Everyone knows that Chicago streets are numbered and every eight blocks is a mile. (Incidentally, the system was introduced only in 1908, before which there was street numbering chaos.) On the North Side you just have to memorize the numbering - Division is 1200, Lawrence is 4800, etc. But on the South Side, all east-west streets are named after their number, with a couple exceptions like Roosevelt and Garfield. You would expect the main streets to fall on the fours since there's a main street every half-mile. But as anyone who's taken the Red or Green Lines knows, the main streets instead land on places like 47th, 63rd, 87th, 111th.
The problem is not that the South Side has forsaken the principle of a main street every half-mile. It's that South Side streets near the Loop were already numbered when the street numbering reform went thru in 1908, and they didn't match up exactly with the new system. Instead of renumbering those streets, they were left as is, while the newer parts of the South Side were integrated into the 800-to-a-mile system.
Roosevelt (1200 S) is actually one mile south of Madison (1 N/S), Cermak (2200 S) is two miles south, and 31st (3100 S) is three miles south. After that the regular system resumes, which is why the main streets then follow regularly: 39th, 43rd, 47th, 51st, 55th, etc.
2009/01/10
Best of 2008
1) Being in the same city as my girlfriend for a majority of the year.
2) Spending the summer reading Capital and Marxian theory.
3) Coming up with something like a dissertation topic, and taking satisfying grad classes.
4) Exploring Tokyo and Osaka, and Hiroshima, Nagoya, and Kobe. Kyoto was okay too.
5) Excursions to New York, San Francisco, Philly, DC.
6) Seeing incredible movies on the screen, many at historic theaters: There Will Be Blood, «色戒» (Lust, Caution), Броненосец «Потёмкин» (Battleship Potemkin), Touch of Evil, Vertigo, King Kong (1933), The Godfather.
7) Biking around Boston and environs.
8) Return to organizing.
9) Baseball! First trips to the original Yankee Stadium and Nationals Park (DC), return trips to two of the best newer parks, Citizens Bank Park (Philly) and AT&T Park (SF). Plus almost constant access to games on MLB's web service before leaving the country.
10) Living in Chicago again.
2) Spending the summer reading Capital and Marxian theory.
3) Coming up with something like a dissertation topic, and taking satisfying grad classes.
4) Exploring Tokyo and Osaka, and Hiroshima, Nagoya, and Kobe. Kyoto was okay too.
5) Excursions to New York, San Francisco, Philly, DC.
6) Seeing incredible movies on the screen, many at historic theaters: There Will Be Blood, «色戒» (Lust, Caution), Броненосец «Потёмкин» (Battleship Potemkin), Touch of Evil, Vertigo, King Kong (1933), The Godfather.
7) Biking around Boston and environs.
8) Return to organizing.
9) Baseball! First trips to the original Yankee Stadium and Nationals Park (DC), return trips to two of the best newer parks, Citizens Bank Park (Philly) and AT&T Park (SF). Plus almost constant access to games on MLB's web service before leaving the country.
10) Living in Chicago again.
2009/01/03
Whoa, Portuguese is messed up
I thought I'd look up how to pronounce Rio de Janeiro since I've been saying it lately when talking about the 2016 Olympics candidate cities. But it turns out that Portuguese pronunciation (at least in Rio itself) is so bizarre that if I said it correctly no one would understand what I was talking about. IPA from Wikipedia: [ˈhiu dʒi ʒʌˈnejɾu] (the footnote has variant Brazilian pronunciations, some of which are closer to the Anglicization). So it's something like "hew ji zhaneru". You can hear it spoken here.
2008/12/16
Best ride on the Dan Ryan Red Line ever
I avoid the Dan Ryan Red Line and the Blue Line past Belmont (O'Hare branch) and Clinton (Forest Park branch) like the plague. Building the El in the median of the highway was the worst idea ever. It's bad enough that you have to wait for the train surrounded on all sides by highway traffic, and then have to ride the thing deprived of urban scenery. What's even worse is that the whole experience assaults you like a tire iron to the face with the horrible realization that car culture is ineradicable. (And if you have some sort of perverse affection for such an alienating experience, consider that this kind of public transit makes transit-oriented development almost impossible.)
