Eastern Market Is Back Open!

Capitol Hill's Eastern Market was closed for two years because of a fire in 2007. There was a temporary structure (pictured below) set up across the street that housed businesses while the central structure was being rebuilt:



Market Lunch in the temporary Eastern Market tent:



Last month, the main building reopened, and it was packed when we visited last weekend. The refurbished building is impressive, but the wait for blue bucks (blueberry buckwheat pancakes) at Market Lunch has gone from about 15-20 minutes to over an hour.

Marina City Towers

Marina Towers, originally uploaded by Nat Hansen.

According to The Architecture of Parking, getting to a parking space on the 19th level of one of the Marina City Towers parking garages requires driving one kilometer each way up and down, "perilously close to a precipitous edge, steering wheel in a fixed lock" (p.225).

The parking structure, and the possibility of driving your car off the side and into the Chicago River, is on display in this clip from Steve McQueen's The Hunter.

Crane

Melody's new office is roughly on the same level as the crane operator's cockpit.

June BBQ

Jay & Christa grilled with us last night.

Z & H

(Pictured above: the Melody breakfast sandwich, consisting of corned beef, swiss cheese and egg on french bread.)

The best thing to happen to Hyde Park since the re-opening of Hyde Park Produce in the former 53rd Street Co-Op is the arrival of Z&H on 47th street. First off, its the only place to get Clover coffee on the south side. Second, Everything that we get there is good: sandwiches, cookies, coffee, root beer, cheese, ice cream, cereal, scones, etc. I got a scone from Z&H that was so good that eating it immobilized me while my cat escaped from the apartment and jumped on the neighbor's roof, where she got stuck. After I finished the scone, I had to climb out and rescue her. Finally, if you go there often enough, the guys who run the place, Sam and Tim, will learn your name and say "hi" when you walk in and "bye" when you leave.

The sandwiches at Z&H are better than those at the fancy sandwich restaurant that just opened in Wicker Park, and they are half as expensive.

Pictured below is the Jackie Treehorn breakfast sandwich: brie and paté on toasted croissant.

Leopold and Loeb

Jay, Christa, Melody and I went on Paul Durica's Leopold and Loeb Pocket Guide to Hell tour of Woodlawn back at the beginning of the month. Paul explained his interests as a mix of "true crime and labor issues" and began the tour with an account of how Leopold and Loeb's murder of Bobby Franks was both very odd, and yet, at the same time, part of a pattern of weird crime taking place in Hyde Park and Woodlawn in 1924, which included bullet-riddled bodies being dumped out of cars on 56th and Kimbark and some poor chap who was kidnapped, anesthetized, castrated, and dumped in a field in south Chicago. Paul then led us on a sightseeing walk that included the carriage house attached to Leopold's mansion, the site of the actual strangulation of Bobby Franks, and the boarded up Franks mansion.

Paul mentioned that in the fall he'll be giving a "secret history of the University of Chicago" tour, which we're looking forward to.


Above: The Harvard school, where Bobby Franks was a student.


Above: Paul describes Leopold's interest in ornithology. Behind him is the Leopold carriage house.


Above: A member of the tour took detailed notes throughout.


Above: The Franks mansion is one of the last surviving buildings associated with the crime.

One big lesson of the tour was that Lepold and Loeb definitely did not pull off anything resembling a "perfect crime". They botched it from the start in a number of ways that seem typical of a couple of grad students (for example, Leopold lost his idiosyncratic and readily-traceable glasses near the spot where they dumped Franks's body).

Philosophy Summer BBQ 2009

End of the year philosophy party in Classics quad.

New York Moving

During my visit to NYC last weekend, I (and a bunch of his friends) helped Wyeth move two vanloads of his stuff from Gowanus to Greenpoint. After the move was finished, we caught our breath up on the roof. Ahzz.

Shakespeare and the Law

A scene from last weekend's Shakespeare and the Law conference at the University of Chicago Law School. In addition to the presentation of academic papers, there was also some acting--in this scene, Judge Posner, playing Polonius, is lying dead off to the left. Martha Nussbaum, playing the queen, is standing next to a student playing Hamlet, and Supreme Court Justice Breyer, who is playing the king's ghost.

Phantasm Street Wars

Upcoming events in Rockingham, NC:

-Outlaw Street Drag
-Phantasm Street Wars
-Cobra Club Lightning Trucks
-Smokeout Bike Rally

Our Literal Speed

Went with some other contemporary art fans to see some of Our Literal Speed, which tried to make art history and criticism into art. The example we saw involved "Rosalind Krauss", "Yve Alain Bois" and others lip-syncing a pre-recorded panel discussion about Picasso and Braque.