Memo from the Sports Desk:
With the NHL (Remember them?: the National Hockey League?) a week away from opening training camps for the upcoming season, now seems like a good time to discuss why Wayne Gretzky may be the Anti-Christ. Hockey purists will understand right away what we’re getting at here. Hockey’s history in North America can be traced to Canada. Canada is cold in the winter. Canada has winter. The sport’s migration into the United States came through cold weather cities like Chicago, Boston Detroit and Philadelphia. They call hockey jerseys “sweaters” for a reason.
Wayne Gretzky came into the league with Edmonton (that’s in Canada for all you Freedom Fries lovers out there). He played there nine seasons from 1979 to 1988. During that time he appeared in five Stanley Cup finals series, winning four. He is arguably the greatest hockey player of all time. He holds 61 NHL records.
And yet … and yet the Indignant Citizen can’t shake the nagging suspicion that Wayne Gretzky has turned into a sellout. Worse than a sellout, really. You see, Gretzky has taken the head coaching job for the Phoenix Coyotes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Wayne Gretzky, the greatest-ever representative of that cold-weather sport played on ice called hockey has signed on to coach a hockey team located in a city where the average daily high temperatures in December, January and February are 66.2, 65.9 and 70.7 degrees, respectively.
Phoenix shouldn’t even have a hockey team. Neither should Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Raleigh, Miami, Nashville, San Jose, Dallas, Los Angeles or Anaheim. They’re not cold-weather cities. Hockey does not belong in those places. Neither does Wayne Gretzky, who of course left Edmonton for … where else? … Los Angeles for the 1988-89 season. He played there until he left for St. Louis about three-fourths of the way through the 1995-96 season. While in L.A., he played in one Stanley Cup finals series, losing, appropriately enough, to a cold weather team: the Montreal Canadiens. Although he returned to a relatively cold weather climate in New York to finish his career, his hockey mojo had been purged in the City of Angels and he never returned to the Stanley Cup finals.
Now he’s coaching a team that was stolen from a cold weather city, Winnipeg, and moved to a Sun Belt Sprawl Capital where ice is a non-naturally occurring state for water. What’s he thinking? Where’s his sense of history? Tossed in the back of some gas-guzzling SUV, no doubt, next to an obsolete road map of the Phoenix-Scottsdale-Tempe metroplex and a set of golf clubs.
Get rid of the aforementioned teams, the Indignant Citizen says. In the process, of course, we throw out the entire Pacific Division and four-fifths of the Southeast Division. Which may be the best thing for hockey. A little downsizing would be good for the sport. In hindsight, hockey’s impending crisis should have been obvious to everyone after back-to-back-to-back seasons featuring southern teams in the Stanley Cup Finals. Carolina and Anaheim both mercifully lost to cold-weather teams in 2002 and 2003. But in 2004, Tampa Bay broke through, and angered the hockey gods. Hence the lockout noticed by almost no one.
It will take an all-cold weather Finals this season to revive interest. Chicago-Philadelphia, for example. Or Chicago-Montreal. Anything less will risk total dissolution of the sport.
Hockey should consider itself warned.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Light vs. Darkness
Today we were supposed to talk about why Wayne Gretzky may be the Anti-Christ, however a more pressing issue has come up: this story in Friday’s Washington Post. Wayne will have to wait.
To sum up, residents in the Washington, D.C. exurbs are arguing over light and darkness. The longtime residents have lived their lives without artificial light at night and would like to keep it that way. New arrivals can’t understand why anyone would want to live without blazing street lights and security lamps, and are intent on installing them.
The Indignant Citizen grew up in the sticks. There were no streetlights and on many a night with a full moon the Indignant Citizen would kill the headlights on his Mustang and cruise by the milky light from above, which gave a bluish hue to hills, trees, anything dark, while turning fields and gravel roads silver. You may say, “Why, he was a damn fool!” And you may be right. But not because I drove by moonlight.
But the Indignant Citizen digresses. We were talking about the D.C. hinterlands. Better yet, let’s let 63-year-old John Eney talk about them. Here he is quoted in the Post story. “I think this county needs to join the 21st Century. It’s ridiculous that people have to fumble around in the dark under starlight.”
If Mr. Eney sounds a little bitter it’s because he is. According to the story, he spent two-and-a-half hours one winter night driving around on Maryland back country roads because an accident closed the only way home he knew and diverted traffic. “I found it easier to navigate the California desert than make my way through the pathetically dark roads of Calvert County,” he told the Post.
Even though the Indignant Citizen knew what this story was about when he started reading, it was at this point his blood reached the boiling point. Hey John, it’s not the darkness’ fault you don’t know where the fuck you live. And didn’t you notice the fucking roads were dark WHEN YOU MOVED THERE? Did you think they’d magically install lighting throughout the county JUST FOR YOU? Whether or not he expected a personalized array of rural route sodium vapor lamps when he moved (the Post doesn’t say when that unfortunate event occurred) he expects it now. As do others in the story who find it unfathomable that these back roads haven’t been lit up like downtown Washington since their arrival.
Twenty-eight year-old Melissa Harris, transplanted from somewhere near Annapolis, offered this original analysis: “It was so dark you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. These people [longtime residents who don't mind the dark and haven't for decades] will push for darkness until their car gets broke into or their house gets vandalized. Then they’ll change their story.” Damnant quod non intellegunt.
You see Melissa, believe it or not there are people who don’t need street lights—or giant security lamps illuminating their homes at all hours—to get around. And the only reason longtime residents would have to fear a car break-in or vandalism is because transient self-important landsuckers like you keep moving farther into rural areas. It’ll be your kids conducting the break-ins and the vandalism, no doubt, because they will have been subjected to soulless suburban childhoods filled with endless TV, video games and babysitters; they will have been conditioned to fear the dark and to believe that owning and piloting a car is some kind of Right. The cheapness of their surroundings will have taught them that nothing has lasting value and that everything is expendable.