But today was different. I took the Red Line from Garfield to Chinatown during rush hour, after the snowstorm had started. So waiting on the platform was not dominated by cars zooming past, but by a peaceful scene of falling snow and cars crawling along. The train ride was dominated by a satisfying schadenfreude, as the El roared past traffic that had been brought to a standstill by the snow. In Chinatown, I heard on the radio that the commute from the Loop to O'Hare was taking three hours. A perfect public transit experience.
But today was different. I took the Red Line from Garfield to Chinatown during rush hour, after the snowstorm had started. So waiting on the platform was not dominated by cars zooming past, but by a peaceful scene of falling snow and cars crawling along. The train ride was dominated by a satisfying schadenfreude, as the El roared past traffic that had been brought to a standstill by the snow. In Chinatown, I heard on the radio that the commute from the Loop to O'Hare was taking three hours. A perfect public transit experience.
2008/11/04
How to not mangle Russian presidents' names
Now that the secrets of Russian pronunciation have been revealed to me, here are some pointers on Russian presidents' names.
Борис Николаевич Ельцин / Boris Nikolaevich Yel'tsin: the Russian name Boris is not BORE-iss, it's bah-REESE, and the 'r' is rolled/trilled like the 'rr' in Spanish. Anglicization of the rest of the name is about right, except Russian 'i's are always pronounced like the 'ee' in 'see'.
Владимир Владимирович Путин / Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: again, the Anglicized version of Vladimir has the stress wrong - it should be on the second syllable, not the first. The last name is roughly PU-teen.
Дмитрий Анатольевич Медведев / Dmitrii Anatol'evich Medvedev: Americans will want to say MED-vuh-dev, but it's actually more like mid-VYEH-dif.
Next time: Communists!
Борис Николаевич Ельцин / Boris Nikolaevich Yel'tsin: the Russian name Boris is not BORE-iss, it's bah-REESE, and the 'r' is rolled/trilled like the 'rr' in Spanish. Anglicization of the rest of the name is about right, except Russian 'i's are always pronounced like the 'ee' in 'see'.
Владимир Владимирович Путин / Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: again, the Anglicized version of Vladimir has the stress wrong - it should be on the second syllable, not the first. The last name is roughly PU-teen.
Дмитрий Анатольевич Медведев / Dmitrii Anatol'evich Medvedev: Americans will want to say MED-vuh-dev, but it's actually more like mid-VYEH-dif.
Next time: Communists!
2008/10/27
Sunday Parkways and fake meat Mexican food
Sunday Parkways was really nice. Chicago is finally emulating cities across the hemisphere and started to set aside some time when a few of the city's roads are closed to traffic - so they can be opened to everyone else who is excluded the rest of the time. The first event, which I didn't make it to, was October 5 and ran thru Logan Square and Humboldt Park. Yesterday the route went thru Little Village and East Garfield Park. I was there around noon - turnout was respectable but not spectacular. Community organizations and the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation organized it, and they got a lot of kids from the neighborhoods involved, directing traffic and helping with the logistics. There were also more white folks moving thru East Garfield Park than there probably have been in the last forty years combined.The route went thru both Douglas Park and Garfield Park, which are both really nice and, when you add in Grant Park, Burnham Park, Lincoln Park, Humboldt Park, Jackson Park, Washington Park, and Marquette Park, make a pretty strong case for Chicago having the best park system in the country. No word yet on whether Sunday Parkways will be continued and expanded, but it sure would be a nice addition to the city's recreation opportunities if they started it back up in the spring and made it permanent.
It gave me a good excuse to go up to the West Side - because of how far away it is from both the places I've lived in Chicago, I've really only biked around there twice before, and I've never been to Garfield Park before. There are some really cool buildings in the neighborhood, including the incredible Garfield Park Fieldhouse, inspired by the Spanish Revival architecture at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego's Balboa Park. Too bad the area is still one of the most violent neighborhoods in the city.Since I was going to Little Village, I looked online for a Mexican place that wouldn't have lard in the beans and stumbled across El Faro (3936 W 31st St), which has a full menu of fake meat vegetarian dishes. I had a torta veggie cubano, a taco de soya estilo carne asada, and a 20 oz Jarritos for $9 incl tip. This is quite a find, and definitely worth going back to.
