Hood August 24, 2010

 
self-portrait Tuesday
*********************************

Borrowing from the concept of one being a product of one’s environment, here’s a walk through my neighborhood…

The Lunch Hour – All Around The Block
Start: WOW Bao, 200 N. State

Having a whole hour in the middle of the day to take a food break is a rarity for me! I usually am out on assignment and livin’ the grab-n-go lifestyle. But this day, there was no eating behind the wheel.

Instead? A nice little sit-down lunch at the neighborhood WOW Bao! This is cool new-age fast-food kind of place, with Chinese steamed buns (BAO), potstickers and different rice bowls. What makes it even nicer is the patio — right out there on the sidewalk. On a glorious day like this one, it is very much fun to have a quick thai curry chicken rice bowl and enjoy the view…

And, as luck would have it, I was sitting just a few feet away from the end of the Flip Book for the Eye & Cardinal street art installation on the south end of the Loop, in Pritzker Park!

The Cardinal is a series of 156 photo-banners hanging from the lamp posts along State St in a series, that when driven, morphs into a bird flying along the route. Here is the blue sky the bird flies in and it tickled me to see that my view that day also included, between other high-rises, a slice of the Hancock Building in the distance over the river forming a triage of narrow rectangles. What a perfectly matching blue in all of the skies I saw.

After a quick nosh, it was time to go fetch my knitting from my car in the parking garage around the corner on Wabash. And wow, there was really something going on there!

Stop #3: TRANSFORMERS 3, the Movie, in a lot next to Gold Coast Dogs (the #1 Dog in Chicago!)
159 N. Wabash

Now these guys have been here, well, it seems like all year! (See Flickr Photo Pool) But this day, they were right across from where I park, on a rather skeevy block of Wabash. Being on the third floor of the garage, I had a bird’s eyeful of some kind of Urban dust-up in an lot across the street.

It was full of all kinds of Styrofoam concrete: pieces of plastic road, burnt-out cars and flamed-out sheds. Most excellent chicanery! I tried to get a picture of it when parts of it were burning, but they turned off the fire and had a confab with the actors (Shia LeBeouf and Josh Duhamel) and thus

Too much action for me! I wanted to grab a little down-time with the needles and headed over to a nearby bookshop. They have a coffee cafe that looks over State street and it’s a dreamy little spot for a stitch break.

But that wasn’t meant to be:

Stop #3: Borders Books, corner of State & Randolph

Going on right at the time I walked off the escalator, was a book signing by Zakk Wylde, lead singer of the Black Label Society (and former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne). The place was full of fans, all ready to worship at the altar of Heavy Mehtel, where head scarfaage is de rigueur and manly beards prevail! You could cut the testosterone with a knife, my friends.

And it became my civic duty, for the remaining minutes of my lunch, to lean against the bookcase nearby, pull out my needles and knit to the music…