And by the way, Mel, who exactly to you fear? Roaming gangs feeling their way through the country darkness in the hope of finding a car to TP or a house to burgle? Don’t forget, without lights it’s kind of hard to see where you’re going … or maybe you should ask John about that. Anyway if you’re so afraid of the dark, move into the Indignant Citizen’s old apartment in Brooklyn, where the streetlight shone in the window all night and yet, failed to prevent several car break-ins and home burglaries on that very same street. If light were the answer, wouldn’t cities be safe? Lack of light isn’t the problem. Crime is, and crimes are committed by individuals.
This story is fascinating. Here we have people contentedly living in the country, without street lights, or lights of any kind save the ones in their houses. And now here come the land speculators, with their SUVs and their “pro growth” agenda, which is basically a reinforcing loop economic system whereby homes and businesses get built and then more homes and businesses are required to sustain this new hinterland economy. These are the same people who build cabins in the forest and then complain the government isn’t doing enough to protect them from forest fires, or move to homes near airports and complain about the jet noise.
The Indignant Citizen has a simple retort: Either move to the country and embrace the darkness, or move to the city and leave the darkness to those who understand it and can move easily in it. Either way, just please shut the fuck up.
To sum up, residents in the Washington, D.C. exurbs are arguing over light and darkness. The longtime residents have lived their lives without artificial light at night and would like to keep it that way. New arrivals can’t understand why anyone would want to live without blazing street lights and security lamps, and are intent on installing them.
The Indignant Citizen grew up in the sticks. There were no streetlights and on many a night with a full moon the Indignant Citizen would kill the headlights on his Mustang and cruise by the milky light from above, which gave a bluish hue to hills, trees, anything dark, while turning fields and gravel roads silver. You may say, “Why, he was a damn fool!” And you may be right. But not because I drove by moonlight.
But the Indignant Citizen digresses. We were talking about the D.C. hinterlands. Better yet, let’s let 63-year-old John Eney talk about them. Here he is quoted in the Post story. “I think this county needs to join the 21st Century. It’s ridiculous that people have to fumble around in the dark under starlight.”
If Mr. Eney sounds a little bitter it’s because he is. According to the story, he spent two-and-a-half hours one winter night driving around on Maryland back country roads because an accident closed the only way home he knew and diverted traffic. “I found it easier to navigate the California desert than make my way through the pathetically dark roads of Calvert County,” he told the Post.
Even though the Indignant Citizen knew what this story was about when he started reading, it was at this point his blood reached the boiling point. Hey John, it’s not the darkness’ fault you don’t know where the fuck you live. And didn’t you notice the fucking roads were dark WHEN YOU MOVED THERE? Did you think they’d magically install lighting throughout the county JUST FOR YOU? Whether or not he expected a personalized array of rural route sodium vapor lamps when he moved (the Post doesn’t say when that unfortunate event occurred) he expects it now. As do others in the story who find it unfathomable that these back roads haven’t been lit up like downtown Washington since their arrival.
Twenty-eight year-old Melissa Harris, transplanted from somewhere near Annapolis, offered this original analysis: “It was so dark you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. These people [longtime residents who don't mind the dark and haven't for decades] will push for darkness until their car gets broke into or their house gets vandalized. Then they’ll change their story.” Damnant quod non intellegunt.
You see Melissa, believe it or not there are people who don’t need street lights—or giant security lamps illuminating their homes at all hours—to get around. And the only reason longtime residents would have to fear a car break-in or vandalism is because transient self-important landsuckers like you keep moving farther into rural areas. It’ll be your kids conducting the break-ins and the vandalism, no doubt, because they will have been subjected to soulless suburban childhoods filled with endless TV, video games and babysitters; they will have been conditioned to fear the dark and to believe that owning and piloting a car is some kind of Right. The cheapness of their surroundings will have taught them that nothing has lasting value and that everything is expendable.
And by the way, Mel, who exactly to you fear? Roaming gangs feeling their way through the country darkness in the hope of finding a car to TP or a house to burgle? Don’t forget, without lights it’s kind of hard to see where you’re going … or maybe you should ask John about that. Anyway if you’re so afraid of the dark, move into the Indignant Citizen’s old apartment in Brooklyn, where the streetlight shone in the window all night and yet, failed to prevent several car break-ins and home burglaries on that very same street. If light were the answer, wouldn’t cities be safe? Lack of light isn’t the problem. Crime is, and crimes are committed by individuals.
This story is fascinating. Here we have people contentedly living in the country, without street lights, or lights of any kind save the ones in their houses. And now here come the land speculators, with their SUVs and their “pro growth” agenda, which is basically a reinforcing loop economic system whereby homes and businesses get built and then more homes and businesses are required to sustain this new hinterland economy. These are the same people who build cabins in the forest and then complain the government isn’t doing enough to protect them from forest fires, or move to homes near airports and complain about the jet noise.
The Indignant Citizen has a simple retort: Either move to the country and embrace the darkness, or move to the city and leave the darkness to those who understand it and can move easily in it. Either way, just please shut the fuck up.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Introducing the West Side Critic
In his perpetual mission to bring you the most relevant and biting commentary on our entropic and increasingly atavistic society, the Indignant Citizen is pleased to present for your viewing pleasure the first in what will be a series of occasional dispatches from the Western Front by our Special Correspondent, the West Side Critic . This is a large country, and the Indignant Citizen cannot cover it all by himself. The West Side Critic will offer his take on the flux of events and you will read with interest because he is intelligent and what he says makes Sense. So here, without further ado, the West Side Critic:
***
So everything west of Chicago is a lot of territory to track. But what can the West Side Critic say? The WC gets the fuck around. The WC reads voraciously. The WC observes closely. The WC is willing to spew venom at all the pricks, cowards and powermongers who would destroy what essentially is a pretty OK country with a democratic tradition and a few lovely places to live in and to visit.
