November 21-22 -- Chicago with Pete

I had never been to downtown Chicago so the drive up Lakeshore to Pete's had that cosmopolitan density I had last seen many states ago, the kind of density that has an electricity and a magnetism to it.  

Pete is a friend from college whom I've gotten to know better since.  His wife Becky and he were part of summer potluck in Williamstown in 2007, a collection of dinners so fun they are a model for what I would like my whole life to be like.  (Readers of this blog may note that it is Pete and Becky's car I almost bought for the trip, the one Pete said was the sort of car he didn't worry about ruining a friendship over.)

Pete and Becky are chefs, but of the modesty and work ethic that they would call themselves cooks.  They had a wonderful restaurant in Vermont.  Pete was invited to cook at the James Beard house.  Though I've never seen it, I imagine Pete knows how to slaughter a large animal, and can cook nose to tail.  Pete is also longtime host of the annual pig roast in Vermont each summer.  He has that kindness that spans having a hundred and fifty people show up to eat a pig you roasted in the ground, or a mi casa su casa welcome to his home in Oprah's home town.  Becky, also an amazing cook, and a dessert conjurer in particular, is now in law school.  I am on my way to see her in St. Paul.


Pete lives on the north side of the city, near his workplace, which is a non-profit that runs a restaurant and training programs for disadvantaged people to help them reenter the workforce.  I meet Pete at a nearby bar called Tweet -- of the pre-Twitter generation -- where they serve free coffee on the bar, and I sit down to read that one local paper that shares syndicated columns with The Village Voice (Free Will, Save Love).  Pete rolls up on his bike waiving through the window, bags full from the market.  We take in my stuff and head to lunch.


Curiously, the best falafel in Chicago (as far as I know, though I was pretty convinced) is in a neighborhood that is an unlikely overlap of gay-Swedish-Middle Eastern. You order falafel from a small back window and sit at small tables with heavy laminated tablecloths to received your $3.50 sandwich on a paper plate.  We got seconds.  


Fortified, we drove into town to visit the Art Institute.  I had never been and wanted, like most people, to see the Seurat La Grande Jatte.  It is human nature to want to lean into that painting, and I can't imagine the scene in Ferris Beuller (that zooms in maniacally through Cameron's eyes) helps people stand back.  As I am pivoting forward, the piercing voice of authority comes from the side, across the room, "Don't lean."


The voice is so forceful, yet not amplified, powerful from well carved out use, not brute force, like rock eroded away by millions of years of water, rather than a sledgehammer, that you can't help but notice it.  I wondered how many times a day the guard had to say that, so we went over to ask.


As a huge oversight, I never asked her name, which I imagine could be Gloria.  Sometimes people ask me what guards think of the art in museums and I don't have a great answer, so we asked Gloria.  She was standing in a room of Impressionist landscapes, plus the Seurat.  She said she often got stuck in with the Abstract Expressionist paintings.  "Now, Cubism I can handle, but they put me in those modern galleries.  What's his name, Pollock?, and that one that looks like it was made with a pack of crayons.  I'm sorry.  I need a tree -- something I can recognize."  Gesturing to the Impressionist landscapes admiringly, "These, you can tell people sat down and painted these things."


Pete and I eventually wound our way around to the modern galleries later, and I can report, as someone who loves many large-scale Pollocks and counts the MoMA Pollock retrospective as among the best museum shows I have ever seen, that the Art Institute's Pollock is not that outstanding.  It's fine, but not one you can lose yourself in.  We decided the "pack of crayons" painting was a late Jasper Johns.  


Here is a group looking at a Lucio Fontana, an artist whose work is described in Museum Legs as seemingly put in museums as lightning rods to collect stray skepticism towards abstract art.

The modern wing had just opened in May of 2009 -- a Renzo Piano building (Piano being half of the Pompidou design team) that apparently added 264,000 square feet, making the Art Institute the second largest museum in the country.  I was shocked by how finely proportioned the wing was, lots of minutely spaced structural supports giving the modernist frame the delicacy of a fish skeleton, more than an austere box.  Here are some artful chairs in the courtyard:

A very pretty coat check:

We set out over the views at dusk, and they were pretty amazing.  

The view back to the original beaux-arts building:

The walkway down toward a Frank Gehry ampitheatre.  That walkway is bouncy, like the "wobbly bridge" in front of Tate Modern, except higher up (though, in fairness, not over water):

The view back to the modern wing, whose overhang reminds me of the Memphis Airport, as it was photographed on the local phone book cover in the 1980s:

Here's Pete on the walkway, Gehry in the background:

The Gehry in full, if atmospheric and blurry:

The modern wing, again with the Memphis Airport feel, to take nothing away from Piano.

The fine bones structure:

The view the other direction:

Pete and I headed back and he made dinner.  This was a huge, huge treat, and I fell for Pete's graciousness that only one person fit in his kitchen.  He made salmon--he had bartered some venison for an amazing piece of fish--and cooked it "temps sous vite", meaning in a plastic bag in hot water.  The principle is that if you are trying to cook meat to a certain temperature, say 150 degrees, if you put the meat in a pot full of 150-degree water, it is not possible to overcook it.  You just leave it there a really long time.  In this case, ideally you have Oregon Pinot and a chance to catch up with Pete while you wait.

After dinner, we went for a walk.  We saw this sparkly mural in the tunnel--in mosaic with mirror shards inlaid so that when headlights came through the tunnel it was kaleidoscopic and unpredictably sparkly, a bit like the Eiffel Tower light effect.  Through the tunnel, we walked around a dark park where I found it odd that this sedan kept making the same loop into a parking lot in tight circles over and over the whole time we were there, then even odder, though perhaps less ominous, that they started using their turn signal.

Pete made food for the week and sent me on the road the next day with this great lunch:

That's squash and brussel sprouts with blue cheese.  The Trader Joe's container is full of dahl and rice made properly with ghee.

I took a neighborhood tour 

and then went to meet with a college classmate, on Pete's kind thought to connect us.  The two of them are close friends.  Robin works in museums and is expecting, so I stopped by her house with coffee and a hot blueberry muffin (and hot chocolate) from her recommended local spot.

It was great to catch up with Robin.  We had a funny grass-is-greener moment about my jack of all trades life, and her long, deep knowledge of her field in the arts.

And then I hit the road for Madison, fortified by the chocolate Robin insisted I take.

Postscript: Pete's cooking and packed lunches and general openness fall under the Living Arts, to say nothing of teaching people job training skills around food and opening a new cafe.