I never been interested in local politics? Good question; maybe because they're so dirty. But ever since moving back to the city almost four years ago I've gotten interested in city and state issues. Go figure.)

I've also been reading more books, and ones not having anything to do with politics. Lately I've reread The Magnificent Ambersons; read Trumpocracy, by David Frum (okay, that one's about politics); and am currently in the middle of A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway (whom I've never been able to read before) and The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond by Michio Kaku, a scientist whom I'd seen on Chicago Tonight. (Excellent show, by the way.) This last one is especially important for me as I have never read a book about science before (I don't think) so it's really expanding my horizons. (If you've never read a book like this I urge you to give it a try; it's incredibly readable and the author is fascinating.)

And when I'm not reading I'm binge-watching all the TV shows I've missed in the last few years. I'm now caught up on Transparent and The Americans and am currently watching Downton Abbey and Divorce (in real time). Twin Peaks could be next.

So maybe Donald Trump is accidentally doing me a favor. Maybe I'm finally getting out of the weeds of national politics and stretching a little. I'm not completely ignorant like the guy in that Times article, but it feels good to be a little less frustrated at every outrage coming out of Washington these days.

Last night, when we embarked...

...on the seventh leg of the Marathon course a thought entered my head that often does at the beginning of each weekly Hike: there won't be much of interest to see tonight. And, as always, I was wrong.

We began the evening where we left off last week, at the corner of Adams and Racine, just after Mile 13. (I didn't realize Adams is a part of "Historic Route 66.") We walked west and immediately passed that gorgeous mural on the side of Skinner West Elementary School. (Apparently, there's a Skinner North; I didn't know that.) Now I could start a real battle royale here by asking whether Skinner or Ogden on the Gold Coast is the better (best?) public elementary school in the city, but there's not enough popcorn for that show. Suffice it to say that Skinner has a very good reputation. Full stop.

(I remember back in the '80s when Ogden was a little yellow-brick structure that served the families that served the wealthy on the Gold Coast who sent their kids to Latin and Parker. Now, it's been replaced by a red-brick Latin School-lookalike that serves the nouveau riche (pardon my French!) on the Near North Side -- if they can get their precious offspring accepted. How times have changed.)

Walking farther west, we passed Skinner Park to the north and Whitney Young High School to the south. (Again, I could start a pretty good fight by talking about Young's reputation in the city. I won't.)

Whitney Young, the alma mater not only of Michelle Obama but also our very own Zechary Stigger, opened in 1975 as the city's first public magnet high school. I noticed on a sign that it's the "Home of the Dolphins," which I remarked was an unusual nickname for a school at least a thousand miles away from any dolphins. "I guess by 1975 all the good nicknames were taken," I opined aloud. Zechary corrected me, however, and said that it was no mistake that a magnet school would identify with one of the animal kingdom's most intelligent creatures. Well, as comedian Steve Martin used to say back in 1975, "Excuse me!"

After Whitney Young we cheated for the first and only time (I promise!) and turned off Adams onto Laflin and up to the Billy Goat Tavern on Madison for dinner. (A guy's gotta eat, doesn't he?) While this location at the corner of Ogden Avenue is relatively new, it's actually closer to the original Billy Goat at 1855 W. Madison Street, where the United Center now stands. (Did you think the one on lower Michigan Avenue was the first? Au contraire; the original, which opened its doors in 1934, moved there in 1964.)

We were in luck; even though there was a Bulls game last night we got there early enough to beat the rush. After dining on double cheezborgers and fries, the ten of us ventured back into the chilly Chicago evening. It was time to get back on track so we walked down Ogden and rejoined Adams and the Marathon course. It made me wonder, though: why doesn't the city take the runners down Madison, which I think is a more vibrant street, and then turn around the United Center and back on Adams or Jackson? Oh, well, no one asked me.

From Adams you could see the UC, better than I expected, and we turned left (south) on Damen and then left (east) on Van Buren to return back toward the Lake. We passed the rebuilt Malcolm X. College and the Blackhawks' new practice facility (which I hadn't seen and isn't even on my Googlemaps). To the right (south) you could see both the old Cook County Hospital and Rush Medical Center across the Eisenhower Expressway, and, straight ahead, downtown. (If you'll recall, the TV show ER was supposedly set at "County," and I used to get a kick out of watching the doctors step outside for a cigarette break -- on Wacker Drive!)

We turned off Van Buren quickly, onto Ogden again briefly, before turning right (east) onto Jackson and into the Jackson Boulevard Historic District. It's only about two square blocks but the homes, dating back to the late nineteenth century, give you some idea of what the entire area must have originally looked like. Such a shame to lose so much beautiful architecture!

