gooollysandra

Thoughts on thoughts and images of beautiful things

Tag Archives: Chicago

5:11 pm - March 15, 2019 -

Feelings reign supreme

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I am 90% guided by my feelings (let’s be real, more like 100%). When trying to evaluate something and make a decision about it I do weigh the pros and cons and at least try to think about it rationally, but ultimately it is the feeling part of me more than the thought part of me that guides my decisions and paths in life. I think this is because I am swayed by the feeling that something, anything, evokes in me and I attach a lot of significance to that feeling.

I was thinking about this the other night while in an Uber ride in Chicago. As I zipped through different neighborhoods I thought about the feeling that each one of those neighborhoods elicits in me and why that matters so much to me. As I’ve spent the past year trying to find an apartment in Chicago I’ve cared a lot about its placement within a neighborhood; because there are some neighborhoods that I really like the feeling of, and others that just don’t speak to me, and even give me an uneasy feeling (having nothing to do with safety or lack thereof)…just an uneasy feeling of not belonging, or a feeling opposite of home. But the neighborhoods that I do like, and feel at home in, I really like. What explains the affinity that I feel towards some neighborhoods and not others? I’m sure familiarity has something to do with it, and memories associated with that place. And the inexplicable feeling of home and being in just the right place at just the right time 🙂

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5:12 pm - March 9, 2018 -

City girl

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I remember listening to this song when I was in high school and college, dreaming of living in the big city one day. Now I’m here and I’m not as happy as I thought I would be back then. I thought I’d live in a beautiful apartment downtown, but I don’t think I knew much about money then. I thought life in the city was glamorous and always exciting. While sometimes true, not always true.

There are moments when do I love the city though. I had one of those moments the other night as I was walking downtown on Wacker Drive. The city at night is my favorite time in the city. It’s something about the lights. But the other night, as I was walking along the river, it was freezing and there were some snow flurries but I didn’t care because I was so caught up in taking the city in. It’s also not as crowded at night so you feel like you have the city more to yourself.

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10:56 am - March 5, 2018 -

Big city blues

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Although I love this city that I live in, I definitely have my frustrations with it. And they’re not necessarily frustrations with Chicago itself, but with the big city lifestyle overall. No one cares who you are in the big city. No one knows you, recognizes you, or looks out for you. In fact, there are people who are actually out to get you. I find myself craving a smaller community where people know each other, look out for one another, and where the lifestyle is more laid back and moves at a slower pace.

I’ve been feeling a stronger connection tho home lately. It’s interesting how when you’re away from home for a while, or from where you grew up, you start to realize certain things about home that you love, even though you could barely stand it while you were growing up. I think as you get older you also start to realize how important it is to be close to your family and those you love. They are an invaluable support system and they won’t be around forever. So we have to enjoy them, appreciate them, and love them while they’re around. We don’t even know how long we’ll be around…even more reason to be close to them.

I’m surprised by how much I’ve been loving my little home state of Indiana recently and the sense of pride that’s been building that I’m from there. As much as I love the vibrancy and beauty of Chicago, it’s never quite felt like home.

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5:45 pm - December 1, 2017 -

McDonald’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

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Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday and watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV is absolutely a staple of Thanksgiving at my house. This year, since I live in Chicago,  I went to the McDonald’s Thanksgiving Day Parade downtown on State Street. I was sad to miss watching the Macy’s parade on TV, but I was also excited about seeing a parade in person. The parade in Chicago is obviously on a much smaller scale than the one in New York, but it still felt very festive.

It was also very different. Rather than big floats and balloons, the Chicago parade focuses on diversity and inclusion by representing various ethnic groups complete with authentic costumes and music from their cultures. I didn’t see the whole parade, but the countries I saw represented were Bolivia, China, Thailand, Mexico, and the Punjab region of India (and I’m sure there were others). I really admired the Bolivian costumes because they wore these interesting wooden clog-type sandals with some kind of bells that made a nice sound.

