The next morning the weather was fine, and we could have gone to the Sears Tower, but we went to the John Hancock Tower instead. And that's because it was close to the hotel, and we still needed to make it to the Science And Industry Museum first, and then on top of that to a performance in a medieval castle. If you're actually taking in the meaning of my words, rather than just skimming, you should be experiencing some cognitive dissonance right about now — where would a medieval castle in the US come from if Columbus sailed here in 1492?
Want to resolve it — read on.
The castle is a new build, meaning a fake for entertainment. More details in the next post.
Chicago, view from the John Hancock Tower.
By the way, everywhere in Chicago there were ads for the movie Hancock with Will Smith, which just came out, but is already beating Wanted at the box office, though losing to Wall-E. A rare case where I got interested in new releases — I'm looking forward to the animated features Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda. On Blu-ray, of course.
An attraction for the brave. See the terrified look on my sis's face?
In the Hancock Tower, as in many other skyscrapers in Downtown Chicago, there are, strange as it may sound, residential apartments. So some lucky folks live a stone's throw away from their job, which is located in the neighboring skyscraper. Rumor has it, rent for such apartments starts at two grand a month. At the top of the tower there is a restaurant — you can dine and enjoy the view in the photo above. There, by the way, for some reason they asked us for ID to sell us alcohol, and I proudly handed over my bicycle license, aka cyclist's licence. (If anyone's wondering, my bike is in good health, just the tire wore out, and they don't sell those around here).
In the Hancock, like in many other places, they forcefully took our picture. And they always printed the photos, which I, being partially green, really dislike. With the spread of digital tech, nowadays they usually show you the photo first and only print it if you ask. But the blessed march of progress hasn't reached everywhere yet. The irony is that the only photo we bought (in the Six Flags park), was the one they actually showed us on a monitor first.
Having visited the tower like boring, proper tourists, we went to get our car from the parking garage. Parking cost a brutal amount of money — about $40 a day, and we were in Chicago for 3 days. The parking structure is, of course, multi-level, with a spiral ramp, and on the upper floors there is a vehicle height limit — the tanks and APCs so beloved by Americans won't fit anymore. You can pay with a credit card at a special machine or insert the card right into the boom barrier at the exit.
By the way, we drove everywhere using a Garmin GPS, some recent mid-range model, and it actually worked really nicely, especially considering my sister and I aren't exactly geographically savvy. It's a shame that in dense urban areas, GPS struggles to catch satellites, and under a bridge it loses them completely. Therefore, when we drove under an overpass and stopped in confusion, an enterprising he-who-must-not-be-named immediately rode up to us and clearly explained how to get to our destination — the museum of science and industry. For his services, the comrade, naturally, asked for some dough for the homeless. Honestly, this was the only time I got on guard — besides us and the black brothers, there was no one else under the overpass. And as everyone knows from Hollywood movies, pulling guns out of baggy rapper pants and robbing innocent passersby is their favorite pastime. On the other hand, members of an organized crime group probably wouldn't ride around on an un-prestigious bicycle, from which I logically concluded we were talking to simple bums. Oddly enough, even I understood the explanation, although it was unnecessarily long. All we had to do was drive out from under the bridge to the left, then turn right and floor it to the bitter end for 12 miles, which a brown sign also informed us of, besides the GPS. They put up a lot of these tourist signs back home too after joining the EU, where every little hillock and stream is declared a landmark — seeing as there's nothing else to look at.
But the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago — that sort of thing is always dear to my heart. By the way, yesterday I was given a phone survey, where I gleefully described the perks of genetically modified foods, nuclear power plants, the slogan "progress will save the world from hunger and disease," and promoted the theory in every possible way that scientists should have more power.
The museum is huge, and in two hours we didn't see as much as we would have liked, but we did send an e-card from a special terminal. The museum has an interesting and clear exhibit on DNA and heredity — Genetics: Decoding Life. This is in contrast to the Field Museum Of Natural History, where, even though you can watch scientists working live behind glass, the explanations are way too complicated.
Of all the museum's beauties, the only thing that stuck in my memory was a giant combine harvester with AC, a TV, and GPS, costing a total of 240 thousand rapidly depreciating US dollars. As for the various items and descriptions, including a brief history of discoveries, the museum was a delight. But there's no way it can compete with the Sinheim Museum in Germany in the sheer number and rarity of cars and similar tech, which I wrote about once. Then again, as the Americans say, there's no need to compare apples and oranges. In any case, the Germans still win in terms of spectacle, even if you do get tired of the endless shine and gloss of polished car bodies.
There was also a pretty good attraction in the museum — guessing acoustic noises inside a submarine. Telling a whale apart from a bomb without training is still doable, but from a merchant ship — no way. Right now the museum is undergoing renovations, and the upper floors won't open until the summer of 2009. But they'll have a unique thing there — the Mindball game, where a sensor reads the brain's electroencephalogram, and the player who manages to relax better wins. I highly recommend playing it to anyone who will be in Chicago after the opening — there are only about twenty such installations in the world so far.
By the way, the museum has an online video section where you can watch, for example, how chicks hatch into the world, if you haven't had enough media content in this post.