LLWorldTour

It’s summertime in Chicago and it’s wonderful. Everyone is out enjoying the sunshine, the lakefront, & the street festivals. In places like our fair city, it seems the residents really take advantage of their summer months. Yes, perhaps it is because the other seven or so months of the year, the weather can be a bit moody and often times downright bastardly. But right now, it’s fabulous. I had the pleasure of checking out a few of these fairly new (or new to me) swanky spots in the sky.

The Roof at The Wit Hotel

Lazily perched twenty-seven stories above State Street (and right across the street from my former workplace, ABC7) sits the new Wit Hotel’s Roof bar. It has an indoor lounge and outdoor bar. Make sure you don your shades because the combo of white fabric and sun reflecting off loop skyscrapers is enough to give you a nice tan. The views are fantastic of the hustle on State Street directly below, the Chicago River, Millennium Park and Lake Michigan in the distance.  It’s a fun scene and certainly makes me feel like I am in South Beach rather than downtown Chicago.

The Terrace at Trump Tower

The terrace lounge on the sixteenth floor of the Trump Tower has views of the city that many have never seen.  From this chic oasis in the sky, you can take in an impressive eyeful of the Chicago River, Lake Michigan, and the Chicago skyline, including the Wrigley Clock Tower and Tribune Building, dramatically lit right in front of you. There are L-shaped couches for cuddling and sharing a bottle of bubbly or trump-like high priced cocktails.

The Terrace at the Conrad

Yet another oasis in an urban jungle, this hotel roof bar scene is adorned with tropical plants, sofas and day beds, transporting you very easily to a tropical paradise. You can mix and mingle with the beautiful people as you sip overpriced martinis and snack on tasty ‘global-inspired’ tapas.

Pegasus

Then there’s Pegasus – an old standby and fave of yours truly. It’s been in Greektown for two decades now.  It’s not at all flashy or chic or too filled with scenesters. But the waiters are friendly and charming (and Greek!), the Greek beer is cold, the yummy apps never disappoint, and the view? Well, it speaks for itself.

It seems in our modern times we spend so much time face down in our blackberry world texting and shuffling through life. Now with all our i-gadgets we never miss a call, but seem to miss more of real life passing us by and certainly have less interaction with people and the world around us.

Juan Mann of Australia has started a revolution to buck this trend. How? By hugging it out.  That’s right, free hugs to anyone who wants or needs one.

Who doesn’t love a good hug? I don’t know about you, but for me, there’s nothing out there for sale at the stores that compares to a good old fashioned squeeze around the mid section.  Now, folks in places like Taipei, Tel Aviv, Italy, Ireland, Toronto, and Colorado are continuing his campaign by offering free hugs to strangers in public places. Check out his site and story here and then go hug someone you love…or if you are feeling really ‘huggy bear-like,’ go hug a stranger. Now get to huggin’.

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“And each time I roam, Chicago is callin’ me home.” —Frank Sinatra (My Kind of Town)

I have a crush on an old flame. I am smitten and falling in love all over again.  That’s right, I’m back in the strong arms of the ‘city with big shoulders’ and it feels gooood.

It’s truly the one place I have lived where nearly everyone seems to like it – the lakefront, the restaurants, the free outdoor concerts, the architecture, the bars, and so on, and so on…

Walking around the many neighborhoods of the north side often feels like strolling through one big college campus. There are young people or young-at-heart people, always laughing, walking hand in hand or riding their bikes somewhere. There’s a bar on every corner, along with cute cafes, restaurants, and the ubiquitous Starbucks. There definitely is a positive energy in the air that is palpable and I love it.

I’ve already waxed poetic about my favorite adopted city so I won’t bore you will my love story details, suffice it to say, I am back and it’s better than ever. Besides the obvious things I’ve bragged about before, here is just one  ’small story’ that may convey why I like it so much:

Yes, Chicago is a big city with more than three million residents scurrying about jockeying for position, but it’s certainly not as harried as New York City and I’m always amazed at the quietness of the side streets – even downtown. It’s known as a city of neighborhoods and each one has its own feel, but remains like a small town or village in a big city. One time, my ex-boyfriend and I had just come from a tasty dinner at a neighborhood joint in the Southport corridor. We went to the local movie theater to catch a post dinner flick. “Would you like me to keep that in the fridge for you guys?” said the ticket-taker as he noticed our ‘to go’ box of leftovers.

We were pleasantly surprised. “Sure! That’d be great.”

“Okay, no problem. Just don’t forget them when the movie’s over.”

And sure enough, just as he suspected, afterwards we forgot and headed straight for exit.

“Wait! Weren’t you the ones who left some food?” He’d spotted us and made sure we got our leftover quesadillas or jambalaya or whatever it was.

How nice is that? Not exactly what you’d think about big city, USA, but more like small town, America, right? But that’s Chicago.

Now, if I can just figure out how to make love to you…I’d be all set.

Traveling also feeds my fascination with languages, dialects, and various accents. After traveling all around the world, I became fairly proficient in Spanish and could get by with a modicum of French, German, Italian, Romanian, Turkish and even a tiny bit of Vietnamese.

