Chicago

Recently returned from a trip to Chicago, as could be reasonably surmised by my last post about the wonders of Midway airport. Which also has a cake store, in case you weren’t previously convinced of its marvels. Chicago is correspondingly marvelous and remains my favorite city in the United States, followed closely by Austin. Boston is not on the list right now. I have nearly started bar fights with people who tried to convince me of its superiority. I’m sorry, Bostonians, but your road system is based on where cows felt like walking.

Also, your architecture is vastly inferior because it’s all at least 100 years old. Not your fault, I know, but you can’t really compare.

We stayed downtown, mostly thanks to the Google hotel finder, but did a fair amount of wandering out to other neighborhoods because no one actually lives in the Loop. Also because both my favorite bar and this guy live on the north side.

This fennec fox will not hear any of your slander about the Lincoln Park Zoo, even if they did take my favorite monkeys off display for “husbandry reasons.” I will forgive them, because this means I can plan future visits to Chicago with the excuse of “but there’s a new baby monkey!”

Also went to go see the modern wing at the Art Institute, since I never managed to make it there while I lived in the city. I’ve been since informed that I missed the part where things like the Dalí paintings live and only saw the “weird floor.”

The windchill was below zero – one of our main reasons for choosing to go to the Art Institute in the first place – so I sadly didn’t get to see this garden from the outside, but the architecture helped compensate.

“Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). This exhibit was a giant pile of shiny hard candy piled in the corner. It was designed by the artist to honor his partner who had died of AIDS, starting as 175 pounds of candy. You’re supposed to take candy from the pile to parallel his physical deterioration. I didn’t take any.  I didn’t see anyone else take any either, but I think that was less due to a conscious decision on their part and more due to people not being sure whether they’re supposed to touch the art even the description says so.

I foolishly didn’t take a picture of the description of this, and googling “art institute string of light bulbs” is somehow much less useful than “art institute candy pile.” The background unfortunately confused image search as well. Alas. Assume I’m making a statement about the inexplicable nature of modern art.

I don’t have any pictures of the truly excessive amount of food I ate because trying to photograph food subtracts time I could be spending shoveling it in into my face, but I’m reasonably sure that I weigh at least five pounds more than I did when we left. Worth it.