Thompson Center sale – would “Big Jim” wind up losing his tribute bldg.?

I have mixed views over what ought to become of the building that already has had more than a third of a century of life – the James R. Thompson Center that is the physical Chicago home of Illinois state government.

A significant Chicago intersection for many layers of government

I know some officials think that the sale of the downtown Chicago real estate would produce revenue too essential to balancing out state government’s finances that would make it too irresponsible to even think of retaining the facility.

YET THE IDEA of now having to find office space for all the state agencies that are based here elsewhere in Chicago make me think it may be irresponsible to abandon their current home.

I know of the ideologues of downstate Illinois who take great offense that Springfield, the state capital, is considered less important for some state agencies than Chicago. But it seems like it could be reckless to sell off the state facility just to appease those ideologues who can’t accept that Springfield is essentially a city built on a 19^th Century scale (Abraham Lincoln would recognize much of it) even though the world has progressed far into the 21^st Century!

This debate is going to perk up in coming years, what with Gov. J.B. Pritzker signing the bill into law that creates a two-year process that would enable someone else to bid on, and buy, the square-block property at Clark and Randolph streets.

Old and new state buildings across the street

The prime real estate located right across the street from City Hall/County Building and also from the old State of Illinois Building (which long ago was converted into the Bilandic Building home of the Supreme Court of Illinois along with the appellate courts for the Chicago area).

AND ALSO KITTY-corner from the Daley Center building, which serves as the Cook County courthouse – at least for civil cases.

All of which makes Clark and Randolph an all-important intersection for the happenings of politics and government at the city, county and state levels.

What becomes of the Dubuffet? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

A presence that would be lessened quite a bit if officials were to decide to let something else become the purpose of the building north of Randolph and west of Clark streets.

As much as some people like to denigrate the building’s appearance and style, I have to admit to kind of getting a kick out of its appearance – even when one tries to ridicule its salmon and sea blue color scheme.

OR, AS I remember, once, someone tried to claim that the Jean Dubuffet sculpture “Monument with Standing Beast” was really nothing more than an AIDS virus trying to infest the body politic. Which probably says more about the mini-mind of the critic than it does anything about the structure itself.

It is interesting that this was an idea that both governors Rod Blagojevich and Bruce Rauner tried to push through the process – although it now has the potential to become a reality under Pritzker.

I just can’t get past the idea that state agencies still need a physical presence in Chicago – unless we’re trying to create the image that state government is completely irrelevant to the existence of the Second City.

A concept that would be totally insipid for anybody to try to spew – no matter how rural Illinois-oriented they are in their approach to life.

WOULD SELLING OFF the state government building in downtown Chicago wind up becoming an even more small-minded decision by our government officials than the move made more than a decade ago to sell off control of parking meters in the city.

The one that saw Chicago blow through the payoff they received, while ensuring that corporate interests will make money off the city for decades to come?

This is something people should think seriously about – particularly if provisions that the existing Chicago Transit Authority “el” and subway platforms at the building would have to be maintained regardless of what some future developer might want to build there.

Of course, I also have my own memory – that of the cinematic scenes from the film “Running Scared” that were shot there. How many of us would not want to see the spot where actor Billy Crystal’s “Chicago cop character” ruined Jimmy Smits’ “drug dealer character” by throwing his “stash” all over the Thompson Center floor?

  -30-

One person’s idea of public ‘art’ is another’s gangbanger-inspired graffiti

Perhaps this is a trend we need to be wary of – what with government officials inclined to think they can help beautify their neighborhoods by permitting artists to let loose and do create their work on the urban canvasses otherwise known as building walls.

'Questionable' mural while in creation. Photo provided by Lake View Chamber of Commerce

For there was an incident recently showing just how subjective the process can be.

IT SEEMS THAT city officials commissioned a mural intended to be visible to people waiting for ‘el’ trains along the Paulina station of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Brown line.

That, of course, is a train line running to the north side through the upscale Roscoe Village sub-neighborhood of Lake View – where the local residents have a certain expectation of the look they want to have for their community.

