Art Institute

Destination: Art Institute
Date: 3/13/11
Cohort: Alaina

Cohort’s favorite thing to do/see in Chicago: "Well, my favorite PLACE in Chicago is the courtyard of the 4th Presbyterian Church on Michigan Ave. because it's an amazing oasis of quiet and stillness in the middle of the downtown bustle. But my favorite thing to DO in the city is to have a picnic at a free concert or movie in a Chicago park in the summer. Love it. Love it. Love it."

Whoops! I got way behind! I promise to post with more regularity!

The good people at Groupon made my next decision for me again by offering half-price tickets to the Art Institute, and giving them a fast-approaching expiration date. I’ve been there many, many times – in fact, that and Second City were the two places I visited when trying to decide if Chicago is a place that I would like to live. So, yeah. It’s pretty good.

My friend Alaina joined me, and since we’re both pretty familiar with the Art Institute, we decided to pose as French tourists to keep things exciting. Apparently, this was unnecessary, as when we approached the museum, a delightful homeless gentleman informed the group of people waiting at the crosswalk that this was his street corner, and since President Obama wants people to exercise more, anybody using the crosswalk must either skip across it or buy a copy of Street Wise from him. Alaina and I happily skipped across Michigan Avenue. The other pedestrians, however, were far less obliging. Before going in, we made a brief visit with some Chicagoans that have an excuse to be stoic.

The French tourist lay-on reached its biggest challenge early on, when I had to buy tickets using the Groupon app on my mobile phone with an accent. (The second was when we ran into a friend of Alaina's, and she just spoke to them without breaking character, like a champ.) After some very slight misunderstandings, though, we were on our way. We started out in the family exhibit downstairs, where we were encouraged to make a Cornell Box, which is based on the work of Joseph Cornell, who basically put a lot of junk in a sideways box. We tried to make ours as French as possible to honor our homeland. Based on the objects available, this consisted mostly of corks and bottles, and a snippet of a Degas painting.

Then we headed over to the kids’ exhibit which was made to correspond with the museum’s temporary exhibition called “Kings, Queens and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France.” I got to try on some chain mail, and we found out what Alaina would look like as a charmingly dim-witted knight.

It’s hard to visit the Art Institute without paying a visit to its most famous paintings, so we checked out American Gothic,

Nighthawks,

and A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  (Alaina played that red parasol lady in a performance once.  See how good she is at it?)

It really is awe-inspiring to be in the presence of such iconic and lovely works of art, though I find that my first reactions to them are usually since astute observations as, “that is smaller than I thought it would be” or, “Man, Monet really dug haystacks.”

In our explorations, we found a place that neither of us had seen before: the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room. Apparently, when the real room was demolished in the 1970’s, much of the glass and stenciling was preserved and used to reconstruct it in the museum. Alaina clearly would make an excellent trader.

After exploring the new modern wing, we headed down to the Thorne Miniature Rooms, which have a whole gaggle of tiny rooms decorated in the styles of different countries and eras. We made some finger puppets (out of actual fingers!) to try them out. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what era this room is supposed to depict, nor could I find it online, but I know we made sure that it was French.

Heading home, we thought we should finish or French day off right and get a croissant, but the Corner Bakery was out, so we had to settle for delicious cookies. C’est la vie, I guess. 

Devon Avenue

Destination: Devon Avenue
Date: 1/30/11
Cohort: Laura
Cohort’s favorite thing to do/see in Chicago: Soldier Field and the zoo. Mostly Soldier Field.

So, just to clarify for those unfamiliar with the neighborhoods of Chicago, when Devon Avenue is listed as an attraction, it really just means a little bit of it; the Desi Corridor in Roger’s Park.  AKA, Little India.  A significant portion of the street is jam-packed (or should I say chutney-packed?  No?  Okay.  I won't then) with Indian and Pakistani restaurants, shops, and grocery stores.  I had never been before, and was most pleased when Laura suggested we go. 