Walking past Whitney Young again, we came to Racine where most of the group peeled off for home. The remainder of us ("And then there were three," remarked my son, John) continued on through the West Loop to Halsted, where we turned right (south) into Greektown. (I couldn't resist taking that shot of the Sears Tower, above. What a sight for the marathoners.)

Crossing over the Eisenhower, we entered the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, which opened in 1965 as the University of Illinois at Congress Circle, or simply, "Circle." (I'm glad they renamed it; I'd hate to have to tell someone I went to a school named after a shape.) We walked past University Hall, above, a Brutalist structure which is actually the tallest building on the West Side. After waving at Tufano's Vernon Park Tap we split up at Racine. We had now completed 17 miles of the Marathon course and will resume our Hike next week to about Mile 20, where runners usually "hit a wall." There will be no wall for us, though, as we are determined to make it all the way to Grant Park in the next few weeks. After that, who knows?

Nature vs. Nurture, Part Infinity.

The Times has a (very) belated obituary of Sylvia Plath this morning, the poet and author of The Bell Jar, who committed suicide at age 30.

What caught my eye in particular was this sentence:

Biographers have linked Plath’s bouts of depression to the childhood trauma of losing her father, as well as to her own perfectionism and her mother’s smothering nature.

Really? Maybe she was just plain born with depression. (Aren't biographers presumptuous? I mean, really, how the hell do they know why Plath suffered from depression?)

In the previous paragraph it says:

Worse was when Plath’s son, Nicholas, a fisheries biologist in Alaska, hanged himself in 2009, at 47.

Hmm. What was the cause of his depression? Could it be . . . hereditary?

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Jenny Craig, a middle school special education teacher in Triadelphia, West Virginia. (Were you thinking of a different Jenny Craig?)

David Ogden Stiers, who...

...appeared in four (or is it five?) Woody Allen films in addition to his most famous role in M*A*S*H, died at age 75.

In the movie Another Woman Stiers plays the heroine's father in a flashback to her childhood. The film is one of my all-time favorites and I never miss an opportunity to plug it. (Stiers is mentioned in the above clip at about 2:25.)

There was no "Urban Hike with Mike"...

...last week as I was visiting my other son in sunny California. Instead, the guys were "On the Go with Lorenzo" in Pilsen. (Okay, not bad.)

So last night we resumed our multi-week project of tracing the Chicago Marathon course. It was the sixth leg in the series and took us to at least the halfway point of the course. If you'll recall, we left off last time at the Chicago Brown Line stop in what may have been our coldest Hike ever. Although the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees by five o'clock yesterday, it felt positively balmy in comparison. And it was foggy, as you can see from that picture above.

We got off the el at Chicago and took a slight detour over to Big Wig Tacos & Burritos on LaSalle for dinner. I always check to make sure the restaurant we're planning on going will still be open and was reassured to find out Big Wig operates on Wednesdays until 4:00 a.m. (Which begs the question: who in the heck is going out for tacos in the middle of the night?)

After dinner we backtracked to Chicago and Wells and began our Hike south at about the eleven and a half-mile mark. There aren't that many landmarks on this stretch of Wells, especially now that Ed Debevic's has made way for another high-rise condo building between Erie and Ontario. But I was really disappointed to see that Carson's, just across the street, had also recently closed its doors! These were two of my favorite spots when I arrived in Chicago back in the 1980s. (I was relieved to learn later, however, that both restaurants plan on reopening soon, Ed Debevic's in Streeterville and Carson's in River East. Phew!)

At Hubbard we turned right (west) and left (south) at Orleans, the twelve-mile mark. When we crossed the river I had the guys stand in front of the Merchandise Mart for a picture.

The "Mart," built by Marshall Field & Company in 1930, was the largest building in the world -- it has its own ZIP code! -- until the Pentagon was completed in 1943. The Art Deco masterpiece was designed by the Chicago architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, which had a long-standing relationship with the Field family. To give you an idea of the severity of the Great Depression, the structure was originally built for over $30 million but was later sold to the Kennedy family in the mid-1940s for only $13 million. (At the end of the last real estate bubble, in early 2007, the Mart was valued at over $900 million.)

When you cross Wacker, Orleans turns into Franklin, and we took it south until Monroe Street. After a quick jog west to Jefferson and the 13-mile mark (halfway!), we turned left (south) and then turned quickly right (west) on Adams.

On Monroe we passed the twin towers of what is now called the CME Group but was known simply as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange when I worked there from 1983 until 2005. (I started my career in the "old" Merc, the "Green Box" above Union Station, in 1981.)

At the corner of Adams and Desplaines, of course, is Old St. Patrick's Church. A debate immediately broke out as to whether or not Old St. Pat's was the oldest Catholic Church in Chicago. Other candidates included Holy Family on Roosevelt Road and St. Procopius in Pilsen.

