03 May 2007
Inland Sea
By seven I knew that there was little else to be known from the 35 th Floor. I had to be back down on the street, or I would assume the aspect of an angel, looking down at the mites that plied the concrete.
I am no angel, and I went down to the streets to be where I should, on the concrete.
Walking is not so easy any more, but if I force the legs to do it, they numb themselves in time, and the old pimp-roll of city travel comes back to me, shoulders back, shift of the hips, and forward down the bold street.
This evening the air is crisp again, backsliding into chilly early Spring that penetrates with the wind and bites with the moisture in the fog. The people are eager for the change of season. Only a day ago the young women were in crop tops, joyful at something that had visiting Southerners still looking for topcoats and sweaters.
The city fronts on the sea. An inland sea, to be sure, but vast and drinkable. It is not like New York , cloistered in its rivers. It is on the bold blue of the big lake. The buildings create the wind of the Windy city, I think, but there is much I do not understand of this place. Why, I thought, striding along in the lowering light, could it be that the fog is coming in from the lake when the prevailing winds blow from the East?
This is a town where people drive fast and confident. They use their horns when things get in their way. I walked up Michigan , past the water tower, that brought back an association from a drunken roll across the city. It had survived the Great Fire that leveled the town, and brought temporary wealth to some of the family who swarmed into the devastation it left. Then under the Hancock Building 's vast black bulk disappearing up into the cotton-balls. I contemplated The Drake Hotel, remembering vaguely something that happened decades ago. I remembered dark wood and expensive silence.
I had the light and the right to cross the street. A cab thought he might have had a chance to brush by me and advance a few seconds sooner to the next light headed downtown. I looked him in the eyes and kept walking between the white lines.
As I made it to the curb, I heard a crisp blast of the horn, and turning, saw him flipping me off. He did not like my smug assertion of the right-of-way.
In the spirit of the city, I flipped him off, in return, and gave him the jaunty greeting of the day, and included precise instructions on where he could put his cab. It felt good. The cabs don't do that back in the District, although the motorists from Up North have their moments. There is an air of urgency about their daily driving that directly reflects their perceived role in the world.
Here it just seems appropriate.
Nearing the lake front, the wind was cold and the sun had been banished. I crossed over to Rush Street , where the buildings provided some shelter. I found the original Morton's Steak House, the first in the chain, and stopped for a drink. It does not have much atmosphere, being a fairly modern restaurant in the base of another one of the Bauhaus towers that thrust up in the Near North neighborhood. Dublin 's or Melvin B's nearby offered much more context to this neighborhood, and as a matter of principle, I should have stopped at either of them.
What I was interested in was the geneses of a marketing phenomenon that has spread this concept of the Chicago Steakhouse far and wide. The entrance is inside the lobby of the tower, and the door is plain, adorned with a brass plate that proclaims the operating hours. Totally unassuming, and defiantly anonymous. I opened the door and went down three short flights of stairs. Portraits of old Mayors, the ones between the Daley's, graced the walls. This was a place of power in its day, and maybe it still was. That must be what they actually sell, in all their outlets, the sizzle that goes along with the steak.
The room was smaller than the franchise outlets, and I told the nice young woman at the desk that I just wanted a drink, something to cut the cold. She smiled and directed me to Kurt, a towering fellow with chestnut hair brushed up in a Ditka cut. He sold me a cocktail that took the best part of a $20. I sat in the small oak bar and watched a party of sleek gents who had clearly made it, somewhere, dressed in golf casual and puffing expensive cigars. They displaced a young woman with a hard edge to her- more employee class than diner- and on her way out Kurt asked her if she wanted to hook up later in the week, maybe have dinner with some of the Umpires from Wrigley Field.
She demurred, saying she hated those guys.
Kurt looked over at me, master of the artificial intimacy of his little kingdom. He shrugged and said “At least she is honest.”
I could feel the desire rising to plant myself and stay, but the prospect of a fine meal alone seemed a waste. I told Kurt I agreed with him, and rose after a decent interval for the walk back down Rush Street in the fog. The moisture made the ache in my joints come up, and I would have taken a cab the last dozen blocks, but I discarded the notion.
Given the odds, I knew it was unlikely I would wind up in the back-seat of the cab with the impatient driver I had told to put someplace improbable.
I am a cautious, if injudicious man. I whistled as I walked down Rush Street, in the fog, toward the River.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com