So when the “bear champ” mural went up on an outdoors brick wall, there were those who saw its bright yellow colors and thought it helped make the neighborhood more cheery.

Pilsen-based art. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

But invariably, there was someone who saw markings on the wall and automatically jumped to the “graffiti” assumption – which usually means someone fears the gang-bangers are headed for the neighborhood.

THAT, ACCORDING TO the Chicago Tribune, led the ‘someone’ to call 3-1-1 and report an incident of graffiti in the neighborhood. City Streets & Sanitation officials went to the scene, found there most definitely was something other than plain brick wall present, and a crew painted over the scene with a dull tan color.

A “victory” for all those believing in law and order, along with a sense of morality – except that this particular piece of ‘art’ literally was commissioned by the Lake View Chamber of Commerce. Most definitely NOT any kind of subversive effort.

The group actually thought the mural by artist J.C. Rivera would add some color and brighten up the neighborhood -- particularly for those waiting for an 'el train to arrive. It might reduce the amount of cursing those passengers would be doing under their breath while waiting for the trains that never seem to run on time.

Outdoor advertising w/ artistic merit in the South Deering neighborhood

Based off the photographs I have seen of what the mural looked like during the few days it was in place, I’m not sure exactly what it was supposed to be. But it was a large splash of color that cheered up the mood. I’m sure whoever it was that made the call to the city to complain was a crank – who may also be the kind of person who calls animal control every time they hear a stray bark echo through the air.

THE PROBLEM BECOMES having to distinguish between the crackpots and people with legitimate complaints; particularly since I don’t doubt the crackpots think they have legitimate complaints.

Even though all they really have is a narrow vision of what their surroundings should be like.

As far as removing graffiti, I do comprehend the need to do so. Particularly since so much of it is ugly and nonsensical and whose only purpose is for one to “place their mark,” so to speak, on a public spot. As though their tag or other symbol can force all of us to recognize their legitimacy.

Maybe we're lucky nobody has called to report this 'eyesore' of public art

For what it’s worth, the neighborhood’s Chamber of Commerce actually used city funds to help create this particular mural that no longer exists. So it literally was the city that destroyed something it had created in the name of neighborhood beautification.

ARE MURALS ALL across the city going to have to be wary of some sense of ‘art police’ eager to erase their mark from the walls of Chicago? What about those who might have their own building and try to decorate it with something representing their business interest – will this be forbidden?

There is one aspect I do find ironic, and it is based off of a Chicago Tribune photograph depicting the painted-over mural. It seems someone saw the newly-created blank space and managed to fill it in by tagging it.

Meaning literally that someone’s effort to erase some nonsensical graffiti resulted in a piece of artwork being replaced by real graffiti – which most likely will remain place longer than the mural did.

That would serve the ‘idiot’ right who made the call to complain about the mural. The only problem is that the rest of us passing through the neighborhood wind up suffering as well.

  -30-

How long it can take (sometimes never) for municipal projects to become reality

I once wrote a commentary essentially praising Chicago Transit Authority officials for moving forward on a long-discussed project to improve mass transit access to the far South Side by extending the Red Line trains from 95^th Street all the way potentially to within one mile of the city’s southern border.

A Red Line stop of the future. Perhaps some day by 2026. Image provided by city of Chicago

As one who was born in the far southeast corner of Chicago, still has relatives there and thinks of the 10^th Ward as the “old neighborhood,” I was pleased to see that something could happen to make it easier for those people to have access to the rest of Chicago.

SO I SUPPOSE I’m pleased once again to learn the CTA took actions to advance the project a little further. They have picked a specific route for the trains to follow once they get to the current end-of-the-line at 95^th Street and the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway.

It is one that will take people all the way to 130^th Street (at the Bishop Ford Freeway), giving residents of Altgeld Gardens and the Hegewisch neighborhood some train access. It also will make stops at 103^rd and 111^th streets – adding further access to people who live Far South in Chicago.

Will it ever arrive?

Yet that original commentary I wrote was back in August of 2009. I also have written about various community forums throughout the years in which those of us who regard a Sout’ Side neighborhood such as Bridgeport as just another place up north expressed our support.

