It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas (2009 edition, part 3)

Inspired by our series of posts about Christmas in Chicago (1 & 2), one of the usual suspects e-mailed in a few photos of her own.  It looks like the Christmas train display is now up and running in the basement of the John Hancock Center (875 North Michigan Avenue).

If you haven't been before, you should make an effort to go this year.  Or even better, make it a family tradition.  

Each day (according to Google Analytics), thousands of people from the suburbs read this blog.  This is a good year to take the kids into the city for a day of holiday walking around.  Look at the trains at the John Hancock Center, then walk down Michigan Avenue and get some popcorn at Garrett's (625 North Michigan Avenue). Next, wander into the Loop to look at the display windows at Macy's on State Street (111 North State Street), swing by Daley Plaza to take in the city's official Christmas tree sharing the plaza with the massive Picasso statue (55 West Randolph Street), then grab some hot chocolate and enjoy the sights in Millennium Park.  

The whole thing will cost you less than ten bucks. Do it every year to teach your children the joys of the holidays, and that Christmas spirit doesn't have a big price tag or come from Wal-Mart -- it's just the joy of being with someone you love.

Need tips on getting in, getting out, getting around and things to see for free with your kids?  Just e-mail me at editor@chicagoarchitecture.info and I'll be happy to help you out.

Now -- more pictures of the trains.  And thanks to everyone who e-mails in their pictures of Christmas in Chicagoland.

Making the World Care About Chicago

Chicago doesn't have the 2016 games, but coming in fourth did a lot for raising the city's profile around the world.

In my travels, I've seen a number of references to Chicago in other countries.  There's a used clothing store in the Harajuku section of Tokyo called "Chicago."  There is a chain of steakhouses operating in Hong Kong, Kowloon, Singapore, and Taiwan called "Dan Ryan's Chicago Grill" with their interiors decorated in Chicago memorabilia.  And while we don't have a "Texas Embassy" restaurant like the one in London, we do have any number of pizza joints around the world trying to emulate Chicago-style deep dish.

But that's not enough.  A symposium will be held in mid-November to talk about Chicago's global reach and what can be done to raise Chicago awareness around the world.  I don't have dates and times yet, but when I do I'll post them here.

In a recent public meeting, Bob O'Neill, the head of the Grant Park Conservancy, noted that Foreign Policy magazine ranked Chicago #8 in its 2008 Global Cities Index.  You can see the article here.   I shot him an e-mail asking for more information, and he came back with a lists of links showing Chicago's rank in America.

• BusinessWeek ranks Chicago #1 for design in America
• Fast Company names Chicago City of the Year in 2008
• American Style Magazine ranks Chicago the #2 arts destination

He also sent this along:

Here are some economic facts about Chicago, some of which really surprised me.

• Chicago has a faster growing economy than either New York or Los Angeles, at 1.9%.
• In 2007 it had the 7th fastest growing population among US cities (not sure if this is the metro area or Chicago proper, presumably the latter).
• 29% of downtown Chicago residents have graduate degrees (over 3 times the national average)
• Chicago is the number one city for business investment and expansion according to Site Selection Magazine.
• 30 Fortune-500 companies are based in the Chicago Metro, second only to New York in the USA.

Interesting stuff to chew on.  So, how would you improve Chicago's global stature?  Post you answers here.

Up... Up.. And... ZOMG We're All Gonna Die!

The newest attraction at Navy Pier is strangely familiar to us.

The first time we encountered a tethered helium balloon as an amusement attraction was in Singapore a few years ago.  According to Wikipedia, the old DHL Balloon that made us fudge our Huggies is no longer there.  For those of you who didn't get a chance to ride it, the beast shot silently up 59 stories on a single steel cable, carrying beneath is a doughnut-shaped gondola full of tourists.  Because it was attached to the ground with just the one cable, it had the ability to sway and meander with the wind, bringing passengers perilously close to nearby skyscrapers.  To complicate matters, all of the passengers rushed to the northwest side of the gondola to snap pictures of the downtown skyline, which made the entire affair lurch, lean, and list menacingly to one side.  It is a singular experience in terror.

