Laugh it up in the Windy City

Chicago is one of my favorite cities in the US, as long as you don't have to go there in the winter. Unfortunately they were experiencing Portland like weather last week, sideways rain, but colder. Luckily, we spent the day inside attending meetings with one of our new clients at the famous Second City improv and comedy club. It was amazing to be in the room where so many famous comedians got their start. I won't try to list them all, because that would take too long, but basically everyone from the original cast of Saturday Night Live to Tina Fey honed their skills on this stage.


After spending all day at Second City, we decided to go see the show that night. We were lucky to get in, there were only a few tickets left for a Tuesday night show. You need to get there by 7:30 for the 8:00 pm show, as it is first come first serve on the seating. We got a decent seat in the back area, but be warned, it is a small venue and there are a lot of seats with obstructed views and tight seats.

The show itself was amazing and had a heavy Chicago influence. They had a few skits about exiting Mayor Daley and incoming Mayor Emanuel that were great. There are two scripted sessions that are about 45-50 minutes each. The sketches are all work-shopped improv and when they are happy with the idea, they script it for the show. The third act is a 20 minute improv session with all the actors on stage, taking topic ideas from the audience. If you don't want to get pulled up on stage, don't try to volunteer another person, they will always pick you. It was great to see these young actors at work, and I am sure at least a couple of them will be on SNL or some sitcom in the near future. They were all very talented.

If you are looking for dinner before the show, I have a couple of suggestions. Just down the street from Second City is a place called the 33 Club. They have a great bar and a huge dinning room. We were there a little early, so it was pretty empty, but it was still a warm and welcoming room. I started with a tuna tare tare that was great and for entree had the seafood spaghetti. The salads and salmon entree were also very good. This would be a good place for a large party or to watch a game in the bar. The prices are pretty reasonable for Chicago.

You'd have to catch the late show on Friday or Saturday to eat at Gibson's Steak House. This is a classic Chicago steak house. The waiters all wear white coats and they bring out the raw steaks so you can pick what cut you want. I went with the NY Strip which was great and the guy with me got the Chicago cut which was also very good. The steak comes with a soup or salad, I got the green pea soup which was tasty and the salad looked good too. As sides we got a twice baked potato and some asparagus with hollandaise sauce, both were excellent. You better come hungry as the portions are really big.

Second City
1616 N. Wells St.
Chicag, IL 60610

(312) 337-3992

33 Club
419 N. Wells St.
Chicago, IL 60610

312-664-1419

Gibson's Steak House
1028 N. Rush St.
Chicago, IL 60611
(312) 266-8999

The Big Uneasy

Was the flooding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina a natural disaster or a result of years of incredible human negligence? This is the question film maker Harry Shearer explores in his new documentary The Big Uneasy. You know Shearer better for his mockumentaries, Spinal Tap, A Mighty Wind, etc. but this time he is deadly serious.

Shearer does a great job of pulling together interviews and stories from the teams that went to New Orleans immediately after the flooding began to try to figure out what went wrong. What they found was so disturbing that the government, the people who funded them, and the Universities they worked for either squashed the results, or in the worst case fired them. If you are like me and you have a vested interest in the city of New Orleans, you will not be surprised by much of what you will see in the movie. We know the wetlands have been disappearing for year and that this makes hurricanes much more intense and much more likely to reach New Orleans at full force. We know that the Corps of Engineers made inferior levees, because we saw all the pictures of sand piles and we know you can't build levees on sand. We know the pumps that were supposed to move water down the canals failed. What I didn't know was that lots the people at the Corps of Engineers knew this and they knew it for a long time before Hurricane Katrina hit. After the hurricane, they decided that any study of what went wrong should, "focus on the future and not seek to place blame." As I am sure you can guess, if blame were to be placed it would all land at the feet of the Corps.

The sad part, is that it is not getting better. The people that caused all the problems in the first place are now charged with fixing them, but the problem is they are not fixing them. They are making things worse. You will hear crazy stuff like the fact that 90% of the levees in New Orleans have not been upgraded and are essentially the same as when they failed after Katrina.

So, next time New Orleans floods, you'll know it was not a natural disaster, but a man made disaster brought to you by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Museum City

Houston is usually called Space City thanks to the Johnson Space Center, and this is a great place to visit if you are ever in Houston with some time on your hands, but I think you might be more impressed with all the museums. The fact is, there are a lot of rich people in Houston and they have given a lot of money to create or endow some of the best art collections in the country. The good news is all the museums are relatively close to each other in a very nice part of the city, and the Houston Museum District website lists all the shows and other info in one place.

I recommend starting with the Menil Collection. John de Menil, a successful businessman and diplomat, moved to Houston after he married the heir to the Schlumberger fortune, Dominique Schlumberger, and together they amassed over 17,000 works or art and artifacts. They built a beautiful building to show a small rotating portion of the art in 1971 and it still stands as one of the best museum spaces in the country. While we were there they had a small, but very powerful collection of civil rights photos from the 60's as one of about eight different exhibits. If you have a particular interest and you can convince them you are an art scholar, you can access any part of the larger collection stored in a separate warehouse.


Across from the Menil is my favorite place in Houston, the Rothko Chapel. In 1971 the Menil's commissioned an intimate sanctuary where people of every belief could go to meditate and be inspired by the mural canvases of Russian born American painter Mark Rothko (1903-1970), who incidentally grew up in Portland. At first the canvases seem like simple, although huge, black panels, but the more time you spend with them the more the subtleties are revealed. The building also has amazing natural light that can have a big effect on art and the mood of the room. In 2001 the Chapel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and is a featured entry in National Geographic's book Sacred Places of a Lifetime: 500 of the World's Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations. I would suggest spending a little time to allow the vibe of the place to settle in, you don't want to rush this visit.

When you come out of the Rothko Chapel, on the plaza, you will see Barnett Newman's sculpture, Broken Obelisk, which was created in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A short drive down the street is the Houston Museum of Fine arts, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Center for Contemporary Craft, the Center for Photography, the Houston Zoo, The Children's Museum, the Museum of Natural Sciences and several other small gems.

One of the gems I wanted to visit was the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, but it looked like it was closed so we went to the Holocaust Museum. For such a downer subject this is a really nice place. They have authentic film footage, artifacts, photographs and documents that depict life in pre-war Europe, the Nazi move toward the “Final Solution” and life after the Holocaust. The tour takes about an hour and a half if you go with one of the guides or you can get around in half an hour on your own.



The most striking part of the museum is the 1942 Holocaust-era rail car where you can stand inside and imagine yourself with 130 others, packed like sardines on the way to a German death camp. It is a chilling experience. On the positive side they also have a 1942 Danish rescue boat that ferried 7000 Jews out of Denmark to neutral Sweden. On the way out I was amazed to see the list of holocaust survivors in Houston, the list was easily over 200 people.


So next time you are Houston, don't complain that there is nothing to do.