Yet here it is, some nine years later, and still no earth has been turned toward the eventual goal of “el” trains connecting places like Hegewisch and Pullman to downtown.

IN FACT, THE Chicago Tribune reported Friday that the soonest actual construction could begin would be some time in 2022, with the actual project taking about four years for completion.

This will NEVER arrive

Meaning that if I’m lucky, I might see this project become reality some time after I hit the age of 60. This project is taking time to complete, and keep in mind that the opposition to this isn’t as intense (some argue that doing anything on the South Side is a waste of time and money, but they’re nitwits) as some other projects have become.

One could easily see the ongoing debate over the need of a third major airport for the Chicago area, where proponents have sort of settled on Peotone, Ill., in Will County, while critics have argued for doing nothing and thus far have been successful.

That project has been under speculation since the early 1970s and had the process narrowed down to four sites by the late 1980s when the opponents really stepped up their hostile talk.

I REMEMBER ONCE hearing then-Peotone village President Richard Benson tell me he had given up even following the airport talk about his municipality. I thought he was being short-sighted and silly.

Heck, that was back in 2000. Some 18 years later, nothing is closer. Perhaps he really WAS wiser than I. In that particular project, it seems that everybody is determined to have nothing happen that a political opponent could take credit for.

Resulting in the lack of activity. Never mind the actual issue of whether Chicago’s aviation needs would benefit from another full-scale airport.

Of course, a Peotone airport theoretically could be revived. Moreso than the one-time Crosstown Expressway – the route that supposedly would vastly improve transit through Chicago.

BACK IN THE 1960s and 1970s, there was serious debate about a highway following 75^th Street to Cicero Avenue, eventually merging into the Kennedy Expressway. There are those who argue it would have significantly reduced the constant jams along the Dan Ryan.

How many would have viewed it as victory if they could have thwarted construction altogether?

But that project never got off the ground, and eventually the federal government withdrew its support in the early 1980s.

Perhaps by that definition, we ought to consider the late 1980s construction of a Chicago White Sox ballpark a success. Talk had been going on in the mid-1980s, and threats in 1988 to move the ballclub to St. Petersburg, Fla., motivated the politicos to act. The ballpark now known as Guaranteed Rate Field is 28 years old.

It's too bad that Hegewisch can't do some political blackmail like the White Sox did to speed up the process toward a Red Line extension. Because I'm sure there are some political people who, if they could have had their way, would still have the ballpark construction argument continuing to this day.

  -30-

Losing yet another tie to Chicago’s past

I must confess to turning a year older today, so perhaps it’s only appropriate that I get all nostalgic over something that I’m sure many people would think totally trivial.

Soon to be history. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

I can’t help but think there’s a loss to the Chicago Transit Authority’s ‘el’ station downtown at Randolph and Wabash streets, which officially closes to the public following this week.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE some sarcastic types will quip that we’re lucky the ‘el’ platform didn’t collapse due to age and decay before the wrecking crews could get around to demolishing it.

Now a part of the reason I feel some sort of affinity for this particular downtown transit stop is that it is a mere block from the Metra Electric commuter trains that I have lived significant portions of my life from.

Which means a trip into downtown would put me right at the Millennium Park site (even though back when I was a kid, no one would have conceived of such a grand park in place of the railroad yards that still exist underneath the park grounds.

The outside view that someday will no longer be

The point was that I have made many trips that involved taking a Metra Electric train, then transferring over to an ‘el’ train at Randolph and Wabash. And if you’re in the city already but not on the South Side, the Randolph and Wabash station was a location that put you near the Marshall Fields’ of old (now Macy’s, which just doesn’t feel the same), State Street’s shopping district in general and just another block away from the Daley Center courthouse (with the Picasso), then City Hall and the Thompson Center state government building.

Trump will no longer loom over Randolph

MY POINT IS that the ‘el’ station feels like a fairly prominent spot for people traveling throughout the area.

Now I don’t know exactly how old that particular ‘el’ station is – although it has the feel of many decades approaching a full century. It has the feel of a place that has experienced first-hand the history of Chicago.