2008/10/18
2008/09/30
Nuclear missiles in my back yard
A couple minutes from my place, in Jackson Park and Promontory Point, the US Army used to maintain anti-aircraft radar towers and nuclear-tipped Nike missiles. WTF!
2008/06/26
Remember the anti-Japan hysteria of the 1980s? The real conspiracy is not against American trade supremacy. It's against vegetarians
I've been in 東京/Tokyo for about ten days now and everything's pretty good for the most part. Thanks to Ariel's sacrifice of tolerating an hour and half commute to her language classes, we're living in 新宿/Shinjuku, which has the busiest train station in the world, one of Tokyo's largest shopping districts, its main red light district, its metropolitan government, its largest concentration of skyscrapers, and its biggest gay and lesbian community. Fortunately we live on the edges of all the clamor while still within easy reach of trains and restaurants.
The restaurants, alas, are not worth much to a vegetarian. One important question I've been contemplating recently is how the Japanese maintain such iron discipline in their conspiracy against vegetarians. Consider:
In between looking for restaurants online, I'm reading Capital, volume 1, enjoying Tokyo's incredible transit system (including the new subway line a couple minutes from our place that opened three days before we got here), and making my way around to the sights.
The restaurants, alas, are not worth much to a vegetarian. One important question I've been contemplating recently is how the Japanese maintain such iron discipline in their conspiracy against vegetarians. Consider:
- We went to a Mexican restaurant that had no beans.
- We went to a Thai restaurant that had no tofu.
- Japanese restaurants fall into a handful of different categories - 寿司/sushi, 居酒屋/izakaya (bar food), 焼き鳥/yakitori (skewers), ラーメン/ramen, うどん/udon and そば/soba, とんかつ/tonkatsu (deep fried cutlets), 天ぷら/tenpura - each of which might have some vegetarian options but generally not enough to make a meal out of.
- Dishes that could easily be made vegetarian, like noodles or tenpura, are invariably sabotaged by adding fish to the broth or sauce or sprinkling かつお節/bonito flakes on top.
- Japanese curry, which I used to eat quite happily when I first lived in 中国/China, is always sabotaged by using a beef base.
- Japan actually does have a tradition of meatless cooking adapted from the Chinese Buddhist tradition that makes China such a wonderful place to be a vegetarian. But 精進料理/shoujin ryouri, rather than a boon for vegetarians, is used to break our will: it's so expensive (around $100/person for a meal) that the one thing that could save us is beyond our grasp.
In between looking for restaurants online, I'm reading Capital, volume 1, enjoying Tokyo's incredible transit system (including the new subway line a couple minutes from our place that opened three days before we got here), and making my way around to the sights.
2008/04/05
Because the word "padre" should bring to mind militarism
I love baseball, but I cringe before baseball's open allegiance to American militarism and nationalism. The national anthem before every game, the practice of singing "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch that swept the majors after 9/11, various invocations of patriotism by announcers - it's all just sickening. But this brings it to a new level: the San Diego Padres featuring "the only Military Opening Night in all of Major League Baseball".
In an attempt to appeal to the many people in the San Diego area working at military installations, the Padres today wore desert camouflage uniforms. The effect was horrifying: it was as if the entire field was controlled by an occupying army. So I was pretty happy when the Dodgers blew the game open in the seventh inning.
Even tho the Padres are named after priests, maybe it's not so inappropriate that they would wear militarist uniforms. The padres were, after all, the first wave of Spanish colonialism throughout the American southwest, just as our boys wearing desert camo are the vanguard of American imperialism today.
In an attempt to appeal to the many people in the San Diego area working at military installations, the Padres today wore desert camouflage uniforms. The effect was horrifying: it was as if the entire field was controlled by an occupying army. So I was pretty happy when the Dodgers blew the game open in the seventh inning.Even tho the Padres are named after priests, maybe it's not so inappropriate that they would wear militarist uniforms. The padres were, after all, the first wave of Spanish colonialism throughout the American southwest, just as our boys wearing desert camo are the vanguard of American imperialism today.