There were of course many high school marching bands, tap dancers, and cheer squads. There weren’t too many musical performers though, as there are in the Macy’s parade. The one disappointment was how anti-climactic Santa’s arrival was. There wasn’t any music accompanying his sleigh and there just wasn’t a lot of excitement among the crowd when he finally did arrive. I think one thing that makes the Macy’s parade so fun to watch are the commentators from The Today Show with their witty and dynamic narratives. So maybe Santa’s arrival was disappointing because there was no big announcement or tale about his gift-giving to all the boys and girls around the world.

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7:21 pm - November 14, 2017 -

Love is a beautiful thing when you have it. Chase after it and don’t let it go.

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10:49 pm - October 27, 2017 -

Open House Chicago 2017

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Open House Chicago is this wonderful annual two-day weekend event where about 200 sites around the city are open and free to the public. It takes place in October and I went for the first time this year. Although we’ve been blessed with beautiful weather fairly late into the Fall, the Open House weekend was cold and rainy. I did my research on all the sites that were of interest to me the week leading up to Open House and I a long double-sided list of sites I wanted to visit. Sadly I only made it to 8. The sites are all over the city and I mostly made it to the sites I wanted to see downtown and in Logan Square, since that’s where I live and they were very easy to get to. The thing about Chicago is that it’s a big city and it’s not the easiest to get to different neighborhoods without a car, especially if they’re far out from downtown. Chicago does have a good public transportation system, but if you have to transfer between L lines, it can take quite a long time to get to where you’re trying to go.

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My first stop was The Robey in Wicker Park, which is a new chic hipster hotel in the Northwest Tower at the six corners intersection. It houses a hotel, restaurant, a lounge/coffee shop, and two rooftop bars, one on the 6th floor and one on the 13th. The 6th floor rooftop even has a small pool (a very small pool) but both offer nice views of the city. And I loved the feel of the lounge/coffee shop on the 2nd floor. It’s definitely a cool place to bring a laptop and do some work, with a nice little view of Wicker Park.

Then I made my way downtown and my first stop was the London House, but due to the long line I just missed the cutoff to get in. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to go there for a drink sometime to take in those sweeping views of the Chicago River and the magnificent mile. So then I went to the Hard Rock Hotel in the Art Deco Carbide & Carbon Building, which was beautiful, but not much of it was open for the tour.

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Carbide & Carbon Building – Hard Rock Hotel

Next was the Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist designed by Harry Weese. The church is a prominent structure along the Chicago River with a unique circular Mid-century Modern design. The interior is laden with concrete supports and ceilings, Italian travertine walls, carpet, and velvet seats. Most of the building is taken up by an expansive semicircular room where their services take place, with a massive organ as its focal point.

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Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist

I made my way down LaSalle Street to City Hall where I got to sit in the room where the city council holds their meetings, which was a very cool experience! These meetings are open to the public and I wish I could go to one but they are always held while I’m at work. Then I went to the Federal Reserve Bank, which has a beautiful lobby and a money museum. I learned that it’s the oldest running Federal Reserve Bank in the country, which was surprising to me. I assumed the Federal Reserve Bank in New York would have been the first. The Wintrust Bank, which is right across the street, has an even more beautiful lobby if you ask me. It was truly stunning and I especially liked the Art Nouveau paintings in the frieze, lining the walls in the center of the lobby. I also got the see the vault in the basement, which was a bit eerie and smelled like old paper.

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Wintrust Bank

My last stop downtown was the Chicago Board of Trade building. It’s one of my favorite buildings in Chicago, but after being inside I have to say that I prefer it on the outside. The Art Deco lobby is very stylish, but it’s too dark and stark for me. It just doesn’t have a warm and inviting feeling; I found it to be cold and intimidating. The exterior, however, watches over the city with an earnest eye at the end of LaSalle Street. I always love when I’m on Wacker Drive and I look down LaSalle and see her comforting presence. The statue standing on top of the building is the goddess Ceres sculpted by John Storrs in the Art Deco style. I didn’t know this, but apparently the statue is faceless.