I often wonder if the people who now go about speculating ridiculously about the chances they would get shot by gang members on Chicago streets while waiting for an ‘el’ train at the station are the great-grandchildren of people who waited at the exact same ‘el’ stop, wondering if they were going to get caught in the crossfire of violence by the Capone mob?

My point being the station has the feel of being a part of Chicago that has been around that long.

Among the Randolph Street sites nearby

AND IT SHOWS.

CTA officials are closing the station effective Sunday, replacing it with a new downtown ‘el’ station one block to the south at Washington Street – which officially is being billed as the Millennium station. That station officially opens Thursday.

I’ll concede that I have long noticed the grime that has accumulated at the Randolph Street ‘el’ station to the point where I wonder what I could catch if I touch something too long, and have often cynically speculated about how secure the platform’s wooden boards could be after all these decades of use.

So I don’t doubt the station’s time to be replaced has come.

Will street musicians still gather at Randolph/Wabash?

ALTHOUGH IT’S GOING to mean the decades of habit I have developed in my mass transit routines are going to have to be adapted to comply with the fact that the ‘el’ station is now one block further to the south.

I doubt I’m alone, since many of us develop transit routines that we follow reflexively, not giving them much thought. Now, we’re going to have to think a few extra seconds to make sure we don’t screw up and wind up being taken to the Monroe Street or State and Lake street stations while travelling through the Loop. Besides, I couldn't help but admire the video snippet I found Wednesday on YouTube posted by someone whom I suspect feels a sentiment similar to my own about this soon-to-be defunct 'el' platform.

I’m wondering if this station will take on a sentiment similar to what I feel for the old Comiskey Park. I must admit that whenever I travel on the Dan Ryan Expressway, a part of me expects to see the old brick, whitewashed ballpark still standing as I approach 35^th Street. Which creates a tinge of disappointment when I see the rose-colored concrete structure that actually is now 27 seasons old.

In my mind, this structure isn't just a decades-old postcard

Am I going to sense the ‘el’ platform that used to exist whenever I travel the Loop and my ‘el’ car passes by Randolph Street?

  -30-

El vs. subway, rather than Sox vs. Yanks. What next? Pizza wars!

The New York Yankees made their annual trip to Chicago’s South Side last week, where they wound up splitting their four-game series against the White Sox. When combined with the two of three games the Yankees won earlier this season in New York, it makes for a 3-4 record the White Sox have for 2017.
 

Rahm smirk sell more papers than Christie carcass?

Not exactly an overpowering by the Bronx Bombers over our Sout’ Side Hit Men.

SO PERHAPS THAT was a factor that caused Noo Yawk types to get all worked up this week in their desire to take pot shots at Chicago; specifically, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the mass transit system we affectionately refer to as the “el.”

For it seems that on Monday, the New York Times published a commentary written by our mayor that took the attitude there were things that mass transit officials in New York could learn from Chicago.

It ran under the headline, In Chicago, the Trains Actually Run on Time and offered up a statistic that claimed 85 percent of us are satisfied with the way our trains and buses operate. Keep your Mussolini gag to yourself; Chicago trains and buses are fairly reliable and that is important for a mayor.

It also had Rahm saying the reason Chicago’s system isn’t confronted with the problems New York faces (Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week declared a state of emergency for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) is because our officials emphasize “reliability ahead of expansion.”

IMPLYING THAT NEW York, which has the largest mass transit system in the nation (Chicago is second) has grown wild and out-of-control.

Yanks didn't administer Chgo beat-down, so other issues must occur

Of course, there were those greatly offended that a rube from outside of New York (actually, outside of Manhattan) would dare to know better about anything, That provoked the New York Daily News on Tuesday (a.k.a., Independence Day) to put Rahm on the front page of the paper.

A quarter century later, and CTA still going strong

The Daily News could have gone with front page photos of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s carcass sitting on a lawn chair on the public beach he had ordered closed to the public. But they thought Emanuel would sell more papers, running under the headline Dumb Track Mind and also reminding people, “AT LEAST our riders don’t get SHOT on the way home!”

Which means if there’s really a sense of cosmic justice or bad karma, there will be a shooting incident on board a subway car somewhere in the Bronx.

