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Last full day in Chicago
Sep. 6th, 2012 02:48 pmFlying back tomorrow, so I'd better start packing in a minute. Although I probably have enough time tomorrow morning as checkout time isn't till noon.
I ended up at the Chicago History museum yesterday. One gallery was of famous Chicago disasters. I knew of the great fire of 1871, the gangland killings including the Valentine's day massacre in the twenties, and I vaguely remember the 1968 Democratic convention riots. I had not heard of the Haymarket affair, which followed a dynamite bomb being thrown at police during a May Day demonstration in 1886. There was also the Eastland disaster in 1915, when a tour ship overturned in the Chicago river with the loss of 844 lives. Not as well known as the General Slocum disaster when a ship caught fire in New York in 1904. That happened the day before James Joyce's Ulysses is set and is mentioned there a couple of times. And there were the race riots of 1919 that started when a negro youth swam across an invisible line in the water in Lake Michigan segregating black and white areas. Someone threw a stone at him and he drowned.
Another part of the history of Chicago had relevance to something that happened earlier in my holiday. The Independent crossword is available online and Monday last week, still recovering from jetlag, I had a go at that day's puzzle. Turned out that it had a theme of the War of 1812. I commented on the coincidence for me on a crossword solver's blog on the occasion. It was only after seeing an exhibit yesterday that I recalled that Fort Dearborn was captured and destroyed by Indians fighting on the British side in that war. The site of the fort is marked out in the pavement just a couple of blocks from the Hyatt Regency hotel in which I'm staying.
Incidentally, this hotel, the site of the two previous Chicons I've been to, is comfortable enough. (The convention centre itself is underneath the hotel.) But this room is rather gloomy. My room faces south, but there's another tall building across the street. The other tower of the hotel is to the east and there are a couple of tall building to the south of that. I can just see the lake in a gap between these. I was writing postcards in the room this morning and around eleven o'clock the sun shone into the room directly for the first time I'd noticed since I got here, and that for about ten minutes.
I've had enough museums now. I did wander around looking in shops just now but there's nothing I want to buy, certainly not books. And there don't seem to be any DVD or CD shops around any more. So I'm going to crash until time for dinner.
A few observations:
There is a chain of restaurants around here called Wow Bao. Their advertising slogan is "Hot Asian buns". I think I've seen websites offering those, as well.
There was a bar I passed with the slogan, "The home of Badger football." That sounds cruel.
There was a guy begging on Michigan Avenue yesterday, just the other side of the river from the hotel. He was a young guy and he had a sign scrawled on a piece of cardboard: "Parents killed by pigeons. I'm saving for a BB gun."
I ended up at the Chicago History museum yesterday. One gallery was of famous Chicago disasters. I knew of the great fire of 1871, the gangland killings including the Valentine's day massacre in the twenties, and I vaguely remember the 1968 Democratic convention riots. I had not heard of the Haymarket affair, which followed a dynamite bomb being thrown at police during a May Day demonstration in 1886. There was also the Eastland disaster in 1915, when a tour ship overturned in the Chicago river with the loss of 844 lives. Not as well known as the General Slocum disaster when a ship caught fire in New York in 1904. That happened the day before James Joyce's Ulysses is set and is mentioned there a couple of times. And there were the race riots of 1919 that started when a negro youth swam across an invisible line in the water in Lake Michigan segregating black and white areas. Someone threw a stone at him and he drowned.
Another part of the history of Chicago had relevance to something that happened earlier in my holiday. The Independent crossword is available online and Monday last week, still recovering from jetlag, I had a go at that day's puzzle. Turned out that it had a theme of the War of 1812. I commented on the coincidence for me on a crossword solver's blog on the occasion. It was only after seeing an exhibit yesterday that I recalled that Fort Dearborn was captured and destroyed by Indians fighting on the British side in that war. The site of the fort is marked out in the pavement just a couple of blocks from the Hyatt Regency hotel in which I'm staying.
Incidentally, this hotel, the site of the two previous Chicons I've been to, is comfortable enough. (The convention centre itself is underneath the hotel.) But this room is rather gloomy. My room faces south, but there's another tall building across the street. The other tower of the hotel is to the east and there are a couple of tall building to the south of that. I can just see the lake in a gap between these. I was writing postcards in the room this morning and around eleven o'clock the sun shone into the room directly for the first time I'd noticed since I got here, and that for about ten minutes.
I've had enough museums now. I did wander around looking in shops just now but there's nothing I want to buy, certainly not books. And there don't seem to be any DVD or CD shops around any more. So I'm going to crash until time for dinner.
A few observations:
There is a chain of restaurants around here called Wow Bao. Their advertising slogan is "Hot Asian buns". I think I've seen websites offering those, as well.
There was a bar I passed with the slogan, "The home of Badger football." That sounds cruel.
There was a guy begging on Michigan Avenue yesterday, just the other side of the river from the hotel. He was a young guy and he had a sign scrawled on a piece of cardboard: "Parents killed by pigeons. I'm saving for a BB gun."
