23 August 2014: It's Good to Be Back!

It's been an eventful month, dear reader, including a move that should have been easy but wasn't, a few weeks with only limited internet access, and a very long train ride to a very nice place. But i'm back at last with a few pictures of what was happening on this late-August Saturday in Rogers Park.

The morning was foggy, the lake and the seagulls barely visible. On mornings like this, the beach seems strange and otherworldly.

Even the Saturday morning fitness class in the park looked almost like an impressionist painting, the coach's voice counting off reps seemed gentle, distant.

After a stormy afternoon, the weather cleared and this exuberant group put on an impromptu staging of "Singin' in the Rain" while waiting outside the Mayne Stage for the Queerpocalypse show to begin. 

13 July 2014: Deutschland ist Weltmeister!

This isn't a very good picture and doesn't do justice to the excitement
of watching the World Cup final on the Mayne Stage's 20-foot screen.
It was a great time whether you were rooting for Germany or Argentina.
But to be perfectly honest, it was a better time for those of us
who are Germany fans.

29 April 2014, Pt. 1: Leon Russell's Back!

Leon Russell has returned to the Mayne Stage
 tonight and tomorrow. I saw him there on 
Halloween 2012 and he put on a great show. 
The show starts at 7:30 both nights and it looks like
tickets are still available. 
I love me some Leon!

8 February 2014: Comfort Food

Just when i feared that i would be at the mercy of my own cooking, there it was on the horizon: the welcoming, rosy glow of J.B. Alberto's. The Italian beef pizza with hot giardiniera truly eased the pain of being 600 miles away from a decent cheesesteak.

25 March 2013, Day 293

I love old movie theaters and find it so sad when they sit empty and deteriorating like the magnificent Uptown Theater at Broadway and Lawrence. The former Morse Theater, which originally opened in 1912, was built on a much humbler scale than the Uptown, but it is has had much more success in recent years. Although it's no longer a movie theater, it was restored and remodeled as a live music venue in 2008, with a comfortable and well-appointed interior and the original terra cotta trim on the facade. Now known as the Mayne Stage, it's a great asset to the neighborhood, to music lovers, and to the streetscape. 

31 October 2012, Day 148, Pt. 2

Leon Russell at the Mayne Stage

Oh Leon, neither one of us is the skinny little package of crazy that we were the first time i heard your music, but baby you can still tease some magic out of that keyboard and make me dance like a wild woman!

1 October 2012, Day 118

In spite of having to teach morning classes and now having to get up extra early for the benefit of my puppy and her tiny bladder, i am a night person -- always have been and always will be. All the alarm clocks over all the years have failed to make the territory of morning any less strange and exotic to me. From my vantage point on the L platform, these construction workers building a new apartment building next to the Mayne Stage on Morse Avenue seem like some alien race of creatures, imbued with an uncanny ability to perform their task with precision and energy at an hour when i am incapable of thinking of anything more detailed than how far away i am from my next cup of coffee.