Tops on the WC’s mind today is the relationship, or lack thereof, between Americans and the American media – print, TV or otherwise.
That includes elected officials’ “relationship” with the American media. The electeds think the fucking press is their vehicle to pour bullshit upon the populace. No wonder. The media haven’t helped. Don’t believe me? Then start wondering why your “local” TV news is reporting about an elephant in Wisconsin that took a shit in the world’s largest toilet. Or consider the standard formula:
BEGINNING: A three-car pile-up killed 16 people and maimed another 30 on the freeway today. Doesn’t that suck? But the blood on the video looked rad. Now let’s go to a commercial about getting rid of hemorrhoids. MIDDLE: The weather will be sunny with patches of rain next week. We won’t be reporting on actual environmental issues, because that might require you to think. END: Three duckies were saved from a storm drain today, so all is well with the universe. OK, folks, this concludes our broadcast. You may now take your brain-dead ass to bed to prepare to get up for your soul-sucking corporate job. Don’t forget your morning Zoloft.
And newspapers? Not aggressive enough. These days it’s all about packaging, cutting stories, scrimping on staff to cover legislatures, local governments and business, and writing “talkers," stories that allow people to gather around the water cooler and talk about meaty subjects like the two-headed bat from Madagascar that has a knack for humming songs by Dave Matthews Band.
(OK. Even the WC will admit that’d be pretty fucking funny if it were true.)
Anyway. There are good newspapers out there fighting the good fight. And, yes, even some TV news reaches beyond the makeup and the teleprompter to tell stories about real people. So. The WC is here to tell all the electeds: Don’t shoot the messenger, bitches. If you fuck up, then expect to see it in print. Expect hard questions. Don’t invert stuff. You fucked up and got caught. If you don’t want to get investigated, then respect the public, respect democracy, do the right thing and don’t act like an asshole.
Now, the public isn’t off the hook, either. Heads up, Captain Head-In-The-Sand. Stop stuffing Doritos in your pie hole, turn off the “Friends” rerun, put the PlayStation 2 controller down and pull your head out of your ass.
There’s a world out there. There’s a war out there. The USA isn’t the only fucking country on the face of the earth. And, sorry, it isn’t necessarily the best. Yes, increasingly, you are living in the United States of Entertainment. But that’s a bad thing! Yes, occasionally the WC likes to cut loose, have a little fun, watch movies with big ‘splosions. But, Jesus, fight it once in a while. Read. Feed your head. For fuck’s sake, think!
And check this essay out to understand why our media – not to mention our Republic – has been in a downward spiral for quite some time. There’s hope, too, suggestions on what we might do – if we care, that is – to restore civic-mindedness and the press’ role in fostering it.
We’re here for only a short time, motherfuckers. Do we want to live it with our heads up our asses or do we believe in intellectual honesty, in thinking critically and in trying to make where we live a better place? What the WC knows is this: You can’t find intellectual honesty up your ass. Not even with a Thomas Bros. guide and a flashlight. So, again, pull your head out of there.
Whew. That was deep. The WC will now go away . . . for now.
Peace, bitches.
***
So everything west of Chicago is a lot of territory to track. But what can the West Side Critic say? The WC gets the fuck around. The WC reads voraciously. The WC observes closely. The WC is willing to spew venom at all the pricks, cowards and powermongers who would destroy what essentially is a pretty OK country with a democratic tradition and a few lovely places to live in and to visit.
Tops on the WC’s mind today is the relationship, or lack thereof, between Americans and the American media – print, TV or otherwise.
That includes elected officials’ “relationship” with the American media. The electeds think the fucking press is their vehicle to pour bullshit upon the populace. No wonder. The media haven’t helped. Don’t believe me? Then start wondering why your “local” TV news is reporting about an elephant in Wisconsin that took a shit in the world’s largest toilet. Or consider the standard formula:
BEGINNING: A three-car pile-up killed 16 people and maimed another 30 on the freeway today. Doesn’t that suck? But the blood on the video looked rad. Now let’s go to a commercial about getting rid of hemorrhoids. MIDDLE: The weather will be sunny with patches of rain next week. We won’t be reporting on actual environmental issues, because that might require you to think. END: Three duckies were saved from a storm drain today, so all is well with the universe. OK, folks, this concludes our broadcast. You may now take your brain-dead ass to bed to prepare to get up for your soul-sucking corporate job. Don’t forget your morning Zoloft.
And newspapers? Not aggressive enough. These days it’s all about packaging, cutting stories, scrimping on staff to cover legislatures, local governments and business, and writing “talkers," stories that allow people to gather around the water cooler and talk about meaty subjects like the two-headed bat from Madagascar that has a knack for humming songs by Dave Matthews Band.
(OK. Even the WC will admit that’d be pretty fucking funny if it were true.)
Anyway. There are good newspapers out there fighting the good fight. And, yes, even some TV news reaches beyond the makeup and the teleprompter to tell stories about real people. So. The WC is here to tell all the electeds: Don’t shoot the messenger, bitches. If you fuck up, then expect to see it in print. Expect hard questions. Don’t invert stuff. You fucked up and got caught. If you don’t want to get investigated, then respect the public, respect democracy, do the right thing and don’t act like an asshole.
Now, the public isn’t off the hook, either. Heads up, Captain Head-In-The-Sand. Stop stuffing Doritos in your pie hole, turn off the “Friends” rerun, put the PlayStation 2 controller down and pull your head out of your ass.
