Riding the Christmas Train

Today on the way home from work I caught the Chicago Transit Authority's Christmas Train, which is decked out with holiday decorations and lights inside and out, has seasonal music playing, and has CTA employees who are dressed like elves passing out info about the train and posing for pictures, and generally getting people in a much better mood than they usually are on the way home from work. The train only makes one run a day, and for only a handful of days through Christmas, so it's pretty cool to see on the tracks, and much cooler to actually ride on, which I got to do for the first time ever, today.

Sometimes this city doesn't totally suck.

Olympic Effort

Throughout the city of Chicago's recent bid to land the 2016 Olympic games, I was pretty ambivalent about it. Some people were absolutely dead-set against it, others brought out the pom poms and were all for it, including Mayor Daley and anyone who did not want to incur his wrath. That was probably a big mistake of his since the opposition to the Olympics in Chicago was as much anti-Daley as it was anti amateur sports festival.

People were upset, and rightly so, about the lack of transparency of the process, about the fee hikes and what they took as the selling of the city (e.g.., the parking meter deal) of Daley to put forth a competitive Olympics bid. People also worried, again, rightly so, about the corruption that just seems to be inherent in this city and how it would manifest itself when it came to hosting the games, building the needed venues, etc. There would likely have been cost overruns, money exchanging hands under the table, deals that would make Salt Lake City look like, well, some sort of holy city, and then there'd be the hassles that regular city residents who wouldn't care either way about the Olympics would have to deal with -- buses and trains that would be even more crowded than normal, migrane-inducing traffic messes, construction projects throughout the metropolitan area, police possibly taken out of the neighborhoods to work at the Olympic sites, etc. And these are all very valid concerns.

Additionally, there are problems in Chicago that need to be fixed instead of throwing an Olympics. Kids and addults aren't safe on the streets or in the schools, the infrastructure is falling apart, the transit system is hobbling along, the schools aren't that great, we're short of a fulll police department by a couple thousand cops, and still, in spite of all that, the mayor and those who worked to bring the Olympics to Chicago deserve a round of applause, if not for the work they did then for at least some of their motives.

This is quite an accomplishment by Daley, to elicit sympathy for him, since he can be altrenately petulant and a bully, especially when he gets all red-faced and shouts at critics or anyone who dares question what he's doing. He loves to try to embarass or scapegoat the media, a favorite whipping dog of his, merely for sking basic questions. But he was right when he asked critics of the plan to get the Olympics, how else they'd make infrastructure improvements, how they get millions and millions of federal dollars, how they'd get tourists to the city from around the globe in the nidst of the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The anti-Olympics crowd made it easier for me to feel some sense of loss when Chicago was quickly knocked out of the running for the Olympics, since they were like a Tea Party bunch -- shouting, screaming, hating, wishing for someone to fail --yet offering no solutions themselves to the many obbbstacles and challenges the city faces. Sure, Daley may have wanted the Olympics as a "legacy" project, and others may have wanted it just so they'd make money off it, but at least he tried. At least they tried. At least those who worked to get the Olympics in Chicago were working for something. What have the "anti" crowd done to the benefit of Chicago?

Yes, there would have been corruption and out of control costs and headaches for the citizens if the city of Chicago had won the 2016 Olympic bid. But things would have gotten built, people would have been put to work, the economic engine would have been humming, the namee "Chicago" would have been on the lips of people across the globe, and man, it could have been one hell of a party.

Zoppe, Part II

Giovanni Zoppe isn’t some idle dreamer, though. He’s been a professional circus performer since he was a child, and a few years ago, he resurrected the Zoppe Family Circus in America, the same circus that his father, Alberto Zoppe, was the star of in Italy, before he came to the U.S. in 1949, lured to this country by Orson Welles, John Ringling North, and an elephant named Mary. The Zoppes may be artists and dreamers, but they are also business managers and problem solvers. To be part of a family circus, you also have to be part engineer, carpenter, truck driver, laborer and accountant.

It was Alberto who, in 1936, invented the four-pole cupola circus tent, which in addition to being more stable and secure than circus tents that had previously been in use, allowed circuses to fit nearly twice as many people in the tents as they had let in before, since the amount of square footage had been doubled by the way Alberto had devised the tents. It is Giovanni who not only takes center stage as Nino the Clown in the Zoppe Family Circus, but who coordinates scheduling with his sisters Tosca and Carla, brothers-in-law Rudy and Jay, half-brother Tino Wallenda Zoppe, and his mother and father, to insure that they, as well as all the hardware -- the tent, the concession stand, the bleachers, and the family’s horses and dogs, all of which is kept at his parents’ home in Arkansas, will be ready to hit the road when they’ve got a gig.