2008/03/18
If only Google cared about transit
Google Maps is an incredible resource, but the way they treat transit is asinine. You have to zoom in far too close before subway stops even appear, and when they finally show up they float around in space, completely unconnected to the lines they run on. Since you're already zoomed in so far, it's impossible to see how the lines run unless you click on each stop and memorize which line(s) stop there. Only someone who knew the system well could make sense of something like these:
I don't know if adding subway lines and making transit systems show up on all the maps would actually encourage people to use transit, but I do know it would get rid of a real pain in my ass. I wrote to maps-transit-feedback@google.com (the only email address for feedback I could find at Google) and they said they'd pass it on to the relevant department. So if you want to make Google Maps more accessible for transit use, shoot off a quick email.
I don't know if adding subway lines and making transit systems show up on all the maps would actually encourage people to use transit, but I do know it would get rid of a real pain in my ass. I wrote to maps-transit-feedback@google.com (the only email address for feedback I could find at Google) and they said they'd pass it on to the relevant department. So if you want to make Google Maps more accessible for transit use, shoot off a quick email.
2008/03/03
Garfield minus Garfield
This is hilarious - the comic Garfield, with Garfield himself removed, is 1) much funnier and 2) occasionally transcendent.
This is the most powerful one:
This is the most powerful one:
2008/02/25
Is Rogers Park the real murder capital?
Here's what someone had to say about my old neighborhood in the Tribune today:
"You tell people about Rogers Park, and they sometimes think there are corpses on the street."
Does this strike anyone else as bizarre? Sure there's some tough guys hanging out on Morse, and up on Jarvis is a little rough, but I've never thought of Rogers Park as being particularly dangerous, plus there's more condos every time I head up there. Do you think he's talking about zombies?
Anyway, there's a new jazz club opening up in the old Morse Theatre this fall that's probably worth checking out.
Bringing jazz to Rogers Park: Will people follow?
"You tell people about Rogers Park, and they sometimes think there are corpses on the street."
Does this strike anyone else as bizarre? Sure there's some tough guys hanging out on Morse, and up on Jarvis is a little rough, but I've never thought of Rogers Park as being particularly dangerous, plus there's more condos every time I head up there. Do you think he's talking about zombies?
Anyway, there's a new jazz club opening up in the old Morse Theatre this fall that's probably worth checking out.
Bringing jazz to Rogers Park: Will people follow?
2008/01/22
Hidden meaning?
Does anyone else see a disturbing resemblance between The New York Times's Oscars coverage ad
and diagrams of slave ships?
and diagrams of slave ships?
2007/11/12
Happy Veterans of Imperialist Wars Day
There should also be a holiday when we pay tribute to all the foreigners who had to die that America might control the trade routes/resources/international institutions.
2007/09/12
When to fly
September 11 is the best day of the year to fly. I flew from Midway to Logan yesterday at 9am, and the airports were deserted. My plane had maybe 25 people on it, total capacity around 150. No lines at check-in or security, boarding and deplaning were quick, everyone was happy.
2007/09/09
2007/09/05
Revive the beard tax!
In 1705 Tsar Pyotr I of Russia ("Peter the Great"), as part of his Westernizing reforms, decreed that all men except church clergy must shave their beards. However, if you wanted to keep your beard you just had to pay a tax, which was verified by the receipt of this coin:
Seems to me that a coin with a bizarre disembodied beard would alone be worth the cost of the tax. This policy would also be effective in cracking down on hipsters. I think the time for the beard tax has once again arrived.
Seems to me that a coin with a bizarre disembodied beard would alone be worth the cost of the tax. This policy would also be effective in cracking down on hipsters. I think the time for the beard tax has once again arrived.
2007/06/09
Quote of the day
Reading thru old copies of the Reader I never got to, I found this great quote from architecture critic and preservationist Lynn Becker, responding to people who leave comments on his blog like "The idea that a group of people can impose their will on the property rights of others' economic self-interest is a slap in the face to the modern business spirit."
When the market economy remains our one true religion, there's never a shortage of those who would destroy beauty with malice and replace it with shit for spite. (2006.11.24)
2007/06/08
Recycling drop-off spots
Chicago is inching toward a decent recycling program, and as part of that very slow process the city has opened a number of dropboxes that you can leave all your recyclables at. See the list here. This is good news since most of us live in apartments that are legally required to have recycling pickup, but which don't because the city doesn't enforce the law. I for one will be dropping off my last 9 months of bottles, cans, junk mail, and newspapers this weekend.
