Midwestern tomatoes

While I was in Chicago, there was some kind of big salmonella thing going on across the country with tomatoes. I didn't have that much time to listen to or read the news. But while all this was hitting the news, I was eating some of the most delicious tomatoes in Chicago. Some were cherry tomatoes (at N9NE) and I believe those are not part of the problem, but I had a cold tomato soup at Coco Pazzo and uncooked tomatoes in all kinds of other things. They were all exceptionally tasty and tomato-y and nary a health problem.

Gotta come back to Chicago!

Day 2 of Neocon and I'm hearing that there are not as many people as previous years. Really? Seemed like a lot to me and the traffic is terrible. People are always talking about LA traffic, but I've never been in anything as bad as Chicago. To and from the airport, slow crawl all the way taking an hour. Plus taxis here don't seem to believe in air conditioning and it's hot and humid here. In the city, people honking and driving between lanes, completely crazy.

Again today, great food. I went with Becky and Sandra to Frontera, which is Rick Bayless' casual dining restaurant. He has a ton of cookbooks and apparently is on PBS occasionally. The food was again marvelous. I had a mango cooler and we all decided on the special of the day, pork in corn massa wrapped in banana leaf (so like a tamale but different). The sauce was a red sauce and was really delicious. We had ice cream with two sauces, but the knockout was the goat cheese, which was caramel coloured and had the most amazing balance of spices, it was like tasting fireworks. We also had flan which was very creamy but after that sauce, they kind of paled.

Dinner was at Japonais again. This time cocktails by the river with yummy spring rolls and sushi rolls. Dinner was shared plates, 2 different kinds of special sushi, 3 different kinds of rolls, plus a chicken, beef and tuna entree. I was so full by the time entrees hit that I could only taste the beef and skipped the other two. My favourite dessert was the 'Coffee and donuts', which were beignets with chocolate inside with green tea ice cream. After dinner, we hit the Mohawk party. Wow, what a bash. Huge crowd with an absolutely amazing live band that totally rocked the house.

Unfortunately the trip must end, however Chicago has impressed me a lot. I barely scratched the surface of the great architecture here (FLW, Mies' Farnsworth, all the Louis Sullivan). We ate a lot of great food, but there is much more where that came from. Plus there's the Field Museum, Art Institute, and more!! This city deserves a longer stay, for sure. One interesting observation about the city, the people are very warm and down to earth, but the population here is very black and white. Most of the Asians I saw were at the Mart (there was a large foreign contingent here for the show). Becky's colleague also noticed the dearth of Latinos (she is one herself).

I found Neocon itself to be totally exhausting but I came away realizing that what you get here that it's not possible to get at home is the ability to put all of the various manufacturers in context with each other. I really got a sense for what they all think is the future of their industries and hence of how they think our workplaces will look in the not too distant future. Whether or not they are right only time will tell, but there were clear patterns here and I really enjoyed getting that perspective. I also enjoyed meeting various people from the manufacturers who are not located in LA.

Neocon begins

I'm not going to bore you with the show stuff, except to say that there are a ton of people here, the Mart is HUGE, and some women are crazy to wear the shoes they are wearing. Lunch was at Coco Pazzo and really good (the panna cotta was incredible). There was a cocktail party at Martini Park and this is a really cool place. It's quite a large space but it was packed. Drinks were free flowing as were the little mini-burgers. They had a DJ spinning some great music and the bartenders were terrific. When we had to leave, there was a line out the door waiting to get in. We lucked out again in our timing! Dinner was at N9Ne and was good but I wasn't blown away, however I've had so much good food so far here that they had a lot to live up to.

Oh, one more thing I want to mention, I've experienced more weather here in a few days than I have in 20 years living in LA!

Architecture and weather in Chicago

Chicago is home to some great architecture. Sandy and I took an architecture boat tour to see some of it from the Chicago river. It was a great tour, although I would've been very happy without the volunteer commentary. There are great examples of all kinds of architectural styles done up as a skyscraper from gothic revival to international style to post-modern. There appears to be a major riverside renewal with a lot of industrial buildings being converted to homes with river views. Luckily, we took our boat tour in the morning, because while I was having lunch with Pam, there was a major thunderstorm! We saw the rain from the restaurant and it was blowing like crazy and coming in sideways, with lightening and thunder. It was spent by the time we finished eating and the air had that great post-storm feeling-cool relief!