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Chicago Board of Trade

If the weather hadn’t been so blustery that day I might have made it to more sites in other neighborhoods. But it’s also hard to take everything in and appreciate it all, so maybe keeping the list of sites to see on the shorter side is the best course of action. There is always next year’s Open House to see more!

 

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8:09 pm - August 18, 2017 -

“But the thing about a great beauty is that no matter its age or condition, it could still turn and give you that look and send the heart aflutter.”

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“I looked around at the stately villa, the murmuring fountains and, yes, even at the overgrown grass. Rome had its issues. The degradation was real. But the thing about a great beauty is that no matter its age or condition, it could still turn and give you that look and send the heart aflutter.”

I have to remind myself to admire the beauty in my surroundings, even if it’s not always initially apparent to me. I also have to be reminded to allow myself to be pleasantly surprised by the beauty that I might encounter unexpectedly. This New York Times article about Rome by Jason Horowitz resonates with me since I was born in Rome and lived there for the first eight years of my life. But I have to say, in disagreement with the author, I always found it beautiful and never wanted to leave. Rome was the best playground a child could ask for. But I will say, now that I live in Chicago, IL, I resonate with the author’s notion that we must seek to see the beauty even in the chaos or dilapidation that’s around us. I love Chicago as a city for all that it has to offer, but at the same time, the city just gets me down on a daily basis. Relying on public transportation for your commute isn’t easy, especially in the dead of winter. The hustle bustle lifestyle with everyone scurrying around in a hurry and forgetting to be nice to one another just isn’t for me. I find myself craving a much more laid-back kind of life. The architecture downtown juxtaposed next to Lake Michigan is beautiful, but other parts of the city that tourists don’t see where the average Chicagoean actually lives can be dirty and graffiti-stricken. So, faced with all this unpleasantness of city life, I often struggle to find the beauty that I once so admired about Chicago.

Horowitz’s evaluation of various neighborhoods in Rome as he searched for an apartment all over the city reminded me to try to appreciate the little intricacies and charms that each neighborhood of Chicago holds, especially since I don’t get to see them everyday. I like how different each neighborhood is and how diverse the city is. So maybe what I need to do, taking a lesson from Horowitz, is take the time to visit different neighborhoods, as he explored Rome, and experience each one for the unique things it has to offer. And maybe I just need to take a harder look at the small things in my everyday encounters with the city to remind myself what makes Chicago the beloved city that it is by so many.

 

 

Categories: Foreign, Photography, Travel Tags: , , , , , ,
2:07 pm - December 29, 2016 -

Cultural divides

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Over the past several months I’ve been conducting oral history interviews with Latino/a artists for one of my jobs. Some interesting and surprising conflicts have arisen that I definitely wasn’t expecting, and am even a bit bothered by. I consider myself a very open-minded person when it comes a variety of things like race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, etc., but what I’ve learned recently is that sometimes people can view this open-mindedness and willingness to engage with those who are different from us as a negative thing, and even a hostile thing.

To put things more concretely, I was speaking with a young Latina artist in Pilsen, the Latino neighborhood in Chicago, and she was bothered, insulted almost, by the fact that I wanted to explore the neighborhood, meet the locals, and try to have an authentic experience there. She proceeded to tell me that there was no way I could possibly have an authentic experience because I as was not Latina, I did not speak Spanish, and I did not grow up in the neighborhood. She said that the “authentic” experience I was seeking was clouded by any preconceived notions of what I thought her culture was about. She was frustrated that white people were visiting her neighborhood to see it for themselves and then trying to build it up because it was still affordable to do so. She opposed the gentrification process that was and still is happening in Pilsen, particularly in regards to the artist community. The artist community that Pilsen is now known for does not typically include the artists who have been living in Pilsen for decades. She felt as though these artists who have recently been moving into Pilsen are trying to replace the artists who were already there, and then pretending like they own the place. I can completely sympathize with the frustration with this kind of gentrification, but I do not think that someone who wants to explore a neighborhood and a culture with genuine interest should be lumped into the same category.

