By Tim Willette

In 1957 the Brazilian visual poet Décio Pignatari turned a famous marketing slogan against itself by manipulating the Portuguese translation of “Enjoy Coca-Cola” into repulsive word-shapes like “drool” and “cesspool.” Pignatari’s work has been on my mind recently, ever since a peculiar ad campaign for Snickers candy bars hit town.
The concept is simple enough: invent new, hunger-inducing words from pieces of other words and deploy them in Snickers’s iconic font, thereby inspiring the target with an irresistible desire to buy and eat delicious Snickers candy. For whatever reason the bright lights at Snickers settled on using CTA buses to carry their neologism-ads to Chicagoans. I’d like to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting. (“Hey, buses are kind of shaped like Snickers bars! And our research indicates 73% of commuters eat candy!”)
A week ago I encountered my first Snickword, “PEANUTOPOLIS,” rolling its way down Milwaukee Avenue. This seemed like a cruel method of transporting the mentally ill – Nuthouse Express, please watch your step! – but the passengers looked comfortable with it. Actually, my opening impression was that “PEANUTOPOLIS” was as good a description as any for our schizophrenically-run city on the make. It also conjures dystopian visions of a citizenry scraping by for peanuts meted out by mad, stingy overlords. Crazy, I know. Further deconstruction yields a single “NUT” connected to a stretched-out “PE-N-IS.” Taxpayer-funded studies disproved the nipples-in-the-ice-cubes effect decades ago, but here it lives – on the side of a city bus, no less. I guess sometimes a candy bar is more than a candy bar.

Read More

Posted on July 28, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

I took a journey through the savage heart of the Chicago dream recently. I visited Millennium Park.
I remain baffled. Is it just me who doesn’t see what’s so great about Millennium Park? Is it just me who thinks it fails as both art and a park, which pretty much invalidates the whole enterprise? Am I the only one bored with the spectacle and unnourished by the park’s tease?
I returned to the park recently to make sure I wasn’t crazy, pig-headed, blinded by antipathy to the Daley Administration. I wanted to see. I really did.
I was in and out in 30 minutes. I tried. But the truth is that Millennium Park sucks.

Read More

Posted on July 17, 2006

By Vince Michael

When it opened two years ago, Millennium Park was four years behind schedule, hundreds of millions of public and private dollars over budget, and still not finished. It had all the makings of a disaster.
Within a week it was a smash hit and within two weeks city kids were putting on their swimsuits, getting on the “L” and heading downtown to splash in 1/8″ of water and the occasional spoutings of the Crown Fountain. The Bean, unfinished and still being polished in 2006, became an icon for the city in a fraction of the time it took for Picasso’s eponymous 1967 steelwork to do so. It was a triumph of ideas over reality and every Chicagoan and tourist loved it and still does.
Millennium Park fits its name because it is not real. It is a cheat and a fantasy – an artificial grass-covered roof over railroad yards that adheres to the letter of lakefront law in the cheekiest way imaginable. No buildings are allowed in Grant Park (which includes Millennium Park), thanks to a 100-year old lawsuit by Montgomery Ward, so grass and trees soar 40 feet above Michigan Avenue, tucking a 1,600-seat dance theater and a massive bandshell with backstage rooms beneath the surface. They built four-story buildings in Grant Park and then lifted the park up to cover the buildings.

