Prison Break Terror

I don't know how you are, but when I watch series there is always a piece of me thinking things are a bit unrealistic. The villain always seems too easily caught and the hero too savvy, or, in possible contradiction, the criminal is unbelievably successful in his ambitions while the  law enforcers make every blunder in the book depending on the angle of the story. But after reading the news tonight, I'll put a little more stock in the probabilities of some television. The news is probably the inspiration behind many scripts.

It appears that a murder convict escaped a prison in Illinois by choking the security guard on duty to death, dressing up in his clothes and escaping with his SUV. Sounds a bit too close to Prison Break starring Wentworth Miller. There was a possible breech of security from the inmate's aunt who used to work as a corrections officer as well as an error during lock down that allowed the prison break to take place. Some are also blaming the escape and concurring murder on staff cuts made state wide due to budget cuts. Whatever the case, there were a lot of things that took place at just the right time that allowed twenty-three year old Kamron Taylor to bust out. Thankfully, the police were intuitive enough to follow a lead in Chicago's South Side and picked him up after only three days. He did not escape to Panama, but is instead awaiting gun charges as they caught him with a loaded weapon.

The Chicagoans and Modernity

Are Chicagoans reluctant to modernity? That would truly be paradoxical given the story of the city as it was the first modern urban industrialized city in the country's history. Nowadays, the city is even widely identified with one masterpiece of modern art and architecture: The Cloud Gate. 

Located on top of Park Grill, between the Lake Michigan and the Loop, it is a 42 feet high sculpture made up of 168 stainless steel plates reflecting and distorting the city's skyline. Anish Kapoor, the British artist who designed it, is one of the most prominent contemporary artist of the last decade. His goal with the Cloud Gate was to remove the trace of the signature of the artist as well as any trace of its fabrication in order to make the sculpture seem as though it was "perfect" and ready-made. 

This artistic process contrasts with another major piece of contemporary art which has left its mark on Chicago's landscape and which stands not far from the Cloud Gate. Before the erection of the Cloud Gate in 2006, Chicago was indeed well-known for the Jay Pritzker Pavilion designed by the famous Canadian architect Frank Gehry. The Chicago Tribune had dubbed Gehry "the hottest architect of the universe" for his acclaimed Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao. The pavilion is a monumental bandshell erected in Millenium Park. It is constituted of the former banshell structure amounted by a monumental roof. Then a trellis consisting of a cross-stitched sweep of curving steel pipes stretches across the entire width of the seating and lawn areas. It's an architectural design which volontarily displays its structure in order to create proximity with the spectators. Even though it was designed as a piece of architecture it is considered as a major piece of art. It transcribes Gehry's vision of architecture: buildings should be humanized so that the individual can recognize itself in the hostile world of the massive industrialized city.  
 

It seems like Chicago is truly the city of artistic openmindedness and audacity. However, that statement wouldn't take into acount the way the Chicagoans reacted to those pieces of art. When the Cloud Gate was revealed in 2006, many Chicagoans were highly critical and dismissed the unfinished 'Bean' as a piece of metal. But the public quickly changed its meaning from pejorative to loving to such an extent that they stopped praizing the Jay pritzker pavilion, which was considered until then as the architectural achievement that would move Chicago into the new millenium. 

I wonder what were the reactions when the first skyscraper was erected. 

But after all, it seems like a normal reaction! Didn't the parisians reacted this way after the construction of the eiffel tower?

The Windy City

The Windy City is perhaps Chicago's most famous nickname, and we immediately suppose it refers to the tremendous gusts that are channeled through the city's skyscrapers off of Lake Michigan . The city has become increasingly windy due to the enormous amounts of high-rise buildings built along the shore of the Great Lake. However, the name was coined long before the building projects began.

In the 1870's the editor of the New York Sun, Dana, coined the word in reference to Chicago politicians who would talk up their city much to chagrin of rival cities such as New York. Their bragging was considered just a bunch of empty wind, nothing but hot air. The nickname stuck, though the reasoning disappeared. Probably, visitors saw that the city did indeed live up to the hype and it wasn't just some politician's grandiose windbag.

The Chicago Loop

To me the Chicago Loop was always the portion of Interstate-94 encircling the innermost hub of central Chicago. A place where all major freeways in the Midwest intersect. A dreaded place to sit for up to three hours in traffic jams.  When I looked it up though, there was a more technical definition for the tag. A quick check online showed me that in reality it was more than just the semi-circular boundary around a portion of the city.

There are seventy-seven districts in Chicago; the Loop being the financial and commercial district in the center of the downtown. It also includes the center of government with the Civic Center. The name the Loop originated from the looping route of the cable between the streets Wabash and Adams and again between Wells and Lake. The cable car has now been replaced with an elevated railway which greets shoppers with a deafening roar when they step out of Chicago's original and famed Marshall Fields Department store between Wabash and State St.

Got U-Boat?

There are numerous amazing museum's the world over, but who can boast a museum containing an entire U-boat and a life-size re-enactment of the history behind its capture and technology? Well, Chicago, of course!

The U-505, captured during WWII by a Navy crew on the USS Chatelain headed by Daniel V. Gallery, is today located in the Museum of Science and Industry along Chicago's lake front thanks to a donation in 1954. Getting it into the museum is a whole story of its own.

The German submarine was captured just off the coast of West Africa where it was lurking in hopes of catching some unaware allied ships. Incidentally, it was the U-505 that was surprised on June 4, 1944. The capture of the submarine remained top secret for the remainder of the war as the Allies wanted to retain the upper-hand gained from the technology that was captured on the boat. Along with codes, there was an Enigma and other secrets that aided the Allies in their victory.

A movie is said to be in production recounting the story of the U-505's capture -- Playing with the Enemy.

Melting Pot

With significant populations originating from all continents, Chicago is one of the world's outstanding "melting pot" cities.

Chicago's population tripled between 1870 and 1900 due to its rapid economic and industrial growth. This population boom was largely fueled by immigrants from Eastern Europe, namely Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Germany and Ireland were also major sources of immigration around this time.

Today, Chicago is home to large communities from Ireland, Italy, Poland, Mexico, India, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Ukraine, Greece, Vietnam, Slovakia, Russia, Korea, Pakistan, Israel, Assyria, and Romania.

Many of these ethnic groups have gathered in large numbers within certain sections of the city and its suburbs creating enclaves of the cultural influence of their home countries. The color coded map based on 2010 census results gives an example of various racial concentrations in and around Chicago.

Pizza!

We mentioned Chicago hot dogs in an earlier post, and feel its only fair to give equal attention to Chicago pizza. Different from all other pizzas and developed in Chicago, Chicago deep-dish pizza could easily be the signature dish of the city. Of course, Chicago's thin-crust pizza has its own following which would argue the point vehemently. Either way, the two pizzas are true Chicago food. We'll introduce both -- can't say unbiasedly -- and let the chips fall where they may.

Deep-dish.
Deep-dish pizza is just that -- deeply satisfying. We don't know exactly how it got here, but we love it. More of a tart than a pizza per se, the deep-dish has a dough shaped like a tart shell and is filled with cheeses, meats and veggies to the customers liking and then baked with the sauce on top. Be warned this is not finger food!

Thin-crust.
The thin-crust, as the name implies is a pizza with a really thin crust. The pizza sauce is a bit spicy normally and the pizza is cut into squares rather than wedges. Where  the deep-dish leaves you feeling like you've had a three course meal, the thin-crust has more of a tapa feel to it, something you'd munch on between beers.