During their windy City visit last week, Seattle’s coolest couple, Kasey and John, waxed giddily about the fun and frolic of my downtown Chicago neighborhood. Their reaction stands in stark contrast to the one I normally get from native Chicagoans when I tell them I live downtown. It’s almost like telling a New Yorker you never ride the subway. The response is always the same: no one’s stopping you from doing it, but why would you want the hassle?
This is just a quick weekend shout-out to a few sites that have shown my blog some linking affection in the past few days.
This year’s Great Chicago Places and Spaces event had an incredible surprise in store for Pastry Chef Chris and me. When we joined the tour of Mag Mile’s historic Intercontinental Hotel, we never expected to be the first public group in years to get to see the onion-dome observatory. Here are the pictures to prove it!
I don’t have an answer to the question of whether the Chicago Children’s Museum should be allowed to build a new home for itself in the Daley Bicentennial Plaza section of Grant Park. But I do think the possibility deserves to be debated and not cut off at the knees as it seems the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune would have it.
Today, my boyfriend, Devyn Caldwell, was quoted in the New York Times regarding the Homeland Security cameras that he and I helped get removed from their former home–smack on top of Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Millennium Park.
The Marina Towers Condominium Association signed a little-known but publicly available legal agreement in 2003 promising never to seek or support landmark status for Marina City. Who knew? (And…why?)
Ah, the power of the blogosphere. As of 11:00 a.m. this morning, the City of Chicago has removed the security cameras from the top of Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain. Good riddance. Devyn and I blogged about the offending cameras and got the Chicago Tribune to write an article on the issue–and article that appeared today. You’re welcome, Chicago 🙂
Today, the Chicago Tribune quoted Devyn and me regarding the horrendously misplaced Homeland Security cameras that now sit atop Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain in Millennium Park. We found the cameras over the weekend and immediately contacted the newspaper to complain. Why? Surveillance cameras don’t belong welded to public art.
There are many good places to put security cameras in Chicago’s architecturally brilliant Millennium Park. Smack on top of Jaume Plensa’s hyper-popular Crown Fountain is not one of those places.
Yesterday, Devyn and I read a Tribune article about haughty McMansions being built in Lincoln Park on lots where smaller, simpler houses once stood. We decided to take a day trip to Burling Street, ground zero for the practice. We didn’t expect to encounter a raging homeowner yelling from her mansion door that we didn’t belong in her neighborhood. You wanna bet?