Sunday, June 05, 2005
Your typical Chicago weekend
Given that this will probably be an average Chicago weekend for me, I think I will be in good shape.
Friday: To flush work out of my system I left directly from the office to the South Loop, where Manifest, a semester-end festival for Columbia College, an arts university, was taking place. Galleries and outdoor music, and a free trolley between buildings that as luck would have it got a flat tire. Apparently some alumni / donors to Columbia were on the trolley because they were making loud remarks about how "their" trolley broke down. After a quick bite to eat (grilled fish sandwich) I took a bus over to the Alder Plantarium, where there was a special discount admission night. A docent suggested to me a special lecture which I attended, which was on astronomical hoaxes. The subject matter seemed extraneous to things of existence that interest me, but the speaker was humorous and compelling which made it enjoyable. I explored the planetarium exhibits, which are open late at night only once a month, and looked out the windows into the dark blue endless lake. If you don't know Alder Planetarium, is on this sort of mini-pier that juts on into the lake with the best skyline view in Chicago. There's a sidewalk path that takes you around the planetarium and at night it's kind of spooky. There were even a handful of singles and couples contemplating who-knows-what in the small trees under the grass near the rocks by the Lake (I'm trying to give you a picture of it, in a poetic way, but all I can give you are coordinates). Then at 9:00pm there was the primary reason I went to the Planetarium, which was the Sonic Vision digital light show. Laser Floyd from the 80s (remember Freaks and Geeks anyone?) this isn't. With a mix of alternate rock music put together by Moby, this had really awesome songs accompanied by all sorts of psychadelicish images set to the rhytms of the music. Very awesome, not the least bit educational. A young guy asked the operator what the show was all about afterwards and he answered "nothing... just graphics and sound." Isn't that all we really need? Even though I had a transit pass it was taking too long so I treated myself to a cab ride to the train station, which wasn't that much. There's a long walk through a park and past a couple big museums to get from the Planetarium back into the city and the train stops, and it's nice to take if you've got the energy, but I didn't.
Well, maybe later I'll talk about Saturday and today.
Friday: To flush work out of my system I left directly from the office to the South Loop, where Manifest, a semester-end festival for Columbia College, an arts university, was taking place. Galleries and outdoor music, and a free trolley between buildings that as luck would have it got a flat tire. Apparently some alumni / donors to Columbia were on the trolley because they were making loud remarks about how "their" trolley broke down. After a quick bite to eat (grilled fish sandwich) I took a bus over to the Alder Plantarium, where there was a special discount admission night. A docent suggested to me a special lecture which I attended, which was on astronomical hoaxes. The subject matter seemed extraneous to things of existence that interest me, but the speaker was humorous and compelling which made it enjoyable. I explored the planetarium exhibits, which are open late at night only once a month, and looked out the windows into the dark blue endless lake. If you don't know Alder Planetarium, is on this sort of mini-pier that juts on into the lake with the best skyline view in Chicago. There's a sidewalk path that takes you around the planetarium and at night it's kind of spooky. There were even a handful of singles and couples contemplating who-knows-what in the small trees under the grass near the rocks by the Lake (I'm trying to give you a picture of it, in a poetic way, but all I can give you are coordinates). Then at 9:00pm there was the primary reason I went to the Planetarium, which was the Sonic Vision digital light show. Laser Floyd from the 80s (remember Freaks and Geeks anyone?) this isn't. With a mix of alternate rock music put together by Moby, this had really awesome songs accompanied by all sorts of psychadelicish images set to the rhytms of the music. Very awesome, not the least bit educational. A young guy asked the operator what the show was all about afterwards and he answered "nothing... just graphics and sound." Isn't that all we really need? Even though I had a transit pass it was taking too long so I treated myself to a cab ride to the train station, which wasn't that much. There's a long walk through a park and past a couple big museums to get from the Planetarium back into the city and the train stops, and it's nice to take if you've got the energy, but I didn't.
Well, maybe later I'll talk about Saturday and today.
