Just spent the weekend in balmy Chicago, archi-tripping. Hung out in Wicker Park, Bucktown, Oak Park, Downtown, Millennium Park...After four days my impression is that Chicago is one awesome, friendly city, with great summer weather and impressive architectural pedigree. Would love to live / work there if I had the chance! You lucky Chicagolanders....
No, I didn't know about your Chicago google map... do you have a link to it LD?
I just like visiting cities as if I was living like the locals, so I did a lot of research into the areas that I thought would interest me. Wicker Park kept coming up as a cool place to chill with coffee or beer in hand, so naturally that's where I wanted to go.
Intelligentsia coffee...wow, REAL coffee!
Are the winters really as brutal as they say they are in Chicago? I've managed to adapt to extreme desert heat, so extreme cold is just the opposite end of the scale...
winter is tolerable - its all about the gear. i actually love the cool, crisp winter air, the polutants fall to earth so you get crystal clear air. Like the saying goes - its not the cold, its the wind! December is great, not oo cold, a little snow and the holidays, January its starting to get old and windy, by Febuary you want to kill yourself, but then Spring arrives and you appreciate it more.
evil is right on about the winters... the fall and early winter are beautiful, and the temperatures are manageable... by the end of January and February it starts getting really cold, and it stays cloudy and dark for days and days sometimes weeks on weeks.
heres the link to my google map, im trying to update it as often as i can... its mostly just covering the major spots right now.
Doesn't sound so bad. A summer in Las Vegas is a warm April / May, when you can walk about comfortably in the sun and sit outside having drinks on the terrace. Gets very hot in June / July, but if you have access to a swimming pool, its like being in a never ending resort. Late July / August, its like the surface of Mars and the roads start melting (literally) and your body dehydrates from the inside out the moment you step outside of air con. Yay late September is like lovely warm t-shirt shorts weather again. So a midwest winter in reverse!
I like to throw myself off mountains strapped to a snowboard, so I agree, its all about the right cold weather gear.
there are days in Febuary and sometimes early march, where the wind is so strong I, a 175 ib man, have to lean into the wind to walk. Although I've never seen it happen, I suspect old ladies and children have been blown into the river never to be heard from again.
Chicago gets top marks for "keepin it real." It just didn't feel as pretentious as other big cities I've been in. Bucktown / Wicker Park was a really nice blend of London / Melbourne / Sydney inner city scale and character. Loved the many treelined streets.
Downtown was very New York / Hong Kong, without the dirt. I actually liked the el, not as extensive as other public transport systems (a bit confusing with like 3 stations all of the same name on different colored lines), but it was clean and efficient.
Impressive number of jobsites underway in the downtown area, I noticed...
it's a shame you didn't get to see "true" bucktown/wicker park... you mention coffee and beer in hand, but there ain't nothing like the old filter coffeeshop! sigh. i have much less of a reason to hang out down there lately, because the hang out spots aren't as individualistic-feeling as they once were, to me. maybe letdown's google map will help me! thanks, letdown!
i love this town too. so glad i moved here. will be here for awhile, it actually feels like home.
We make the winter seem much more horrible than it really is to keep away the riff-raff. But in February, when you walk down to your corner bar, you've earned your beer!
myriam, i have included a couple bars i enjoy up that way, ill keep updating them but the few i have up there (except lotties... dont go there unless you want to watch a football game) are great bars which i frequent!
Back home I have a few favorite grungy coffee shops that I pray never change / close down. I read about Filter, and the bank that is displacing it in the Coyote building. It's definitely the kind of place I would have frequented.
Good map Letdown, will refer to it on my next trip up there!
There should be a cool coffee shop thread on Archinect. One of my favorites in Auckland was called the Odeon (sadly, now gone). It was in an old funeral parlor with ornate woodwork, a lack of sunlight and faded retro furniture. Sounds morbid I know but it was a great place to pass the time doing nothing with a pot of chai.
Pro Chicago
Just spent the weekend in balmy Chicago, archi-tripping. Hung out in Wicker Park, Bucktown, Oak Park, Downtown, Millennium Park...After four days my impression is that Chicago is one awesome, friendly city, with great summer weather and impressive architectural pedigree. Would love to live / work there if I had the chance! You lucky Chicagolanders....
woot, glad you liked it. ill tell you what theantipodean, chicago thought you were pretty cool too im sure.
you were right in my neighborhood, did you by chance check out my chicago google map?