2007/06/04
Best Chicago websites
What do you think are the key websites for Chicagoans? Here's my nominations:
Chicago Reader. This is a no-brainer - decent articles (could be a lot better tho) and all the music, movie, and restaurant listings. Clout Street, the Reader's political blog, is also one of the best sources on city politics.
Chicago Menupages. Most of the restaurants in the city, all with online menus.
Beachwood Reporter. Digging thru all the fluff and crime reporting of mediocre papers like the Tribune to find out what's going on in your city - often to find that there isn't any decent local news in the first place - is a tiresome and disillusioning experience. The Beachwood Reporter pulls out the key articles and adds biting humor in a progressive critique of Chicago politics and media. Also featuring the Lou Piniella Alert Level.
Encyclopedia of Chicago History. Short articles on all the neighborhoods, personalities, and events of Chicago's past. Check out this historical map of the El, complete with all the lines - both operating and decommissioned - and when they opened.
Chicago Reader. This is a no-brainer - decent articles (could be a lot better tho) and all the music, movie, and restaurant listings. Clout Street, the Reader's political blog, is also one of the best sources on city politics.
Chicago Menupages. Most of the restaurants in the city, all with online menus.
Beachwood Reporter. Digging thru all the fluff and crime reporting of mediocre papers like the Tribune to find out what's going on in your city - often to find that there isn't any decent local news in the first place - is a tiresome and disillusioning experience. The Beachwood Reporter pulls out the key articles and adds biting humor in a progressive critique of Chicago politics and media. Also featuring the Lou Piniella Alert Level.
Encyclopedia of Chicago History. Short articles on all the neighborhoods, personalities, and events of Chicago's past. Check out this historical map of the El, complete with all the lines - both operating and decommissioned - and when they opened.
2007/05/30
Biking again
In the last week I made two expeditions to the outskirts of the city. Tho they are administratively part of Chicago, they have more in common with Wilmette or Skokie than with the city proper, so I apologize for how boring my descriptions will be.
Southwest on Vincennes thru Hamilton Park, Gresham, Brainerd, and Beverly, west on 111th thru Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Last Friday I did the 25-mile round trip to Veggie Bite, the vegetarian so-called fast food place in Mount Greenwood in the city's far far southwest. I didn't get a very good feel for the neighborhoods biking on Vincennes, which is a diagonal multilane road. No bike lanes (it used to have them part of the way, but they've been removed), but pretty good for biking with the exception of a few dicey intersections. When I got to 111th and Hoyne in Morgan Park, I encountered something I've never seen before in Chicago: a legitimate hill. Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood are all very suburban and middle class. Mount Greenwood is lily white and feels a lot like northwest Chicago - not exactly a friendly place for an all-vegetarian restaurant. I liked Veggie Bite, but I'm not sure they should market themselves as a fast food place. I got the "cheese steak", which was good but bore no resemblance to the real thing and took awhile to make.
On the way home I took the marked "Vincennes alternative" route, which involved less traffic and gave me a much better look at residential parts of Beverly and Brainerd. Beverly has a lot of suprisingly large homes with big yards, something I've never seen in the city. Northern Beverly and Brainerd had more conventional bungalows, but the neighborhood was completely black. Just like middle class white folks, these homeowners seemed to be spending most of their time on lawn care.
Northwest to Chinatown, southwest on Archer thru McKinley Park, Brighton Park, and Garfield Ridge, south to Clearing, east and south to Ford City Mall, back to Hyde Park thru Englewood. Chris and I tried a new place in Chinatown, House of Fortune (2407 S Wentworth) - pretty good, but the menu wasn't too interesting and looked pretty bland past the Sichuan stuff we got. Archer is another multilane road that mostly cuts you off from the neighborhoods but is pretty good to bike on. McKinley Park is mostly Latino with some Poles, a mix which continues down Archer but whose balance switches by the time you're west of Midway. The surroundings are like going west on Touhy around Chris's parents' place - lots of bungalows and a feeling of being transported back to the '50s.
I went south on Narragansett (6400W) just to include another of Chicago's main roads on my checklist, then east on 65th thru Clearing, so called because the farms that once stood there were cleared for factories. Taking 65th was probably a mistake - the drivers on this 4-lane road seem to have never encountered a biker before and roared past me within a foot. The traffic was light tho - the real hell started when I turned south on Cicero. Cicero is more like the Dan Ryan here than a city road - 8-10 lanes filled with cars moving very fast. In humiliation, I took to the sidewalk. Starting around 71st the mall district starts. It's hard to convey thru mere words how alien a cyclist is in this environment. Parking lots, huge retailers, broken sidewalks, and people talking on their cellphones while driving right at you: along with some of my trips to the malls of the north suburbs, this ranked as one of my least pleasant bike adventures.