NOT THAT I’M hoping for such an incident. But for a newspaper that contends its provocative front page layouts are intended to sell papers for people who make an impulse purchase while walking by a newsstand or news box, I just can’t see where Rahm’s goofy smirk really does much to inspire New York news interest.

Besides, for all the things that people can complain about Chicago, one has to admit that our mass transit system does work fairly well – particularly when one considers how old it is.

Some 125 years, with parts of it dating back a century. The basic concept in moving large numbers of people around various parts of Chicago isn’t that radically different than the days when Al Capone was a living, breathing human being in these parts.

It also is one of the things I miss about life in the city proper, and why on those occasions when I return to Chicago proper I make a point of relying upon mass transit to move about.

ANYBODY WHO SERIOUSLY pays $35-40 to park their car for an hour or so in downtown Chicago is a fool. Our mass transit is one of the things our beloved Second City is doing right!

For what it’s worth, my guess is that this outburst (which Emanuel himself is managing to laugh off) is just the usual New York vs. Chicago rivalry; a holdover from when they really were the two largest cities in the country and where Chicago maintains a significance regardless of how much larger Los Angeles may ever become.

A hefty meal, and not junk food

Perhaps if the Yankees could have swept the four-game series against the White Sox, the need to dump on Chicago over mass transit might have been reduced.

Then again, we’ll always have pizza to quarrel over – particularly with those individuals who seriously look at those flimsy slices sold in Brooklyn and can’t see the superiority of something from Uno’s or Lou Malnati’s.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: As for the Daily News claim that Chicago is the "murder capital," these days St. Louis has the highest homicide rate in the nation, with some 60.37 slayings per 100,000 people compared to 18.6 for Chicago (and 7 for New York).

What’s good for Hyde Park sticks it to South Chicago, while the masses yawn!

In my mind, I already can hear the lone voice or two out of the South Chicago and South Shore neighborhoods along the lakefront who will express furious anger at the thought of the limited access to public transit they already have being cut even further.

Metra may make it easier to get to Hyde Park from Randolph and Michigan at the expense of other parts of the South Side. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

The rant will be vociferous. It will be sincere in its emotion. And I also don’t doubt that the masses, particularly those involved with mass transit in the Chicago area, will care less.

I’M REFERRING TO the proposal being put forth by the Metra commuter railroad system that takes people from all across the metropolitan area into downtown Chicago to alter the set-up of the Metra Electric line, which goes from Millennium Station at Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue south to University Park, with branches that break off and take people both to Blue Island and also to the aforementioned South Side neighborhoods.

According to Metra officials, their intent is to boost the number of trains on the line that pass through the Hyde Park neighborhood. Under the current set-up, once the morning rush hour is over, trains go through at the rate of one per hour – the same as through the rest of the south suburbs on the line.

But because Chicago Transit Authority “el” service doesn’t stretch into Hyde Park, people living there rely on the Metra for contact with the rest of the world. Metra officials say they’d like to have trains stopping in Hyde Park stations (every two blocks from 51^st to 59^th streets) every 20 minutes.

That’s nice for them. I think that’s great. Particularly since I often use the Metra Electric (I’m old enough to remember when the line was a part of the Illinois Central railroad, and there are many old-timers who still think of it as the “IC line”) to get to Hyde Park, and it would be nice if trains ran more frequently.

BUT I ALSO was born in the South Chicago neighborhood, and know that CTA trains don’t go anywhere near the neighborhood. Even the number of bus routes are limited.

A trip downtown on the Number 30 South Chicago bus route that eventually puts you on a Red Line train at 69^th Street is slow, makes multiple stops and can take over an hour each way to make the commute.

It’s part of the reason activists in this area are pushing for the CTA to extend the Red Line train south to 130^th Street, which would make it possible to use other bus routes to catch the “el.”

 

UChgo influence makes Hyde Park transit a priority

But just at a time when CTA officials are moving forward with that long-rumored project, Metra now wants to come in and reduce the service the area already had.

NOW I’LL ADMIT a bias here. I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood, and remember as a kid visiting my grandmother who lived just one block from the 91^st Street station that is the end of the South Chicago line.