After lunch I met up with Sandy and we walked down Michigan Ave to do some window shopping and to see Millennium Park. This place has been much photographed because of the Anish Kapoor sculpture called Cloud Gate but often called the 'bean'. There is also a beautiful Frank Gehry designed open air theatre with a huge lawn for playing, sitting, throwing a ball. The Cloud Gate was gorgeous. Because the sky was still stormy, its reflection in the mirrored surface was amazing. Just as much fun was seeing how people were interacting with the sculpture. Another major attraction here is the Crown Fountain which is two large glass block rectangles with images of faces projected from inside (apparently via LED lights). Water pours down from the top or from an opening in the images' mouths into a shallow pool. Even on a stormy day, the combination of children and water is irresistible.

After a short rest at the hotel, the evening started at the Vitra party at Japonais, a neat Asian themed restaurant with a lower level lounge and patio looking right onto the river I'd just been on that morning! Next stop was Harry Caray's bar for a light dinner and trying to watch the Dodgers and the Lakers at the same time. It's going to be a very long day tomorrow, and my first experience of the Merchandise Mart.

Chicago!

I had a really smooth flight to Chicago. The security lines at the airport were really short. The TSA folks were exceptionally nice, and the plane was full but I had no trouble with overhead storage space. When we were just outside Chicago, we flew by some weather (we had to fasten the seatbelts) and although the ride did not get particularly bumpy, on the right side of the plane we were treated to the most spectacular cloud formations I've ever seen. One in particular was this ridiculously huge stack of fluffy, cloudy whiteness (massive!) that turned grey and fuzzy near the top and kind of blended in with a thin layer of dark grey clouds above us. I later learned that there was a tornado just south of Chicago and I wonder if that cloud formation had any part of that.

Traffic into Chicago was rough (it was raining off and on rather hard) but after we got checked in, cleaned up and changed, I met Sandy down at the hotel bar for a quick drink (Patty was there too, after a hard 2 hours of shopping) and we went to meet some folks at The Gage for dinner. The food was really good and the restaurant was busy and hopping. We shared a delicious cheese plate (some cheeses from Europe, some local). Barb had the celery root soup with salmon rolls which was surprisingly good. I had elk with mashed potatoes and the meat was amazing, flavourful, juicy but not fat at all. The mashed potatoes were buttery, smooth and delicious. Yummy! For dessert we tried the peanut butter mousse s'mores and the french toast. I didn't much care for the french toast (the maple jelly was good but the crispy rice didn't have much taste) but I loved the peanut butter s'mores, although really I think they were more like Reese's with marshmallow foam. We had two delicious bottles of wine, one a Chardonnay from Mendoza, Argentina and one a Pinot Grigio. We had a great time talking about things both important and trivial, and crushing on the bus boy (he's 21, from El Salvador and in Chicago because he heard it was a fun city).

After dinner, Sandy and I went to Blue Chicago to listen to a really fun blues band. They started with a male singer but were later joined by a woman with a voice that'll blow you out of the room. They sang a few covers, made sure there was plenty of audience participation, and just rocked the house.

The streets were packed as we made our way back to the hotel. What a great intro to a great city!

