CHICAGO CARLESS » VIDEO BLOG

CTA Transit Union Deserves No One’s Sympathy (Video)

Mike Doyle — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:30:27 +0000

UPDATE (1/21/10): A CTA union board member complained today in my comment thread that past union-member pay raises have been put instead towards health insurance and pensions–so they deserve raises now. I’m sure many underemployed or unemployed Chicagoans would love to have health insurance or a 401K plan. It’s as if the CTA union has been living in a different economy than the rest of us for the past 18 months. The comment needs to be read to be believed…
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Today in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) transit union complained that 1,000 union workers will lose their jobs on February 7th. The rest of us 1.5 million CTA ‘L’ and bus riders know that as the day almost 20% of Chicago transit service will be eliminated–because the transit union refused to share the pain of a bad economy with the rest of us. In this video, I explain why CTA riders owe no sympathy to the soon-to-be-sacked union workers who needlessly caused commutes to get a lot worse for an entire city of transit riders.

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

The Lido’s Coffee Klatsch Does Lincoln Park Zoo Lights (Video)

Mike Doyle — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:01:55 +0000

On Friday, my Lido’s Caffé coffee klatsch buddies (and more) went on a holiday foray to see the Lincoln Park Zoo Lights. Every year they say the lights will be better than last year. This December, though, the claim’s finally true–the new zoo lights festival was particularly stunning. (My guess is they finally got the gays in to give the event some color theorizing.)

This video, however, is less about Christmas lights and more about Christmas hams. Pastry Chef Chris organized our meetup, and Overly Frank, Hoosierella and hubby, and several others tagged along. See who you can spot in this video from the Chicago Carless Cast of Characters. Both on the Endangered Species Carousel and standing next to it…

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

Death of an AT&T DSL Modem (Video)

Mike Doyle — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:40:28 +0000

If your Chicago AT&T DSL broadband Internet service is anything like mine, it probably drops out at the drop of a hat. Mine did so yet again today in the middle of a business day (I work from home), separating me from clients, email, and important remote documents. Like me, from time to time I bet you’ve fantasized about taking a hammer to your AT&T DSL modem in revenge, or at the very least, in disgust.

Today, I decided to dump AT&T and sign-up for 4G CLEAR Wimax service. As it turns out, Wimax service is spectacular from my 38th-floor downtown Chicago apartment–not to mention faster than my allegedly “pro” speed AT&T DSL. And then I finally went and got that hammer…

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

I’m Not a Mac #5–What Windows Users Think of Mac Users (Video)

Mike Doyle — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:25:44 +0000

This post is part of my “I’m Not a Mac” series, chronicling my controversial migration away from Apple Computer after 15 years as a Mac user. Find other entries in the “I’m Not a Mac” series archive.

The response I’ve gotten since starting my “I’m Not a Mac” blog series about migrating away from the Macintosh has been amazing, and a little scary too. Many Linux and Windows users have posted supportive comments and helpful advice to guide my exploration of other OSes beyond Mac OS X.

Mac users, however, seem to be taking my decision personally. Many of them have expressed shock, anger, and in the case of the AngryMacBastards podcast, a desire to “put a bullet” in my head for writing publicly about my disillusionment with Apple Computer. For a long time, Windows users have called the Mac community a cult. After 15 years, I think I’m finally getting the message. Click the play button and watch the video for more.

(Click the HQ button for a higher-quality video. RSS subscribers, click here to view the video on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

Should You Believe Everything You Read Just Because a Reporter Writes It?

Mike Doyle — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:56:18 +0000

This content originally appeared on my former Chicagosphere online-media blog, hosted on the Chicago Tribune’s ChicagoNow network.

It’s amazing how unused to receiving criticism reporters can be. Since writing about the future of journalism in Chicago this week (see here and here), I’ve been inundated with comments from reporters telling me that I don’t have the right to share my opinion or voice dissent when it comes to reporters…because I’m not a journalist myself. In today’s video post I ask my audience, do you think you should believe everything you read just because a reporter writes it?

Where’d Chicago Go?: Skyscraper Roofdeck Fog Bank

Mike Doyle — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:28:23 +0000

With the freak-show weather we’ve been having this summer in Chicago, I knew it wouldn’t be long before the Windy City ended up topped in a John Carpenter-esque layer of fog. It’s one thing to watch the Sears Tower (’til the grave, folks) disappear into the murky whiteness from below. It’s quite another to stand atop one of Marina City’s twin, 61st-floor open-air roofdecks and try and make out the Chicago Loop from inside the aerial fog bank, itself. Odd. Eerie even.

(Video: “We were aided by an unearthly fog that rolled in, as if Heaven sent, although God had no part in our actions tonight. Blake’s gold will be recovered tomorrow…” The Fog, 1980.)

Living in the corncobs, I’ve had that experience many times before. This perilously vaporific morning, I headed up to the East Tower roofdeck with my Flip ‘corder to give you an idea what it’s like to wonder where in all heck Chicago went from 550 feet above downtown. To see what’s missing in today’s video, take a look below at the video blog I shot one sunny day back in April from the exact same vantage point.

Dramatic weather changes are among my favorite reasons to live in Chicago. It’s not like I ever heard the weather sirens go off in New York to signal a funnel cloud. Although next time I flee from one (or stand on my balcony waiting for death), I’ll be sure to hit the record button…

(Click the HQ buttons for higher-quality videos. RSS subscribers, click here (fog walk) and here (sunny walk) to view the videos on CHICAGO CARLESS.)

A Fair to Distemper

Mike Doyle — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:04:24 +0000

Last Thursday, I did the Wisconsin State Fair badly. In my defense, I meant well. But having been to only two state fairs in my life–Arizona’s in 1990 and New York State’s in the Shea Stadium parking lot–I was ill-prepared for the scope of Milwaukee’s century-old annual festivity. Not to mention the heat.

