Home Sweet Home, Chicago

I admit it, we now live in the sub­urbs. We lived in the city for many, many years and loved it, but our jobs changed and we started the reverse com­mute process. Then kids entered the pic­ture, and it seemed point­less to hold out any longer. We suc­cumbed and moved to the sub­urbs. It was closer to work, and more grass and open space for the kids we told our­selves. We’re still wait­ing for the day we move back into the city, because our hearts are still in Chicago.

Our kids love hear­ing sto­ries about liv­ing in Chicago. The older they get, the more they want to know about it, and the more inter­est­ing it is to go back to visit some of these places. This was the gen­eral idea this year for our anniver­sary, a day of memories.

On a nice day in May, we headed into the city to do some sight­see­ing. The idea was to spend lit­tle money and revisit old haunts and rekin­dle old mem­o­ries, not to visit the muse­ums. Instead, we would visit some of the places we used to go all the time or lived near and loved, and walk our old neighborhood.

We added to the mix a visit to Millennium Park to view the Cloud Gate sculp­ture since this fell into the out­door sight­see­ing cat­e­gory, and it is always a fun time for the kids. Who doesn’t enjoy stand­ing under the “Bean” and wav­ing at your reflec­tion, or mar­veling at the cityscape reflected back at you. Probably more pho­tos are now taken here in the city than any other loca­tion! OK, so this was a stop for me since I like to take pho­tos of our kids here, I admit it, but they go along to humor me anyway.

Millennium Park

Of course, we didn’t find nearby park­ing, and ended up park­ing some dis­tance away, near the Swiss Hotel. It proved to be a bit of a hike, but that was the idea for the day, no set sched­ule, just walk­ing. We set off along Columbus Drive, which ran under­neath Wacker Drive, ready for any­thing, when we walked right into the mid­dle of a film set!

The police were stop­ping all cars and mon­i­tor­ing the foot traf­fic. We had visions of a Dark Knight sequel being filmed, but it turned out they were film­ing a car com­mer­cial. We hung around like tourists just out of cam­era view and watched the car slowly cir­cling the drive with a huge cam­era mounted to the hood.

We couldn’t fig­ure out how the dri­ver could even see, let alone avoid hit­ting a cement sup­port beam. After all, we’d seen many peo­ple do that dur­ing a nor­mal day’s com­mute! We tried to pay atten­tion to the make and model of the car so we could watch for the com­mer­cial later and be able to say we saw it being made.

Even though the car was mov­ing so slow, I’m sure the com­mer­cial ended up look­ing like it was mov­ing at the speed of light. Though we haven’t rec­og­nized the com­mer­cial yet, and prob­a­bly won’t ever see it, the expe­ri­ence was fun and enlight­en­ing for the kids. Where else but Chicago can you walk into the mid­dle of a com­mer­cial being filmed? Chalk one up for the day of adven­ture, off to a good start!

As a con­ces­sion to me, since I love gar­dens, the fam­ily headed into Millennium Park by way of Lurie Garden. The gar­den was beau­ti­ful in May, with many things still in bloom. This year was a bit of a late sea­son with spring plants still going strong in parts of the area due to the cool weather we expe­ri­enced all sum­mer. On this day, the birds were espe­cially chirpy, mak­ing for a relax­ing, peace­ful walk. Even the kids slowed down.

We mean­dered our way past the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and mar­veled at all the peo­ple just hang­ing out on the grass enjoy­ing the day. We decided that the next time we vis­ited, we’d most def­i­nitely bring a pic­nic lunch to enjoy on the lawn. There were no per­for­mances the day of our visit, but the kids agreed we should try to come to one here some­time in the future. It would be petty awe­some to lay back on your quilt and lis­ten to the symphony.

We took our time, and even­tu­ally made it to the Cloud Gate sculp­ture, more affec­tion­ately known as “the Bean” because of it’s bean-like shape. I never get tired of pho­tos here. Of course I take pho­tos every­where, but who doesn’t love to stand around dif­fer­ent sides of the Bean, find­ing your reflec­tion in the crowds? Or tak­ing pho­tos with the cityscape reflected in an angle around you? Or tak­ing a pic­ture of your kids jump­ing up to touch the under­side of the bean with their hair fly­ing all around? It’s just fun, and by the num­ber of peo­ple who joined us, oth­ers agreed. Tourists and res­i­dents alike fell under its spell, and we were hap­pily part of the group.

We spent a lit­tle time hav­ing fun: pos­ing with the per­form­ers that were enter­tain­ing the crowds, lay­ing on the ground under the “Bean” mak­ing our­selves look like we were climb­ing it. Just like every­one else, but fun all the same. We were hav­ing a tourist day, so why not act like tourists?

The kids didn’t want to leave the park with­out a last stop at Crown Fountain. Crown Fountain is inter­ac­tive art, foun­tain and splash park all rolled into one, done up in a way that could only be pulled off in Chicago. The kids fig­ured if we still lived in Chicago, they would be down at the foun­tain to play in the splash area all the time, and it was fun for them to see all the kids get­ting wet. We thought about run­ning through, but changed our minds when we got there. It was a pretty chilly day, and the mist was already mak­ing us cold. Maybe next time.

Eventually, we made our way back to the car. I felt like it was get­ting colder as we walked. The wind was def­i­nitely pick­ing up off nearby Lake Michigan and, as I men­tioned this, the kids, with their dry sense of humor, felt com­pelled to remind me that “this is the ‘Windy City’ you know!” They both shook their heads as if I were a bit daft, it was all so obvi­ous to them!

