my eyes opened. the sun was bright. the night ended. i stretched my legs and stared at the walls for another 45 minutes. sore and confused from the passing of sunshine p., my mouth tasted different. my fingers were longer. uncomfortable in my body. i needed to get out of the house.
the chicago history museum (link!) is free on mondays so i rubbed my eyes clean and brushed my yellowing teeth to go out. didn't have time to pluck the brows but who the fuck cares? under thirty pounds of winter wear, i may as well have had a mustache.
on my walk down lincoln, i found "old town". wikipedia has this to say about it:
many Nations including Potawatomi, Miami and Illinois.[2] Following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, most of the indigenous people were forcibly removed, and the land was then settled in the 1850s by German-Catholic immigrants.
still today, the forced removal of Native peoples living in and around Chicago is jarringly clear in the great city. i didn't come across one Native American while in town. what has the city of chicago done to rectify their racist actions from the 19th century? this is something i will investigate and report back.
wikipedia also tells me that this was the center of the midwest hippie kingdom. ok. sure. lol. all two blocks of it.
please stop buying real christmas trees to decorate and admire for two weeks and then throw out. it's so beyond wasteful. buy the plastic kind. or better yet draw a picture of one and glue photos of dick knipfing on it. it'll preserve the christmas traditions and make the funny funny happen simultaneously. basically, i feel like a piece of shit fake-out green peace advocate right now. let's agree that it wouldn't kill you to tell your mom about fake christmas trees.
now, observe the bed that abraham lincoln died in:
minus the post mortem stains.
just based on their wall color choice and wall font, you'd think the checagou exhibit would be prosaic. it's not bad. it's a little too 9th grade american history textbook-y but they make up for it by being COMPLETELY FREE ON MONDAYS. fair.
it feels so good to say 'beaver' and really mean it.
basically each diorama had a button you could press to hear commonplace chicago sounds from their respective times. my favorite would have been the fiddle song, representative of 1880s party music, except it wasn't long enough or unabashedly loud either. of course, the fiddle song led me to seek out my favorite old west movie song as recreated by zz top in back to the future 3.
this is mark beaubien. he and his wife created the hotel and tavern, sauganash, around 1830, basically inventing chicago's first studio 54 environment complete with overtly erotic facial hair and hoop skirts that would blow your mind. faux-hawk!
photos of immigrant families:
originally i figured it was a poorly attended exhibit but no, it was just the decorations on the hallway to the bathrooms.
there was also a pretty cool exhibit about couture gowns worn by prominent Chicagoan women from the 1860s to about now. the cool part was that it focused on the haute couture of each individual dress, rather than the details of Mrs. Richie Rich, Esq.'s life and social charity balls.
so it was a no photo zone but i wrote down some interesting notes about the exhibit. i'll post em separately.
k, so i moved on to the world's fair exhibit.
i fell in love with the 1930s poster artwork. it was so revealing. audacious. i was the only one walking the exhibit and imagined it to be my opulent french country estate.
i eavesdropped on the hurried conversations of museum curators while in this room. i like their job. i could dissect aesthetic as they do.
i took this pic bc it reminded me of the glass blowing show connell and i watched when we were stoned. we weren't really stoned but why the fuck did we watch a guy make a glass business card holder for 35 minutes?
1907 telephone operators waiting for the l.
the 'father of chicago', jean baptiste pointe du sable. he was the first settler on the banks of lake michigan where chicago now stands. and something about a fur-trader. born in haiti. idk, wikipedia kind of did an assy job of describing the importance of jean. he was in at least 6 out of the 10 exhibits in the history museum.
french?! french? yesssssss! lane and ashley's apartment has that adorable unique french architecture that makes me wet. in my mouth. salivating? this sentence has regret written all over it. moving on.
this read like it was written by a waste of space english/philosophy/american history graduate. not quite independent from the parents' money. not quite using their own brain. don't try to wrap up loose ends, chicago history museum! let them dangle out of the wrists like blood drenched veins.
personally, i think mark beaubien got robbed for "handsomest man in chicago."
the romance of the rails!!! it seems like ages and ages ago when i was in my sunshine high on the coast of california, doesn't it?
yeah, some parts of the exhibits had kids' museum mentality.