I know Metra officials are arguing that the specific train lines they’re talking about cutting so as to shift the service to benefit Hyde Park have fewer than 10 passengers, and sometimes only one or two.

But I’d argue that it’s because Metra in recent decades has offered such a scant service to the area that local residents have come to not expect it as an option when they need to get from place to place.

Older area residents recall the days when trains ran regularly on the South Chicago branch – in fact, as frequently as the every 20 minutes that officials are talking about creating for Hyde Park! I’m sure area use would increase if service were available.

YET THAT ALSO requires some ambition and a desire to actually provide a product. Whereas in the past, Metra has clearly considered getting people from suburban locations into downtown Chicago as its priority – with the stops that Metra trains make within the city considered as a thing of the past.

You'll need a car to get to area around 95th St. bridge

So yes, Metra officials deserve some praise for wanting to bolster Hyde Park service – possibly by summer’s end.

Yet here’s hoping that residents of South Chicago and the surrounding neighborhoods that would rely on Metra service if it were more frequent and reliable can get their voices up loud enough where they’re heard over the din of public anger on so many issues.

Otherwise, it will be too easy for Metra officials to dismiss them as insignificant; leaving a sizable part of Chicago further isolated from the rest of the city.

  -30-

How long until proposed Red Line extension turns local tempers all “red?”

It is one of those projects that has been discussed for years – extending the Chicago Transit Authority elevated commuter train lines deeper into the city’s South Side than they already go.
 

Proposed route for Red Line extension

On a certain level, the project makes too much sense. The commuter trains that help city residents get from place to place and are a common fact of everyday life in most of the city only go as far south as 95^th Street.

WHILE CHICAGO ITSELF usually considers 119^th Street to be its southern boundary and there are parts of the city at the southeastern corner where 138^th Street is the end of life as we know it and where suburbia begins.

Now as somebody who actually originates from that part of the city (born in South Chicago and with relatives scattered across the neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward), this is a project that I have long followed.

Because for people in the southeast part of the city, there are a few bus lines that pass through that eventually can take you to a place along the Dan Ryan Expressway where you can catch a Red Line train.

But it can be a slow, plodding trip (what with all those bus stops) and it can result in an hour-and-a-half journey to get downtown. There are parts of Will County or Gary, Ind., that have quicker connections to downtown Chicago via suburban commuter trains.

IT’S NO WONDER that those people who live near a Metra Electric line station in the South Chicago or South Shore neighborhoods, or in the Hegewisch neighborhood where the Indiana-based South Shore commuter line keeps its lone Illinois-based station, prefer to use those suburban-influenced services even though they're very much urban residents.

Which is why the idea of extending that Red Line train that now runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan to 95^th Street would be a life-altering experience for the Far South Side.

 

Metra lines more a daily life reality in Far South Chi

A direct CTA el train extension going to 130^th Street? Actual stations in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods – instead of having to take a bus to the west to catch a Metra Rock Island line commuter train in the Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhoods.

It sounds like nirvana (and I don’t mean the 90’s era rock band).

EXCEPT TO THOSE people who, while complaining about how isolated their part of Chicago often feels, will also be the first to complain about anything that brings about change.

They’ll be the ones who think of el trains as being something associated with “the ghetto” or artsy-fartsy North Side neighborhoods – and something they’ve managed to do without all these years.

I have heard from some of these people already. Although they have been muted largely because of skepticism that the city will ever get its act together and actually build the extension!

But will they get louder, now that talk is progressing to the point of figuring out where exactly new track would have to be built. City officials this week said they would allocate some $75 million for engineering studies. Which means figuring out what structures would need to be torn down.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported Thursday about the project – pointing out that 82 single-family homes and 19 multi-family properties are on a list of things that would need to be torn down to make room for 5.3 miles more of train track for the el extension.

The weekly business newspaper already has some comment from people who admit train service would be nice, but not necessary if it means they have to move.

Personally, I became an el proponent back during the stints I lived in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, and I often wonder how it is that my home base neighborhood, so to speak, has never been willing to demand such equal service.

