As I discovered during the first of several trips to Chicago, Florian missed his calling: he should have been a tour guide. I'd only visited briefly on business, before the construction of Millennium Park, one of our first stops in April 2006. Florian, following Nancy Reagan's fashion lead, got a lot of mileage out of his red jacket.
He's a big animal lover, even of the stainless steel kind. Despite his relocation to the Windy City, I still loved photographing him. And little did I know then, he would showing me around Hamburg and other German cities in less than a decade.
He took my picture in front of Lake Michigan on a gorgeous spring morning.
Even this die-hard New Yorker had to acknowledge Chicago's impressive downtown. The city goes all out on St. Patrick's Day, dyeing the Chicago River green.
Americans chewed a lot of Wrigley's gum to build the clock tower behind Florian.
A big bust on a very tall plinth honors Montgomery Ward, who founded a mail order business, later expanding to include bricks and mortar department stores that bore his name. My father, like most Americans of his generation, called them "Monkey Wards." Think of the storied Chicago entrepeneur as the late-nineteenth-century equivalent of Jeff Bezos but with a more philanthropic bent.
Chicago even boasts its very own Picasso, said by the artist to resemble the face of Kabul, his afghan hound.
You can see what look to be the horns of the John Hancock Center on North Michigan Avenue, also known as the Magnificent Mile. Upon completion in 1968--a year after Florian's birth--it was the second tallest building in the world.
But American architecture has gotten a lot more phallic since. The Hancock Center now ranks #5 in Chicago and #14 in the U.S. Here's Florian clowning on the observation deck.
The Gothic Presbyterian church offered a sharp, more humane contrast across the street below, with blue ribbons tried to the tree outside recognizing abused children.
We also toured Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois. Constructed in 1889, Wright worked and lived there for two decades with his wife and six kids. I wonder if it leaks like Fallingwater?
Although not original to the house, the sculptures adorning the exterior of his drafting room were designed by Wright.
Florian lived with Roland, his ex, in the Loop.
The windows of their brand new apartment faced the Merchandise Mart, the world's largest building when it opened in 1930. Size seems always to have mattered in Chicago--chalk it up to the Midwest's inferiority complex!
Florian found work at the Chicago Park District as a lifeguard, both at a local pool and on Lake Michigan's beachfront, where I never got the chance to see him in action.
The Harold Washington Library remains one of his favorite haunts. He often lets me know how many people are ahead of him on reservation lists for popular books he wants to read.
May 2006
The annual International Mr. Leather contest gave me an excuse to make a second trip to see Florian over the Memorial Day weekend. We biked to Oz Park early in my visit.
Meanwhile, Millennium Park was in full bloom for the holiday.
I'm wearing my t-shirt from the Gates, happy times we'd shared the year before in New York.
Young locals and tourists took delighted advantage of the park's innovative water-cooling opportunities.
We stopped to take pictures at several of Chicago's world-class cultural and scientific institutions including the Field Museum
. . . the Shedd Aquarium
. . . and the Adler Planetarium, the first to be built in the United States.
All of it paled in comparison to the camp novelty of the IML contest--think chaps and harnesses instead of bikinis--which took place at the Chicago Theater. Florian posed (bashfully) with the newly crowned winner from Montreal.
January 2007
Chicago knows how to celebrate the holidays, that's for sure. The flag at half-mast marked the recent death of President Gerald R. Ford.
My exuberance in this photo is atypical.
Macy*s decorated its atrium with wreaths and ornaments.
Terra cotta reliefs of four Germanic composers outside the building that houses The Second City were festively adorned, and betray the structure's origins as the Schiller Theater. Only Mozart, as Rudolf, remains familiar today.
You have to wonder what 20th century composer Fritz Reuter would have thought of his hat, and if the Second City was aware that the Nazis embraced his work.
There were other more statuesque embellishments around town, too.
I arrived in Chicago with just two days left in 2006. By now our explorations had started to take us farther afield, including the Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette. It welcomes members of all scripture-based faiths in this ornate building with nine sides.
Nearby Lake Michigan attracts skimboarders even in December.
Florian and I watched the fireworks celebrating the arrival of 2007 from the lakefront with a bottle of champagne, snacks and noisemakers. It was one of the most romantic evenings we ever spent together. The new year turned out not to be a happy one although it began well with a belated birthday celebration in Florida.
On New Year's Day, we drove to Milwaukee where I played tour guide at the incomparably beautiful Museum of Art.
Lake Michigan is visible from inside the building and provides a great backdrop for the right kind of art.
March 2007
An unanticipated visit began with clouds hovering above the Museum of Contemporary Art.
The weather improved for Greektown's annual parade over the weekend.
We spent a contemplative hour at the spring flower show in Garfield Park Conservatory.
It turned out to be a great place for exotic botanical close-ups.
Sears Roebuck, Monkey Wards' primary competitor, had grown so large by 1970 that it commissioned what was then the world's tallest skyscraper for its headquarters. Now called the Willis Tower it remains the third tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, with New York claiming the top two spots. I never made it to the observation deck.
By the time I left, gray skies obscured the Chicago skyline at Montrose Beach, where Florian lifeguarded during the summer,
April 2007
By now, Florian had taken me to most of Chicago's major tourist attractions including my favorite, the Art Institute. Disappointingly, Seurat's "La Grande Jatte" was not on view at the time. On my last visit, we biked to Skokie, stopping in a sculpture park for a picnic.
Much of our route on a hot spring day took us along Lake Michigan which really does look as vast as an ocean.
Florian soon would be on the move again, back to Germany. No doubt he missed his American views in Chicago and New Jersey!
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