There’s a world out there. There’s a war out there. The USA isn’t the only fucking country on the face of the earth. And, sorry, it isn’t necessarily the best. Yes, increasingly, you are living in the United States of Entertainment. But that’s a bad thing! Yes, occasionally the WC likes to cut loose, have a little fun, watch movies with big ‘splosions. But, Jesus, fight it once in a while. Read. Feed your head. For fuck’s sake, think!
And check this essay out to understand why our media – not to mention our Republic – has been in a downward spiral for quite some time. There’s hope, too, suggestions on what we might do – if we care, that is – to restore civic-mindedness and the press’ role in fostering it.
We’re here for only a short time, motherfuckers. Do we want to live it with our heads up our asses or do we believe in intellectual honesty, in thinking critically and in trying to make where we live a better place? What the WC knows is this: You can’t find intellectual honesty up your ass. Not even with a Thomas Bros. guide and a flashlight. So, again, pull your head out of there.
Whew. That was deep. The WC will now go away . . . for now.
Peace, bitches.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Giving us the Business
Let us spend a moment in consideration of Shirley McMayon, former Chicago Park District bigwig and payola pimpess extraordinaire. Prosecutors alleged on Thursday that McMayon, who has since left the Midwest to join the high-net-worth crowd carving up the Park City, Utah, area into their own sprawling crack den, took more than $120,000 in cash and benefits in exchange for directing $8 million worth of park district business to certain firms.
We use the term “business” loosely here, given that according to newspaper accounts some of the work involved the landscaping firms turning the park district around and giving IT the business by billing for work that was never performed, sometimes in amounts suspiciously similar in size to recent bribes paid to McMayon. McMayon received cash payments, vacations and—are you ready?—tickets to Green Bay Packers games.
As the Indignant Citizen’s friend and former coworker Jon put it today, “So I’m reading about the Park District scandal, and what does it say that my main reaction is, ‘Packers tickets?!’”
What does it say indeed? And what does it say about McMayon that she would be working for the Chicago Park District and accept Packers tickets as a bribe? Loyalty isn’t what it used to be. Then again, maybe she enjoys a good sharp cheddar dildo now and then and the only place she knew of to obtain one without anyone recognizing her was through Billy’s Exotic Dancing in Green Bay. The Packers tickets were just a cover.
The photo of McMayon in the Sun-Times on Friday looked it was of her on a bike; apparently the photo department tracked down someone who knew her and had this picture in an album or perhaps even on his or her desk. She lives in Park City, where, coincidentally, the Indignant Citizen will be traveling next week. And guess what? She’s in the phone book! In case you want to give her a call and ask her yourself about her corrupt ways, anywho.com has her at 435.649.9144. There’s also an address, which the Indignant Citizen will not publish here. Instead he will perhaps try for a first-person interview.
Although she may be busy, what with the indictment and all. She might not have time to entertain callers. Plus you know, it’s almost football season, and the Indignant Citizen bets it’s hard to find cheddar dildos in Utah.
We use the term “business” loosely here, given that according to newspaper accounts some of the work involved the landscaping firms turning the park district around and giving IT the business by billing for work that was never performed, sometimes in amounts suspiciously similar in size to recent bribes paid to McMayon. McMayon received cash payments, vacations and—are you ready?—tickets to Green Bay Packers games.
As the Indignant Citizen’s friend and former coworker Jon put it today, “So I’m reading about the Park District scandal, and what does it say that my main reaction is, ‘Packers tickets?!’”
What does it say indeed? And what does it say about McMayon that she would be working for the Chicago Park District and accept Packers tickets as a bribe? Loyalty isn’t what it used to be. Then again, maybe she enjoys a good sharp cheddar dildo now and then and the only place she knew of to obtain one without anyone recognizing her was through Billy’s Exotic Dancing in Green Bay. The Packers tickets were just a cover.
The photo of McMayon in the Sun-Times on Friday looked it was of her on a bike; apparently the photo department tracked down someone who knew her and had this picture in an album or perhaps even on his or her desk. She lives in Park City, where, coincidentally, the Indignant Citizen will be traveling next week. And guess what? She’s in the phone book! In case you want to give her a call and ask her yourself about her corrupt ways, anywho.com has her at 435.649.9144. There’s also an address, which the Indignant Citizen will not publish here. Instead he will perhaps try for a first-person interview.
Although she may be busy, what with the indictment and all. She might not have time to entertain callers. Plus you know, it’s almost football season, and the Indignant Citizen bets it’s hard to find cheddar dildos in Utah.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Our Fraying Social Fabric
The Indignant Citizen took a vacation recently, and when he does that he usually returns to dis certain down in da Midwest with one of two feelings: 1) Chicago is the greatest city in the world; everyone else can go fuck themselves; or 2) Chicago is doomed. This time around, the Indignant Citizen is leaning more toward 2 for this simple reason: people in other places are nicer.
Case in point: Oregon. Specifically Portland and the Oregon coast. Very friendly people there. They smile at you in the grocery store, even at those awkward moments where your respective carts are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. They happily spend five or ten minutes discussing the weather, or which of the countless local beers they prefer, or the afternoon breeze that always cools the beaches in summer.
Of course, when your state’s unemployment rate is 6.5%, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a good argument can be made that you don’t have anything better to do. But the Indignant Citizen prefers to think that Oregonians, even in the afterglow of the decades-long ejaculation of Californians into the forested folds of the Beaver State, have retained their friendly sensibilities. In short, they remember how to interact with one another.
Compare that to Chicago, where restaurant workers glower and act as if you’re inconveniencing them by being there, employees behind the deli counter of the Jewel at 95th and Pulaski pretend they don’t know how to slice bread because they’re interested in doing the absolute minimum before clocking out for the day, and making eye contact on the street results in either steely stares or getting a half-empty cup of change shoved in your face.