When he is not on the road with the Zoppe Family Circus, Giovanni Zoppe freelances with other circuses or various festivals as either Nino or whatever other character he may be suited for. This spring, for instance, he performed for two weeks in Hawaii, came home to Chicago for a day, and then hit the road for his next job, in Pennsylvania. In Chicago, he has performed at Navy Pier’s “Winter Wonderland,” where he produced a one-man show, “The Night Before Christmas,” in 2002. “It was a chair-stacking act (where his objective was to place an angel atop a Christmas tree) that we built a whole show around.”

He’s also played a scarecrow at the Halloween festival at Daley Plaza, in addition to performing at the Shriner’s Circus at Medinah Temple, before the building was transformed into a Bloomingdale’s furniture store. Elsewhere, he has performed a few times at Carnevale in Venice, as “a horny, drunk monk, an American tourist, the Greek god Mercury, … (and) a minotaur, a Comedia dell’ Arte character.”

While the origins of his family’s circus are in Venice, it is Chicago that has been his muse for the modern-day Zoppe Circus, as well as the winter circus he one day hopes to see in the city. While much of his living comes on the road, it is Chicago that Giovanni Zoppe has made his home; the place where he feels destiny has brought him.

It was while performing as Nino the Clown in 1998 as part of the Shriners Circus at Medinah Temple that Giovanni Zoppe first saw Block 37, and got his epiphany for a winter circus in Chicago. One day when he had some time to fill, Giovanni took a walk around downtown, “and I saw Block 37, and thought, ‘Oh my God!’ I stood there for like 10 minutes and thought, ‘What an amazing place to put my little circus, to put my family’s circus.’”

Even before he set eyes upon Block 37, Giovanni Zoppe says that, “I had already planned on opening my own circus. It may have been a little push from working at Medinah (where his father had performed some 50 years earlier)and the richness of it” that further fueled his dreams.

Besides mentally placing his circus on Block 37 and the German market that would compliment it, Zoppe further has envisioned the ComEd building that looks across Dearborn to Daley Plaza, as a training facility for Circus Arts one day.

'Royko Was a Prick'

I don't quite understand the fascination and reverence that many people of Chicago, whether they are journalists, would-be journalists, or media junkies, have for Mike Royko. Royko is the legendary Chicago newspaper columnist who got his real start in Chicago reporting at the City News Bureau of Chicago, then worked for the Daily News, Sun-Times and Tribune, writing some 7,000 columns over a 30-year career, exposing government corruption, taking on City Hall, and writing about other passions, such as the Chicago Cubs and 16-inch softball. His book, "Boss," about Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, is a classic, and showed the mayor as corrupt and racist, and I treated that book as a bible of sorts when i was in high school and college. He's also famous for drinking at the also legendary Billy Goat Tavern.

People speak of Royko as a Catholic would speak of the pope or President Kennedy, as some speak of Sinatra, as basketball fans speak of Michael Jordan, as boxing fans speak of Muhammad Ali -- he was the greatest, there will never be another like him, you all could learn a thing or two by watching him, etc. People name their dogs after Royko. When some get pissed off at a present day newspaper reporter or columnist, they sometimes resort to saying things like (I paraphrase), "Royko was the last great reporter in this town, the rest of you suck." People still are drawn to the Billy Goat, as they were when he was alive, because they want to be in the place where he spent so many thousands of hours drinking, getting into scuffles and hitting on other guys' wives and girlfriends.

He may have been a great newspaperman, but by some accounts, the guy was a first-class prick. A year or two ago, when I heard a radio interview with Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, who has had his own obstacles to deal with in his personal life (which you can read about in his book, "Drunkard"), in which he was asked about Royko, someone whom he spent some bar time with at the Goat, and Steinberg stated, "Royko was a prick." And by all accounts, Royko was an unpleasant person to encounter. (Maybe someone who knew him will disagree, that's fine. I never met him and can't say I regret that.)

Then, while bouncing around on the Internet today, I found that Jerry Pritikin, aka "The Bleacher Preacher," has a blog (he doesn't update often, but it is a blog nonetheless). Pritikin, now in his 70s, is a lifelong Cubs fan, a photographer by trade, and is also gay. In a piece he wrote (with photos which you should take a look at) for the Beachwood Reporter in 2008, Pritikin wrote of something he saw one summer day in the 1970s on Chicago's North Side lakefront (then and now, a place where gays liked to gather).

Pritikin saw a handful of police cars and bunch of cops "raid" the beach all because a young blond man in a Speedo was selling sandwiches on the beach, without a license to do so. Yeah, selling sandwiches without a license got nine cops to respond to the beach that day and arrest the guy.

