Mrs. Farrago and I took a vacation over the holiday week. We didn’t go anywhere. Sometimes those are the best vacations. We did a little bit of something we’ve wanted to do for a while: partake of the offerings of our own city. We’ve been ashamed, when friends from out of town have asked us, “What is there to do in Chicago?” that we’ve been unable to give helpful, detailed answers.
We did take care of some business… we got a new wide-screen LCD HD television, finally, as our 16 year old television set finally crapped out on us. We ordered it online, expecting it to come in the seven-to-nine days the online merchant told us the free shipping would take, only to receive it in two… Glad we didn’t pay for 2-day shipping!
The CD player in the little car could no longer be called a CD “player,” as it only played
with a disc… taking it in part way, and then trying to spit it back out, but not far enough for one to get his fingers on the disc, and then it would pull it back in. It took pounding on the dashboard several times to get the disc to come out far enough to grab it, and then it was a fight with the CD player to get it out. We got a nice new stereo for the car, one that is fully compatible with the steering wheel buttons to control just about every aspect of the listening experience.
It was a week for concerts. It seems like eons ago that we bought tickets for the reunion tour of The Police, but Thursday finally came. I had never been to a Police concert before… I was an odd teenager… I wasn’t much into music groups until I noticed the Beatles in sophomore year, and Journey during senior year in high school. And since The Police stopped recording as a group in 1983, and graduation was in 1982, there was little time for me to catch up.
The concert was at Wrigley Field, of all places. Mrs. Farrago and I live a mere two miles from Wrigley, so it was a short bus ride and a four-block walk to get there. And quite an interesting walk it was! Mrs. Farrago and I have gone to several Cubs games, but only during the day. Never has the walk up Sheffield Avenue been the loud, colorful, crowded eyeful for us that it was Thursday! It seemed that every Wrigleyville bar existed in those four blocks alone, and every single one of them was packed with young, beautiful 20- and 30-somethings looking for love and/or a buzz!
Wrigley Field was transformed. Having only ever been there to see baseball, and never at night, I found it quite interesting to see the park in late-late afternoon sunlight and dusk. We were seated in the lower-level grandstand, quite far back and under the upper deck, to the left of home plate. A huge stage had been set up in center field, facing the grandstand. On either side of the stage, and onstage, as well, were huge video screens (projection or jumbotron, I know not which) which, when combined with the pair of pocket binoculars we brought, helped immensely for our enjoyment of the show. Some type of white plastic grating had been laid over all the grass on the field; and the infield dirt, though exposed, was cordoned off. Premium seating, in the form of steel folding chairs, had been set up directly in front of the stage and reached back almost to the edge of the infield dirt. Starting precisely at 7:00, the opening act performed, a band called Fiction Plane, fronted by none other than Joe Sumner, who is the son of none other than Gordon Sumner, better known by his stage name, Sting, the lead singer/bass player of The Police! Young Joe looked quite a bit like his father, as I imagine one would expect. He also plays bass, which doesn’t surprise me. What was freaky was how much his singing voice
sounds like his father’s. He could probably fill in for him if the need ever arose, and few would hear the difference.
The Police quite well rocked Wrigley! As they’re not touring to support a new album, they merely played all their hits (and for anyone who never listened to pop radio, they had quite a LOT of hits!), so the whole show was basically a sing-along…or perhaps a Sting-along, as it were. Tee-hee. There were the obligatory appeals to the audience to cheer louder, the obligatory call-and-answer segments of songs, and the obligatory lack of understanding by the band of why the crowd booed when Sting mentioned that the last show they played in Chicago was at Comiskey Park (it’s a Cubs fan vs. Whie Sox fan thing, Sting).
And, of course, there was the obligatory wafting cloud of pot smoke. In all of the few rock concerts I’ve been to, that pesky cloud of smoke manages to get in the venue, and blows past me somewhere in the middle of the performance. Although I’m against it in general, as it’s an illegal activity (though I favor its legalization), I view it as a given at a rock concert, an accepted reality of the concert-going experience. Funny was how everyone around the toker, who was several rows in front of me, looked around, seeming either to search for the person with the joint, or to keep an eye out for “the man” to make sure that the toker didn’t get busted. And as the cloud wafted past our nostrils, there were two reactions: rolled eyes, by people like me who never did; and smiles by those did.