I was looking for a brief break from my Windy City work-at-home day to day, and a ten-dollar Megabus ride to rekindle an old friendship with my Milwaukee friend Big Buddha on the first day of Dairyland’s State Fair seemed like just the ticket.

My inability to figure out how to work the A/C in my overly sunny, upper-deck front row seat on Megabus should have been a clue as to the impending tenor of the day, though the bus’s speedy WiFi made the two-hour trip a multitasking dream. Big’s thirty-minute late arrival at the Cream City’s Intermodal Station to pick me up should have been another.

Late or not, it was fun to take a spin through Chicago’s smaller, northern neighbor. New Yorkers often call Chicago a little NYC due to our town’s smaller but still-imposing skyline, though nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet even for its almost non-existent skyline, I often have a similar impression of Milwaukee: all the lakefront yuppiedom and mid-town slumminess of Chicago, but in a convenient, travel-sized dose.

Even with one-fifth the population, though, driving across Milwaukee’s industrial Menomenee Valley from the staton to Miller Park and back–then south to St. Francis–then further south to Cudahy–all in search of a Chase bank, made the city seem postiviely enormous last week. Big works at an Apple Store and we both have iPhones, so there was no excuse for not Google Mapping the nearest branch. But I wanted to see the city–especially it’s less-touristy side–so I settled in for the ride.

Eventually, we made it to the Mitchell Domes, which provided a respite from the morning’s 80-plus heat. Last time I saw them was with Devyn. They’ve since been renovated and are more spectaular than ever. The modernist in me has to love any botanic conservatory squeezed into three massive, breast-like 1960s conoidal domes.

(Photo: Milwaukee’s version of the Garfield Park Conservatory always puts me in a happy, Jetsons mood. More in my flickr.)

But after an hour, I felt the clock ticking on my already-delayed day trip. So canned goods in hand for a nifty $7 Hunger Task Force Day admission discount, off we headed for West Allis, the near-west suburb that hosts the Wisconsin State Fair since (incredibly) 1892. The town sits in the same location relative to Milwaukee that Oak Park sits relative to Chicago–but with yuppies and BMWs replaced by mechanics and Harleys.

I bit my tongue–mostly–as we parked half a mile from the fair to save on the parking fee. As we reached the ticket booths after a sweat-infused walk back to the fairgrounds, I noticed a woman trying to pass off a roll of toilet paper as a non-perishable food item. I inwardly begged God to bring Twitter back up from its Denial of Service attack to let me tweet the moment.

Once inside the mile-square fair, snap judgment gave way to the pleasure of surrendering to a big, fat, grassroots, down-home day of fun. The kind that urbanites like me only admit to at the time and later on blogs, but rarely in mixed company once returned to our metropolitan high rises.

(Video: No, I didn’t. Yes, I wanted to.)

Food and beverage booths extended into the distance down multiple pathways as far as my eyes could see, punctuated by gargantuan show houses, with a lazy skyride hanging above all. How much did I get into the mood? I stood on a ten-minute line to buy a four-dollar ticket to stand in another ten-minute line to buy a “famous” Wisconsin dressed baked potato. And liked it.

It was the Midwest my New York friends warned me about when I moved here in six-and-a-half years ago, and it was a blast. But it was also something just short of 1,000 degrees. That kept Big and me off the sky ride. That and Big’s distaste for amusement rides kept us out of the Midway most of the day. And that, my damnable lactose intolerance, and a line of hundreds kept me away from the equally “famous”, gargantuan cream puffs.

Good sense didn’t keep me away from a Noon-time, open-air beer in full sunlight, though. Nor did good sense motivate me to stop taking “No” for an answer every time I tried to maneuver Big into a shaded, air-conditioned show house. (Much as I respect the guy, refusing to enter a livestock barn at a state fair because it would “smell like animals” reached so far up my nose I could feel my brain hurt.)

So by day’s end, what should have been a relaxing end to a really fun, absolutely out-of-character stint in Laverne-and-Shirley town headed south, and quickly. As we exited the fair, I could feel a dehydration headache growing.

By the time we reached downtown’s uber-urban Historic Third Ward to hang out before my trip home, headache had grown to a migraine of historic-hangover proportions. As I sat with Big on the second floor of the Public Market with my sunburned head on the table and a frosty Sprite Zero held tight to my forehead, it was all I could do to apologize–in what feeble voice I could muster–for the unspectacular end to the day.

Big drove me back to the Intermodal Station–a trip that could have been a five-minute walk from the Third Ward if my head hadn’t wanted to explode so badly–where I ditched Megabus for a speedier Amtrak Hiawatha ride back to my home downtown. I did my best to think happy, healthy thoughts the whole way to try and avoid my rampant sense of spew-at-any-second nausea. Thankfully, by the time the train pulled into Union Station, my head had pulled itself together enough–with the help of a pint of vitamin water–to allow me to make the 20-minute walk to my house in relative comfort.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day. I still love Milwaukee–though next time I’ll stick to the lakefront neighborhoods I’ve frequented in the past. (For Milwaukeans, that would be the yuppie spine of the #15 bus from the East Side, down through downtown and the Historic Third Ward south to Bayview.) I’ll do State Fair again, too. Only I’ll be sure to arrive with a stash of Lactaid pills so I won’t have to avoid the cream puffs. And friends will enter air-conditioned buildings with me voluntarily or via being moved there bodily.

And considering the flu-like symptoms I developed the day after returning home, if ever again I run into a small child hacking his lungs up in the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, I’ll run like hell.