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Posts tagged ‘chicago’

Sep 5

46 Comments

The City and Its Tower

This is the first post of seven, each a response to Kate Shrewsday’s request for an itinerary of MTM’s Seven Architectural Wonders. Each text post has a corollary visual post; the text and image posts will alternate between the blogs of Kate Shrewsday and the Andra Watkins. Since I am no longer a paid pedant, I will try to make these as entertaining and enlightening as possible in 600 words or less. One ground rule: I cannot include a work of architecture I have not experienced directly and personally, just as one’s list of Great Books should not include a book one hasn’t yet read.

To read the text of the first post “The City and Its Tower” please click here!

The Accidental Cootchie Mama presents the first of MTM’s Seven Architectural Wonders

Trivia Question: Which costs more, four F-16Cs or the John Hancock Center?

Raise a toast

Aug 31

16 Comments

Once in a Blue Moon (a guest post by MTM)

If you haven’t made it out to gaze at the Blue Moon, let this post inspire you.

Every day we live passes methodically and in most cases unremarkably. Sure, there are the landmark dates; the birthdays, the anniversaries, the varied special or Hallmark dates that we feel inspired or compelled to take note of. May 22, 1997 was not one of those ‘important’ dates. Maybe its significance came as it marked the transition when the warmth of the Spring day finally triumphed and carried over into the night.

It was the night that I remember. I was living in one of a long string of easy sublets that I habituated in my time in Chicago; this one was a three-month stint in a three-lobed tower at the south end of the Loop. Restless and rootless, I went to see a film–don’t recall what film–at the Fine Arts Theater in the old Studebaker Building on Michigan Avenue. Afterwards I found myself wandering about the city, a flaneur with the flat patois of the upper midwest.

I recall seeing a girl waiting to cross the street. In the bright moonlight she struck me as cute, at least from my distance. The light changed and she crossed. For a moment I thought of following her. But I didn’t; then she was gone. I headed off into Grant Park, eluding the aim of Bowman and Spearman, the two Indian Warriors that guard the entrance on Congress Ave. Once ensconced in the darkness of the park, the soundtrack of the night rose in my ears.

I knew this was more than a simple full moon; in honor of the occasion, the haunting sound of the Cowboy Junkies‘ “Blue Moon Revisited” had been echoing off the bare walls in my apartment earlier that night.  Now, shrouded in the lonesome night, I was no longer listening to it. It was speaking to me. Painfully.

Who was it that caught my eye that night, then disappeared? Was the girl even real? All I know is that when I saw her again, five years later at a little cafe in Charleston, I did not hesitate.

 

Aug 31

33 Comments

Exhibitionism and a Dark Alley

He wore a Chicago Blues Fest t-shirt. Grant Park, it read. It was red, white and blue. Out of place on a day like that day. Yet, he followed me, pushing his stroller laden with his little girl sporting red shoes and the pink shirt that proclaimed she was a ‘Girly’ on the back.

I found some random graffiti, and I wanted to take a quick photo while MTM paid our tab and my friend Alison went to the facilities in our hip-and-cool Sao Paulo spot. So, I snuck around the corner for a quickie. At least, I thought it would be a quickie. The man in the Chicago shirt changed all that.

“There’s more. Around the corner. To the right.” He spoke slowly, his native Portuguese making certain I understood his faltering English before he left me. He directed me to an artistic wonderland of graffiti, though I didn’t know it then. Really, I didn’t thank him properly for following me, because he evaporated too soon.

We wandered along a cobbled street and turned the corner as instructed. The street opened into an outdoor gallery, street art that went on and on and on. It was gorgeous. Colorful. Illicit. Almost like the photos Liz Duren snapped of me on the eve of my fortieth birthday. She picked the location, and it was also a riot of graffiti.

Perfect for me. Both of these places, covered in color. How did he know I would love it? Why did he follow me?

Have you ever taken a wrong turn and found a riot of art?

This post is the fifth installment in the series Eye of the Beholder, my wandering observations about works of art that speak to me. If this is your first visit to the series, please click here to catch up on the first post, go here for the second, here for the third and here for the fourth.

Jun 29

18 Comments

And The Winner of the Urinary Extravaganza Is…..

MJ Monaghan, a blogger in California. Yesterday, he guessed the correct location of the Number 1 Tinkle.

The Signature Lounge at the John Hancock Center in Chicago.

For his Googling and guessing abilities, MJ has won a 3D puzzle of the John Hancock Center.

From eBay.

Congratulations, MJ Monaghan. Please message me with your address so that I can get your architecturally inclined prize to you.

Check out MJ’s blog by clicking here. He is the master of info-tainment.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

Jun 28

31 Comments

No. 1 Tinkle: Signature Lounge at John Hancock Center Chicago

A bar was the inspiration for this wacky series, and a bar will finish it. We were in Chicago for MTM to reconnect with Hanno Weber, one of his architecture mentors. Hanno and his partner, Kathleen Hess, invited us to their apartment for dinner on our last night in the city.

But, WHY do we have to go to a crummy old apartment to eat? I’d rather go stand in line at Frontera Grill.

Their apartment is in a Mies building, Andra. You HAVE to see it.

Why? WHY? His buildings all look the same. A bunch of tall glass and steel. You’ve dragged me to almost all of them while we’ve been here, and I’ve had a hard time differentiating one from the rest of them.

*Sigh*

The doorman directed us to the correct floor in the Mies building on Lake Shore Drive. It was like popping popcorn between my ears  as we ascended in the elevator. I gritted my teeth and hoped I would get to utter one sentence during a dinner party with three design people. It had the potential to drag on for hours. And HOURS.

I ended up highjacking the whole conversation with my boorish charm, lecturing Hanno about the perils of not running an architecture practice like a business for most of dinner. We volleyed back and forth with heated fervor. At the end of the evening, he smiled at MTM and proclaimed that he liked me.

Kathleen insisted that if we did nothing else in the time we had left, we had to visit the bar atop the John Hancock Center. Because you MUST visit the bathroom.

?

The building was a short walk from their apartment. More popping ears, and we were dumped into the Signature Lounge, a packed establishment with the Chicago skyline twinkling everywhere we looked.

I’m going to the bathroom.

Now? Andra, we just got here. You haven’t even had a drink yet.

Just order me anything. I’ll be right back.

I pushed open a door to the ladies room and staggered. While the bar was teeming with people jostling for a chance at a window seat, the bathroom was empty. AND IT HAD THE SAME SHIMMERING CITY VIEW. Finally, a drinking spot that understood the relationship between bar and toilet, moving the patron from raucous activity to a private, quiet view. I was tempted to leave the stall door open while I tinkled, just to take it all in. I was gone so long that MTM thought I had flushed myself down the toilet.

It was tempting to stay in a place where they really know how to treat a girl who’s gotta go.

This post is part of the series My Top 10 Tinkles. If this is your first visit to this urinary extravaganza, please click here to start the series at the beginning. Thank you for reading my blog, for sharing it, and for spending time here.

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