Ford City Mall, the site of a long-planned extension of the Orange Line, looks like crap on the outside. Inside it's actually quite nice, except it's a mall so you want to get out as soon as possible. I think is was the only white person in the entire place - lots of Latinos and blacks and a few Asians.
I took the Marquette bike lane thru Marquette Park, West Englewood, and Englewood back to Hyde Park, which would be a very nice ride if not for the psychological strain of being very white riding thru the most violent neighborhoods in the city. Good thing Daley fixed that whole race problem.
Southwest on Vincennes thru Hamilton Park, Gresham, Brainerd, and Beverly, west on 111th thru Morgan Park and Mount Greenwood. Last Friday I did the 25-mile round trip to Veggie Bite, the vegetarian so-called fast food place in Mount Greenwood in the city's far far southwest. I didn't get a very good feel for the neighborhoods biking on Vincennes, which is a diagonal multilane road. No bike lanes (it used to have them part of the way, but they've been removed), but pretty good for biking with the exception of a few dicey intersections. When I got to 111th and Hoyne in Morgan Park, I encountered something I've never seen before in Chicago: a legitimate hill. Beverly, Morgan Park, and Mount Greenwood are all very suburban and middle class. Mount Greenwood is lily white and feels a lot like northwest Chicago - not exactly a friendly place for an all-vegetarian restaurant. I liked Veggie Bite, but I'm not sure they should market themselves as a fast food place. I got the "cheese steak", which was good but bore no resemblance to the real thing and took awhile to make.
On the way home I took the marked "Vincennes alternative" route, which involved less traffic and gave me a much better look at residential parts of Beverly and Brainerd. Beverly has a lot of suprisingly large homes with big yards, something I've never seen in the city. Northern Beverly and Brainerd had more conventional bungalows, but the neighborhood was completely black. Just like middle class white folks, these homeowners seemed to be spending most of their time on lawn care.
Northwest to Chinatown, southwest on Archer thru McKinley Park, Brighton Park, and Garfield Ridge, south to Clearing, east and south to Ford City Mall, back to Hyde Park thru Englewood. Chris and I tried a new place in Chinatown, House of Fortune (2407 S Wentworth) - pretty good, but the menu wasn't too interesting and looked pretty bland past the Sichuan stuff we got. Archer is another multilane road that mostly cuts you off from the neighborhoods but is pretty good to bike on. McKinley Park is mostly Latino with some Poles, a mix which continues down Archer but whose balance switches by the time you're west of Midway. The surroundings are like going west on Touhy around Chris's parents' place - lots of bungalows and a feeling of being transported back to the '50s.
I went south on Narragansett (6400W) just to include another of Chicago's main roads on my checklist, then east on 65th thru Clearing, so called because the farms that once stood there were cleared for factories. Taking 65th was probably a mistake - the drivers on this 4-lane road seem to have never encountered a biker before and roared past me within a foot. The traffic was light tho - the real hell started when I turned south on Cicero. Cicero is more like the Dan Ryan here than a city road - 8-10 lanes filled with cars moving very fast. In humiliation, I took to the sidewalk. Starting around 71st the mall district starts. It's hard to convey thru mere words how alien a cyclist is in this environment. Parking lots, huge retailers, broken sidewalks, and people talking on their cellphones while driving right at you: along with some of my trips to the malls of the north suburbs, this ranked as one of my least pleasant bike adventures.
Ford City Mall, the site of a long-planned extension of the Orange Line, looks like crap on the outside. Inside it's actually quite nice, except it's a mall so you want to get out as soon as possible. I think is was the only white person in the entire place - lots of Latinos and blacks and a few Asians.
I took the Marquette bike lane thru Marquette Park, West Englewood, and Englewood back to Hyde Park, which would be a very nice ride if not for the psychological strain of being very white riding thru the most violent neighborhoods in the city. Good thing Daley fixed that whole race problem.
