Trip 5: Day 26 (Chicago)

Flying tired is one thing, but flying tired and hungover is just tons of fun. 8:20am flight to O'Hare was on time. The security line at Austin-Bergstrom was a bit unbelievable. Two luggage scanners and one body scanner. Even the TSA pre-check line was long. That may be it for me flying out of Austin for a while. It's more expensive and the lines are long. But the food's good. While I sat at the gate, I could have sworn that they were playing a sort of ambient electronic music that was very soothing. It could have been that they adopted Brian Eno's idea. Eno produced "Music for Airports" in 1978, meant to be played overhead at airports as both a way of calming travelers, but was also meant to be conducive to the atmosphere of air travel. To my knowledge, only a single terminal at LaGuardia used it briefly, but I think it's his best work.

Irving Park Boulevard south of O'Hare
The street is stuck between a rail yard
and the runways.

O'Hare was a nice airport. There was a lot of trendy airport art things, like the walkway that plays music and a light show as you go through. My first order of business was letting them know that I would not be continuing on to Des Moines, in spite of how attractive that sounded. The woman at the gate for my flight that arrived (the Des Moines flight was a really long walk) seemed somewhat disappointed, but said that she would make the change. I'm curious to see if I still get any frequent flier miles for that flight since I didn't actually complete it.

Since it was early, I drove down to Elmhurst. Chicago is surrounded by over 100 separate municipalities, most of which have their own police forces, street signs and business districts. Aside from the signs as you enter, the separate cities are surprisingly distinct and have their own character. Elmhurst is one of the nicer suburbs in Chicagoland, sitting along a METRA line about 15 miles west of Downtown. I listened to NPR while sitting in a park. Up the road, a supermarket, Mariano's, had just opened up. The parking lot was crowded and a father and son were collecting donations on behalf of a charity. Inside, a man was playing the piano. He looked straight out at nothing with a twisted, almost scared expression as he played a number of more well-known tunes. Most shoppers passed him without notice, while others looked at him like you would a piece of art.
I enjoyed the experience there but, driving just a mile down the road, I came across an abandoned Dominick's. Dominick's was a Chicago supermarket chain until just this past year, when all stores were shut down. They had had issues with declining sales ever since the local media began running stories of them stocking expired food in 2011. It was also used as the setting in the 2008 film "The Promotion" starring John C. Reilly and Seann William Scott. They both play competitive managers at an urban Chicago Dominick's location and vie for the same promotion to manage a new store location, until Reilly's character inadvertently makes a racist comment to a black community leader and eventually quits and returns to Quebec. They show the film on Comedy Central fairly often, so I've seen it a couple of times.

Keeping with the market theme tonight, I took a trip to Mitsuwa Marketplace in Arlington Heights. Mitsuwa is a chain of Japanese supermarkets that include bookstores, liquor stores and a large food court, all under the same roof. There are several locations in California, but only two outside of the state: in Chicago and New Jersey. It's one of my favorite destinations in Chicago, even though it's quite a ways in the suburbs. The food court is the best part, I think. They serve mostly Japanese food, including some excellent ramen, but there's also a Chinese restaurant. I also go for the Japanese-style pancakes, which are strangely difficult to find in this country. I used to get them at a Japanese shopping center in Singapore, where they were cooked fresh in the back of a supermarket. But, alas, the food court was closed and the rest of the shopping center was shutting down for the night. I got a glutinous rice cake for $1.50. Back in the parking lot, it was emptying out, and people sat in their cars, most started and with the lights on. The parking lot of the Chicago Mitsuwa is a bit unsettling. There's a large abandoned restaurant at its southwest corner, and the pavement is in really rough shape. When it's dark, there's something very menacing about the place.
I drove back on the toll road, something I don't often do, but I was a little tired of traffic lights. It'll be nice to be in the country again tomorrow. Back to videos, road blogs and lots of pictures.