In Which the Driveabout Becomes the L-About

Yesterday felt vaguely familiar.

As I was wandering around downtown Chicago looking for the Millennium Art Fair, I felt like I was back on the Driveabout.

First, there was the sense of not knowing where the heck I was.  Downtown Chicago continues to confuse me.  Partly, I think, it's because I arrive there by coming up from a hole in the ground and am therefore completely disoriented to begin with.  Partly it's because I'm great with a map but have no intuitive sense of direction, and Google Maps likes to flip around so I never have a solid sense of north for any extended period of time, which I generally find helpful in orienting myself.

But it was more than that.  It was the fact that I was just so in awe of what I was seeing.  Cool stuff, like a building called the Carbide and Carbon Building.

Talk about Old Industry.

Or the best We'll Tow You sign I've seen since Chattanooga:

Take that, Walgreen's.

My plan was to check out the art fair and then go to "Do-Division," a street festival on Division Street.  Chicago has a ton of these festivals, I am told, and they're all fun.

It took a couple of times walking around the block, but I finally found the art fair.  It was nice - a couple of blocks long, with everyone all battened down against the torrential rain storms that were generally predicted but, mysteriously, went around us.

There was a performance artist:

Yes, this is a person.  A little boy walked by and touched her skirt.  He looked genuinely shaken - as I would have been had I been six years old - when the fabric moved since she really does look like a statue.  She'd been dancing when I first walked by, but then stopped when no one stepped forward with another tip.

The rest of the exhibitors consisted of painters, photographers, jewelers, and artists in wood, leather and fabric.  One photographer's work was so vibrant that I really thought he used multi-media until I got close enough to see it wasn't three dimensional.

But I can only spend so long at an art fair, so I figured out my way from the Loop to where I thought the Division Street festival began (at Ashland, according to one website I consulted), which seemed simple enough - just get on the Blue Line toward O'Hare and get off at the Division Station which is right at Ashland.  Can't be any easier than that!

Of course, it was Friday about 4:30 p.m. so there was quite a crowd at the CTA station, this being the Loop and all - about a quarter of whom appeared headed to O'Hare, at least judging from their luggage.  The train came and it was already packed before another hundred people tried to get in each car (okay, I'm exaggerating a little, but just a little.)  I wasn't able to get in, which turned out to be fine, because about three minutes later another train came by, this one with much emptier cars, so I was able to find a seat.

Three stops later, I hopped out at Division and Ashland.  I looked around, and there was no sign of a street fair in sight.  Undeterred, I decided that I would have something to eat and then go looking for the festival.  I saw a sign that made me think that I was back in Milwaukee:  Podhalanka Polska Restauracia.  Or something like that.  My Polish isn't very good, but I can tell a Polish restaurant from across six lanes of traffic.  I beelined over.

Podhalanka looks like an old neighborhood cafe and it operates that way.  Before 5 p.m., I had obviously beaten the evening crowd, but it took a while for the food - the waitress was chatting with somebody at the end of the counter, but I think the main reason was that the cook (both the cook and the waitress looked like your great aunt from Warsaw) was making my cabbage pierogies from scratch.  They were certainly worth the wait, and during the interim the waitress had brought me wonderful bread.  This is the kind of bread I associate with old Central European restaurants - white, sliced, and with a brown crust that you have to work at to tear apart.

While I was eating I grabbed the Reader, one of those free local entertainment magazines which lists all of the events around town.  According to the Reader, Do-Division began a few blocks further west, at Damen.  The sky was looking somewhat ominous and walking west meant I would be that much further away from the L, but in classic devil-may-care Driveabout fashion, I headed out in search of the festival.  The fact that I was no longer hungry didn't hurt my outlook.

The merchants who organized Do-Division accomplished their goal with at least one person, me, who had never been on Division before and who definitely will come back as a result of coming to the festival.  When you get just a little west of Ashland, there are so many restaurants, one after the next.  (Podhalanka is just east of Ashland.)  Some look very high end, and some are sports bars, and there's a lot in between.

There was a place called the Milk and Honey Cafe which had a sign up that said they were now serving Beer and Wine - milk and honey, apparently, not being quite enough anymore.  I saw a bakery with amazing cakes.

In a way, Division Street seemed very Milwaukee-ish.  Perhaps it was the Schlitz globe sign:

And then I found the festival, right at Damen where the Reader said it would be.  It was pretty typical of a festival, I guess, with rather ho-hum commercial vendors (cell phones, etc.) along with more interesting craft/clothing offerings from local merchants.  I signed up for a $12 subscription to the Chicago Tribune because it came with a funny t-shirt.

The Trib used to own the Cubs, remember?  Do you get why it's funny?  It's unclear whether this is an old shirt, left over from when the Trib owned the Cubs....okay, if you have to explain a joke, I guess it's not so funny.  Anyway, I'd been wanting a Cubs t-shirt and now I have one.

It was still very early when I arrived, but they did have a band playing.

Yes, that's a shark balloon in front of the stage.  No, I don't know why it's there.

I had a beer (if you paid close attention to the picture above, you'd know it was a Coors Light) and walked around.  It was fun, but I was getting a little weary of tourism at that point - apparently my tolerance has dropped significantly of late - and I knew it would be something of a production to get home.

It was a strange and good feeling to want to get back to my neighborhood.  Strange in the sense that it's been a while since I've had a neighborhood, and good in the sense that this is how I am feeling about Edgewater, where I live.

Division Street is in the West Town neighborhood.  One of the cool things that they had at the festival which I liked a lot but didn't want to spend $180 on it plus have to schlep it home, was a framed stylized neighborhood map of Chicago.  If I see another one around and it's a bit lower priced, I may pick it up because it's a nice reference if nothing else.

Thanks to Google Maps (even though I knocked it earlier, it's a lifesaver) I found the Damen Blue Line stop at Milwaukee Avenue (see?  Milwaukee!) and headed southeast so that I could change trains at the Loop and head north.

Of course, I got completely lost during what was supposed to be a short walk from the Monroe Blue Line station to the Monroe Red Line station.  I will offer two pieces of evidence in my defense:  no one else seemed to know where it was, either, and neither station is actually located on Monroe Street.  Finally I started walking in what seemed to be the right direction, after I had eliminated all other directions through trial and error, and then saw a nice Red Line glowing on a sign, a beacon calling me home.  Once I get to a Red Line station I can find my way with a high level of confidence, and made it back to Bryn Mawr station without any trouble whatsoever.  Other than they charged me for a full fare, rather than a transfer, but I wasn't in an arguing mood so I figure that's a buck seventy five that is my contribution to the CTA.

It still wasn't raining when I got to Bryn Mawr, so I stopped in at Francesca's, a very nice Italian restaurant about two blocks from my apartment, and had a salad (cabbage didn't seem like enough vegetables for the day) and a glass of wine.  I sat at the bar and started talking with a guy, and mentioned I was from Fort Wayne.  He laughed, having just spoken to a friend in Michigan that day who said that he (the friend in Michigan) was having a friend from Fort Wayne come visit.  Yes, Fort Wayners are everywhere.

And now, Saturday afternoon, it's clouding up again just in time for me to head out to a friend's.  Our plan was to watch some of the Black Hawks game and then check out a festival in Lincoln Park, but we may end up ordering pizza at her place.  Which, since I haven't had Chicago pizza yet, wouldn't be the end of the world.