2007/04/22
Baseball notes
I've watched a lot of baseball these last few weeks, and I've found that about three-quarters of the commercials are either for cars or lawn care products. So would we even have televised baseball if the suburbs didn't exist?
* * *
The best change that could be made in baseball - other than fully socializing revenues among the teams as the first step toward converting the majors to parecon relations of production - would be to change the name of the Cleveland Indians. It's bad enough they're called the Indians, but they insist on retaining their racist caricature logo too. I think they should rename themselves the Spiders. The Cleveland Spiders played from 1887 to 1899 in the old American Association. Cy Young, one of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game, started his career with them and led them to the championship in 1895. Then the owners of the team bought the St Louis Browns and moved all the Spiders' good players there. The 1899 Spiders team was the worst in baseball history, finishing 20-134 and 84 games out of first place (!!!!). The attendance at games was so low (averaging 179 per game) that other teams refused to come to Cleveland, so the Spiders had to play their last 36 games on the road. They lost 35 of those. That was the last season the Spiders played. The team that would eventually be called the Indians started playing in 1901.
Avenge the betrayal of the Spiders! End the racist Indians! Revive the Cleveland Spiders!
The best change that could be made in baseball - other than fully socializing revenues among the teams as the first step toward converting the majors to parecon relations of production - would be to change the name of the Cleveland Indians. It's bad enough they're called the Indians, but they insist on retaining their racist caricature logo too. I think they should rename themselves the Spiders. The Cleveland Spiders played from 1887 to 1899 in the old American Association. Cy Young, one of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game, started his career with them and led them to the championship in 1895. Then the owners of the team bought the St Louis Browns and moved all the Spiders' good players there. The 1899 Spiders team was the worst in baseball history, finishing 20-134 and 84 games out of first place (!!!!). The attendance at games was so low (averaging 179 per game) that other teams refused to come to Cleveland, so the Spiders had to play their last 36 games on the road. They lost 35 of those. That was the last season the Spiders played. The team that would eventually be called the Indians started playing in 1901.
Avenge the betrayal of the Spiders! End the racist Indians! Revive the Cleveland Spiders!
2007/04/14
Baseball '07
Starting with the playoffs last year, I've been getting back into baseball. I was a huge baseball fan from age 10 till my freshman year of college, but after that I stopped following it. I'm pretty committed to getting back into the game, and baseball games have now replaced Law & Order as my means of avoiding work. Today I've already watched parts of three different games, and spent no time on the research paper that I told my professor would be done last week.
My team has always been the Yankees, which I know is out of keeping with my politics. But I have two solid defenses: I inherited it, since the Yankees were my dad's team, and it's not right to forsake your team just because you become politically conscious. And second, for the years and years I rooted for the Yankees, they couldn't win a thing - 1996, the last year I followed baseball, was also the first year the Yankees went back to the Series. So I'm no fair weather fan.
In the old days, aside from the Yankees there were a number of other teams I pulled for based mainly on whether I liked their team colors and logos - the Mariners, Astros, Angels, and Indians (I now find that last one difficult to explain; the Angels have unfortunately switched back to their atrocious old logo). I absolutely despised the White Sox for complex reasons. Growing up in Iowa, the Sox were the only American League team I could regularly watch on tv (the Yankees are also in the American League and at the time there was no interleague play), and their play-by-play man Ken Harrelson was intolerably partisan. Their big superstar, Frank Thomas, had the ugliest swing in the majors. That doesn't seem like much, but for something so arbitrary as sports loyalties it was enough.
Now I've revised who to secondarily support: those teams that play in good cities (i.e. those low on sprawl), especially those in small media markets who can't afford to throw their money around like the Yankees can. So the Mariners, A's, Tigers, Twins, Indians, Blue Jays, Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Nationals, and Giants are in, while I have to resolutely oppose the Braves, Astros, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Devil Rays, Dodgers, Rangers, and Angels. (As a Yankees fan, of course I can't publicly provide any support for the Red Sox, but I will say that Boston is pretty good city.) Altho Chicago is probably my favorite city in the country, I still can't bring myself to root for the White Sox.
My team has always been the Yankees, which I know is out of keeping with my politics. But I have two solid defenses: I inherited it, since the Yankees were my dad's team, and it's not right to forsake your team just because you become politically conscious. And second, for the years and years I rooted for the Yankees, they couldn't win a thing - 1996, the last year I followed baseball, was also the first year the Yankees went back to the Series. So I'm no fair weather fan.
