I can see why people want to live here, Chicago

Lots of glass, making sonic canyons for the honking of taxis. Perfect weather, enough snow flurries to keep it interesting but nothing sticking to seep in slushy slop through my silly shoes (I’m Californian, I don’t have the wardrobe for precipitation). The urban rumble of the L train making periodic passes through the air and the ear. All of it was beautiful, all of it was Chicago, but my main memory of the city doesn’t live in the eyes or the ears or the skin.

Just a typical intersection, but I dig the train.

You’d think it would be felt in the feet. My new phone has one of those pedometer things. Is 24,163 good for a day? Downtown Chicago is a walkable city, as long as you don’t mind cars slicing through the crosswalk closer and faster than we West Coasters prefer.

Cars and magic flying schoolbusses both

Walking all day was fine by me, but I had suggestions from some of y’all marvelous folk, so went looking for those. The Art Institute of Chicago was a lovely warren of rooms, where my lady and I found an attendant/guard who agreed with us, John Singer Sargent sure did know his business.

Outside the Art Institute, Chicago's
skyline fading into the morning mist

And I liked the Chicago Cultural Center just fine, with its interior walkways and Eschertastic stairwells, even before one of my lady’s coworkers told me its story. Apparently after the great fire of 1871 burned down the entire city, the French felt so bad about the loss of the great Chicago library that they sent money to rebuild it. The people of Chicago were so grateful that they neglected to tell ze French that they hadn’t had a library in the first place. Sssssh!

Walking incurred a rather windy hunger, which fed my main memory. I hear tales of American food deserts and feel compassionate despair for them and gratitude for living in the Bay Area, but lordy lordy, Chicago ain’t got nothing to complain about. Those folks know how to eat.

So many to choose from, Greek to pizza, barbeque to Bayless’s Mexican, but it was the crepes that snagged my top spot. Because what else would you expect to find under a train station than a French market complete with opulent truffles, Belgian fries, and bona fide French people making crepes at 9:00 in the morning? Merci!

So Chicago was tall buildings, varied art, aesthetic snow, and groaning metal. It was also ham, bacon, eggs, cheddar, cream cheese, and fresh blueberry jam for breakfast, followed hours later by slow-cooked apples, salted caramel, vanilla cream, and toffee chunks for dessert.

Yup, Chicago was pretty sweet.

I can see why people want to live here, Oakland

New phone, they say the camera's better, but out
the window of a moving bus is not optimal

This was no exception to my habit of beginning air-travel days in a state of maximal hygiene, fresh shirt and thorough shower, but arriving at the airport nice and sweat-soaked anyway. But given that it was 86° F in Oakland, that wasn’t all that surprising.

Healthy bodies and sunshine smiles were gathered around Lake Merritt, on blankets and in running shoes, and the frisbees didn’t care that it was a workday. In the bus, we stood and swayed, smiled vaguely and forgot that “sweater” can refer to clothing as well as identity. And when we disembarked the AC Transit steed of slightly stained seats, it was into a Frank Ogawa Plaza filled with food trucks, conversation, and sunglasses.

Not even hungry, I wanted to stop and eat anyway.

Smelling carne asada and grass, blinking at sun and skin, I felt the paired desires of my feet, the push to stop to sit meshing in sympathetic opposition with the pull to keep going. A mighty fine place, I can see why people want to live here, Oakland.

But I had a ticket, somewhere in the electric cloud, for a metal bird to carry me, up among the vapor clouds, to Chicago, the Land of Wild Garlic. (Probably should have said more overtly last time that that’s the translation for the indigenous word shikaakwa from which the city derives its name.)

First impression outside the hotel

Upon arrival, there was only room in my mental carry-on for food and sleep, but yesterday I got up and out into the city. Looking through the window of my memory I saw California sunshine, but the window of the hotel showed swirling white flakes.

My coat may have been closed up tight, but my heart and mind were open, looking to see why people would want to live here, Chicago. What waited on these streets?

(And thank you to everyone who gave me suggestions for what to see here. I've already checked a couple things off the list...)

Anybody know anything about this "Chicago" place?

Get that garbage outta my way
I have places to go.

The systematic chaos of the crowd parted before me, obeisance to my stride, which was suddenly comfortable after three months of lifestyle constipation. I suppose I’d failed at my attempt to move back to the US, but none of that mattered now, because everything was right, the last sunlight through the glass, the bag hanging off my shoulder like it was part of me, a sense of music in my veins.

I was traveling again. I was a traveler again. I was a traveler still! Those months of motionlessness had not been a tombstone on my vagabondery, just a pause, a rest, a Rip Van Winkle snooze button. And god it felt good to wake up.

Yes, on my first visit to the city, I loved Chicago.

O'Hare seemed nice. Not Taipei-Airport-Garden nice, but still

Except that’s all I saw of it. One O’Hare hallway. So no, I’ve never been to Chicago. But next week I’ll change that, inshallah. My lady has a business trip and I can work from there, so Thursday to Sunday, I’ll be Windy.

I’m downright excited about it. Eager to begin. Looking forward to it.

Las Vegas. Feeding addiction until the last minute possible

Except I have no idea what I’m looking forward to. I know nearly nothing about what’s there, what I should do, see, eat, drink, hear, feel. And I’m torn between leaving it that way, arriving in perfect ignorance to take it in as it comes, versus preparing a plan, a schematic for experience.

What do you think? Show up tabula rasa, or do you have any recommendations for a couple free afternoons and an evening in the city of shikaakwa, the city of wild garlic?