This aloofness and occasional downright antisocial behavior is part of living in a big city. It’s a way to cope with the scale of social interaction. When the Indignant Citizen first moved here, he tried saying “hi” or nodding to most people he passed on the street. He was ignored and discouraged. And among a certain segment of the population he was quickly identified as a “sucker” and regularly asked to part with change, dollar bills or money of any kind. Once a guy hanging out at the Adams and Wabash el stop caught the Indignant Citizen in a generous mood. When the Indignant Citizen reached into his wallet to hand the guy the dollar he said he needed for the train, the guy saw a fiver in there and had the gall to say, “Just gimme the five, man.” Seeing no weapon, the Indignant Citizen declined in the most polite but direct terms possible.
For the most part, outside the small social circles we construct for ourselves, we city dwellers have forgotten how to be civil with one another. This tattered edge of our urban fabric will, the Indignant Citizen fears, continue to fray until economic or political forces beyond our comprehension today finally tear it to pieces. Have a nice day.
Case in point: Oregon. Specifically Portland and the Oregon coast. Very friendly people there. They smile at you in the grocery store, even at those awkward moments where your respective carts are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. They happily spend five or ten minutes discussing the weather, or which of the countless local beers they prefer, or the afternoon breeze that always cools the beaches in summer.
Of course, when your state’s unemployment rate is 6.5%, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a good argument can be made that you don’t have anything better to do. But the Indignant Citizen prefers to think that Oregonians, even in the afterglow of the decades-long ejaculation of Californians into the forested folds of the Beaver State, have retained their friendly sensibilities. In short, they remember how to interact with one another.
Compare that to Chicago, where restaurant workers glower and act as if you’re inconveniencing them by being there, employees behind the deli counter of the Jewel at 95th and Pulaski pretend they don’t know how to slice bread because they’re interested in doing the absolute minimum before clocking out for the day, and making eye contact on the street results in either steely stares or getting a half-empty cup of change shoved in your face.
This aloofness and occasional downright antisocial behavior is part of living in a big city. It’s a way to cope with the scale of social interaction. When the Indignant Citizen first moved here, he tried saying “hi” or nodding to most people he passed on the street. He was ignored and discouraged. And among a certain segment of the population he was quickly identified as a “sucker” and regularly asked to part with change, dollar bills or money of any kind. Once a guy hanging out at the Adams and Wabash el stop caught the Indignant Citizen in a generous mood. When the Indignant Citizen reached into his wallet to hand the guy the dollar he said he needed for the train, the guy saw a fiver in there and had the gall to say, “Just gimme the five, man.” Seeing no weapon, the Indignant Citizen declined in the most polite but direct terms possible.
For the most part, outside the small social circles we construct for ourselves, we city dwellers have forgotten how to be civil with one another. This tattered edge of our urban fabric will, the Indignant Citizen fears, continue to fray until economic or political forces beyond our comprehension today finally tear it to pieces. Have a nice day.
Daley Goes Down
When Steve Warmbir and Tim Novak at the Sun-Times began bludgeoning Daley with the Hired Truck cudgel, I figured the whole mess would blow over eventually like so many others. It hasn’t, and Daley has thus far been incapable of staying ahead of the news cycle. He announces a change over here in the afternoon, but over there earlier that morning someone else got indicted or pleaded guilty.
I assumed early on that Daley would tough it out, that by the time the 2007 election rolled around all this would be forgotten. It won’t. And now I’m starting to wonder if Daley will even run again. Smart money would still have to bet on him to win, but his disapproval rating is on the rise and the media sharks are circling, waiting for someone with any kind of name recognition at all to announce they’re running.
This person, if he is out there, should be careful not to announce too soon. For instance, if someone were to announce next week, or even before the end of this year, it leaves way too much time for the media love fest to climax and subside. An announcement has to be timed for the middle of the third quarter of 2006, I believe, to most effectively ride the twin waves of scandal and disdain into office. No one will beat Daley by arguing Chicago is worse off than it was when he took office. No one will win by saying he’ll reduce crime that’s already falling. The road to City Hall will be paved with the bones of scandal, and they will have to be fresh bones, at that. There is still enough time for Daley to save himself if he isn’t indicted and if he can show he’s cracking the whip on patronage and waste and corruption. The prudent strategy for any challenger is to wait at least a year and see what happens.
I assumed early on that Daley would tough it out, that by the time the 2007 election rolled around all this would be forgotten. It won’t. And now I’m starting to wonder if Daley will even run again. Smart money would still have to bet on him to win, but his disapproval rating is on the rise and the media sharks are circling, waiting for someone with any kind of name recognition at all to announce they’re running.
This person, if he is out there, should be careful not to announce too soon. For instance, if someone were to announce next week, or even before the end of this year, it leaves way too much time for the media love fest to climax and subside. An announcement has to be timed for the middle of the third quarter of 2006, I believe, to most effectively ride the twin waves of scandal and disdain into office. No one will beat Daley by arguing Chicago is worse off than it was when he took office. No one will win by saying he’ll reduce crime that’s already falling. The road to City Hall will be paved with the bones of scandal, and they will have to be fresh bones, at that. There is still enough time for Daley to save himself if he isn’t indicted and if he can show he’s cracking the whip on patronage and waste and corruption. The prudent strategy for any challenger is to wait at least a year and see what happens.
Superstar? Superstar Archi-Clown, Maybe
So Santiago Calatrava swaggered into town Monday, waving his big dick of a skyscraper in the faces of the drooling Chicago media, and they eagerly lined up to fellate him. Stories about Calatrava’s soaring, twisting tower appeared in both the Sun-Times and the Tribune on Tuesday, and both papers referred to the Spanish architect as a “superstar.”