May someday no longer be distant southern CTA outpost?

Except that too many people living out in the land where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept but is the place at the other end of the Chicago Skyway have become too used to their sense of isolation from the rest of Chicago – a concept whose time truly ought to come to an end.

  -30-

Banks finally makes it to Daley Plaza

Somewhere in another realm of existence, John Hoellen is either smiling, or laughing his head off.

Hoellen is an alderman from long ago remembered because he was one of the few people who would publicly say when he believed Mayor Daley (as in the old man Daley, not the son of more recent years) was “full of it” on various issues.

OF COURSE, HOELLEN was often the lone Republican serving in the City Council during his time in public service. So being a malcontent to the majority came naturally.

Why am I bringing up Hoellen now?

It is because he came to my mind when I learned Sunday of the intent by city officials to pay tribute to one-time Chicago Cubs ballplayer and Hall of Famer Ernie Banks by putting his statue in Daley Plaza. Literally, the statue that has been outside of Wrigley Field for the past seven years will be moved this week to outside of the county courthouse that has the famed Picasso statue. Banks died Friday night following a heart attack.

Anybody who knows their local history remembers that many local people initially didn’t like that Picasso statue. It looked freakish. What is it? There are still people who can’t tell you what it is supposed to represent.

HOELLEN WAS THE public official who was so critical of Pablo Picasso’s design that he said city officials should have erected a statue of Ernie Banks instead, if they wanted to capture the true Chicago spirit.

Now I don’t know if I agree with that sentiment. In fact, I remember Hoellen from my reporting days with the now-defunct City News Bureau – at one point, I covered the Chicago Transit Authority and Hoellen was the board member who could always be counted on to complain (often for legitimate reasons) about what the majority of the CTA board wanted to do.

Personally, I think the Picasso statue is so unique and gives our city a distinct monument outside the building where so many lawsuits get resolved – and across the street where our city and Cook County politicos continue to concoct so many deals that aren’t necessarily in the public interest.

But for a four-day period, at least, people will be able to show up to pay their tributes to Ernie Banks. Hoellen’s vision, or lack thereof, gets to come true.

THEY’LL BE ABLE to go on and on about how we should all “play two” today and whine about how it’s a shame that Banks never got a chance to show his stuff in a World Series OR be alive to toss out the ceremonial 'first pitch' at their fantasized Cubs World Series in 2015.

While all those pigeons who converge on Daley Plaza regularly will be able to do their business, so to speak, all over Ernie’s image. It’s too bad they couldn’t aim for the political people located across the street.

  -30-

Waiting for the ‘el’ or a bus, the quintessential Chicago experience

We’ve all endured it, getting drenched by the rain or pelted by snowfall while standing at a street corner waiting for the damned bus that just doesn’t seem to ever want to arrive.

The concept of mass transit in Chicago is a wonderful way to get around the city. It makes it possible to avoid owning an automobile (and dealing with the expense) without being reduced to the life of a shut-in.

BUT WE ALL know how unreliable those Chicago Transit Authority buses and elevated trains are when it comes to showing up on time. The great uncertain is figuring out how much time to allot for the actual commute because you don’t know how long it will take to complete – particularly if a bus or train transfer is involved.

I know I have read those alleged schedules that claim buses on many lines run every 15 minutes, and that there are times of the day when ‘el’ trains are supposed to come along every seven minutes.

It’s supposed to be the endless system where one can just show up at the street corner or ‘el’ station whenever and catch the next train or bus. It is the reason many city residents claim they could never live in the Chicago suburbs, where the trains and buses run on set schedules once an hour (or sometimes even more infrequently).

Yet those suburban Pace buses and Metra trains at least have set schedules, and people know when the train or bus is late. City residents are expected to just cope with the delays, and hope they don’t work for the kind of boss who looks for reasons to rant against his employees.

WHICH IS WHY I found it amusing to learn of a new survey by a mass transit app called Moovit that says the amount of time people spend waiting for their bus or train is less in Chicago than it is in other cities.

Thirty-one minutes is supposedly the amount of time we spend each day waiting at the street corner or train platform, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

By comparison, New Yorkers wait an average of 38 minutes a day, 39 minutes a day in Boston and 36 minutes in San Francisco.

