There once was a dentist named Gary,
Whose teeth were so white it was scary,
But he had a Secret,
And he couldn’t keep it,
So now he has need to be wary.

So Gary Kimmel was sentenced to prison today and Marina City’s just fine without him.  Since January 2006, there’s been neither rhyme nor reason to explain the actions of the former Marina City condo board member. After his arrest and indictment that month on charges of money laundering in connection with a national prostitution ring operated out of several of his Marina City condo units, stupefied corncob residents took to the age-honored task of trying to render reason through rime on the then-newly debuted Marina City Watchdog blog.

A dentist whose woes had got deeper,
Knew his condos could not be a keeper,
He barely had closed when
His assets were frozen,
He bought high–the feds sold them cheaper. 

As a fellow stupefied corncobber, for more than a year I followed the sleazy story in these virtual pages. From the collective shock that reverberated up and down all 120 combined floors of 300 North State Street (Marina Slutty, “Like 9/11 with Hookers”) to the condo board’s secretive circling of the wagons (Kimmelgate Update: No Rudder, Sinking Fast), from revealing the details of the U.S. Department of Justice complaint to opining wistfully on how things are done in less-infamous condo towers (John Hancock: How the Other Half Lives), I tried to keep up with the story.

After the collective interviews with me and other residents conducted by Chicago Magazine for an exposé on Kimmel appearing later that year (How I Helped Chicago Magazine Pimp Gary Kimmel), it all got to be a bit too much.  Next thing you knew Marina City was suing Marina City, fellow indictees were making the contours of the case a bit too revealing (“Some of my best girls were minors…”), and the initial shock had morphed right through outrage at Kimmel and the condo board into stiff resignation and forlorn that in our beloved, historic high-rise home scandal had become status quo.

A dentist with pimps did conspire,
So the feds asked his friends “wear a wire”,
Though he lives in a tower,
And once had great power,
Now everyone knows he’s a liar.

In my stead, the upstanding scribes over at Marina City Online took up the stressful baton of Kimmel coverage, reporting in May 2008 that, as many had long suspected would happen, Kimmel finally pleaded guilty.  As told by the rumor mill, by that point his apartments had already been sold off by the feds and his family was in shambles.  I expressed sympathy at the time, although I found it odd that after two years Kimmel continued to walk around Marina City common areas as if nothing at all were wrong.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune and Marina City Online this afternoon, the other shoe has dropped–and with a whisper-quiet thud at that.  After almost three years of foolishness, Gary Kimmel’s sentencing today to three years in federal prison was remarked on almost in the manner of a footnote by local media.  It’s a harsh comeuppance when someone formerly of good reputation doesn’t even merit notice for their bad reputation anymore.

I doubt anyone here will miss Kimmel.  At least, not anyone without a seat on the condo board.  As a longtime resident, though, I’m fairly if unfortunately pretty sure that before long these towers will come up with something to top even the most disgraceful of scandals. Like Gary Kimmel.

It’s a moral to make Kimmel shiver:
Immorality’s left him a sliver
Of pride, name, or nerve,
But brought what he deserves–
Serving 36 months up the river.

(Photo: A slight exaggeration over the cut-rate Christmas on view at Macy’s State Street. Credit: not Mike.)

[The following entry is cross-posted on my Huffington Post Chicago byline.]

I’ll cut to the chase: Macy’s State Street has cost-cut its Chicago Loop holiday windows and Christmas tree so deeply this year, I personally don’t believe it’s worth bothering to make that time-honored family foray downtown to see them. 

In January 2008, Macy’s fired longtime window dresser Amy Meadows, the woman responsible for decorating 25 years worth of State Street holiday windows and Walnut Room Great Trees, as part of a particularly brutal wave of cost-cutting layoffs at the retailer’s Chicagoland stores.  When it happened, the Sun-Times quoted a Macy’s spokesperson saying, “We have a talented visual team who will decorate our store windows and continue the time-honored tradition.”

Given the former-Federated’s track record in Chicago, I doubted those words. And if this holiday season’s State Street windows and Great Tree, publicly unveiled on Saturday, November 8th, are any indication, I had good reason for pause.  

I’ve said it, I’ve repeated it, and I’ve even ended up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune business section saying it: Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren will go to the grave–and take the former Marshall Fields with him–before he and his team get a clue about how to honor Chicagoans and their local retail traditions. 

The first two years of State Street holiday decorations under Macy’s tenure were an uneven affair, but at least there was evidence of an artistic program, not to mention a budget.  The 2006 season gave us Cinderella windows and a Swarovski crystal-festooned tree.  The following season brought a Mary Poppins storyline and a tree decorated by Martha Stewart.