Fuck that. Calatrava’s grotesque tower would mar Chicago’s skyline, but more importantly it would be a giant ass pimple on the lakeshore. His big “innovation” is rotating each successive floor two degrees clockwise from the floor below it, thus giving the building the twisting appearance. In one story, Calatrava tried to say the design was meant to evoke the first wisp of smoke from the first fire lit by natives along the lakeshore. Whatever. It’s an overly narrow, overly tall building that—at 2,000-plus feet tall—is too tall for the Streeterville neighborhood in which it will be built.
I doubt the city will allow it, but the slobbering knob job both the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave the initial design is as good a reminder as any that newspaper architecture writers and critics are writers and critics—not planners or architects—for a reason: often, they have little taste and no sense of sustainable, practical and scalable development.
Fuck that. Calatrava’s grotesque tower would mar Chicago’s skyline, but more importantly it would be a giant ass pimple on the lakeshore. His big “innovation” is rotating each successive floor two degrees clockwise from the floor below it, thus giving the building the twisting appearance. In one story, Calatrava tried to say the design was meant to evoke the first wisp of smoke from the first fire lit by natives along the lakeshore. Whatever. It’s an overly narrow, overly tall building that—at 2,000-plus feet tall—is too tall for the Streeterville neighborhood in which it will be built.
I doubt the city will allow it, but the slobbering knob job both the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave the initial design is as good a reminder as any that newspaper architecture writers and critics are writers and critics—not planners or architects—for a reason: often, they have little taste and no sense of sustainable, practical and scalable development.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Cudgeled by the Sunday Trib
Every once in a while, the Sunday Chicago Tribune will land with a particular authority on the front porch, and The Indignant Citizen knows it’s going to be one of those rare papers that delivers a treat of some kind in almost every section. This past Sunday, the 10th, was one of those.
Two sections in particular stood out: Metro (the South-Southwest edition) and Arts & Entertainment. We’ll start with A&E. Headlining the page was a Blair Kamin architecture review of the new Hyatt Center at Wacker Drive & Monroe Street downtown, “Throwing Tradition a Curve.” Kamin likes it, as he likes the Hyatt Center’s neighbor to the south across Monroe, 111 S. Wacker Drive. He argues they make an attractive western gateway to the Loop that offers visual rewards for pedestrians, much as the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building do on southbound Michigan Avenue, and the University Club and Monroe Building do at Michigan and Monroe. The Indignant Citizen agrees.
However the design of the Hyatt Center, and more specifically the design of the plaza separating it from Monroe Street, is to The Indignant Citizen more significant than the architectural statement the fish-shaped building makes within Chicago’s right angle-dominated skyline.
Some history. According to Kamin’s story, Hyatt’s new headquarters was supposed to be a showcase building. First, it was to be in a prominent location in Chicago. Second, the Hyatt hotel chain is owned by the Pritzker family, which gives out an annual award for architectural excellence that is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for literature or the Pulitzers in journalism. Finally, the building was slated to be the first skyscraper completed in Chicago in the new Post-9/11 era, also known as the Time of the Fear.
After that wretched day, the Pritzkers knew hotels wouldn’t be making big money, at least in the short term, and they downscaled their dream. They told the original architect, Pritzker Prize winner Lord Norman Foster, that the “special shout” building project he had been commissioned to draw was dead. Instead the Pritzkers hired Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York. Cobb, whom Kamin described as a “distinguished elder statesman” was certainly more than capable of designing a quality office tower, having put his name on Boston’s John Hancock Tower. But one gets the impression that Cobb is to architecture what Shel Gordon was to sex in When Harry Met Sally. Sure, Cobb can do your taxes or give you a root canal, but humpin’ and pumpin’ out a hot building that leaves your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat ain’t Cobb’s job.
Nonetheless, his building has a certain grace, and it does one thing exponentially better than the much higher-profile, David Childs-designed “Freedom Tower” in New York City that will sit at Ground Zero: It relates to the street. Cobb’s Hyatt Center meets the sidewalk with a curving glass façade that gives pedestrians a chance to interact with the building. The “Freedom Tower,” on the other hand, meets pedestrians with a massive setback and a 200-foot-tall concrete pedestal that says, loudly and clearly “Get the fuck away!”
Argue all you want about how the “Freedom Tower” is a bigger magnet for Islamo-terrorists, but then face this fact: A truck bomb is a truck bomb, whether it explodes at the “Freedom Tower” or the Hyatt Center. The key is keeping the explosives away from the building’s structural supports. Childs did this by placing his building on a concrete turd. Cobb managed to effect the same protection using whimsically curved planters made of stone placed strategically in a pedestrian friendly plaza along Monroe Street. The planters are low, have ledges for sitting, contain grass and are curved to reflect the tower’s exterior. They allow pedestrians to walk in between them and easily access the building. And they are close enough together to keep any vehicle well away from the building’s lobby, where an explosion would cause the most damage.
Here’s Kamin: “Following the unveiling of the fortresslike Freedom Tower, [Hyatt Center] offers an alternative vision, one in which our fears—and, thus, our buildings—remain in proper proportion.”
Right on.
Now for Metro. There were four stories on the Metro front, each one worth reading. At the top of the page was the obligatory “public agency wastes taxpayer dollars” story about financial problems in the tiny but tax-rich Salt Creek School District 48 in DuPage County. It is the fourth-richest district in the state, thanks to a relatively low student population in proportion to tax revenue.
The discretionary income-drawing Oakbrook Shopping Center rests within its borders, and homeowners in the Salt Creek district enjoy the second-lowest school tax rate in the state. Yet the district still managed to spend $12,653 per student on 550 students in 2004. The Trib doesn’t include a current statewide per-pupil spending average in its story, instead saying Salt Creek’s spending is “far higher” than the state average. That is a lazy journalistic cop-out. Why not put real numbers in? Following a relatively simple Internet search, the Indignant Citizen found that Illinois’ total per-pupil spending in 2003, the most recent year statewide numbers are readily available, was slightly more than $8,400 per pupil. Half again as much could be “far higher” than the state average, but surely the state average increased from 2003 to 2004, right?
