Back from Chicago where the kids had a blast. Sears Tower and the Loop and all that stuff. A visit to Chicago makes a person wonder what exactly the geniuses in this area were thinking when they allowed industry and salt mines and an airport only the very rich use to be built on Cleveland’s most valuable asset – the lakefront. I mean, let’s be serious. Even putting the Browns stadium there was pretty silly. Perhaps, maybe, it could have been a park that people can use every day. Which is what Burke ought to be as well. A park. Chicago takes advantage of the lakefront it has, even if it is named Michigan. Cleveland’s has industry, Whiskey Island and a dumpy airport Dumbo would probably fly by. No, Akron does not have a lakefront, but it also does not have the life a downtown like Chicago has. Then again it’s only short a few million people, which can affect things as well.

At any rate, there is a kind-of new park in the southern part of downtown Chicago, and it’s on the lake, and located In this park is the newest tourist rage: The Bean. That’s right. The Bean. We were introduced to The Bean by my brother the history professor and nautical archeologist from Loyola University of Chicago (he got the brains in the family). He said we had to go.

The Bean is this sculpture thing that actually is not edible. It’s just shaped like a bean. Figured that might have been confusing. It’s not like you can walk up to it with sauce and knife and fork and start munching away. At any rate, it’s sort of shaped like a kidney bean. With the indent in the middle. So imagine this giant kidney bean that people can walk up to and see and then imagine being able to walk into and under the bean where the indent is. Cool, eh? Good enough for the whole family?

Now … here come s the good part … imagine it’s made of this material – like, oh, glass or shiny chrome or something like that – that reflects everything perfectly — right down to the pimple on the tip of your nose. So people can walk up to The Bean and actually SEE THEMSELVES! And they can see the city reflecting out of one side, and the sun depending on time of day and to the south they can see the disgusting smoke and smokestacks and giant ore piles from the steel mills in Gary, Indiana (Dah-da-dah-dah, dah-da-dah!)

You can take a picture of yourself in “The Bean.” You can wave to the kids. You can make faces like a goof. You can wave to cousin Edna standing a good ways from you but who is able to see you in The Bean. All in this giant kidney bean made of reflective material. And … it’s FREE! No tickets, no going through metal detectors to see it, no taking off your shoes to walk up to it.

Then, where the surface curves, the human form reflected in it takes on weird shapes. Short, fat, squat, long, thin, all those kinds of things. “The Bean” is many things, but most of all it’s like taking all those old funhouse mirrors and placing them in a curved surface on one spot and letting people go at it. Put a reflective bean in a public place and there’s no telling how long people will be entertained.

This proves a few things. One is that Chicago is way ahead of the curve with “The Bean,” because it’s actually pretty cool. Second is that every city, every square, every gazebo needs a bean. And third is that the human capacity to be entertained must require little thought or mental challenge. Thousands and thousands of people go to see The Bean on a daily basis. And they go back the next day. Just to see themselves in The Bean.

It’s also the talk of Chicago. We asked Danny, the waiter at Ballo, a very, very nice and family-friendly and reasonably priced Italian restaurant on Dearborn, what the attraction of “The Bean” is and he said: “I don’t know.” Then he took somebody their water and came back and said: “But people go to it all the time. It’s really pretty cool.” Moral of the story: All of us need a bean in our backyard.

As for sports … it was good to see the Indians won a game last night. You go on the road with the Cavs and lose sight of the baseball team and next thing you know they can’t score a run and they’ve lost 82 in a row or something like that. The Indians are not the 1927 Yankees, the Bronx Bombers of the Lakeshore Filled With Industry They’re a bunch of nice hitters who need to all be working well together for the team to succeed. That wasn’t happening much until last night, when they scored eight in a win. Which may be a good sign, or it may be one of those every-once-in-a-while-the-team score-eight games. What the Indians do have is excellent starting pitching, and because of that it’s waaaaaaay too early to start to panic on the season. Things need to get better, yes, but the pitching will keep them competitive. And let’s face it, it’s not like someone has run away with the division already.

I’ll have more on the Indians from Wednesday’s game.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 12:13 am and is filed under Chicago, McManamon, The Bean, Travels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.