The Navy Pier version is somewhat tamer.  It's half the size and carries people a mere 35 stories high, but appears to suffer from the same lurching, drifting, and leaning behavior of its big sister on the other side of the planet.

Whether you go up in the balloon is up to you.  It's probably one of the best locations from which to get pictures of the city.  But the faint of heart (or weak of wallet -- it costs $25 bucks!) may want to think twice before taking the silent ride.

Status Update: Crown Fountain

It's unusual for us to do a "Status Update" for something that's already completed.  But if, like us, you have people in town from other parts of the country for a wedding, you should know that the Crown Fountain (let's call it 1 North Michigan Avenue) is being repaired.  So when you bring your guests down to Millennium Park, be sure to spend extra time at The Bean, because while the water is flowing at Crown, none of your neighbors' faces are being projected on the glassy monoliths.

Update: UNStudio's Burnham Pavilion to Close for Repairs

Last week in an article titled This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, I wrote about how tourists and visitors are damaging UNStudio's contribution to the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan for Chicago.

Ben van Berkel's sometimes-called "Light Table" pavilion at Millennium Park (25 North Michigan Avenue) has been scarred by hordes of unruly children and teens who were never taught to respect art or the property of others.  Worse, they were enabled by parents who failed to admonish them, seeing the architecture as a jungle gym and temporary babysitter.

I took an unusual amount of flack for what I wrote from people who suggested that there's nothing wrong with children destroying the built environment.  And since children behave like animals at the Daley Plaza Picasso, they should be allowed to destroy other works around the city.

Well, in keeping with your mother's admonition of "This is why we can't have nice things" since the city of Chicago can't behave, it's having its toy taken away.

According to the Chicago Tribune, The Light Table will be closed for repairs starting Tuesday.  The damage is so extensive that the director of the Burnham Plan Central Committee told the Trib that if the repairs aren't done, the pavilion might not survive until Halloween, the scheduled end of its run in Millennium Park.

Attention is also being turned to Zaha Hadid's Z-Pod installation.  As we showed you a couple of days ago, within hours of its unveiling the offspring of those with bad parenting skills were already trying to climb the fabric, leaving footprints on other people's hard work.  Now, the Tribune article continues, the structure's more sensitive areas may be cordoned off with a railing.

We'll see if that protects the structure, or just serves as a launching pad or another piece of playground equipment from which young vandals-in-training can swing.

Quickie: New shops at Navy Pier

According to Crain's Chicago Business , new retail we'll see at Navy Pier next season includes Garrett's Popcorn, Buffalo Wild Wings Grill & Bar (probably similar to BW3 [Buffalo Wild Wings and Weck]), DogEworks, and another souvenir shop.

Millions of tourists must be right

It's something of a burden to bear.  For the thousands of people who live in the New East Side not a day passes without hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tourists wandering their streets asking how to get to the lakefront and Navy Pier.

Long lines of cars snake into, and then back out of, the cul-de-sacs and private driveways of the New East Side as legions of tourists ignore the few tattered signs put up to direct them.  Once an articulated CTA bus got stuck back there and it took the better part of 12 hours to get it turned around.

The opening of Millennium Park only made things worse.  After all -- it only makes sense that the city's front lawn would connect to the lake and eventually on to Navy Pier.  But more than once I have seen a frustrated tourist raise an angry fist to a local when told, "you can't get there from here."

Well, some day maybe they can.

With the impending destruction of Daley Bicentennial Plaza to make way for the new Chicago Children's Museum, there are finally some serious talks about linking the parks and the lakefront in that area. it cost $20 million to do the same thing at 11th Street.  How much it will take farther north remains to be seen.  But a committee is starting work on it, and maybe there will be some logical relief soon.