We were both very excited to embark on our adventure - we’d heard so much build-up about how it’s like being in Bombay that we felt like we needed our passports and a crash Rosetta Stone course.  After pondering the dollar-to-rupee exchange rate on the North Side, we popped into a couple of stores.  The shopkeepers were very welcoming and helpful, but since we were neither actually in the market for a sari, nor passable as your everyday casual sari-shopper, we kept our browsing pretty brief.  It’s fun walking into the shops from the dreary February streets, though.   Like walking into a rainbow factory.  (Are there rainbow factories?  I would TOTALLY go to one…) 

If there were rainbow factories, I suppose this is what the workers would look like.  Except the headless guy.  Rainbow factory workers all have heads.  Some are indeed missing a hand though.  Rainbow-making is dangerous work.

Laura found a reasonably-priced scarf that she really liked, after which we found some other small white people who had done the same.

We went to a couple of big grocery stores, which were so vast and vastly different than our own grocery-haunts, that it really did feel like being in another country.  Or at least some sort of fascinating food museum…  I was excited about the varieties of cool and exotic produce.  Like a dosakai - a round yellow cucumber used in a lot of curries and chutneys and whatnot.

Laura took some time to check out the expansive rice collection, which sort of reminded me of how hard it is to pick out toothpaste at the store when you don’t really have any brand loyalty.  There are so many kinds!  They are all slightly different!  How do you pick???  Thank goodness when you choose the wrong toothpaste, though, you aren’t stuck with 9 ½ more pounds of Colgate.

At Patel Brothers, I became fascinated with, and purchased a bottle of coconut juice with fun coconut flakies in it. 

I wondered if I would like it...

I did not.  At all.

Ew.

Even though we kept buying little snacks everywhere, we resisted the temptation to munch since we were looking forward to our lunch at Mysore Woodlands.  When we were sufficiently hungry, we headed in and ordered a feast.  After a masala tea for Laura and a killer mango lassi for me, we got our appetizer of aloo papdi chaat, which Laura determined was the equivalent of Indian nachos.  While we were still deciding what nachos of different cultures would be, the rest of our food came.  There was naan, of course, masala dosai, which is like a big spicy crepe, and a nice spinachy saag paneer curry with rice. 

It was all wonderful, and as an added bonus, wrought no havoc on my belly like Indian food often does.  (Wink, wink!)  (I’m talking about POOPING!)

After we were totally stuffed and exhausted, we spent a good five minutes kneeling on the ground trying to take a picture of us with a Ganesha statue.  Despite all of his claims, however, even Ganesha could not make us fortunate enough to get a good shot.

Museum of Science & Industry

Destination: Museum of Science & Industry
Date: 1/8/11
Cohort: Molly
Cohort’s favorite thing to do/see in Chicago: Going to see a Sox day game at Comiskey Park and enjoying the sunshine, an overpriced beer and a brat... especially if Paulie (Konerko)  is up to bat.  (She insisted that I call it Comiskey.)

  

Somehow, I had never been to the Museum of Science and Industry before.  Actually, I don’t know why I’m pretending not to know why I haven’t been there.  There are three reasons:

1)      It has “science” in the name

2)      It has “industry” in the name

3)      It is really annoying to get to without a car (and costs $18 to park if you do have one.  $18!)

But, for you, dear blog reader(s), I have overcome my misgivings and embarked on a scientific and industrious adventure! 

My dear roommate, Molly, joined me, despite having been to the museum several times.  The lure of the temporary Muppet exhibit was quite strong, and she was eager to check it out.  When our third roommate, Lucy, heard there was a Roomie/Muppet expedition, she was most disappointed to learn that she wasn’t invited, despite meeting the residency requirement and looking remarkably muppetesque herself.

