It’s Windy

And it’s a city

A couple of weeks ago, Lauri Novak wrote a post about, and illustrated with photos of, Chicago’s Riverwalk.

The Chicago Riverwalk

Looking at her pictures took me back. A long way back in fact, as far as the final decade of the last millennium. If this post were a film, the words would now wibble wobble across the screen, and somebody would be playing something ethereal, probably on a harp. However, since it isn’t, and I haven’t worked out how to turn my words into harp music as you read them, you’ll just have to imagine the sound.

Let me take you back, back to a business park in Frimley, on the Surrey/Hampshire border where, towards the end of 1993, young(er) Paul went for a job interview for a position as Translation Manager (Europe). Once I’d passed that hurdle, I then had to have a follow-up interview with the company’s global translation manager who, I know, sometimes reads these, so hello to you if you’re reading Ralph!

After the second interview, which took place in a hotel lobby somewhere near Heathrow’s Terminal 4, I was duly recruited, and I started work, in a system software company, at the beginning of 1994. A couple of weeks later, I went on a fact-finding tour of Europe, which involved a lot of time travelling (6 countries in 5 days) and the rest of the time in meeting rooms, all of which looked much the same wherever on the continent they actually were. After all this time, the only things I can really remember about that trip is that I ripped the sleeve of a brand new jacket I’d bought, in Milan, that in Barcelona I stayed in a hotel with lots of buttons on a panel by the bed, including one marked ‘butler’, but that since I arrived there at around midnight and left about 5 hours later, I never got to press it, and finally that when I got back to Heathrow at the end of the week, there had been an accident in one of the road tunnels, so nobody could get out of (or indeed into) the airport by road. I ended up getting the tube to Hatton Cross and then walking to the place where my car was parked from there, which took hours.

Anyway, this was meant to be a post about Chicago, but I’ve already got as far as the fifth paragraph and I haven’t even mentioned the place yet.

A couple of weeks after the European marathon, I set off to the Windy City for the first time. It was cold – in fact I was told it was one of the coldest Februarys the city had ever experienced. I can quite believe that and, when I tried to walk from the taxi into the hotel, wearing nice shiny leather business shoes with leather soles, I almost fell over. It would have been a shame to end my Illinois adventure so quickly, and so the very first thing I did, after dumping my suitcase in my room, was to slide down the road to the nearest shoe shop, and buy some proper footwear, some Timberland boots that lasted for years.

The hotel was called the Nikko (it’s called the Westin Chicago River North now) and it was the first place I ever had a hot rock, which is a basically a meal where you are supplied with a very hot slab of granite and a selection of sliced meat and vegetables, which you then cook over the said lump of stone. It’s an extremely convivial way to have a meal, and when I got home I bought one which I still use regularly when entertaining (I’ve got one friend who loves it and can’t get enough when we bring it out).

Before I keep going, a word about photographs. Usually, I liberally sprinkle my posts with photos I’ve taken. As I’ve said before, probably far too often, it’s a hobby I really enjoy, and I spend far too much of my time thinking about taking photos, actually taking photos, or editing photos. There are worse ways for somebody to spend their time, and it’s a pastime that gets me out into the great outdoors, which can’t be bad.

However, my photos of Chicago were taken a long time ago, using a good camera (A Minolta X700 I regretting trading in mere nanoseconds after I’d walked out of the shop, but it was too late by then), but the negatives are long gone, and I scanned the prints quite a long time ago too, at a resolution which, looking at them now, is best described as disappointing.

So, when we get to the photos, apologies for the quality, but what they don’t have in terms of detail, they make up for, I like to think, in analogue beauty from an earlier time.

So, back to my times in that fair city. After my first trip, I went over quite regularly and, some time later when my boss resigned, I was invited to replace him. I didn’t accept that offer for various reasons (I could write more about them, but the short version is: family). My refusal was sort of rejected, inasmuch as I was ‘encouraged’ to spend a few months in the city while the company looked for a full-time replacement.

And so it was, that I ended up living on the 33^rd floor of an apartment building in the centre of the city, and working in an office on the 32^nd floor of a building that was basically on the other side of the road, above a railway station. In a straight line, my commute was probably about 300 yards, but the actual journey was further than that, since I had to travel all the way down, cross the road, cross the station concourse, and then travel all the way back up.

The office itself was busy, with a lot of people working over several floors, and the translation department I managed had 50 people working in-house, not something you’ll find in many commercial companies these days.

After a few months, my replacement was duly found, and my time in Chicago came to an end. Or so I thought. For reasons I can’t really remember anymore, they only stayed with the company for a few months and, once they left, I was summoned back. Since I was quite busy doing stuff for the company in Europe (‘stuff’ is the correct technical term here, believe me), the powers-that-be decreed that I would spend one week a month physically in the USA (staying at the Intercontinental hotel each time. The only thing I remember about that place was that it served imported Bass in bottles, which was nice), and the other three weeks of the month doing whatever stuff I was doing on the Old Continent.

Luckily, nobody had made the connection between climate change and air miles back then because otherwise I’d be strung up from the nearest gibbet for my transgressions. As it was, I was just permanently knackered, and living on mid-Atlantic time for most of the month. However, that period lasted quite a while until, one day, the business decided it could save money by switching its preferred airline to one where I didn’t have any accrued benefits. After criss-crossing the Atlantic with my shiny gold card, and turning left on boarding the plane (or indeed going upstairs), it was a bit of a shock to turn right and end up in the cheapest seats at the back of the plane.

And so I resigned, and my Chicago adventures came to an end.

So, to the photographs. I did promise you some, and now you’ve read this far you deserve a rest, even it it’s just to look at some grainy old pictures of places I can’t really remember very clearly (although perhaps more clearly than the captions might suggest).

A shadow of a pointy building on the lake.

The city separated from the lake by a massive road. Oh dear.

I wonder how much this skyline has changed in the intervening decades. Maybe I should pop back and have a look.

Boats and a green river. I vaguely remember being told that it used to flow the other way until engineers decided that wasn’t the best solution for something or other.

Merchandise Mart. Hiding some of the photo’s imperfections in black and white.

I suspect I must have been in a boat to take this photo. Either that or I was walking on water, which I don’t remember doing.

This was the view from my window during my longest stay there. Not bad as views go, and these days I’d spend hours trying to get just the right shot. Not many trees in sight though.

Soldier Field, apparently. Looking online, the stadium is somewhat larger now.

Green water again

Why so green? It must have been taken on St Patrick’s day!

Another one where I wonder how much the skyline has changed.

And finally (at last, I hear you say), evidence of a time when, if you wanted to create an effect, you had to stick a filter on your camera and twiddle with it, then wait for the photos to come back so you could see what the result actually looked like. Folks have got it far too easy these days!

And, at last, we have reached the end of our journey. If, quite understandably, the thought of subscribing is too much to contemplate, but you’ve enjoyed reading something I’ve written, then you also have the option to simply buy me a transatlantic airline ticket (contributions may in fact be used to buy Chicago pizza, but I won’t tell if you don’t ask).