I countered all of this by arguing that not everyone who visits the neighborhood wants to replace what’s already there or try to change it. Some people are genuinely curious about other cultures, and not only curious but truly eager to learn more, engage with, and try to experience things with the locals. She was still insulted and offended by this proposition, insisting that there’s no way an outsider could have a genuine experience, precisely because he/she was an outsider.

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I left this encounter feeling so frustrated because I felt like she was prejudice against me, while I was not at all prejudice towards her. I was left feeling like there’s no way that two people who are fundamentally different from one another ethnically, which is out of their control, can come together and learn from one another. It was as if she encouraged segregation between cultures and as if she didn’t want to share her culture with anyone, nor learn about another’s culture. This was very frustrating to me because while I am a white American female, I was born in Europe and grew up there for the first eight years of my life. My mom has taught ESL (English as a Second Language) to people from all over the world for many years, and I myself am now teaching ESL as well. I also volunteer at a non-profit that helps Spanish speakers with a variety of things, where I help with their citizenship classes. I have friends from diverse cultures, and in fact I prefer to surround myself with people who are different from me because I feel that there is so much to learn from them. I definitely have a genuine interest in exposing myself to different cultures and experiencing things as they do the best that I can. So I too was insulted by her for not understanding this genuine interest of mine in wanting to explore her neighborhood and do as the locals do.

Although frustrating, this was interesting perspective to be confronted by, which made me think more about what I was trying to accomplish by surrounding myself or exposing myself to other cultures. Despite her pessimism and unwillingness to accept me into her neighborhood, I’m still all about mixing cultures because there is truly so much learn.

Categories: Art, Foreign, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
9:53 am - January 8, 2016 -

Christmas eats

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Undeniably, food is a big part of the Christmas holiday. This year, my family tried a new chicken recipe from The Kinfolk Table Cookbook, which is a marvelous book if you don’t know it. It’s actually one of the first recipes I’ve tried from this cookbook, but surely not the last, because, again, it’s a beautiful book filled with unique delicious-looking recipes. My mom and I also made our annual traditional trip to the Christkindlmarket in Chicago, which we look forward to all year. The hot chocolate, spiced wine, crepe booth from Paris, and authentic German Christmas ornaments really pull at our heartstrings. Fortunately, we stumbled upon a French booth run by Catholic nuns, who were selling French pastries and desserts. Not only were the nuns the sweetest, and very happy to speak French with my mom, their desserts were to die for. We bought an apple pie and a chocolate Buche de Noel, which were as yummy as they were beautifully-presented. This year, we also made our own egg nog for the first time, and I have to say I thought it was better than the store-bought egg nog!

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11:41 am - November 1, 2015 -

Moving

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Moving is never an easy thing to do – unless you hate where you’re living or hate the situation that you’re in – and I just made a difficult move. I’ve moved a couple times in the past couple years, and I’ve just moved again…three moves in three years, and the third year is only just beginning. I’ve called the beautiful city of Chicago my home for the past year and unfortunately my time here has expired for the moment. I moved to Chicago to go to graduate school, which I completed, and then my task was to find a job and stay in Chicago, which I did not achieve. While the outcome is sad, it also opens the door to other opportunities. So, with a little help from my family, I’m going home temporarily until I figure out what my next move is. I’m incredibly grateful to have family to lean on during a time like this.

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There are so many things I will miss about Chicago – walking around downtown on a rainy night, the plethora of restaurants and bars to try, the uniqueness of each neighborhood, sitting in coffee shops, and perhaps most importantly, the friends I made in Chicago – by far some of the best I have ever had and will have for life. Some things I will not miss about Chicago are the stress of the big city, taking the L at rush hour, feeling unsafe while walking around at night, and how expensive everything is.

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Moving allows you to put things in perspective, think about what you really want, and is a chance to hit refresh on your life – all of which are good things. So in the end, I suppose moving isn’t so bad.

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