Pete in Chicago - twenty O one

Chicago, Illinois 7-Feb-2001. After writing dozens of e-mails about me in Chicago I decided to do a web page instead. I plan to keep this page private, some bits may only be interesting for some of you. I apologise for not having a German version of this but I'll keep the English simple.

I work in this office building, we are on the 31st floor. In the background is the Sears Tower, the tallest building in the US with over 100 floors.

work
I am currently on a three month assignment in Chicago. The company I am working for in London (saltmine) opened a new office here in early January. My colleague Alan from our London office and Amy, Andrew, Brian, Bill and Matthew from our Seattle headquarters are with me. We already hired our first new employee Matt and we are a great team and having fun together. In addition to working together, seven of us live in the same apartment building. Our favourie hang-out is the Manhattan bar, just half a block from our apartments. They are already serving beer in saltmine glasses.

My apartment is in the Fisher Building. It was build in 1896 and used to be an office building but was just converted to an apartment building. I live on the fourth floor.

living
After being in the US several times for holidays, this is the first time I'm here for work. I never stayed in the same place for longer than a week. I have been here for over four weeks already and I have settled down. My apartment building is in the south part of the loop. The downtown area of Chicago is called the loop because the elevated tracks of the L-train form a perfect loop in this area, just like the Circle line in London but much smaller and above ground. The L-trains are a distinguishing feature of Chicago. The L goes just by my apartment in the Fisher Building, a beautiful old structure built in 1896 and mentioned in every guide book of Chicago. There is still some construction going on but they are nearly done with renovating the whole building. When coming home, one is greeted by a doorman in the lobby. My apartment is on the fourth floor, which is actually only the third, because the Americans count the ground floor as the first one.
My apartment consists of a living room/kitchen combination and a bedroom with a huge extra closet. The whole place is bigger than my house in London and perfectly fine for one person for some months. I like the bathroom and particularly the great shower. Most showers in London suck. The kitchen is fully equiped but usually I only use the oven or microwave to heat things up. Having a dish washer is a first for me, which is cool. There is a big TV and a VCR and I have cable-TV with about 70 channels, but there are simply too many commercials on American TV.
Which reminds me of my first Superbowl party on January 27th. The commercials in the breaks are more important than the game itself, especially if you don't care about football. I went to a party at my colleague Andrew's house. People brought great food and it was an fun evening. Still American football is pretty boring.

This building is the main Chicago library and it's what I see when looking out of the window in my apartment. Again you see the Sears Tower in the background. It is a ten minute walk from the apartment to work.

Looking out of the windows of my apartment I see the massive building of the Harold Washington Library. It is also just two blocks to State Street, one of the main shopping streets in Chicago. It's only a ten minute walk to work, however living downtown is not all that great. After six O'Clock when all the office workers have commuted out into the suburbs the whole area is pretty dead. There are only a very few restaurants and there are no shops open after seven. There are no proper supermarkets around so one has to go into the surrounding neighourhoods or shop online. A favourite among my colleagues is the Webvan. Personally I'd rather go into a real store, especially because I am not that familiar with the American brands yet.

This is the corridor in my apartment building. The coolest thing is the garbage chute (Müllschlucker), you just put your trash into it and it falls down into the basement.

Indie pop in the windy city
Chicago is not renowned as a great indie pop city and coming here from London which is still one of the best indie-pop places in the world, was a step down. Also going to gigs in London is much more than seeing bands, it is about meeting friends of whom I hadn't had any in Chicago.

The last time I was in Chicago I came for a popfest in June of 1997. The Legendary Jim Ruiz Group, Shoestrings, Poole, Apples In Stereo, The Pushkings, The Aluminum Group, Bunnygrunt and others played and US popkids from all over the place gathered and I had a wonderful time. Only a few of the people were actually from Chicago and even some of those have moved away by now.

The view out of my bedroom with the library and the L-tracks below.

On the plane over from London I met my old friends Tim and Latitia who I knew from pre-Stereolab times when I stayed with them in London in the early 90's. I haven't seen them since I moved to London so it was weird to see them on the plane and again at gigs in Chicago. Stereolab was recording another album over here and we met up again and it was nice to talk about the old days and our current activities.

Before coming over I was in touch with just two indie-pop people in Chicago. When I announced the closing of the shalala mailing list partly because of my relocation to Chicago, I received two messages from members in Chicago. I met up with Jen first. We went out for dinner and drinks and decided to become friends. At the same time there was a discussion thread on the indie pop list about record-shopping in Chicago. So I emailed everybody involved to set up a meeting. The new Chicago indie-pop gang was born. We are currently planning to set up a club-night. This is really cool because now I know people to go to gigs with. We also have dinner and go shopping together. A second popfest is planned for late May, unfortunately I will be gone by then.

The only good gig I've been to was the Aluminum Group, but there are some promising shows coming up. I will also go over to New York in March for the March Records fest.

The living room, again with the library in the background.

I haven't done much record shopping so far. There are some okay places for current releases but I don't really know what new stuff to look for these days. I started buying from various American mail-order companies to find the best service.

shopping
Besides record shops, I usually spend my shopping time in book and thrift stores. Chicago has a local thrift store chain, the "Village Discount Outlet Stores" with 15 locations around Chicagoland. I plan to visit most of them. My best buy so far was 7 great shirts and sweaters for 9 bucks. Besides thrift stores, Chicago is not that much cheaper than London. Every second building is a restaurant or café and it seems this is were Chicagoans spend most of their time. The portions over here are at least one third bigger than the English ones. I'm am trying to order small portions and also cut down my consumption of meat.

the weather
In December the city experienced heavy snowstorms and temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit). Since I've been here it hasn't been that bad, there was a single day with -18 Celsius but on average we have around -3 (+/- 5). There is still some snow left from December and it snows occasionally and recently it even rained. The famous wind is not too bad either, but sometimes I experienced heavy winds on the roads between the tall skyscrapers. There are quite a few "blue sky days" and all four Saturdays so far were among them. I did a walk along the Lake the other Saturday. It was freezing in the shade but nice and warm in the sun and it was beautiful watching and hearing the waves hitting against the shore. Most of the rocks were frozen over and snow was covering the large lawns of the shoreline parks.

a partial view out of my office window.