{"id":297,"date":"2006-07-12T12:57:08","date_gmt":"2006-07-12T16:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattclare.ca\/wordpress\/2006\/07\/12\/more-chicago\/"},"modified":"2006-07-12T12:57:08","modified_gmt":"2006-07-12T16:57:08","slug":"more-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/2006\/07\/12\/more-chicago\/","title":{"rendered":"More Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DoubleMonday of this week I had a full day (baring the time I spent responding to frantic E-Mails from Brock) to explore Chicago. I used this opportunity to head out to Wicker Park.<\/p>\n

\"JohnyOn the Blue Line El’ on the way from O’Hare to downtown I noticed that there were a lot of nice lofts, cools shops, and lots of young people in Chicago. I took note of the ads too: Mac tech support and Johny Walker – an F1 sponsor. When I got off the El’ at Division station I realized that this was the neighborhood I was looking at on that first El’ trip.<\/p>\n

Wicker Park is where the Double Door is – the club that hosted all the hot acts in the late 90s grunge music scene. The Double Door also hosted a lot of Smashing Pumpkins show, including the last (for the moment) show. I’ve always been a really big Smashing Pumpkins fan (not in a Kiss Army kind of way) and to see the Double Door was pretty cool.<\/p>\n

Tuesday brought rain and all I managed to do was visit the United Center (home of the Blackhawks) and do a little meaningless shopping and ultimately register and attend the start of the WebCT !mpact 2006 conference.<\/p>\n

One last experience I want to share is about stereotypical Americans – there aren’t that many and I’d suggest that the stereotype (at least in this Democratic city) is the exception, not the norm. American’s aren’t all overweight – but those that are, they enjoy the freedom to really be obese. One last note is an old woman (70+) who I met standing in the rain just beside the Christian Science reading room.<\/p>\n

Old woman: Does this bus go to ____.
\nMatt: I’m sorry what was that?
\nOld woman: Does this bus go up ____.
\nMatt: Come stand under the umbrella. The bus…
\nOld woman: Do you know where it goes?
\nMatt: No, I’ll admit, I’m from Canada.
\nOld woman: The Black country?
\nMatt: No, not Ghana or Gambia, Can-a-da.
\nOld woman: Oh that’s OK. It’s a British country. You know Britain created this country and Canada. So that’s OK.
\nMatt: Well I’m glad that’s OK. Well… I have to go. Good luck.<\/p>\n

— Every city has it’s crazies, but I’ve never had a conversation about public transportation turn that direction.<\/p>\n

I also took a bunch of night pictures without a tripod (forgot my mini-tripod in the hotel room) which the Flickr people seem to enjoy.<\/p>\n

\"Night<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday of this week I had a full day (baring the time I spent responding to frantic E-Mails from Brock) to explore Chicago. I used this opportunity to head out to Wicker Park. On the Blue Line El’ on the way from O’Hare to downtown I noticed that there were a lot of nice lofts,… Continue Reading More Chicago<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,9,2,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattclare.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}