Supposedly, Los Angeles residents wait an average of 41 minutes per day. Although my understanding of LA mass transit is that it isn’t as extensive as what other cities try to do, which means many people avoid it and turn to the freeways where they cause those daily traffic backups that can be just as frustrating as getting drenched by rain while waiting for a bus.

I’M SURE CHICAGOANS don’t feel comforted in the least by learning their average commute is less than other U.S. cities – particularly since we all have memories of incidents where we waited at least an hour for the bus to show up.

And whenever there’s a mechanical problem or a heavy weather-related storm, all bets are off in terms of getting to work on time – or even at all if things get particularly bad.

If anything, it is memories like this that make me remember fondly the summer some 30 years ago when I lived in an apartment on Damen Avenue just three doors south of the Brown Line ‘el’ station, which also was a bus stop.

Living in such proximity (I could see the ‘el’ platform out my bedroom window), I developed an inner sense of knowing when the trains and buses would arrive so I could avoid the waits – a sense I haven’t had at any other point in my life and one that I (along with many other Chicagoans) wish I could get back.

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Do we really need to read text messages while riding underground the city?

I'd bet that when the subway tunnels were built in the early 1940s, no one thought they'd ever have to be upgraded for an improved communications network. You want to talk to someone? Use a payphone! Photograph provided by CTA Historical Photo Connection

Perhaps this is a generational issue, and I’m just on the wrong side of the equation. This definitely is a move being contemplated by the Chicago Transit Authority for people not like me in mind.

But I can’t really comprehend the need for an upgrade of the underground wireless network that currently exists in the tunnels that are used by elevated trains for those moments when the track drops down from being an “el” to being a “subway.”

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported Thursday that CTA officials are seeking bids from telecommunications companies to see who could install an improved system the cheapest in the 12 miles of track that run as subway along the Red and Blue lines.

It seems that the current system that has been in place in recent years merely allows for someone to use their cellular telephone or smartphone while underground to actually make a telephone call.

For sending text messages or trying to read something off the Internet, it just isn’t capable of handling such tasks.

Which means people who are in the process of transporting themselves via the “el” from one point to another have to actually wait until the train pops out of the portions where it is subway.

OR, A MORE radical thought; they have to wait until they actually get to their destination and leave the underground stations before they have full access to the many services a smartphone can offer – but which all too often are wasted on such trivial tasks.

CTA officials told the Tribune that people riding an “el” train during its moments of being a subway to refresh Facebook feeds or watch podcasts.

Personally, in those moments when I ride underground on the “el,” I’m more focused on paying attention to the people who happen to be surrounding me on the train. I’d think paying too much attention to one’s little device would be a sure-fire way of making myself a target for someone who might have “robbery” on their mind.

At the very least, I’d think it would be advertising myself as someone who has a smartphone worth stealing. I’d feel more secure reaching into my wallet and waving around whatever dollar bills I happened to have in my possession at that given moment.

EVEN IF THAT weren’t the case, I can’t help but wonder what could be so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes (because most of the “el” system is above ground, which is why we call it the “el” even when it is underground)!

There are times when I think some of my Facebook friends do little more than put narcissistic thoughts about themselves out there for all to see – although I’m sure some of them probably think I’m posting dreary, dull stuff.

Or maybe they think I’m as full of myself as I think they are of themselves.

The point being that maybe we’d all be a bit better off if there were moments when we weren’t fully accessible at all seconds of the day.

GUESS WHAT? IF you had to wait a few minutes before you could read this particular commentary, it wouldn’t change the overall stance. The point being made would remain the same!

But it seems this is the direction the CTA is headed. The Tribune reported that officials hope to have an improved system in place by next summer.

Although I should admit one potential plus to this trend – the fact that the last time I rode a subway/el (Saturday, I used a train/bus combination to get to the Criminal Courts building and back for the duties I do for a suburban daily newspaper) there were no newspapers or other paper scattered around the train cars.

I’m just not sure that litter-free railcars justify the cost of a communications upgrade.

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