(According to its website Holy Family Parish, founded in 1857, is the second oldest parish in the city. St. Procopius, in comparison, wasn't organized until 1875 and its Romanesque building on 18th Street wasn't completed until 1883. A veritable arriviste!)

Old St. Patrick's was founded on Easter Sunday in 1846. Originally housed in a wooden building at Randolph and DesPlaines, the current church building was constructed of yellow Cream City brick from Milwaukee in the 1850s. (Two octagonal spires, said to represent the Eastern Church and the Western Church, were added in 1885.) The building is one of only a handful of structures remaining that predate the 1871 Great Chicago Fire and is the city's oldest standing church building. In 1977 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

We then crossed over the Kennedy, through Greektown, and into the West Loop, which has positively exploded in recent years. I would say it has to be the "hottest" neighborhood in town and has undergone an incredible metamorphosis over the last twenty years or so. My favorite line about the West Loop (which anyone who knows me is sick of hearing) is that when my niece moved to Chicago around the year 2000 I showed her the various neighborhoods in and around downtown. When we drove down Halsted past all the Greek restaurants I cautioned her not to "go west of Greektown," the implication being that it was, well, "rough." I now tell young people not to "go west of Greektown -- you can't afford it!"

When we finally reached Racine, just shy of the 14-mile marker, we turned left (south) and made our way back to 1212 W. Flournoy. Next week we'll pick it up again on Adams and Hike around the United Center. Remember, not too long ago, how you would never walk around in that neighborhood after dark? Well, believe me, it's changed. Come join us; I think we'll be dining at the Billy Goat on Madison.

Enrique Castro González, a...

...Spanish soccer player, died at age 68.

I had never heard of Mr. González, and like many (most?) Americans don't really know much or even care about the sport. (My dad used to say half-jokingly that soccer was some sort of Communist conspiracy to distract Americans from real sports such as baseball, basketball and football.) And I have to say, that picture above from González's obit in the Times today just isn't helping the sport's image at all. Why does it seem like soccer players always look so dorky when photographed playing the sport?

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

Pretty sure someone should have shortened that to just "Rosen" somewhere along the line.

I'll be in Los Angeles...

...for the next week or so visiting my son and his wife. Blogging will be non-existent, but you can still follow my adventures on Twitter @BoringOldWhtGuy.

Tom Rapp, "who...

...founded Pearls Before Swine, an eclectic band much loved by aficionados of underground music in the 1960s and ’70s," died at age 70.

I had never heard of Mr. Rapp nor his band, but I'm always on the lookout for obscure groups from the '60s (such as this one). From his obit:

Among Mr. Rapp’s claims to fame is “Rocket Man,” a song from Pearls Before Swine’s 1970 album, “The Use of Ashes.” It is said to have been among the inspirations for the Elton John hit of the same name.

Who knew?

Singer Vic Damone...

...is dead at age 89.

I initially read Mr. Damone's obit in the Times to see if I recognized any of his hit songs. I didn't.

(I wondered, in particular, if he had recorded "Volare," but it seems he's the only Italian-American singer who didn't. The version I had in mind was by Bobby Rydell, born Robert Louis Ridarelli.)

I also didn't know that Damone turned down the role of Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather. Why? Apparently he thought the movie was "not in the best interests of Italian-Americans." Was he overly cautious? Maybe. But maybe not:

Mr. Damone’s autobiography, “Singing Was the Easy Part,” written with David Chanoff, appeared in 2009. In it, he recalled a night when a mobster, angry that he had broken off an engagement to the thug’s daughter, dangled him out of a New York hotel window. The Luciano boss Frank Costello got him off the hook, he said.

“We didn’t think about it back then,” he said, “but the mob owned the nightclubs and theaters.”

Another noteworthy tidbit is that Damone was married five times and three of his wives preceded him in death, two by suicide. That is not a good record.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Skiffington Holderness, the current husband of Rob Porter's first ex-wife, Colbie Holderness.

The absolutely best sentence...

...I read last week was from Michael Lewis's piece in Bloomberg, "Has Anyone Seen the President?" (My emphasis.)

Bannon has a favorite line: If I had to choose who will run the country, 100 Goldman Sachs partners or the first 100 people who walk into a Trump rally, I’d choose the people at the Trump rally. I have my own version of this line: If I had to choose a president, Donald Trump or anyone else I’ve ever known, I’d choose anyone else I’ve ever known. 

John Perry Barlow, who wrote...

...lyrics for "some 30 Grateful Dead songs in all" including "Hell in a Bucket," died at age 70.

I had never heard of Mr. Barlow, but from reading his obit in the Times he must have been a veritable Zelig (my emphasis):

As a student at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, Mr. Barlow took LSD trips with the Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary in Millbrook, N.Y., where Dr. Leary and others were living in a grand Georgian house.