What a difference another 12 months make. The decorations for this year’s windows and tree were “inspired” by celebrity designer Tommy Hilfiger around a clumsy one-word theme of “Believe.” Abject disbelief is closer to the feeling I was left with upon experiencing them, not to mention more than a little suspicion that Hilfiger’s hands went nowhere near a drawing board here.

The first thing I can tell you about the holiday windows is that there are fewer of them.  The animated scenes do not even make it across the entire State Street frontage. The dressed windows are interrupted at the Randolph corner by an uninspired collection of toy piles more akin to a retail endcap than a historic holiday window.

At the Washington corner, things get even worse: adult mannequins sporting fashion clothing, perfect for deflating the holiday interest of any Windy City child.

I’d love to tell you the storyline of the windows that do exist.  However, I couldn’t decipher one.  They seem to be an abbreviated series of vignettes about grotesque toys come to life in some way.  

What way or why I couldn’t figure. Not that there’s much life to speak of.  In an obvious attempt to try to sell the Christmas-shopping public on doing more with less, this year’s holiday windows have fewer moving parts and more garish blinking lights–for some indecipherable reason, frequently hidden inside semi-transparent vacuum cleaner-esque hoses and tubes.

At first glance, things are more festive upstairs at the 7th-floor Walnut Room.  This year marks the 101st anniversary of the two-story tall Great Tree, set in the center of the hoary old restaurant’s main room. Last year, the store didn’t bother to decorate behind the embarrassingly cheesy cardboard cutout of a town set at the bottom of the tree, giving hordes of shoppers on the 8th-floor gallery above a clear view of wires, duct tape, and scuffed flooring.

This year, to its credit, Macy’s has placed actual, three-dimensional boxes and F.A.O. Schwarz-branded toys all the way under and around the tree, completing the holiday illusion for viewers from any angle. However, that improved view is of a surprisingly nondescript tree. Aside from the aforementioned toys, nothing is to be found bedecking the tree more interesting than inexpensive twinkle lights, cloth ornaments, and garland. The bling of years past is nowhere to be seen.

And the sum of all of that is a shame. After the cost cuts in January, Macy’s made a very public attempt to try and heal the retail wounds it had wrought in Chicago over the previous two years since taking ownership of the former Marshall Field’s by narrow-marketing to local consumers.

Speaking as one of those local consumers, not to mention a downtown resident (I live steps up State Street from the store) and a former New Yorker who before moving to Lake Michigan shores would otherwise have had no axe to grind with Macy’s, Lundgren’s retail empire has blown it big time this holiday season in the heart of Chicago.

If this is the best Macy’s can do after almost three years of ire, perceived insult, and frankly disappointment from Windy City shoppers, something is very wrong at Lundgren’s shop. Starting at the top, and finishing with a heart-breaking holiday thud on the State Street pavement.

(Photo: If only his campaign–and its aftermath–had been as gracious as his concession speech…)

Last night on CNN, Campbell Brown nailed John McCain’s campaign advisers to the cross, damned near literally. In her “Cutting Through the Bull” segment, she made one thing clear to GOP aides who have been set on publicly humiliating ex-Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin ever since Barack Obama’s historic win: they picked her–and more than that, they have only themselves to blame.

Note to same aides: Duh. Your perspective is almost as ridiculous as arch-conservative Tony Perkin’s spin-worthy idea that moderate Republicans are to blame for leading the GOP astray. You mean by voting Democratic, right, Tony?

Below, view Brown’s stellar commentary (or click through to it here).

(Photo: A city salutes its–and America’s–own. Credit: kirbyfest.)

UPDATE: Welcome, Gapers Block readers! Put your feet up, explore the rest of the blog, and have fun!

UPDATE: The following entry is now cross-posted on my Huffington Post Chicago byline.

As thrilled as the world was to learn that America elected its first black President on Tuesday night, the reaction to the news by revelers at Grant Park was transcendent. Here’s what you didn’t see on TV: a quarter of a million people spontaneously counting down in unison while awaiting the West Coast polls to close.  

Drawn from the YouTube feeds of my fellow Obama rally revelers (one word baby: ticketed!), here is how we who were down there experienced the moment when America changed forever.  A big shout out to the Obama supporters who took these videos: Guys & Gals, yes we did!

And if you, dear reader, like the videos, consider clicking through to each person’s YouTube account and telling them so.  (Note: Folks who cannot see the videos in their RSS or email feeds can click the link above each one to watch them directly on YouTube).

