Windy City Trip

Eeek! This guy was huge!! Photo does not do it justice. Hard to see, but his liver is hanging below ribs.

Went to the Field Museum to see the Aztec exhibit. I think I financed Cortez' entire expedition to retrieve the treasures or something... Why is culture so expensive and the local bar so cheap? Is there a correlation here? I would think so. Museums should be free and it should cost $54 bucks to enter a tavern. That's what it cost for tickets for two (with audio tour). Sheesh! Should have seen an actual human sacrifice for that. The objects were on loan. Thank goodness we didn't buy them. Is there a Antiquities Unpackers 401 Union having a very merry Christmas out there somewhere? Of course, I had to be there on Bratty Kids Get in Free with a Screaming Sibling and Pushy Parent With a Stroller day.

Need to do a little research on my own, the exhibit left many more questions in my mind than were answered. I'll be having nightmares about that god of death for the next several months, too... The snakes were nice, though.

Evil Macy's had sent me plenty of coupons in advance, in the hopes of tempting me into their State Street store. Might have considered it, until I approached close enough to realize they broke with what, 100 years of tradition? and did not make a little holiday-themed story with their windows. Is nothing sacred???

From some blogs I found about the topic:

Mike Doyle reports -

In January 2008, Macy’s fired longtime window dresser Amy Meadows, the woman responsible for decorating 25 years worth of State Street holiday windows and Walnut Room Great Trees, as part of a particularly brutal wave of cost-cutting layoffs at the retailer’s Chicagoland stores.

When it happened, the Sun-Times quoted a Macy’s spokesperson saying, “We have a talented visual team who will decorate our store windows and continue the time-honored tradition.”

Given the former-Federated’s track record in Chicago, I doubted those words. And if this holiday season’s State Street windows and Great Tree, publicly unveiled on Saturday, November 8th, are any indication, I had good reason for pause.

I’ve said it, I’ve repeated it, and I’ve even ended up on the front page of the Chicago Tribune business section saying it: Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren will go to the grave–and take the former Marshall Fields with him–before he and his team get a clue about how to honor Chicagoans and their local retail traditions.

This is old, but so well-said, you really need to check out the trip to the Walnut Room for Cate Plys.

A visitor's disappointment at Dragonfly Soars!

I didn't do any shopping downtown (Hear that, Mr. Mayor? Your sales tax is too high!) nor did we spend the night (Yeah, your hotel tax is even more outrageous! Keep praying for the Olympics, Mr. Arrogant. You're not going to get them!). Skating looked like fun, but I don't have my own ice skates. Used the free trolley - but that's a thing of the past starting January first. All kinds of reasons to come back now, eh?

Just had dinner at the Webber Grill, where I had no idea my fantasy steak had a name: a Philadelphia or a Black and Blue. Next time, I'll just go with Medium Rare, something I can only do in a fine steakhouse. But It was nice to try a charbroiled, red and dripping cool slab of meat. Just because I could.