In 1972, after his father died, he returned to Wyoming to manage the family’s debt-ridden ranch, the Bar Cross Land & Livestock Company. (Jaqueline Onassis sent John F. Kennedy Jr. to work as a wrangler there in 1978.) 

In Wyoming, he was chairman of the Sublette County Republican Party for a time and a coordinator for the 1978 congressional campaign of Dick Cheney, whose conservative politics Mr. Barlow later disavowed.

His preoccupation with the internet dated from the mid-1980s, when he began using a computer to manage the ranch’s finances. In 1986 he became a director of the WELL (the initials stand for Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link), an online community that drew members from the worlds of music, publishing and technology.

Mr. Barlow, an emeritus fellow of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, was also a founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation in San Francisco, which promotes adversarial reporting and internet advocacy. The foundation’s president is Edward Snowden, the former government intelligence analyst who leaked secret documents to journalists in 2013.

Dennis Edwards, lead singer...

...of the Temptations, died at age 74.

It was sixteen degrees...

...last night when we got off the bus at Halsted and Diversey, making it our coldest Hike yet. (I think.)

We resumed our project of tracing the Chicago Marathon course by picking it up again at Diversey and Clark, but walking south this time. It was our fifth leg of the trip, and (some of us) made it all the way down to around Mile Eleven and a half, to the Brown Line stop at Chicago and Franklin. We're almost halfway to the finish!

The Hike started off much like last week's in that it was a stroll of sorts down Memory Lane for me. From 1982 until 1985 I lived in a studio apartment just off the corner of Fullerton and Clark. I was young, still new to the city and in the process of "finding" myself. In hindsight, it was probably the most consequential period in my life. Oh, and I met my future wife, Julie, (of 31 years!) during that time.

We turned right (south) on Clark at Diversey and right away I began reminiscing about all of my old haunts from the '80s. If you're familiar with the area, and were around back then, you might remember Hanig's Slipper Box on the corner where there is now a Starbucks. The store, which had a blue awning, opened in 1944 and closed after 70 years in 2014. (I bought more than one pair of shoes there.) This article says "the decision to close was based on the rent, which the shoe store could not afford to support." That's not hard to believe, as Lincoln Park has gentrified probably more than any other neighborhood in the city.

A couple of doors down is a LensCrafters location, on the site of the old Parkway Theater. I can't remember when it closed -- it's been a while now -- but it was a "revival house" that showed classic (as opposed to first run) films. Although I had already seen Annie Hall and Manhattan by the time I arrived in Chicago, I think I really developed an appreciation for Woody Allen movies at the Parkway, where I recall sitting alone through double and even triple-features. It's probably where I first saw such classics as On the Waterfront and Casablanca, too.

Walking farther down Clark, past newer stores such as Banana Republic and Target (when did that go in there?), but also more familiar landmarks like the beautiful art deco post office and McDonald's across the street, I began to realize that the area has probably always been in a state of constant flux. Hard as it is to believe, time didn't begin when I showed up almost forty years ago. Or, in other words: the more things change, the more they stay the same.

But one thing that hasn't changed is the Wiener's Circle, just before the road bends at Wrightwood. Open until four a.m., Googlemaps describes it as "Late-night hot dogs with a side of sass." For some reason, the prospect of getting insulted while ordering dinner was a bit of a draw for some of the seven guys who joined me (it couldn't have been the weather!), but they must have been a little disappointed as the guy who waited on us seemed more bored than anything. (It was a slow night -- go figure.) Strangely, I don't recall ever being treated rudely (unlike Ed Debevic's) in the handful of times I've eaten at the Wiener's Circle; perhaps they recognize an individual not to be messed with when they see one.

We opted to eat inside, and, with the exception of one other couple, were the only ones there. The burgers, hot dogs and fries were good, as usual, but all I could think of was how there used to be a Vienna hot dog stand on practically every street corner in the city when I first got here. Now, you have to seek them out. Oh, well.

By the way, ya gotta love whoever's responsible for that sign:

Past Wrightwood is Dave's Records, which has been there forever, and Frances' Deli (since 1938), which used to be across the street and known as -- I think -- Frances' Food Shop. It had a "steam table" back in the day, and was a great place for a bachelor to get home-cooked entrees like baked chicken with "two sides." In short, it was awesome.

At Deming I pointed out the building where Julie lived when we were married in 1986, and the Cycle Smithy at the corner of Roslyn. But gone is that cozy little pizza place (with a fireplace) on the east side of Clark, as is the old Parkway Restaurant at Fullerton and Clark. It originally had an Arabic-themed name, like Aladdin -- although that wasn't it -- where I probably ate more than anywhere else in those days. The Parkway (?) Pharmacy (was everything called "Parkway" back then?) was kitty-corner where Five Guys is now, and the Golden Cup restaurant was down just a few doors on the east side of the street. The Big Apple grocery store is still there, somehow, but I didn't see any sign of Neo -- an old punk rock bar where I think I went once -- in the alley across the street. Also long gone is the Belden Deli at -- where else? -- Belden, where I developed a taste for their lima bean soup (which Julie, for some reason, could never understand).