Anyway, the key to this story is the fact that despite this tax windfall, the district is going broke. It has prostrated itself before voters five times seeking tax increases, each time unsuccessfully. Meanwhile a teacher in the district has alerted the state attorney general’s office to some shady financing involving the use of Medicaid funds to pay for district administrators and board members to travel to winter conferences in places like Orlando, San Diego and Phoenix. At the same time the district is cutting teachers and programs. Parents are fed up, and berated the district at a recent meeting. District mouthpieces can’t get their stories straight about tapping the Medicaid accounts, but maintain the complaints about staffing and trips are coming from disgruntled teachers angry that their salaries have been frozen for four years and negotiations on a new contract aren’t going well.
The Trib reporter then helpfully points out that the “average” Salt Creek teacher salary is $63,065, “higher than all but a handful of elementary districts in the state.” What’s with the generalities again? Just give us the numbers so we can see for ourselves. And no shit the teachers are pissed. A four-year salary freeze is the same as a pay cut when you consider inflation, a point the Trib story fails to make, instead leaving the rhetorical impression that Salt Creek teachers are well-paid and should shut up and take it like good little whores.
To the Indignant Citizen, this relates back to America’s failure to properly compensate teachers for the work they do, which today includes babysitting as much as instruction. The problem isn’t teacher pay. The good ones aren’t paid nearly enough. (The bad ones should be fired, period. Unions defending lazy and stupid teachers are one reason the public regards teacher unions as it would a disemboweled squirrel falling from a tree onto the Sunday afternoon barbecue.)
For most districts, their problems revolve around bloated administrations and narrow mandates to teach children only what they must learn to do well on tests and earn the ho cash doled out by Pimp Daddy Bush and the Johns running No Child Left Behind. Add to that the fear of frivolous and/or zealous lawsuits against districts with teachers whose ideas challenge students to think critically and you have an education system that is surpassed in mediocrity only by our national public transportation system.
This Salt Creek story isn’t over. That money went somewhere, and not all of it went for $20,000 trips to warm locales. Someone’s got a nice house somewhere or a Mercedes in the garage that was paid for by the district. Just wait.
Then below that there’s a story about a freak murder near the University of Illinois at Chicago. The best anyone can figure, two punk bitches from the ‘burbs got their asses kicked or fell off a city curb late Friday night. When a UIC poly-sci student and his buddy noticed the two bleeding burbanites, they offered to help, an act for which one, Tombol Malik, 23, was beaten to death with his own bike lock and his friend tasered. The Indignant Citizen wonders what kind of fucking world we’re living in when a dude offering a hand gets beaten to death.
Finally the Trib has a story about new lights being installed that will cast a tighter beam on the Wrigley Building. That’s nice as far as it goes. The new light towers on Michigan Avenue are ugly, though, and the Indignant Citizen wonders whether it’s even worth the energy to light up the Wrigley any more, but the real news is buried in the ninth graf:
“The modification comes at a time when the company [Wrigley] is studying its long-term real estate needs and a possible move from its historic headquarters, a development that has prompted some real estate speculators to suggest that the building could someday be turned into luxury condominiums.”
The Indignant Citizen is all for more people moving downtown. But he is also for jobs downtown. Is Wrigley preparing some cut-and-run maneuver in which it downsizes and moves its operations to Beijing? Try it, bitches. I got $50 and a Kryptonite bike lock that says you’re stayin’ right the fuck where you are. Additionally, who’s going to live in these luxury condominiums when the last pump in the Gahwar oil field in Saudi Arabia starts spitting seawater instead of oil, dousing the oil-fired “global economy?”
Two sections in particular stood out: Metro (the South-Southwest edition) and Arts & Entertainment. We’ll start with A&E. Headlining the page was a Blair Kamin architecture review of the new Hyatt Center at Wacker Drive & Monroe Street downtown, “Throwing Tradition a Curve.” Kamin likes it, as he likes the Hyatt Center’s neighbor to the south across Monroe, 111 S. Wacker Drive. He argues they make an attractive western gateway to the Loop that offers visual rewards for pedestrians, much as the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building do on southbound Michigan Avenue, and the University Club and Monroe Building do at Michigan and Monroe. The Indignant Citizen agrees.
However the design of the Hyatt Center, and more specifically the design of the plaza separating it from Monroe Street, is to The Indignant Citizen more significant than the architectural statement the fish-shaped building makes within Chicago’s right angle-dominated skyline.
Some history. According to Kamin’s story, Hyatt’s new headquarters was supposed to be a showcase building. First, it was to be in a prominent location in Chicago. Second, the Hyatt hotel chain is owned by the Pritzker family, which gives out an annual award for architectural excellence that is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for literature or the Pulitzers in journalism. Finally, the building was slated to be the first skyscraper completed in Chicago in the new Post-9/11 era, also known as the Time of the Fear.
After that wretched day, the Pritzkers knew hotels wouldn’t be making big money, at least in the short term, and they downscaled their dream. They told the original architect, Pritzker Prize winner Lord Norman Foster, that the “special shout” building project he had been commissioned to draw was dead. Instead the Pritzkers hired Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York. Cobb, whom Kamin described as a “distinguished elder statesman” was certainly more than capable of designing a quality office tower, having put his name on Boston’s John Hancock Tower. But one gets the impression that Cobb is to architecture what Shel Gordon was to sex in When Harry Met Sally. Sure, Cobb can do your taxes or give you a root canal, but humpin’ and pumpin’ out a hot building that leaves your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat ain’t Cobb’s job.
