Little Toy Robot

Last post for a while…

Full Dark House, by Christopher Fowler
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami
Gateways, by F. Paul Wilson
River of Shadows (nonfiction), by Rebecca Solnit
The Catcher Was a Spy (nonfiction), by Nicholas Dawidoff
The Memory Artists, by Jeffrey Moore
Nine Innings (nonfiction), by Daniel Okrent

There’s a street in Chicago called Maxwell Street. It’s not far from where I live. It has a history of being a gateway community for recent American immigrants, like Manhattan’s Lower East Side on a much smaller scale, and it was also a center for the Chicago blues scene.

And now the famous Maxwell Street Market has been relocated a few blocks away, and the whole area where Maxwell crosses Halsted, just south of Roosevelt, is being redeveloped under the name University Village Marketplace as UIC grows.

Sounds pretty interesting. Having read about it last month, I decided to hop in the robomobile and pay it a visit (it’s way too cold out to walk even to the bus stop if you don’t have to).

On-street parking looked pretty hit-or-miss but I noticed that the ticket collection mechanism wasn’t working in the parking garage, so I parked there for a few hours for free. Not sure if that was legal.

I went to Barbara’s Bookstore, which is pretty big and well stocked for an independent bookstore (it’s the flagship for the small chain). It had a nice selection of graphic novels and manga, literary fiction, and magazines, in addition to the bestsellers that independent stores are forced to carry to compete with the big chains.

Then I went to Quizno’s for a toasty sub and had a cup of coffee at Caribou. I was going to check out Hashbrowns, the breakfast place, but it was crowded. I noticed a sports bar, a swanky sushi restaurant, and a handful of other places in various states of completion. It looks like it will be a great little area for students on the fringes of the University, and a few statues and plaques pay homage to the neighborhood’s quickly vanishing history.

Understandably, for some people that isn’t enough. There’s a Preserve Maxwell Street site and one that aims to Save Maxwell Street’s Heritage (which is the source of these photos). I was intrigued enough to want to read a little more and pay a few more visits to the area. But I’ll wait until it’s a little warmer out.

Email me at roboball -at- gmail -dot- com if you’re interested in joining an all-blogger fantasy baseball league!

Some details if you’re interested after the break.
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First, gossip columnist Cindy Adams slams Chicago in the NY Post:

EXCUUUUSE me? I read in last week’s paper that The Second City - Chicago - is now calling itself the Number One City in America. Chicago, that toddlin’ town, The First City?

Excuuuuse me? Take away Al Capone, the Merchandise Mart, O’Hare and Sinatra’s favorite song and what have you got? A nice little gritty city that has decent beef, a few tolerable restaurants, some OK hotels, the stockyards and The Loop. But let us all calm ourselves . . . New York it’s not.

Now comes the rebuttal by Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. Although my heart is still in NYC, my body and my job are in Chicago, and based on the strength of these two pieces alone, the score is Chicago 1, New York 0.

Adams calls us a “deprived lot” after posing these questions: “Do you have New York cheesecake? New York sirloin? New York bagels? New York water? New York Post? New York attitude?”

The correct answers: Don’t need it; yes; yes; don’t need it; no thanks; and God, no.

Update: This response is even better. Chicago 2, New York 0! [via GB]

I wasn’t sure if Jenny Lewis, without her band Rilo Kiley, could produce an album as good as 2004’s More Adventurous. With Rabbit Fur Coat, she has. Lewis must be easy to fall in love with: she has a sweet, urgent voice and the looks and lips to go with it. But all that aside, she could sing her way out of a traffic jam. This latest album turns the volume down a little bit, which only serves to highlight her voice, which is backed the Watson Twins.

Every single interview with Lewis mentions her affinity for country music, but that’s just an easy observation for an album that’s full of acoustic and slide guitars, and three-part harmonies. Lewis doesn’t break any new ground, but she delivers solid, catchy pop songs that don’t need any sort of apology.

Highlights for me include “Born Secular,” a sort of gospel number that doesn’t go, musically, where you think it’s going to go, and “Happy,” which I think is Lewis’ most heartwrenching vocal performance yet. But like I said, the whole album is consistently good. The only dud is the cover of the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care,” which suffers for some sub-par vocal contributions from the likes of Ben Gibbard and Connor Oberst.

This the time of year when I let out a big sigh and start to climb out of a season-long depression. That’s right, football season is over. Baseball season begins in under two weeks. On 9 am on 2/15, pitchers and catchers start reporting to team spring training facilities across the warm states in America. And finally, the world is right again.