After Francis Parker School we turned right (west) on Webster for only a half a block and then left (south) on Sedgwick. It was quite a change from Clark, which is almost all commercial. Sedgwick, on the other hand, is a beautiful (some might even say "leafy") street which may be one of the best examples of Lincoln Park Living. Last week I mentioned that my ideal dwelling would be a vintage high-rise apartment on Sheridan Road, but the "low-rise" landscape on a street like Sedgwick (or, say, Dayton or Fremont farther west) would be awfully hard to beat.

When we got to Armitage I had a bit of a start as I saw a bank on the corner (what?) where I thought the old Carnival Foods used to be. (Oh, no, not the Carnival too!) I was relieved, however, to find out I was mistaken: the Carnival is still very much in operation at Lincoln and Dickens, just up the street. Phew! We continued on, past Marge's Still on Menomonee (full disclosure: never been there; can you believe it?), St. Michael's Church in the distance, and Twin Anchors (best ribs in the city?) at Eugenie, to North Avenue and the Sedgwick Brown Line stop. It was getting cold (getting?) by this point, so two of the guys peeled off to catch the el for home. That left just my son John and me (the other four had bailed on us at Fullerton), and we decided to walk "the distance" to the Brown Line stop at Chicago. (My son is a beast!)

We walked east on North, past the Old Town Ale House (founded in 1958, the year of my birth) and the UP Comedy Club, to Wells where we turned right (south) into the heart of Old Town. Zanies Comedy Club is still there, in case you were wondering, as is the Old Town Aquarium, the Fireplace Inn, Burton Place on -- duh -- Burton Place, and the House of Glunz just before Division.

When you cross Division you're officially out of Old Town and into an amorphous stretch of the Near North Side community area. My son asked me where exactly we were and all I could think of was the old Cabrini-Green housing projects that are no longer there. He also asked me, coincidentally, which neighborhood had changed the most in my time in Chicago and I had to tell him we were in it right now. There was no way -- no way! -- we could have walked down this street in the 1980s. That's how much Chicago has changed -- for the better -- no matter what they say about us on Fox News.

At Chicago Avenue -- about Mile Eleven and a half -- we turned right (west) and caught the Brown Line for home. Next week we'll resume our journey here and try to walk back to 1212 W. Flournoy.

Happy birthday Joe!

28? Impossible!

John Mahoney, whom you probably...

...know best from his role as Martin Crane, Frasier's father on the sitcom of the same name, died at age 77.

But the longtime resident of Oak Park (did you know that?) who was born and raised in England (he deliberately shed his British accent in the U. S. army -- who knew?) also played a troubled CEO on the HBO show, In Treatment. I didn't think Mahoney was particularly believable in that role -- I thought he was a little too old to play a CEO; shouldn't that character have been in his forties or fifties? But the series itself, which ran from 2008 to 2010, just might be the best show you've never heard of.

Nicholas von Hoffman, "a provocative...

...author, broadcast commentator and syndicated columnist who examined American politics and culture for five decades from a left-wing perspective," according to his obit in the Times, died at age 88. (My emphasis.) In other words, what my dad would have called a "troublemaker."

I guess even Mr. von Hoffman would call himself that (again, my emphasis):

Mr. von Hoffman, who never attended college, styled himself a “creative troublemaker” after his mentor, the social activist Saul Alinsky, for whom he worked as a community organizer in Chicago before starting his journalism career at The Chicago Sun-Times in 1963.

(That's  Messrs. Alinsky and von Hoffman in the picture above.)

But, to read his obit (and I remember reading him in The New Republic back in the 1970s), Mr. von Hoffman had a distinguished career in the world of letters. So distinguished, in fact, that his obit made the New York Times. So where am I going with this? The key is in this paragraph:

Nicholas von Hoffman was born in New York City on Oct. 16, 1929, to Carl von Hoffman and the former Anna Bruenn. His father was an immigrant Russian cavalry officer. After graduating from Fordham Preparatory School in the Bronx in 1948, Nicholas went to Chicago, intending to enroll at Loyola University. Instead, he took a research job at the University of Chicago, and in 1954 joined Mr. Alinsky as a field organizer in black and Hispanic communities on the South Side.

And, right away, I thought to myself, if Fordham Prep, a Catholic school, is anything like the Catholic schools I attended, I'll bet his name isn't even listed among the school's alumni on its Wikipedia page. And, yep, sure enough, I was right.