Here is a list of languages I encountered and dabbled in while traveling:

• Spanish (for about 4 months of trip)
• New Zealand & Australian English
• Cantonese (in Hong Kong)
• Vietnamese
• Cambodian
• Thai
• English in Singapore
• English in Dubai
• Turkish
• Romanian
• Hungarian (learned one word…extremely difficult language)
• Slovak
• Polish
• German
• Dutch
• British English
• New Yawk English
• French
• Italian
• Arabic (in Egypt & Jordan)
• Hebrew
• Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian
• Swedish

Although I feel truly lucky to speak English as a first language and never had any problems mainly because so many around the world can speak some English, it’s always so much nicer and more respectful if, as a traveler, you can at least greet someone in their native tongue and it goes without saying that  ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ go a long way.

Gracias! Merci! Grazie! Toda! Shukran! Danke! Tack! Arigato! Paldies! Dziękuję! Efharistó! Mulţumesc! Spasibo! Tesekkurler!

Here is a cool vid that a friend showed me months ago. See if you can figure out where she’s from.

21 Accents

While I was home in New Jersey living once again with my dad and his new wife in my old childhood house, I helped them sort through 36 years worth of stuff (dare I say crap?) before they sell the house and possibly move to a lovely over fifty-five community where the grass is always green and nicely mowed.

So our house here in NJ is a lovely typical suburban split level abode circa 1972. And it hasn’t changed much since.  As I described earlier, my pink bedroom was nearly exactly as I’d left it 20 years ago. And the same could be said for most of the rest of the house, like the kitchen complete with yellow Formica countertops, yellow linoleum floor, and beautiful faux wood grain cabinets. But, now my dad would be selling and trading up for newer more contemporary digs. So I was helping him sort through all kinds of miscellany and junk, a lot of which hadn’t been touched in several decades.

Here are some fun items we came across in the garage…most of which went straight to the trash:

• Burpee seed catalog circa 1987
• Bicentennial commemorative 1976 hot plate
• A tiny Torah. Mazel Tov!
• Old plasticy table cloths
• Half used cans of WD-40 and Oil-in-One
• 20-30 plastic, cobweb-filled plant containers
• Dried up craft paints
• ‘Cleen! Brite-White’ white wall tire spray circa 1978
• 6-7 ice scrapers and various snow brushes
• Approximately 512 used golf balls
• 1 old red snow sled (a keeper!)
• An unidentified tool that looks like a ray gun from a 1960s sci-fi movie
• Drain snake
• Plutonium reactor (just seeing if you are paying attention)
• Coleus Plant seeds circa 1979
• One Headlight (The Wallflowers would be proud)
• 1 Styrofoam egg container
• Axe handle sans Axe head
• Metal Mailbox Letters
• 1970s hanging lamps
• Random bits of wood, glass, Plexiglas, skin
• 1 Hedge Trimmer
• Solidified Turtle wax
• Various balls of twine, rope, and electric cords

Besides most of this stuff that hit the trash before I could say ‘toss it’ we still decided to have a moving sale—the classic American weekend of fun—hocking old, dirty wares to old, dirty bargain hunters.

The morning of said sale, the darn garage sale groupies showed up around 7:30am. Our sale started at 9:00. They were circling like vultures, just waiting to score that coveted old Sinatra LP or misplaced antique.  The funny thing was these early birds all knew each other…it was like a scary gang, but scary as in ‘get a life’ scary.  I went out at 8:30am to say ‘hi’ and ask jokingly ‘what about NO early birds’ didn’t they understand?! I did relent and let them in at 8:50am…nice salesgirl that I am.

Here are some of the luxurious items I sold throughout the day:

• A mini fridge (which was later returned as it was said to ‘not work’ even though it actually did…later sold it on Craigslist.com)
• My ‘Sew Perfect’ little girl sewing machine
• A small pocket knife
• A green glass dish
• An old transistor radio
• My old Soundesign small radio
• A plastic laundry hanger thingy
• The Hardy Boys books
• Couple other books
• A Sudoku coffee table set
• My brother’s old nun chucks. Some kid is going to attack someone with those soon. At least I made a few bucks.
• An old softball bat
• Random stuffed animals
• Assorted games
• A Nurf basketball set
• Barware
• Watches
• Several wall prints
• Frames
• 2 plastic storage boxes
• A never-used charcoal grill
• Old Sheets/bedspreads
• Brass candlesticks
• A silver ice bucket
• A glass jar for .25. (for the buyer to store her ‘fish food’)
• A beautiful never-used car shammy
• Car Seat Cover
• Basket of fake flowers
• Sunglasses
• Clip on Sunglasses
• Sports flip up sunglasses
• Outdoor Chair Cushions

This is it. This is what my life has come down to on a beautiful Saturday. Hawking lame wares to lame people. Ugh.

The last sale of the day? My Fiddler on the Roof Music box. Sniff, sniff. Goodbye Tevye! Just like him, I wish I were a rich (wo)man…and now I know that having a garage sale is not the way to achieve that.

But there is still stuff left if anyone is interested in a twenty-plus year old outdoor umbrella or a shoe horn shaped like a horse.

As a good friend of mine put it so perfectly: One man’s trash is…well, another man’s trash.