Read More

Posted on July 17, 2006

By Natasha Julius

I know how it works. As a jaded Chicagoan I’m supposed to reject Millennium Park outright as a symbol of everything that’s wrong with our city. It arrived heinously over-budget and comically overdue, an unmistakable whiff of patronage surrounding its development. The plan to cram four major public art works onto a 24-acre site along with plazas, pavilions, an ice rink, and a state-of-the-art bicycle storage facility has resulted in a sort of cultural Portillo’s; a vast clearinghouse of sensory experiences that, consciously or not, substitutes noise for nuance, capacity for quality, and pandering for populism. So yes, in many ways I can dismiss Millennium Park as a great, gaudy symbol of how this city has lost its way.
Yet there is one feature of the park that cuts through my urban skepticism. Rising like a stainless steel beacon of hope from the AT&T Plaza, Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate sculpture is a reminder that sometimes Chicago’s brash ambition and constant urge to cast off and reinvent can create something wonderful. Sure, a lot of times we wind up with a jumbled mess, a garish box or a pointless heap of concrete. But these colossal disappointments are mitigated by the glorious success of the Bean.
I freely admit I was somewhat in love with the Bean before I’d even seen it. I’ve been fascinated by Kapoor’s work since learning he’d unwittingly developed a working Death Star. And I’ll gladly concede the point that the Bean came in even more budget-bloated and behind schedule than the rest of Millennium Park. I don’t care. In my eyes, the Bean is a triumph.

Read More

Posted on July 17, 2006

By Scott Gordon

According to online records of the National Transportation Safety Board, last week’s Blue Line derailment is the fifth Chicago Transit Authority accident since 2001 to prompt an NTSB investigation. NTSB investigator Kitty Higgins, at a press conference last week, vaguely credited the CTA with making improvements following past investigations. But it’s not clear that the CTA is taking the initiative. These reports suggest that while the CTA has followed some of the NTSB’s recommendations, it didn’t make full use of NTSB findings – or, say, basic logic and intuition – to fix pervasive safety problems, like drivers’ negligence. It took three accidents and two urgings by the NTSB, for example, for the CTA to “implement systematic procedures” to monitor drivers’ compliance with speed limits and signal rules. Here are summaries of the accidents, as taken directly from NTSB reports. under that, a roundup of recent small fires on the O’Hare branch of the Blue Line.

Read More

Posted on July 16, 2006

Date: July 7, 2006
From: Wicker Park
To: Near North Side
The Cab: My first Mohawk cab – the ones with the rooftop advertising wedge. (“Allstate Deduction Rewards”). Otherwise clean, sturdy, and nondescript.

Read More

Posted on July 7, 2006

Date: July 7, 2006
From: Near North Side
To: Wicker Park
The Cab: What’s that smell? I like it, but I can’t place it. Oh, there it is! A strawberry car freshener tree in the back window. Mmm, strawberry.
Hey, what’s that sticker on the little coin window slat thing: It says “Helper.”
Hey, what’s that little metal plate screwed into the back seat separation unit? It says “Whip It Out. J-Fold. Original Sportswallet.”
Hey, there’s another one: “KGT Bumper Guards, Long Island.”
Just below the black, oscillating, Axics 12-volt fan.
There’s a lot to look at in here, for a cab with no actual decoration.

Read More

Posted on July 7, 2006

By Steve Rhodes

It would be all too easy to make fun of the “Freedom Museum” now housed in the former Hammacher Schlemmer space, in the Tribune Tower complex on North Michigan Avenue. Ironies abound, many of which inform our very own “Freedom Museum Exhibits We’d Like To See.”
But if you are any sort of freedom geek like those of us here at Beachwood HQ, you have to admit the museum is kind of inspiring. After all, it’s about freedom.
So hop aboard the freedom train, McCormick Tribune Foundation-style.

Read More

Posted on July 1, 2006

By Natasha Julius and Tim Willette

The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum is a fine attempt at civic virtue, but we think they left out a few exhibits.
1. Write Your Congressman! User is invited to write letter which via elaborate rope & pulley system is delivered to congressman’s desk, but it works only if sack of money is placed on scale/chute.
1a. More money allows user to write congressional bill.
2. Speak Out! User is invited to air grievance (unamplified) in a room filled with blaring televisions, radios, & loudspeakers.
3. Mr. Potato Head of State. Build a candidate for office from die-cut parts which user can test in the Focus Group Analyzer. (Deposit required)

Read More

Posted on July 1, 2006