I remember noticing this when one of my journalistic idols, David Carr, died a few years back. He and I graduated from the same high school in Minnesota and I immediately tweeted the news to them. Whoever answered me obviously had no idea who he was, though, as they responded something anodyne like, "Our thoughts and prayers are with him." And, although his name appears on their Wikipedia page now, it didn't for a long time; and when it first did it linked to the quarterback of the same name! (I even wrote a post about it; click here to read it.)

And the bottom line here is that Catholic schools have gotten so conservative nowadays that they're loath to even acknowledge alums who the Soviets would have called "antisocial elements." It's one of the many things I hate about Catholic schools. As I wrote in that post about Mr. Carr:

Benilde has gotten a lot more conservative -- and "fancy" -- since I graduated way back in 1976. The place that almost closed its doors in the early '70s now seems to be one of the more "prestigious" schools in the area. (Go figure!) And, since BSM is a private school, of course, they have to always be "selling" themselves. After all, if Benilde isn't "better" than your local public school, then why on earth would you spend thousands of dollars to send your kid there? And the last thing a Benilde parent wants is for their little dears to turn out to be drug addicts like Carr! (No one else at Benilde has ever tried alcohol or drugs besides Carr.) No, BSM parents expect their precious offspring to remain squeaky clean and go on to a suitable Catholic university like Notre Dame. (And don't even think about following in Carr's footsteps to be a "writer." It's strictly business, law or medicine for my Johnny or Janie!) 

You know what would really impress me? If Benilde-St. Margaret's were secure enough to say that, yeah, David Carr struggled after graduation but turned out to be a famous, gifted writer. We don't care what he said about Benilde -- we're proud of him just the same!

Good God, Fordham Prep! Can't you at least put Mr. von Hoffman's name in the list of alums on your Wikipedia page?

Last night we hiked the fourth leg...

...of the Chicago Marathon course -- the northernmost tip through Lakeview -- and made it to about Mile Eight and a half. (If it sounds like we're going slow it's because we can't take up exactly where we left off each week. We could if we had a helicopter, but one of our constraints is that we always use the CTA.)

If you'll remember, last week we got as far as the Goethe Monument in Lincoln Park. We then walked west on Diversey and caught the Number 8 bus on Halsted, so we resumed our Hike last night where the bus dropped us off at the same spot. With me so far?

I found a restaurant, Nando's Peri-Peri Chicken, which serves Afro-Portuguese flame-grilled chicken in a spicy chili sauce. It's a chain, but it met our budget requirement: dinners for around ten dollars. I had the chicken breast sandwich -- medium spicy -- which was "served on a toasted Portuguese roll with arugula, tomato, pickled red onions and PERi-PERi mayo," fries and a glass of water. With tax it came to $11.09 and was quite good.

The restaurant was just beyond the Half Shell, on the corner of Orchard and Diversey. None of the guys had been to this iconic North Side eatery, and since it's a little pricey for our group I told my son I'd bring him back sometime with his mother and/or his brother.

On our way to Sheridan and Diversey, where we finished last week, we passed the Brewster Apartments on Pine Grove where Charlie Chaplin lived when he was filming silent movies with Essanay Studios in 1915.

We turned left (north) on Sheridan into Lakeview -- or do you spell it Lake View? -- one of the 77 officially recognized community areas of Chicago. (Boystown and Wrigleyville, on the other hand, are actually "neighborhoods" within Lakeview.) I know, it's all very confusing.

This particular street (which turns into Lake Shore Drive at Belmont and Marine Drive after Irving Park) is one of my favorites in all of Chicago. It's lined with luxury high-rise condos and apartments from the 1920s (and probably before) to Mid-Century modern and beyond. I've often thought that my ideal residence would be a massive vintage high-rise apartment along this stretch of road. (A guy can dream, can't he?)

The lighting wasn't very good, of course, but I did manage to take a picture of this sculpture outside one of the many Mid-Century modern buildings.

Before we reached Addison, where we turned left (west), we passed one of my favorite structures in the area, Temple Sholom, between Stratford and Cornelia. (Is it just a coincidence, by the way, that one of the few -- only? -- Tudor high-rises in the area is on a street called Stratford?)

The temple, founded in 1867, it is one of the oldest synagogues in Chicago.

The current building, a mix of Byzantine and Moorish Revival styles completed in 1928, was the result of an assignment given in 1921 to three students at the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology). While I'd always admired the synagogue from the outside, my son and I had an opportunity to see the interior last fall as part of Open House Chicago. In short, it's every bit as spectacular on the inside as it is on the outside. (None of these pictures really do it justice.)

We were only on Addison for a short time, not long enough to see Wrigley Field at Clark, but we did pass my very first apartment on Pine Grove, just north of Addison. I moved there in 1981 when I was 22 years old and fresh out of college. I was a runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange at the time, and the $200 a month studio -- utilities included, pay phone in the hall -- fit my budget nicely. That and a $40 monthly CTA pass were my only two fixed expenses. The rest of my princely $7600 a year salary was for food and generic beer, which I bought just around the corner at the Jewel on Broadway. And, yes, as a Chicago native I say "the Jewel," rather than just "Jewel" like my wife and kids. Looking back, I was poor but happy as a clam. (I also, in fairness, had my parents to fall back on.)