After one encore the band called it a night and we left, happy after a show well played, and departing the venerable Wrigley Field content that the Cubs hadn’t lost!
We hopped on the bus again Saturday bound for Grant Park in downtown Chicago, where the annual Taste of Chicago has been since June 29th. Our main goal for the day was to see the free concert by the bands Cracker, Soul Asylum and Cheap Trick. But before long, it became clear that our main goal was just to get there. We transferred to the Lake Shore Drive express, an
articulated bus, and had a pleasant, smooth, non-stop ride to Michigan Avenue downtown. As we approached the Chicago River, traffic seemed to get slower and slower (stopped and stopped-er?) the nearer we got to the bridge. Just as it became evident that the extra congestion was caused by another bus which had broken down on the bridge at the end farthest from us, and just as we broached the middle of the bridge, OUR bus conked out! The driver was able to restart it, but frustrated motorists who hate sharing the road with buses to begin with, exacerbated the problem by denying him entry to the moving lane, which caused the bus to stall again. TWO buses out of commission on a bridge! Through repeated cycles of starting, inching and dying, the driver was able to get the bus into the flow lane, and then off of the bridge and over to the curb about a half block ahead, at which time he had to shut it down and tell everyone another would be along to pick them up. Mrs. Farrago and I chose to walk the rest of the way…it was a beautiful day.
After a messy pile of BBQ ribs, we found a spot on the Petrillo Music Shell lawn area. It proved to be a somewhat unwelcoming place to be: the venue seating area – again, steel folding chairs – restricted use of cameras.
The lawn area was separated from the seating area by a 4-foot snow fence lashed to 3-foot steel barricades, a 30-foot expanse of asphalt, and an 8-foot chain-link fence! So much for “seeing” a concert! Nevertheless, we plopped down right behind the snow fence-barricade combo and spread out our towel. Mrs. Farrago brought her long lens and was looking forward to getting some halfway decent shots of Cracker and Cheap Trick, but directly in front of us was a Programs dispenser, permanently anchored in the asphalt, immediately inside the chain-link fence, at a perfect height for anyone to rest their beer cup on top of it…and just stand there, blocking our shot. Before the show started I scouted another fence-side spot and squatted on it while Mrs. Farrago gathered up the stuff and moved it to where I was. Just then a 30-something man sitting in a lawn chair a few feet away spoke up, pointing to a red towel on the ground between his land and ours. “Your next-door neighbor here [towel] is a meth-head. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’ll drive you nuts inside of two minutes.”
We thanked him for the warning and we enjoyed Cracker, the lead singer of which used to be the lead singer of Camper Van Beethoven. Bet you didn’t know that.
There were quite a few characters milling about. I was only able to capture a few shots of some of them, and these are far shy of the strangest ones who seem to have camera-radar and can sense when you’re pointing a lens at them…or at least that’s my fear…and you never know what someone is capable of doing.
These events always seem to attract the head-cases…free concert, access to beer, and exposure to large crowds. It almost makes the exorbitant ticket prices extorted by the top concert groups worth the money.
After the first band finished our aforementioned neighbor showed up, and the warning we had received was accurate – the guy was a nut cake. He seemed to think that everyone found his act entertaining: walking up to and squatting to talk so someone’s little kid, sitting in a vacant lawn chair next to some guy’s wife (as happened with the couple who had warned us about the guy, while the husband was on a beer run), singing really loudly part of a song the earlier band had played…while we were still between bands, and dancing goofily throughout the next band’s set. And this guy did not appear or smell drunk.
Soul Asylum was good; they’re not a band that Mrs. Farrago or I are terribly familiar with, though there was one song I recognized. They were a bit too loud…which makes me sound like an old man to say it.
After the set we were seated on our towel. Mr. Nutcake was up to his usual annoyingness when he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and dropped his lighter, which bounced forward and through the slats of the snow fence. This brought me joy. People on the other side of the chain-link fence, who also seemed to be freaks and who seemed to know him, laughed at his misfortune. He tried to reach through to get it, but the slats were too narrow for him to get his hand in much past the wrist, and the lighter was just beyond his reach. But then he crossed the line.
