Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Chicago - part 2 (mostly Navy Pier)

When I saw the sign on the bridge, "La Salle Street", I remembered that I used to work on that street, crossing this bridge in the middle of winter! More about that later.
After the architecture tour we were hungry and hot, and found a good market cafe on Illinois Ave for lunch. We wanted to explore the "Navy Pier", so we walked to the end of the pier. If it had been cooler, or night-time, we would have stood in line to ride on the Ferris Wheel. As it is, that is about the only reason I would ever come back to the Pier. I put it in the "been there, done that" category of things we don't have to do again.


I took this photo of the HOT DOG stand for my good friend, Taylor, who has been in prison (wrongly incarcerated) for more than 16 years. He wanted to know about the Hot Dogs in Chicago. We talk about food a lot.




We headed up Lake Shore Drive to West Cornelia Avenue. On the way we noticed the "Chicago Beach". Whoever knew that Chicago had beaches like this, with volley ball courts and everything. I didn't see anyone in the wather, though. I don't know whether that was because the water was too cold, or dirty or what. It looked pretty clean to me.

Believe it or not, in the winter of 1972 I lived on West Cornelia Avenue, and I wanted to see it again. I was 21 years old, just out of college, and came to Chicago to "be on my own". I knew some people who lived near the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, and after sleeping on their couch for a couple of weeks, moved into the apartment at the corner of W. Cornelia and Broadway. I worked downtown as a statistical analyst at a place called "Crop-Hail Insurance Company". I remember it as a boring job. My roommates on W. Cornelia were different (crazy).
Hard to believe that when I walked this street on my way to the train station, my hair would freeze into icycles!
(to be continued ...)

3 comments:

  1. Having taken the train with friends from St. Louis to Chicago to witness a horrendous blizzard there (it was an adventure back then!), I can believe that your hair would freeze. More fabulous photography, Beth!

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  2. You probably also understand about the "crazy" roommates. One "older man" lived there. He was about 30 years old. We were on the corner of Broadway and Cornelia, where young girls waited for the bus downtown. We were on the 4th floor and this guy, Gerry, would put a fishing line out the window with chocolate Easter bunnies at the end, hoping to lure one up to his bedroom. Even though it was 1972, it really was still the 60s culture ...

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  3. Not exactly the same thing, but I recall hearing that one of the honours science boys hung some bread out of the physics classroom window attached to the roller blind string to lure hungry and noisy sea gulls that trolled the campus for food. It was called "bird fishing."

    Sounds like this Gerry was passing strange, as they say.

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