Book group boards the billionaire's yacht

The oddest thing happened at book group the other night. It started out being a pretty typical meeting. This month was Diane's turn so we met on her 28' boat at the marina. As usual, we sat out on the back and chatted away about the book and then about all kinds of other things, whatever happened to cross our minds. Amy's friend Sue was visiting and she added her opinions to the mix. We must have been making a bit of noise because right after Allison left to go home we heard a shout from outside the locked gate at the entrance to the dock asking to be let in. Diane did so and brought over a good looking young guy with long hair coming to check out the girls making all the noise. He then proceeded to tell us that he and his buddy were on this 90' yacht on the next dock over and had planned a party for some movie they were promoting about an Indian god named Hanuman starring Keanu Reeves but no one came to their party. He said we should all join him on the boat. There were clearly a few of us who were thinking these guys are probably serial killers or something, but enough of us thought 'what the heck' so that we all disembarked from Diane's little boat and trouped over to this gigantic vessel called the Mer Sea. Amy yells up "Permission to board!" and a guy named David gives us the okay. Apparently we need to take off our shoes (?) and we meet David and gather around a table, which seats all 7 of us plus Mark (the young guy) and David, who we are told is a billionaire who is in commodities. By the way, there are 2 TVs you can watch from the dining area. We are poured French red wine (check out the cool Oster electric cork remover they used), we try and figure out what these guys are doing (didn't look like it was set up for a party) and how much if anything they are telling us is real. For example we are told that David has purchased an even bigger yacht, 92' long, which is to arrive shortly and when it does, the Mer Sea will be moved to another spot and the new boat will be christened the Mer Sea Beaucoup. We are shown the sales flyer for this new yacht which has an asking price of $3.5 million dollars. We do not ask if David bargained the sellers down. We are then joined by Lance who gets us going around the table with each person saying the title of the book we would write and what it's about. It's actually a very interesting exercise and we have a lot of good laughs out of our book ideas and titles. We are poured another bottle of French wine (this time I see it's a '95 Bordeaux). Both bottles of wine are excellent. Lance tells us when he first came to LA he made a bunch of 'T&A' movies but now is a presenter for something called 'Beverly Hills TV' which sells only in England. It's all very entertaining and weird and fun, however 10:00 rolls around and most of us have to work the next day, so we take our leave and walk away wondering what the heck just happened.

When I got home, I tried to check on some of the stuff we were told. There is a website for Beverly Hills TV which seems to sell knock offs of celebrity merchandise in England. The Mer Sea has a website of its very own. And there are postings on various blogs with gossip about a movie about Hanuman with Keanu Reeves, possibly Kevin Costner and an Indian star. Apparently Amy tried to Google David but didn't find anything.

Diane's gonna have to let us know when the new bigger yacht sails into town .

All kinds of artists and also food

I had a very art filled weekend. Saturday was the Culver City Art Walk and Gigi, Aven and I went to check it out. The eastern portion of Washington Blvd. near La Cienega has drawn quite a collection of little art galleries showing all kinds of up and coming artists. And some already very well established ones such as Takashi Murakami who had some works at one of the larger galleries. I chatted with a woman artist who's paintings had the most beautiful colours and a sense of space and serenity. One gallery had some works made from straight pins with string to form pictures (remember doing that as a kid?) as well as others with cut paper and paint. There was a lot of use of resin with other materials (over collaged fabric, papers, etc). I've been very drawn to more craft based art, I think I like that 'hand of the artist' thing. I definitely don't see craft technique used in art as secondary to traditional paints or sculpture. The neat thing about some of these artists was that if you saw something you really loved and wanted to buy some art, you could get some pieces for a few hundred dollars. I didn't buy anything, but at those prices at least it's within the realm of possibility. Of course food was a very important part of the day (when is it not?) and we had amazing healthy hot dogs (grass fed beef!) from the "Let's Be Frank" truck, tacos (al pastor!) at a make shift outdoor stand and pastries from the local french bistro.

On Sunday I went to check out the Kara Walker show at the Hammer. My first encounter with this artist was two years ago, where she had a small showing at the Met in NYC. Her theme there was the New Orleans hurricane and flood. I didn't know anything about her but was fascinated by the technical skill in her cut paper silhouettes as well as the provocative subject matter. The show at the Hammer is more extensive including works from early in her career (although she seems to be pretty young). She includes a lot of references to literary and other materials in her works, many of which I'm only vaguely aware of, so I feel like there is a lot I'm missing. However the works themselves are amazing. You just want to keep looking to try and see all the nuances. There is a great little video of her talking about her life and work and she seems like someone I would love to chat over coffee or a glass of wine.