One quick aside from those days. When I first moved to the city in the early 1980s, Lakeview was just beginning to gentrify. (Lincoln Park was only a few years ahead of it.) A product of the suburbs, I decided I would have to abandon my habit of taking walks after dinner. (It was the big, bad city, remember?) One night, however, I remember coming home from work late and walking up Broadway toward Addison. I heard footsteps behind me and immediately thought, this is it. I turned around quickly and saw that it was just an old lady pulling her groceries in one of those collapsible wheeled carts. I figured if she wasn't worried then I shouldn't be either. And, with one minor exception, I've never had a problem in all my years in the city. It's really much safer than people think. Honest.

Broadway, which is nearly all commercial, provides quite a contrast with Sheridan, which is almost all residential. While there are many new businesses, of course, there are still a number of spots from the Old Days that are still in operation. If you're familiar with the street, you'll be happy to know that Lake View Presbyterian Church and Joe's on Broadway are still kitty-corner from each other at Addison and Broadway. Also, for those of you who were around "back in the day," the Treasure Island (albeit with a recent face lift) and that funky hotel between Cornelia and Hawthorne are still there. Ann Sather -- not the original on Belmont (I was a regular there; Tom Tunney used to say hello to me at the counter) -- is still between Hawthorne and Roscoe. And the Broadway United Methodist Church (the new version, not the wooden one that burned down in the '80s) is still across the street from the Closet on Buckingham. (I remember wondering as a naive young man, Is that a gay bar?) The Unabridged Bookstore is still between Aldine and Melrose, but the Melrose Restaurant itself -- I'm sorry to say -- is closed and the site is available for rent. My son asked me why they didn't take down the signs and I sighed that you don't want to remove something so sublime as that until you absolutely have to. Kids today!

The Chicken Hut is still on the corner of Belmont and Broadway. (That intersection, by the way, was code for "gay neighborhood" when I first moved here. Boystown on Halsted was still a few years off, I think.) But before you get to Friar Tuck and Barry-Regent Cleaners at Wellington, there's an enormous Mariano's at Barry that replaced a smaller neighborhood grocery. When on earth did this get here? I thought. It was so huge and intimidating that I was initially put off by it. It doesn't fit in with the character of the neighborhood! I thought. But, then, everything keeps changing and Chicago, I'd say, has done a good job of maintaining a healthy mix of old and new.

All in all, Broadway was much quieter than I remember it. But then my son pointed out that it might be a little busier on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of summer than on a Wednesday evening in January.

We were almost to the end of our nightly trek, where Broadway meets Clark at Diversey, after the road curves at Surf Street and across the street from a newer place called Sushi Burrito. Doesn't sound very appetizing to me, but my son opined that what the city really needs is more good fusion restaurants. Okay.

The final landmark on our stroll was a four plus one on Oakdale where my wife and I lived back in 1986-87 when we were first married. A "four plus one," in case you don't know, is a five-story apartment building unique to Chicago where the first floor consists of the lobby and a parking lot. My son asked me, Why don't they just call it a "five"? I tell ya, everyone's a comedian on these Hikes.

Next week we'll pick up again at Clark and Diversey and walk south to -- who knows? -- maybe as far as Mile 12 at Hubbard.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to Wilder Penfield, a Canadian neurosurgeon. The only name better than that is his full name, Wilder Graves Penfield.

Last night the same thermometer...

...that showed 18 degrees last Wednesday was a full ten degrees warmer, at 28 -- over 50 percent higher! -- when the Brown Line train we were on crossed the Chicago River at a little after five o'clock. We were embarking on the third leg of our Hike of the Chicago Marathon course and our first stop would be at Sedgwick.

We ducked into a Subway restaurant just steps from the station on North Avenue, and after a sumptuous dinner we turned left (north) on LaSalle Drive toward Lincoln Park. (By the way, when does LaSalle Street become LaSalle Drive?)*

The first landmark we encountered was the Moody Church, completed in 1925.

The historic evangelical Christian church, which melds features of both Romanesque and Byzantine architecture, was intended to bridge the gap between the traditional Roman Catholic cathedral and the typical Protestant church buildings of the late 19th century and early 20th century.

The structure seats over 3,700 people and features 36 large stained glass windows, no two of which are alike, around the perimeter of the building.

One interesting tidbit about the church is that when it was originally built, summer cooling was provided by means of a large pit in an alley in back of the building, where large loads of ice would be dumped. Air was then blown over the ice and out of mushroom-shaped vents under the auditorium seats. The system could recirculate the church’s air in six minutes.