We fol­lowed the same path back to the car and you would never have known there had been a com­mer­cial being filmed just a cou­ple of hours ear­lier. All traces were gone. It was amaz­ing that they just packed up and moved on with no vis­i­ble evidence.

Lakeview and Wrigley Field

For the next part of our day, we headed north to the Lakeview neigh­bor­hood where we once lived. Lakeview is in the Wrigley Field area, but luck­ily the Cubs weren’t play­ing at home. It’s not that we don’t enjoy a game day crowd, but not when we’re try­ing to drive through the area. Cubs fans tend to wan­der out into the roads with their beer in hand at times, mak­ing the dri­ving a bit more chal­leng­ing. We would often find our­selves mut­ter­ing under our breath “Hello! Did you for­get you’re in a major city? Get out of the road!”

We did a dri­ving tour around the ball­park to show the kids where the Cubs played and were once again amazed that the field sits right in the mid­dle of a vibrant city neigh­bor­hood. We mar­veled at the fact that when we lived in the neigh­bor­hood, we didn’t really fol­low sports too much, even though we lived so close to Wrigley Field. Now that we live fur­ther away we only get to watch the games on TV, and pine for the days when we could have walked to Wrigley for all the day games we wanted.

We headed over to Belmont Avenue, near Roscoe Village, where our last house in the city was. This area had really changed in the past ten years. A lot of the houses and build­ings have been con­verted into con­dos. Our old house was even torn down and was now a three flat brown­stone. Wow, if we had stayed would we have done the same or would we still be liv­ing in the old Victorian house tucked between a school and a busi­ness? Who knows, it was a great loca­tion. The rest of the road was now pretty well gen­tri­fied, and looked nice.

Uncle Fun, Robot City and Leona’s

Some of the same busi­nesses were still here, and a lot of new ones were tak­ing root. Time moves on. We decided to take the kids to one busi­ness that will prob­a­bly always be here, and is def­i­nitely worth the trip if you like some­thing a bit quirky: Uncle Fun! Anyone who can’t find some­thing to tickle their fan­cies here, well, you get the idea. Uncle Fun’s is a car­ni­val of a store. The kid’s eyes lit up the sec­ond they entered the store. Cries of “Oh wow, look at this! We found old Star Wars trad­ing cards!” echoed out of our kids’ mouths as they stum­bled across one of a kind post­cards to send peo­ple and use­less plas­tic ani­mals to keep in their pock­ets. “They’re just cool, mom,” I was told. They had a hard time choos­ing just a cou­ple of things, so we escaped by promis­ing a future trip. They are work­ing on their lists for next time. I’m sure you will be too…

Time goes fast when you spend the day rem­i­nisc­ing. The day had been good so far, and we had done quite a bit of walk­ing. We unan­i­mously agreed that the time for food had arrived! We decided to take the kids to an old neigh­bor­hood spot that was a tra­di­tion for us, Leona’s! Yum. Leona’s is located on Sheffield Avenue, just north of Belmont. This is one to try if you are in the area. Probably every­one who lives nearby has been here more times than they can count, whether they admit it or not. It is still a fam­ily friendly Italian restau­rant with good, inex­pen­sive food. The ser­vice is fast and friendly, and the por­tions are large and fill­ing. Their sig­na­ture dish is lasagna, and you have a lot of vari­eties to choose from. Luckily for me, lasagna is one of my favorite dishes! Our kids will always eat pasta or pizza, so we all found some­thing we liked on the menu. I swear, this cost us less than some of the local places in the sub­urbs for a fam­ily of four, and we still ended up tak­ing home left­overs for a cou­ple of meals.

As we walked out into the late after­noon sun, caught in clutches of a won­der­ful food coma, we saw a new store across the street: Robot City. Robots? The kids love robots! So does my hus­band, so we decided to give it a try. As we walked in, we were over­whelmed by all the crazy robot stuff! It was just as adver­tised, a store brim­ming with robots and robot­ics related books, kits and toys. The store was full of robot­ics and elec­tron­ics kits you could take home and build on your own. The kits did all sorts of things: lights with cir­cuit boards; motion detec­tors; sound detec­tors; and, well, you get the idea. As I’m the mother of two boys,  this was excep­tion­ally fun for them. It was hard to choose only one item apiece, but in the end we man­aged it. I left with some brochures about robot build­ing classes, which the kids wanted to sign up for on the spot. “Mom has to plan a bit more than that,” I explained. “this isn’t just right next door to us any­more,” I said, with more than a lit­tle hint of sad­ness in my voice, I’m sure.

Out of the kids mouths came “we like this neigh­bor­hood! It was fun!” and “we could live here again!”

Winding Down

Our day trip came to an end as we made our way out to the inter­state and headed back home. Our day of activ­i­ties, while fun, was just a glimpse of what’s around. When our kids get to be a bit older, we’ll be sure to check out The Alley store, another neigh­bor­hood land­mark that seemed to have grown to cover an entire city block; as well as all the cloth­ing stores, music shops and count­less restau­rants we used to fre­quent. Wait, they prob­a­bly won’t want mom and dad along by then, but who knows? I can hope, can’t I?

Additional Chicago Resources

For more pho­tos of our day trip to Chicago, see the Gallery.

maps.cityofchicago.org
www.explorechicago.org

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