I am so full of surprises

About 2 weeks after I got back from New York, I headed to Chicago for a surprise bday party. I hadn't been to Chicago for at least a decade, I forgot how much I really love that city and how much nostalgia I have for it.

Day one:

We took the train from Evanston into Chicago, a little later to meet Team Sisters to do some Chicago touristy things. We met them at the Shedd, they were just finishing their aquarium related business. We pondered what to do next when we were approached by a salesman to buy tickets for a water taxi to Navy Pier. Usually we wave these people off saying that we weren't interested because it is usually people selling glo sticks or super sweet lemonade in this contraption you have to carry around all day with sticky hands. The more we thought about it, the more it sounded like a good idea, especially after the schlep team sisters had already that morning from hotel to Navy Pier, Millenium and Grant Parks to Museum Campus. That idea turned out to be one of the best of the trip. Chicago has a great coast line, full of random archtecture that somehow all works together. Sears Tower, John Hancock, and the modern shiny Gerhy amplitheater in Millenuim park. (I will show these later, my post is aleady getting long)

 

We landed on Navy Pier about 20 minutes later walked around a bit, kids riding rides, stopping for refreshments. Then I did something I never thought I would do, agree to ride on the GIGANTIC ferris wheel. 

We met up with Mandu and had a nostalgic late lunch at Due, it was as good as we remembered

Dinosaurs wolves and mamoths

I have passed by the Page Museum twice a day at least five days a week for the past 4 years and have never gone in. Los Angeles is like that, you pass by a place a million times, but it is often because you are on your way to some place else.

For Ciclavia I wasn't really on my way anywhere, just east and the Page ended up being on that path. The page museum sits at the site of Rancho La Brea which used to be cattle ranches, pretty hard to believe, although it is on museum row, it still is one of the more active and more stinky fossil sites.

I was pretty amazed at its collection and had no idea mastadons/mammoths only had 4 huge molars in their mouths, like super huge like the size of my head.

Here are some photos.

 

1 antique bison

2 mastadon

3 dire wolf skulls

 

 

4 anamatronic saber toothed tiger falling a giant sloth

Meanwhile back in Los Angeles

Last Sunday I took part in Ciclavia: iconic Wilshire Blvd.

What the heck is Ciclavia? Well I am glad you asked. Ciclavia was started in Columbia as a response to congestion in the streets and pollution due to cars and other automobiles. LA knows a little about those two things. It is a day when the residents take back the streets by closing down a main thoroughfare only for bikers, skateboarders, rollerskaters and walkers.

This time is was Wilshire from Downtown to Fairfax, but also involved was a self guided architecture as part of PST presents tour with a little kbbq fest thrown in. I couldn't resist and I really didn't have an excuse not to go, since it was basically a block from my house.

There were several stations set up as rest stops for ciclaviaers (?) including djs, cultural dance and martial arts demos, food trucks and there were several 25 cent lemonade stands that neighborhood kids set up to make some summer cash.

Here are photos:

While digging through dropbox....

I found that I actually did take picture of Jean Georges and Red Rooster

Monday in New York

Monday in New York museums are open, and I took the opportunity to see my cousin Nick who has been touring the country, but happened to be in New York coincidentally. This trip was full of coincidences.

At MoMA one of the special exhibits was a rain room. Wherever you stepped, the rain suddenly wasn't there, they warned that you might slightly wet, but after two days of getting rained on, this really didn't really sound appealing to me. Especially a 2+ hour wait. I am too old to wait 2+ hours to get slightly rained on. No thanks.

I did however want to see the Applied Design exhibit. 

What the heck is applied design? I know you had  that question.

I guess the best way to answer that question is to tell you what I saw.

Artfully designed chairs made from unlikely materials

A rolling giant ball made from big plungers that rollover and detonate undetonated mines 

A visualization of the internet

Tetris, super mario brothers

A machine that makes pottery out of sand using sunlight

I don't know if that explains it, but i hope it does. 

This is a chair