I was excited for the Muppet Exhibit too, so it was our first stop.  Sadly, calling it “The Muppet Exhibit” is inaccurate.  It is actually “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.”  So, not quite as Muppet-centric as one might hope.  Our bad.   Right away, though, we came upon a case with Kermit in it.  (Sorry – no pictures were allowed inside this portion of the museum.)  We then embarked into a labyrinth (get it?) of posters, photographs, and concept art from his career, occasionally peppered with a childhood icon. 

It was really cool to see his drawings of puppets-to-be, complete with people inside them so that one could understand how they operate.  Like Big Bird - it had never really occurred to me that whoever is in there has to hold one hand really high over their head to operate the mouth, and then use the other hand to operate his arm.  I’d never noticed that he only gestures with his left arm.  Watching YouTube videos of the big guy this morning, I can’t help but think it looks like he had a stroke.

We did get to see Bert and Ernie, Rowlf, Miss Piggy in her wedding dress from The Muppets Take Manhattan, and someone I was really excited about, Gobo Fraggle.  It’s kind of eerie to see your old TV buddies sitting there lifeless under glass.  As Molly pointed out, it felt kind of like being at a wake.  Back out in the main part of the museum, they had some pretty awesome photos up of the Muppets hanging out around Chicago.  Here’s my favorite.

You’ll note at the bottom of the photo that there are Christmas trees.  I promise it really was January 8^th when we went.  There was a huge tree in the center where you could get your picture taken, with steps to help you get closer in order to do so.  I found the last one a little impractical, even for my stork legs…

Next we checked out the museum’s oldest exhibit, the coal mine.  After cramming into a little elevator and riding down into a mine shaft, there is a guided tour to learn all about coal mining through the ages.  You even get to ride in an awesome little work train!  This was all particularly exciting for me, since when I was a little kid, I had a lump of anthracite as a pet.  I also had a big wooden ampersand.  I was weird.  Molly proved to be excellent at monitoring miner safety.

Being a miner takes a lot out of you, (plus the tour lets you out in the food court) so Molly and I opted for a lunch break.  I found a sweet Muppet cupcake which I naturally had a really hard time eating, and pretty much immediately dropped on its face. 

Next to FarmTech, where we raced to see who could get teat cups on a cow faster, though the results were inconclusive since I messed up hitting the timer button. I would like to take this opportunity to repeat, “teat cup.” We particularly enjoyed the unit on cow poop.

We also got a nice couple to take our picture with a cow (once all the darn kids got out of the way) and then forced them to let us take their picture with it in return.  (This is on their camera.  You don’t get to see it.)

Next stop was the real U-505 submarine that was captured from the Nazis in 1944.  (U stands for Unterseeboot, AKA undersea boat.)  U-boats were primarily used against Allied merchant ships bringing war supplies across the Atlantic to Britain.  You can, for a fee, go inside the submarine, but we just opted for the free outside info. There was still plenty to check out.

Next we went in search of the fairy castle, which we thought would be fun and awesome and pretty, but was really just a big creepy dollhouse full of weirdly ornate furniture and real jewels with a creepy voiceover playing through weird little telephones.  It was weird.  And creepy.  We finally hit up Molly’s must-see, which was the baby chick hatchery.  I was kind of freaked out at first because there were three freshly-hatched chicks that were all slimy and pink lying prone on the floor of the incubator, and I thought they had all died.  They were, however, just getting used to being chickens, and eventually hoisted themselves up and tottered around.

 Apparently, once they get less terrifying, they are promoted to the cute-chick case, where they run around and peck little bits of hay off of each other or sit in a fluff clump. 

We did some other stuff too, and missed a TON.  (Which, we learned in the coal mine, is 2,000 pounds.  Okay - we already knew that one.) Unless you are some sort of learning-cheetah, it’s impossible to get through everything in one visit.  But, we still saw a lot of awesome stuff.  You might say we came to the museum as newborn chicks, addled and slimy, and left perky, adorable, and fluffy with knowledge.