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Published: March 5th 2012
Chicago Blues Festival stage
The band jams on the main stage at the Chicago Blues FestivalI’m in
Chicago this morning, and I’m depressed.
The horrible weather from last night continues.
I went outside, and saw skyscrapers rising into clouds.
Drippy rain is falling on and off.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it’s pretty cold.
Definitely not the type of day I was looking for in one of the greatest cities in the United States.
A solution to this problem sort of exists.
The
Chicago Blues Festival is this weekend.
The blues was born in the Mississippi delta (see
Nature’s Aftermath), but it grew up in Chicago.
Many poor Mississippi musicians took the train to Chicago for a better life (so many that the Illinois Central depot in Clarksdale features in several songs) and brought the music with them.
In Chicago, it mutated in a highly energetic form of blues featuring electric guitars and loud vocals.
This form of blues influenced countless rock musicians.
The festival, the largest in the world, celebrates this heritage.
I decided to walk to the festival.
The route passes directly past countless skyscrapers.
I got to see their bottoms, at least.
At one
Buckingham Fountain
Buckingham Fountain shows its stuff point, the road crossed over the Chicago River.
This is supposed to be one of the city’s best sights, with skyscrapers stretching in every direction.
It looked like one of James Whistler’s paintings of London, all grey and black forms.
I can only hope things improve before I leave.
The festival itself spreads over several stages around
Grant Park, the largest waterfront park in the city.
Like Movement (see
Put Your Hands Up For Detroit), I could wander from stage to stage taking in different performers.
Also unfortunately like Movement , I spent quite a bit of time huddling under trees trying to escape the rain.
The acts themselves ranged all over the place, from the traditional blues I heard in Clarksdale to fiery electric bands whose linage to rock groups like Led Zeppelin was obvious.
Most of them were pretty good.
One main stage singer showed the crowd her ability by briefly singing without a microphone; the entire crowd was still able to hear her.
They broke out cheering afterward.
I can’t avoid comparing the festival to the Ground Zero club in
Blues Festival crowd
Blues fans dance to the band at the festival after the rain stopped Clarksdale (see
Ride With the Devil in Cotton Country).
They were almost polar opposites.
The club show was a bunch of friends getting together to jam.
The festival was a showcase on a grand scale.
I enjoyed the intimacy of one, and the energy of the other (even in the rain).
See some of it:
While eating dinner, I took the time to see one of Grant Park’s famous features, the
Buckingham Fountain.
It consists of multiple layers with water jets sprouting from every layer.
The center contains a water jet capable of sending a plume multiple stories in the air.
This fountain is one of the largest in the world.
During the summer, the fountain puts on a show with the water jets choreographed to match colored lights.
I saw the show, although the soundtrack was turned off due to the festival.
The tail end of the festival day provided the best sight I have seen today.
The clouds finally lifted.
As they did so, the skyscrapers slowly revealed themselves in all their glory.
Chicago Skyline
The famous Chicago skyline emerges from the fog behind the Chicago Blues Festival A wall of them appeared next to the park on all sides.
Behind them were even more buildings.
The city now looked like what it was supposed to be, an incredible showcase for modern design in general and the International Style (see
Days of Future’s Past) in particular.
The lifting clouds allowed the final sight tonight.
The
Chicago Navy Pier has the reputation of a honey pot for tourists and suburbanites, which natives pointedly avoid.
This reputation has a large basis in fact.
The pier is a huge complex of mall shops, cheesy restaurants, and fast food joints.
Some of them (the
McDonalds of the Future, arranged like a cafeteria) need to be seen to be believed.
Tourist trap it may be, but the pier has some things worth seeing.
The first item is the view of the city.
When the visibility is good (which is now was), the pier has a perfect view of the city skyline from the water.
The buildings stretch almost to the limit of vision.
It took my breath away.
The other thing worth seeing is the
fireworks show, which the pier puts
Chicago from Navy Pier
The famous skyline at night on every weekend.
This show was a beautiful artistic production, with multiple fireworks going off at once to a matching music soundtrack.
The variety was large, and the designers knew how to use them.
Many festival fireworks shows are not this good (see
The City of Sunshine), and this one happens every weekend!
Watch it!
After the fireworks show, the pier provided a blast of fun cheese: a
rock band playing 80s new wave covers.
They were certainly enthusiastic, pretty good, and got the crowd going.
In Chicago, I stayed at the
Whitehall Hotel.
The hotel was built as an apartment building in 1926, and converted to a hotel in the 1970s.
It has the feel of a very old place, with lots of design detail in the rooms and lobby.
Like many old buildings, the rooms are small.
The location is amazing, across from the John Hancock Building at the northern end of Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s wealthiest residential and shopping street.
The small rooms mean the rates are surprisingly affordable for this neighborhood, which I appreciated.
Navy Pier Fireworks finale
You gotta ignite the light, and let it shine! Just own the night, like the fourth of July! The Whitehall perfectly illustrates one of the petty annoyances of urban hotels.
Like many, it
charges a fee per night for wireless internet.
What makes this one particularly annoying is that the hotel lies less than a block from a coffeehouse that offers it for free.
To complete the absurdity, the concierge gladly provided directions to the coffeehouse this morning.
The hotel is basically charging people for the privilege of avoiding a two minute walk, and many are paying it!
I wish more would resist this type of fee like I did, so it will eventually disappear.
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