Chicago!

Administrivia:

So Substack is a dud: I'm getting a fifth to a third the number of views of a typical Breadbin/Proofing Drawer post. And life has thrown me some curveballs of late that have forced my attention elsewhere for the foreseeable future. I won't bother you with excuses. As part of my ongoing social media calibration, I'm done with announcing plans before they've come to fruition.

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I do want to commemorate the weekend I just had with my pal. My apologies for the lack of pictures: I left my phone turned off once I got over the border, not wanting to incur ugly roaming charges. 

Back in November, Craig invited me to come see Mahler's 2nd Symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And right away I have to stop and explain to non-classical music fans why this is a big deal.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)'s musical philosophy might be summarized as "go big or go home". His symphonies, of which there are nine complete, are massive, emotive sound worlds. Symphony #2, "the Resurrection", is widely considered to be the absolute zenith of Romantic era music; in fact, many say the last five minutes is the most glorious music ever composed. It's scored for a very large orchestra and chorus -- so large, in fact, that only three orchestras in Canada have the forces at their disposal to program the work. 

Craig has seen this several times. Being a professional trumpeter, it kind of goes with the territory. For me it was a bucket list piece I honestly never thought I'd get the chance to hear live.

He had a gig at Theatre Woodstock on Friday and comped me a ticket: Something Rotten! This was an absolute hoot of a play, capably acted and sung, and some of its tunes will be stuck in my head for a while -- especially the opening number, "Welcome To The Renaissance" and "A Musical" (the latter directly references twenty other musicals in the space of eight minutes and celebrates the genre while mercilessly mocking it).  So much fun.

We lit out for Chi-town at nine in the morning on Saturday in a monsoon that let up shortly out of London. Not much to be said about most of the trip there as far as scenery goes. The 403 from London to Sarnia is quite possibly the most boring stretch of road in Ontario ("oh, wow, a curve!" I remarked just outside Sarnia). It was about a half hour wait at the border, otherwise painless, and then we stopped -- as is required -- at Cracker Barrel in Port Huron. 

Craig is a fan of the chain, and I mean that as short for "fanatic".  I'd been to three locations with Eva and my love for the place isn't too far behind his. Good down-home comfort food. Even with our dollar sitting around 73 cents, eating out in America is quite a bit cheaper than it is here.

 

I had never been west of I-75 in Michigan. The little differences jump out at you to let you know you're not in Canada anymore:

REST AREAS. It's odd, you know: you'd expect hypercapitalist America to have "service centres" like we have in Ontario (ours are called En Route) but instead you have actual rest areas, with picnic tables and nowhere to spend money besides a couple of vending machines. America does these right, in my opinion.

SPEED LIMITS! Rural Michigan has long sections of interstate signed at 75 mph (120 km/hr). You'll only find that on one highway in Canada...and in Michigan, in many places,  the flow of traffic is 90 mph or faster. I'm not kidding. 

WHERE ARE THE HIGH RISES? Apartment buildings seem to be almost non-existent outside the downtowns in the U.S. You really notice the lack.

Craig had booked us in to the Holiday Inn Express in Portage, Indiana. This little city is an hour east of downtown Chicago. Any closer and we'd be staying in Gary....which is not advised. I only saw the city from the highway, and I saw enough to know I don't want to see any more. There might be nice areas of Gary, but all I saw was blight and neglect. 

After checking in and refreshing ourselves, we completed the trip into the Windy City, and this is when things got interesting fast. 

I've always felt Toronto is extremely intimidating to drive in. There's only one through east-west route and it is clogged to high heaven most of the day and night, not to mention absolutely infested with tractor-trailers. 

Chicago is intimidating for different reasons. The first is the signage. Coming over the Chicago Skyway, you're confronted with a profusion of signs with a hell of a lot of information on them. Toronto has its share of spaghetti interchanges but Chicago is on a whole different level. 

 Like Toronto, Chicago has express and collector lanes (here called "local"): unlike Toronto, the signs for the collector lanes do NOT inform you which exits each segment serves. Let's say you want to exit on Park Ave. In Toronto, you'll transfer from express to local when you see the sign saying "COLLECTOR LANES and a list of exits, wth distances:

Field Ave 2km

Meadow Rd 3 km

Park Ave 4km

Dale Ave 5 km

In Chicago, you better know where Park Ave is because the signs won't tell you. The split will say EXPRESS on one side and LOCAL ALL EXITS FIELD AVE TO DALE AVE. Craig tells me he had some adventures his first couple of times here.