Pritikin, who was visiting from San Francisco (he's lived in SF and Chicago) at the time, found a pay phone nearby and called the Daily News, where Royko was working at the time, and asked to speak to Royko, "who I had heard was always willing to go to bat for the little guy.

"I was connected to him and he listened my story and when I was finished Mike Royko said to me loud and clear:

'They should arrest all the faggots!'

And then he hung up."

So, you know, forgive me for not genuflecting at the altar of Royko the next time he is brought up in conversation or I remind you of how much of a prick this guy must have been when you ask me if I want to be like Royko or you assume that I ask St. Royko for journalistic guidance every day when I leave for work.

Crane Kenny

I don't mean to direct any more attention the way of the guy running the Chicago Cubs, whose name is Crane Kenny, but that's the name that came to mind for this item. The crane Kenny I am talking about here, however, is Ken Derry, an actual crane operator for McHugh Construction, which is the firm putting together the Trump Tower in Chicago. He has taken loads of absolutely stunning photos from his perch, often high above the city, throughout construction of the building. He has put them together on this photo blog.

Some of the photos are just absolutely breathtaking, especially when you stop to consider that there was someone behind the camera, sometimes 70 or 80 stories above the city, exposed to the elements, with no walls or windows around them. I'd be terrified to be up there with them, but these guys, the construction workers who take the dreams and visions of real estate developers and architects and make them into reality, have got to have balls of steel to do what they do. Hats off to them.

Take the CTA -- Please!

My love/hate relationship with the city of Chicago is kind of a roller coaster ride. For instance, take the CTA -- please! (If you get that you are reallly old or you are such a show people geek.)

Saturday afternoon/evening I went downtown to see the John Turturro-produced documentary "Beyond Wiseguys" at the Gene Siskel Center. Since the Red Line trains were not stopping at their usual stops downtown, I walked past my local station and to a bus stop, where I got an express bus downtown. Even though I live just about two miles south of the city's northern border, by the time the bus ("with more frequent service!" the CTA claims) got to my stop,and even though it was one of those double-long, stretchy in the middle buses, every seat was filled. OK, no great disappointment there, but since I was standing (on the 'turntable' in the middle, where the bus swings when it turns) and the bus driver was comfortably seated, the fact that I was hanging on for dear life and he barreled down Lake Shore Drive was not a concern of his. I got off about a half-mile early so I could get my bearings straight before settling in to the movie.

But that wasn't the worst part of it. On the way back, I decide to walk up north a bit, to Division Street, where I could pick up a Clark Street bus, which would take me to about a block from my building and since it was a long ride, I'd be able to do a bit of reading. Well, even though the Clark/Division Red Line station was closed, the CTA hadn't added any buses to the Clark or Broadway routes, to pick up the additional riders they'd get because there really was no rapid transit alternatives listed on the sign that said 'this station closed.' 

 

After watching two Broadway buses turn onto Clark from Division, at which point they head north for the most part, on the same route as the Clark Street bus, I decided to jump on a Broadway bus, since the crowd had grown to about 11 people waiting for the Clark Street bus in the 15 minutes I was there.

I got to that bus stop about 8 p.m. I got home about 9:30 p.m. Normally, it would a 30-40 minute ride. But about six blocks into my ride, the driver of the Broadway bus put on his hazard lights and settled in for about five changes of the traffic lights. It was not until one rider (no, not me) shouted, "hey, is there something wrong with the bus?" that he mumbled something like "ahead of schedule, have to wait three minutes..." We waited about 10 minutes there, during which time one young white man (I only mention his color in order to try  to point out how ridiculous he looked and acted) confronted the driver, went back to his seat, then got into a nasty, foul-mouthed argument with his female companion. And the bus still WOULD NOT MOVE. 

OK, so then we get moving, not too fast, of course, and when we get to Diversey, where the Broadway bus takes a soft right to go up Broadway and where Clark Street-bound traffic takes a soft left, to continue to go up Clark, my driver, the driver of the BROADWAY bus, goes up Clark Street! Then, then, without saying anything to the passengers, apologizing, etc., he flags down a Clark Street bus, and asks the driver of that bus how he would get back on to Broadway! Is this one of the new part-time drivers the CTA has hired at one of their recent job fairs? Incredible. He keeps driving up Clark, and when we get to Halsted, about four blocks up, I get off and run to catch that Clark Street bus. Of course I have to stand until the bus gets to about Irving, about two miles from home for me, so it's pointless by then to take out one of the books/magazines I brought with to read. I just listen to my ipod, look out the window and fume. 

To top it all off, when I get off the Clark Street bus, about 90 minutes after I first arrived at that bus stop at Division Street, another Clark Street bus was behind it less than a block away, about one-eighth full. 

World Class City, my ass.