Next we saw the Robert Cavelier de La Salle Monument, at the corner of Clark and the La Salle Drive extension.

De La Salle (1643–1687), as every student of Chicago history knows, explored the Great Lakes area, Mississippi River, and Gulf of Mexico in the 17th Century. He is best known for claiming the Mississippi Valley for France, and naming it "Louisiana" for King Louis XIV. La Salle died during an expedition to Canada in 1687, when his crew mutinied and killed him. (I didn't know that!)

Our hearty band of Hikers then turned left (north) onto Stockton Drive into Lincoln Park and almost immediately heard the howls of a pair of coyotes (coyotes!?!) off in the distance near South Pond (is there a North Pond?). We could actually see the critters but I don't think I could have captured them on my iPhone.

According to a segment from Chicago Tonight, there are more than 4,000 coyotes roaming Cook County and they do surprisingly well within the city itself. (I saw one across the street from my building just a week or so ago. Yikes!) From the show:

“The abundance of food is quite high in Chicago and it’s not just human food or garbage, but there’s a lot of natural food available for these animals in many parts of Chicago that you wouldn’t realize,” said Stanley Gehrt, a professor of wildlife ecology at Ohio State University.

Coyotes are both predators and scavengers, eating small rodents, Canadian geese, rabbits, deer, fruits and more.

“Most people think it’s the opposite, but once they learn how to cross roads and avoid cars – the only real threat to them – they do extremely well in the city, much better than out in the country.”

Walking past Lincoln Park Zoo, founded in 1868 and one of the oldest in North America (and one of only a few free admission zoos in the United States), we passed Cafe Brauer, above. Completed in 1908, it has been called "an outstanding example of the Prairie School of architecture."

While the original restaurant closed in the 1940s, the Lincoln Park Zoo Society began a $4.2 million restoration project in 1987. The second floor ballroom was renovated so that it could be used for private events, and the first floor was remodeled as a small family restaurant and ice cream parlor.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986, Cafe Brauer received Chicago Landmark status in 2003.

At Webster (about the five and a half-mile mark of the Marathon course), four of our group peeled off to catch the bus at Halsted for home. The remaining five of us continued on north, past the Lincoln Park Conservatory, completed in 1895. We turned right (east) on Fullerton, left (north) on Cannon, past the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, which opened in 1999. (In case you were wondering, the North Pond is just behind the museum.)

At Diversey, the course turns right-ish onto Sheridan Road, but that was enough for our intrepid Hikers and we turned left (west) toward Halsted.

At the northernmost tip of the park are two more landmarks worth noting: the Goethe statue and the Elks Memorial. (I had planned on taking a spectacular photo of the Memorial but it wasn't all lit up as I had expected. Instead, I got a couple of good shots of the Goethe statue.)

The Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Monument pays homage to the famous German writer and philosopher who died in 1832. Completed in 1913, the timing of its dedication a year later was anything but fortuitous: a month before the outbreak of World War I, when admiration for Germany and its people went south dramatically.

The Elks Memorial, a Beaux Arts-style domed building at the corner of Lakeview and Diversey, was built to honor members of their order who had served in World War I. The architect had the unlikely name of Egerton Swartwout and it was completed in 1926. (John and I went inside during Open House Chicago.)

When we turned on Diversey, with the Lincoln Park neighborhood to our left (south) and Lakeview to our right (north), I was struck by how much the street had changed since I had last visited. For those of you familiar with the area, the old Market Place grocery store on Hampden has been torn down in favor of two luxury (what else?) condo buildings. The sign said four-bedroom units are expected to fetch as much as $1.7 million. That's a far cry from when I moved to a studio apartment in Lincoln Park in 1982 for a little over $200 a month!

Another new building is underway on the southeast corner of Clark and Diversey, and I tried to explain to the guys that before the busy intersection of Damen, Milwaukee and North in Wicker Park, this was the place to be for young people back in the 1980s and '90s. All they could remark upon was the abundance of women's clothing stores on that stretch of Diversey.

We finally made it to Halsted and caught the Number 8 bus for home. Next week we'll tackle the fourth leg of the Marathon course, from Diversey and Sheridan, up to almost Wrigley Field, and back down Broadway and Clark. That should get us to about Mile Nine, or about a third of the way through.

* Answer: I think when it crosses the Chicago River.

The Name of the Day...

...belongs to John McCain, United States senator from Arizona who recently penned a political science research piece, "Convincing evidence that congressional staff do, in fact, matter."

Whoa, whoa, whoa -- my bad. Turns out the author's name is actually Josh McCrain, a graduate student in the political science PhD program at Emory University. I clicked on that piece thinking it was by John McCain. I don't suppose Mr. McCrain ever runs into that trouble. For that reason, make his the Name of the Day.