very cool. even a vegetarian such as myself can appreciate the importance of oscar mayer all meat wieners.
agnes nestor. tres cool dame. she helped to organize a ten day strike against the non-unionised glove factory she worked in. it was a success. wiki-p says it better than i:
She also helped to organise unions in other industries, such as the needle trades, campaigned for women's suffrage, a minimum wage, and maternity health legislation, and against child labour, and took part in the 1909 and 1910–1911 garment workers' strikes. She was largely responsible for the passing of the Illinois ten-hour-day law of 1909 (her goal of an eight-hour day wasn't reached until 1937).
she ran for congress and lost, but during her lifetime and with her help, many advancements in women's suffrage and labor laws were acheived. i like seeing well-planned powerhouse actions coming from small, contained women. it reminds me of a coiled snake positioned to strike. additionally, agnes nestor makes an excellent snake name.
m: here's some fine woodworking detail in the furniture industry exhibit. what is this? walnut painted as cherry? plastic? metal? cherry painted as cherry? i don't have the same eye for wood as you have, mon oignon.
this exhibit had no free samples. bummer.
homage to the world's first hipster glasses.
lane, look familiar?
so on a more serious note, my favorite exhibit was called CHICAGO: CITY IN CRISIS. it was a novel way to define chicago as the city that gets bruised and broken but still shuffles into the future. a city that breaths and feels pain. it bleeds. and you can see how it falls. a city that doesn't wither. a strong city. chicago. it's heavy with scars.
the exhibit featured six incidents:
the great fire,
the haymarket affair,
the 1919 race riot,
gangland,
the sinking of eastland,
and basically the tensions of 1968.
"i will" is chicago's motto, bet you didn't know. now forget it.
a journal filled with entries written by 'justin' was found after the fire subsided. his imprisonment in the fire, experiences escaping the smoke filled streets and eventual last days.
"everybody calls me a racketeer. i call myself a businessman. when i sell liquor, it's bootlegging. when my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive, it's hospitality." al capone.
in the interest of inappropriate history museum turn-ons, i compiled images of the sexiest gangsters from gangland.
the guy on the top is pretty in that upper class yalie turned bad boy way. middle guy is grouchy hot and the guy on the bottom satisfies my egon fetish. you know, egon from ghost busters?
here, the guy on top is hot in that sugar daddy suck-a-dick for a scholarship sort of way. the guy on bottom has great hair. also, glass eye = hot.
yeah, so the two guys on left aren't getting me off but that's why they're gangsters. machine guns make up for asymmetrical ears and marshmallow face. and obviously guy on the right is bone worthy.
the eastland disaster:
here ends the city in crisis exhibit. i cried during the history channel video about chicago's grieving families crying out on the streets when dr. martin luther king, jr. was assassinated. and the confusion and brutality that arose after the events.
so there was an awesome 80s pbs style documentary in the museum. they asked several residents of chicago to talk about their neighborhoods. one lady relayed the way to find a polish village in chicago is to look for the polish delicatessen and polish video rental store. there's a distinct kind of proud that comes from living in chicago. and the jazz! ravenwood is an earthy neighborhood. a kind of place where people from many different backgrounds say 'you know what, let's make this work.' and chicago is a city that constantly refurbishes its centers. rather than gentrification, you see the residents scrub and refine their neighborhoods. etc etc. i'm making it sound super corny and useless but really, it made my trip worthwhile. and besides, the whole time i was like, 'man, these people are progressive for being from 1983.' and then i found out the video was made last year. it's just that everyone had terrible midwest fluffy hairstyles and ill-fitting geometrical shaped sweaters. lol.
innovations from chicago:
i barely got to the architecture room and they kicked me out. get out! the museum closed ten minutes ago! on a positive note, the museum attendant asked me to marry him. no joke.
suddenly, north face costumes make sense.
walked around michigan avenue until my toes fell off. additionally, my eyelashes formed pointy icicles.
i call michian avenue OBNOXIOUS, in a loving way.
then i took the wrong bus back to ash and lane's apartment building and had to walk 45 minutes out of my way with serious knee joint problems. m and i got in a phone call fight and we all kind of went to sleep early.
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