Then you get downtown and I never really thought I'd call Toronto a baby city but...wow. Depending how you measure population, the cities are comparable, but Chicago feels all grown up. I know Toronto currently has more ongoing building construction than any other city in North America but it has a ways to go to catch up with the colossus that is Chicago. 

The waterfront here is a vast improvement on Toronto's: instead of endless condos, you've got as nearly endless park. And of course the public transit here puts Toronto's to utter shame (not hard to do)...although the L train is old, rickety and loud as hell. 

We park and are warned to validate our ticket at Symphony Center, otherwise it'll cost us fifty bucks.

Dinner: Miller's Pub, established 1935. This sprawling and cavernous bar is a local icon. I had a prime rib sandwich and Craig had a heaping platter of fish and chips and I'd come back here in a heartbeat. 

Then, the main event. We climbed and climbed (and climbed and climbed) until we could almost touch the roof (click here for something like our view). No vertigo until the standing ovation.

Which was well earned. Mahler's 2nd symphony is about 90 minutes long. Our performance was to be conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is quite renowned in the orchestral world, but he withdrew for personal reasons and so we got Neeme Järvi instead, and he's legendary.

The piece itself -- well, I can't expect any of you to go listen to it. Just in case: Neeme Järvi doesn't have a YouTube recording, so I have gone with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. There is a whole universe in here, complete with some awfully big bangs.  It requires serious stamina to play this, no matter your instrument. The brass and strings in particular have very demanding parts.

The choral fifth movement is simply heavenly. Here's a link to the final 8 minutes or so, and if you can spare the time, you'll never hear anything else quite like it.

Craig being Craig, he had spotted the assistant principal trumpeter. Mark Ridenour, just before Mark had to go prepare for the concert;  we met up with him in the rotunda after the performance. Given congratulations on a fine performance, Mark said that it felt like a struggle for the entire brass section. If that's them struggling, I can't begin to imagine what they sound like when they're not. 

Then we meandered up Wabash St. to a bar where friends of Craig's from Sarnia were. A burly Black bouncer started to pat us down and demand a $25 cover charge to enter, and so instead his friends came out one at a time, so as not to lose their table.

We forgot to validate the parking, but Craig simply asked the parking attendant if she could do so, and she did. One of his philosophies is "it never hurts to ask". What feels bold as, well, brass to me is just confidence and kindness (for Craig is one of the kindest men you'll ever meet). I truly believe he produces his own luck.

Getting out of downtown was...frightening. In fact I've never been that scared in a car in my life. It had nothing to do with Craig: the man is an exceptional driver roughly on par with my wife (and that is a supreme compliment). It had more to do with how Craig had to drive.

In Chicago gridlock -- and that grid was locked tighter than Tilly, such that the traffic lights were meaningless--you drive aggressively or you never move at all. A spot opens up ahead of you: you'd best take it before somebody else does. And so we made our way, ever so slowly, out of the downtown core and back to our hotel in Portage.

We had pizza from this place delivered to our room. I know I was supposed to get a Chicago deep dish pizza, but I really prefer a thin crust. I didn't realize how hungry I was. Damn, was that tasty.

The next day, we came  back home, stopping once again at the Port Huron Cracker Barrel, this time for lunch. We ordered, and Craig excused himself to go to the restroom; before he got back, our dinners were on the table. I have NEVER had service that fast. And why can't Cracker Barrel come to Canada?

Craig tried his best to get me into opera on the way. It's still a bridge too far for me, mostly because of what feels to me like overwrought sopranos. But on the way back I heard a couple of Bruckner symphonies, which were excellent, and later that night at his place I introduced him to this, not expecting him to like it.

People don't like the music I share with them; I've basically had to shutter that side of myself. Craig loved this...sent it to his father, who loved it too...and there is nothing that feels quite like people falling in love with music you love yourself.

I was supposed to train home yesterday, but the train was replaced by a bus due to "operational issues". I got back home around 1pm, tired but exhilarated.

Some thank yous are in order, as alwayu.

To Mark and Kathy, who together got me to Woodstock; 

To my father, whose generosity supplied my spending money;

To Eva, for the train ticket (too bad it turned into a bus ticket, but oh well);

and lastly, of course, to Craig, for the music, the food, the laughs, and the company. I love you, pal.