From jdmellin (watch on YouTube).

From tylerl82 (watch on YouTube).

From lackadaisicaal (watch on YouTube).

From jmsmcntsh (watch on YouTube).

From kmbst53 (watch on YouTube).

(Photo: Ten seconds later.)

Change in air. Golden ticket. Perfect evening. Carnival atmosphere on walk to Grant Park. Disneyland loudspeaker announcements, “Go right, oh ticketed attendees.”

Dodging Kamikaze piles of horse poo. Hearing rumors among lined-up throng. Slogging through three security checks. 

Belt back on. Stepping down to the field. Heraldic columns of light above podium. CNN blow-by-blow on massive Jumbotrons. Five hours on feet. Crushing crowds. Blowing dust. Crappy pizza.

AT&T cell service missing in action.

Worldwide media beginning to work crowd. My legs growing tired, most legs here, far younger, are doing fine. 

Tiny early lead for McCain. Then Pennsylvania falls and hope arises. Chilly boredom between CNN top-of-hours.

Dum-dum-da-dum. Stuttering musical intros from CNN pile up. Ohio falls. New Mexico falls. Breath gets shallower among crowd. Is it really happening this fast?

Dominos begin to go. Iowa.  Virginia.  Collective disbelief.  It’s coming now. It’s coming now.

9:59:50 p.m. CST. CNN warns of special announcement.  A quarter million people spontaneously count down in unison, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Dum-dum-da-dum. CNN Breaking News, Chicago gives Barack Obama to America as its first black President. One tiny second of pause between announcement and realization. Then jubilation.

Bush years over, finally over. The Great Society, at long last, comes to pass.  This native New Yorker proud beyond words to live in Chicago, Illinois.  

At the moment, the absolutely undisputed center of the world.

(Photo: “Politics, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple…”)

I admit it. I feel like Charlie about to have an audience with Willie Wonka. Today I got the email that thousands in this city were hoping for: my non-transferable ticket for me and a guest to attend Barack Obama’s Grant Park election night rally.

In answer to the obvious question that I’ve already been asked a dozen times, the second the Gapers Block announcement of the ticketed rally showed up in my RSS reader, I dropped everything and flew to the Obama campaign website to sign up. That’s how.

You may not believe it, but unlike all the opportunists on Craigslist, I had a hard time finding someone who wanted to come. I asked my groovy ex, Chris–who still has a terrific apartment share in Oak Park for the right roommate, maybe you?–but pastry is his thing, not politics.

(The 12 hours of Ikea hell we collectively suffered through over the weekend to make my postage-stamp apartment Thanksgiving-ready for eight people probably sealed the deal.)

In the end, my old friend, florist-extraordinaire Brian Braddy asked to go. He drove me with a cat on my lap and my stuff all the way to Chicago from New York City in 2003, so I feel this finally returns the favor.

Even though I early voted for Obama (and against that nutcase Sarah Palin) and despite being a former citizen of an over-crowded metropolis, this ex-New Yorker doesn’t care for crowds. But I do geek to once-in-a-lifetime events, and I certainly know them when I receive tickets for them.  

Besides, fellow blogger Jasmine Davila will be there.  Given our usual madcap topics of conversation, that in itself is reason to show up for me.

I don’t know what the future holds for this country.  And I doubt McCain can win every single contested and leaning state, as according to the Washington Post he would need to do at this point to win. But I’m holding my breath nonetheless.  

Still, as far as I’m concerned, as long as there are enough porta-potties at the rally so I don’t have to hold something else for six hours, I’m good.  

Now will all the theater queens in the readership please stand and join me in a rousing chorus of One Day More…

(Photo: Louis “Studs” Terkel, May 16, 1912 - October 31, 2008.)

Rest in peace, acclaimed Windy City author-activist-broadcast personality and media luminary Studs Terkel, who died today in his North Side home at the age of 96. A fellow former New Yorker, like me Studs never drove a car and once he got to Chicago never left, by dint of simple, deep love of this place and the people in it.  This city–not to mention the Community Media Workshop Studs Terkel Awards–will never be the same without him.

To learn more about Studs’ life and accomplishments, see the Chicago History Museum’s Studs Terkel online archive, as well as coverage of his passing from CNN and the Chicago Tribune.  Community Media Workshop has also released a statement about the passing of their “patron saint.”  

More like co-patron saint of incisive community observers and scribes of everyday life in urban America, along with the equally missed Mike Royko.  I’m hard pressed to name anyone in this town who comes close to following in their everymannish journalistic footsteps. And that may be the most depressing part of all.

Bye, Studs.