Mrs. Farrago and I are mild photography buffs and had brought a photo monopod with us to help take better photos. Mr. Nutcake leaned toward the monopod, reaching for it on our towel, and asked if he could use our pole to get his lighter. Mrs. Farrago and I both said, very loudly, “NO, YOU CAN’T!”
He stepped away, saying to the others around us, “Okay. You don’t have to be an asshole about it!” He tried again to reach through the fence, and then he asked us, “Okay, can YOU use your pole to get my lighter?”
I thought briefly about it…very briefly. I don’t particularly like it when people smoke around me. I don’t care if it’s indoors or out, the smoke bothers me. I didn’t care to help this guy out who was then going to light up and blow smoke in my face. And dance around. And get up in people’s face and try to be cute…at 50-whatever.
So I said, “No.”
“You’re a fuckin’ asshole,” he said to me. He faced the people behind us and, I assume, pointed at me (I didn’t look at him). “This guy’s a fuckin’ asshole.” He called to another guy in the crowd, a plump, shirtless black man whom we had noticed earlier, dancing spacily, enjoining the crowd around him to dance along with him …yes, a freak… whose jeans were unbuttoned beneath his jelly-belly and held up – barely – by the mostly-closed zipper. Mr. Plumber’s Butt came over, and Mr. Nutcake said, “See if you can get my lighter. This jerk over here…” Me, again. “…won’t let me use his pole to get it.”
Mr. Nutcake pulled at the bottom of the fence slat, bending it far enough so that Mr. Plumber’s Butt could reach the lighter. The freaks on the other side of the chain-link cheered him on in a crescendo as his hand got closer and closer to it, and breaking into joyous noise as he grabbed it.
Mr. Nutcake lit his cigarette and then bent down and put his face in our line of sight, about 18 inches away. “You’re an asshole,” he said softly. “You know that? You’re a fuckin’ asshole.”
Mrs. Farrago and I did our best not to respond to him, as it surely would have meant escalating the situation. I really wanted to hit this moron. I’m no tough guy, and doing so would have probably gotten me into a lot of trouble, either physically or legally. I just wanted to see Cheap Trick play, and I wasn’t going to do anything that might jeopardize the opportunity. So we ignored him as he walked away behind us, spewing more derision our way.
Shortly, Cheap Trick started their set, and Mrs. Farrago and I got to our feet, cameras clicking. I kept darting glances over my shoulders, expecting any minute to get a fist or a cooler or a railroad spike to the back of my head. I heard once, through the scream of electric guitars, “asshole,” clearly enough to know he said it, but then motion caught my eye to my right, and I saw him fold up his towel and leave.
I don’t know if someone else said something to him or if he was so upset that we didn’t want to be his friends that he couldn’t bear to show his face. Whatever it was, he left and we were happy. Nonetheless, I kept an eye over my shoulder, just in case.
In all, it was a great show. I’d never seen Cheap Trick live in person before, so it was a great pleasure to hear them play the songs I’ve listened to and sung along with for 20-something years right before my eyes and ears.
And then it was over…but the evening was not.
Mrs. Farrago and I walked north, through Millennium Park where we encountered another free concert in progress, the Grant Park Symphony and Choir at the Pritzker Pavilion. We spent only as much time there as it took to walk through and take a few photos – it is beautiful at night, a quiet comment inside the parentheses of the skyline – but we made a promise to each other that we would look up a schedule and catch another free performance here soon…provided Mr. Nutcake isn’t also a classical music aficionado!
Then we made our way back to Michigan Avenue and a bus stop there. We boarded another articulated bus up to Belmont Avenue and transferred to the #77 bus to get us home. About halfway between home and where we boarded the #77, at the Clark Street stop, our bus conked out! This one, however, despite the driver’s efforts, could not be started up again! Mrs. Farrago pointed out the coincidence of the date – 07/07/07 – and the route number – 77 – and we were awed.
A few minutes later another bus came to our rescue, and we made it home.
It was a busy week acting like a tourist in Chicago, and I’m sure I’ll head back to work tomorrow feeling like I went somewhere special.