Nonetheless, his building has a certain grace, and it does one thing exponentially better than the much higher-profile, David Childs-designed “Freedom Tower” in New York City that will sit at Ground Zero: It relates to the street. Cobb’s Hyatt Center meets the sidewalk with a curving glass façade that gives pedestrians a chance to interact with the building. The “Freedom Tower,” on the other hand, meets pedestrians with a massive setback and a 200-foot-tall concrete pedestal that says, loudly and clearly “Get the fuck away!”
Argue all you want about how the “Freedom Tower” is a bigger magnet for Islamo-terrorists, but then face this fact: A truck bomb is a truck bomb, whether it explodes at the “Freedom Tower” or the Hyatt Center. The key is keeping the explosives away from the building’s structural supports. Childs did this by placing his building on a concrete turd. Cobb managed to effect the same protection using whimsically curved planters made of stone placed strategically in a pedestrian friendly plaza along Monroe Street. The planters are low, have ledges for sitting, contain grass and are curved to reflect the tower’s exterior. They allow pedestrians to walk in between them and easily access the building. And they are close enough together to keep any vehicle well away from the building’s lobby, where an explosion would cause the most damage.
Here’s Kamin: “Following the unveiling of the fortresslike Freedom Tower, [Hyatt Center] offers an alternative vision, one in which our fears—and, thus, our buildings—remain in proper proportion.”
Right on.
Now for Metro. There were four stories on the Metro front, each one worth reading. At the top of the page was the obligatory “public agency wastes taxpayer dollars” story about financial problems in the tiny but tax-rich Salt Creek School District 48 in DuPage County. It is the fourth-richest district in the state, thanks to a relatively low student population in proportion to tax revenue.
The discretionary income-drawing Oakbrook Shopping Center rests within its borders, and homeowners in the Salt Creek district enjoy the second-lowest school tax rate in the state. Yet the district still managed to spend $12,653 per student on 550 students in 2004. The Trib doesn’t include a current statewide per-pupil spending average in its story, instead saying Salt Creek’s spending is “far higher” than the state average. That is a lazy journalistic cop-out. Why not put real numbers in? Following a relatively simple Internet search, the Indignant Citizen found that Illinois’ total per-pupil spending in 2003, the most recent year statewide numbers are readily available, was slightly more than $8,400 per pupil. Half again as much could be “far higher” than the state average, but surely the state average increased from 2003 to 2004, right?
Anyway, the key to this story is the fact that despite this tax windfall, the district is going broke. It has prostrated itself before voters five times seeking tax increases, each time unsuccessfully. Meanwhile a teacher in the district has alerted the state attorney general’s office to some shady financing involving the use of Medicaid funds to pay for district administrators and board members to travel to winter conferences in places like Orlando, San Diego and Phoenix. At the same time the district is cutting teachers and programs. Parents are fed up, and berated the district at a recent meeting. District mouthpieces can’t get their stories straight about tapping the Medicaid accounts, but maintain the complaints about staffing and trips are coming from disgruntled teachers angry that their salaries have been frozen for four years and negotiations on a new contract aren’t going well.
The Trib reporter then helpfully points out that the “average” Salt Creek teacher salary is $63,065, “higher than all but a handful of elementary districts in the state.” What’s with the generalities again? Just give us the numbers so we can see for ourselves. And no shit the teachers are pissed. A four-year salary freeze is the same as a pay cut when you consider inflation, a point the Trib story fails to make, instead leaving the rhetorical impression that Salt Creek teachers are well-paid and should shut up and take it like good little whores.
To the Indignant Citizen, this relates back to America’s failure to properly compensate teachers for the work they do, which today includes babysitting as much as instruction. The problem isn’t teacher pay. The good ones aren’t paid nearly enough. (The bad ones should be fired, period. Unions defending lazy and stupid teachers are one reason the public regards teacher unions as it would a disemboweled squirrel falling from a tree onto the Sunday afternoon barbecue.)
For most districts, their problems revolve around bloated administrations and narrow mandates to teach children only what they must learn to do well on tests and earn the ho cash doled out by Pimp Daddy Bush and the Johns running No Child Left Behind. Add to that the fear of frivolous and/or zealous lawsuits against districts with teachers whose ideas challenge students to think critically and you have an education system that is surpassed in mediocrity only by our national public transportation system.
This Salt Creek story isn’t over. That money went somewhere, and not all of it went for $20,000 trips to warm locales. Someone’s got a nice house somewhere or a Mercedes in the garage that was paid for by the district. Just wait.
Then below that there’s a story about a freak murder near the University of Illinois at Chicago. The best anyone can figure, two punk bitches from the ‘burbs got their asses kicked or fell off a city curb late Friday night. When a UIC poly-sci student and his buddy noticed the two bleeding burbanites, they offered to help, an act for which one, Tombol Malik, 23, was beaten to death with his own bike lock and his friend tasered. The Indignant Citizen wonders what kind of fucking world we’re living in when a dude offering a hand gets beaten to death.
Finally the Trib has a story about new lights being installed that will cast a tighter beam on the Wrigley Building. That’s nice as far as it goes. The new light towers on Michigan Avenue are ugly, though, and the Indignant Citizen wonders whether it’s even worth the energy to light up the Wrigley any more, but the real news is buried in the ninth graf:
“The modification comes at a time when the company [Wrigley] is studying its long-term real estate needs and a possible move from its historic headquarters, a development that has prompted some real estate speculators to suggest that the building could someday be turned into luxury condominiums.”
The Indignant Citizen is all for more people moving downtown. But he is also for jobs downtown. Is Wrigley preparing some cut-and-run maneuver in which it downsizes and moves its operations to Beijing? Try it, bitches. I got $50 and a Kryptonite bike lock that says you’re stayin’ right the fuck where you are. Additionally, who’s going to live in these luxury condominiums when the last pump in the Gahwar oil field in Saudi Arabia starts spitting seawater instead of oil, dousing the oil-fired “global economy?”
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