In the old days, aside from the Yankees there were a number of other teams I pulled for based mainly on whether I liked their team colors and logos - the Mariners, Astros, Angels, and Indians (I now find that last one difficult to explain; the Angels have unfortunately switched back to their atrocious old logo). I absolutely despised the White Sox for complex reasons. Growing up in Iowa, the Sox were the only American League team I could regularly watch on tv (the Yankees are also in the American League and at the time there was no interleague play), and their play-by-play man Ken Harrelson was intolerably partisan. Their big superstar, Frank Thomas, had the ugliest swing in the majors. That doesn't seem like much, but for something so arbitrary as sports loyalties it was enough.
Now I've revised who to secondarily support: those teams that play in good cities (i.e. those low on sprawl), especially those in small media markets who can't afford to throw their money around like the Yankees can. So the Mariners, A's, Tigers, Twins, Indians, Blue Jays, Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Brewers, Cardinals, Nationals, and Giants are in, while I have to resolutely oppose the Braves, Astros, Diamondbacks, Marlins, Devil Rays, Dodgers, Rangers, and Angels. (As a Yankees fan, of course I can't publicly provide any support for the Red Sox, but I will say that Boston is pretty good city.) Altho Chicago is probably my favorite city in the country, I still can't bring myself to root for the White Sox.
2007/03/31
Capitalism giveth, and capitalism taketh away
Filter, one of the few reasons to still go to Wicker Park, is being evicted from the Flat Iron Building. The hot dog place Swank Frank is also being booted. Why? So a new Bank of America branch can move in.
2007/03/03
The Bolsheviks Hitler would love
I was intrigued when a news article about a protest in Russia mentioned a National Bolshevik Party that has allied with the liberal opposition to Putin. I expected the NBP to be a splinter from the Communist Party, but it turns out that National Bolsheviks are Bolshevik the same way National Socialists are socialist - as their flag indicates.
Even better, NBP leader Eduard Limonov was a Soviet exile who "arrived in New York City in 1974 as an émigré and began writing novels. He fell in with the New York punk and avante-garde scene, acquiring an admiration for Lou Reed, as well as such American writers as Charles Bukowski." Later he moved to Paris and joined literary society there. Later still he "join[ed] a sniper patrol in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian war" - in support of Serbia. He supported extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhironvsky before splitting with him. The NBP explained that "a Jew masquerading as a Russian nationalist is a sickness, a pathology." Finally, "Limonov has listed among his idols Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Bakunin, Julius Evola and Yukio Mishima."
The SS look is back in style among National Bolsheviks.
Even better, NBP leader Eduard Limonov was a Soviet exile who "arrived in New York City in 1974 as an émigré and began writing novels. He fell in with the New York punk and avante-garde scene, acquiring an admiration for Lou Reed, as well as such American writers as Charles Bukowski." Later he moved to Paris and joined literary society there. Later still he "join[ed] a sniper patrol in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian war" - in support of Serbia. He supported extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhironvsky before splitting with him. The NBP explained that "a Jew masquerading as a Russian nationalist is a sickness, a pathology." Finally, "Limonov has listed among his idols Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Bakunin, Julius Evola and Yukio Mishima."
2007/03/01
Shrines of the machine
I don't read John Kass very often, but this column is great. On election day he went around to Daley strongholds on the Irish Catholic southwest side and asked Democratic machine workers where the shrines to their saints are. The "saints" are corrupt machine members who have resigned in disgrace, but who Daley continues to treat as if they were beatified. We get this classic exchange:
we walked up to the Daley machine captains, including one man who ate two slices of sausage pizza but didn't offer me any, and I asked them about the political shrines.
"Shrines?" said one. "You kidding? We don't got no shrines in this neighborhood."
How dare you pretend not to know! My back hurts, and I was hoping to buy a relic at the Shrine of Robert the Mute, and drink from his fountain, and so be healed.
"What?" asked the captain.
Robert the Mute. Robert Sorich [a top Daley aid and patronage boss, convicted in federal court last year].
"That's ignorant," said another Daley captain and friend of Sorich. "That's in poor taste. It's ignorant."
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