Mondays with Mike: Sweet Home Printers Row

As Beth posted earlier, we’re headed to Mendocino, California, Wednesday. I’m looking forward to another break from urban life in a beautiful place. If it’s anything like our trip to Anacortes, Washington, it’ll be terrific.

City life can wear me down. Sirens, traffic, car horns, construction, brutal homelessness all conspire to sort of dull my senses. Nature restores me mentally and physically.

It can also make me wonder about whether city life is worth it.

It’s a tossup sometimes, but so far, the Magic 8-Ball always answers “yes.” I think it has something to do with exactly where we live in this rugged city of Chicago. As far as I can judge, and certainly I’m biased, we live on the best single block of Chicago. It’s right in the middle of everything, but because Dearborn Street ends at Polk Street, our block is a little cocoon that lives more like Lake Woebegone than downtown Chicago.

Anthony’s telescope always draws people in.

That’s not to say everything’s hunky dory. I wrote about losing our local tavern, Hackney’s, a couple years back. There are new, architecturally bland, high-rise apartments seemingly everywhere around us, blocking formerly gorgeous views. They’re all “lifestyle” joints that have all the amenities stuff, from gyms to coffee shops, which mean residents really don’t need to go out. Which begs some questions, but, whatever. Traffic is worse. Summer festival season is fun on one hand but draws lots of lemmings who walk six abreast, and who stop in their tracks to look at their phones for directions.

But Lake Michigan is still where it’s always been, as are the Art Institute, Orchestra Hall, Millennium Park, Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum….

And we’ve established a sort of replacement for Hack’s. It’s called Half Sour. It’s a nice bar and restaurant, but not too nice if you know what I mean. We can always count on seeing one or a half dozen neighborhood pals there. If you get down this way, we’ll meet you there.

We met up with some dear friends there last Friday. They’d gotten some really bad news days earlier, of a heartbreaking loss, the kind that had us thinking about them all week. It was good just to be together, give them hugs—and for me, at least, something of a relief simply to lay eyes on them. We sat outside on a beautiful, temperate Chicago evening—the kind that makes you forget that any brutal weather ever happens here. We talked and talked and talked, some tears were shed, and we took in the fragrance of herbs that the restaurant grows in planters on the patio.

After darkness fell, another neighborhood pal appeared on the sidewalk with his telescope. Yes, on clearish nights our friend Anthony regularly brings out a rather serious instrument, sets it up on its tripod, and aims at the moon, Saturn, Mars, or whatever is good viewing. He and we’ve taken to calling his telescope the “Oh my God” machine. Because complete strangers walking their dogs or simply out for a stroll will stop, Anthony will offer them a look, and verily they shriek “Oh my god!”

Even with the air and light pollution in the heart of the city, looking through that telescope elicits the kind of awe that I felt in Anacortes, Washington, and expect I will in Mendocino. And apparently, others feel the same way.

Certain events, like the ones our friends we spent last Friday evening with endured last week, makes one take stock. They remind both of the pricelessness and fragility of life. And last Friday, as I watched passersby peer at the moon, and we sat with our friends, I realized that Printers Row really is home; now, and for the foreseeable future.