I just moved out to LA from Bucktown, and god to I MISS CHICAGO!
No, I didn't know about your Chicago google map... do you have a link to it LD?
I just like visiting cities as if I was living like the locals, so I did a lot of research into the areas that I thought would interest me. Wicker Park kept coming up as a cool place to chill with coffee or beer in hand, so naturally that's where I wanted to go.
Intelligentsia coffee...wow, REAL coffee!
Are the winters really as brutal as they say they are in Chicago? I've managed to adapt to extreme desert heat, so extreme cold is just the opposite end of the scale...
JamChar, I too am contemplating the move to California. LA looks most likely....do you mind me asking why you moved?
P.S. check out Silverlake / Sunset Junction and Pasadena. You may feel a little less homesick.
winter is tolerable - its all about the gear. i actually love the cool, crisp winter air, the polutants fall to earth so you get crystal clear air. Like the saying goes - its not the cold, its the wind! December is great, not oo cold, a little snow and the holidays, January its starting to get old and windy, by Febuary you want to kill yourself, but then Spring arrives and you appreciate it more.
evil is right on about the winters... the fall and early winter are beautiful, and the temperatures are manageable... by the end of January and February it starts getting really cold, and it stays cloudy and dark for days and days sometimes weeks on weeks.
heres the link to my google map, im trying to update it as often as i can... its mostly just covering the major spots right now.
CHICAGO
Doesn't sound so bad. A summer in Las Vegas is a warm April / May, when you can walk about comfortably in the sun and sit outside having drinks on the terrace. Gets very hot in June / July, but if you have access to a swimming pool, its like being in a never ending resort. Late July / August, its like the surface of Mars and the roads start melting (literally) and your body dehydrates from the inside out the moment you step outside of air con. Yay late September is like lovely warm t-shirt shorts weather again. So a midwest winter in reverse!
I like to throw myself off mountains strapped to a snowboard, so I agree, its all about the right cold weather gear.
there are days in Febuary and sometimes early march, where the wind is so strong I, a 175 ib man, have to lean into the wind to walk. Although I've never seen it happen, I suspect old ladies and children have been blown into the river never to be heard from again.
it doesn't even get cold in chicago. it gets to -25 here in winters on a regular basis, without the windchill
where the hell are u bossman? Ice Road Truck'n?
chicago is definitely a very fine city. just don't ask the locals about LA or New York, because they've got a big inferiority complex.
Chicago gets top marks for "keepin it real." It just didn't feel as pretentious as other big cities I've been in. Bucktown / Wicker Park was a really nice blend of London / Melbourne / Sydney inner city scale and character. Loved the many treelined streets.
Downtown was very New York / Hong Kong, without the dirt. I actually liked the el, not as extensive as other public transport systems (a bit confusing with like 3 stations all of the same name on different colored lines), but it was clean and efficient.
Impressive number of jobsites underway in the downtown area, I noticed...
it's a shame you didn't get to see "true" bucktown/wicker park... you mention coffee and beer in hand, but there ain't nothing like the old filter coffeeshop! sigh. i have much less of a reason to hang out down there lately, because the hang out spots aren't as individualistic-feeling as they once were, to me. maybe letdown's google map will help me! thanks, letdown!
i love this town too. so glad i moved here. will be here for awhile, it actually feels like home.
We make the winter seem much more horrible than it really is to keep away the riff-raff. But in February, when you walk down to your corner bar, you've earned your beer!
myriam, i have included a couple bars i enjoy up that way, ill keep updating them but the few i have up there (except lotties... dont go there unless you want to watch a football game) are great bars which i frequent!
Back home I have a few favorite grungy coffee shops that I pray never change / close down. I read about Filter, and the bank that is displacing it in the Coyote building. It's definitely the kind of place I would have frequented.
Good map Letdown, will refer to it on my next trip up there!
There should be a cool coffee shop thread on Archinect. One of my favorites in Auckland was called the Odeon (sadly, now gone). It was in an old funeral parlor with ornate woodwork, a lack of sunlight and faded retro furniture. Sounds morbid I know but it was a great place to pass the time doing nothing with a pot of chai.
take the redline up to rogers park and hang out at the ennui coffee shop.
^Indeed. I just moved out of Rogers Park. I reallly miss Ennui. :(
there's another new coffee shop there too on jarvis where near where that gay bar charmers is at...
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