Moving Sidewalks for Urban Dwellers?

Because sometimes a girl just has to Google herself and her blog, I found this Slate.com article about moving walkways in a would-be scenario in which moving sidewalks replace their concrete counterparts.  

Should Cities Install Moving Sidewalks?

So I ask you, do you think a spiderweb of moving walkways would be beneficial or burdensome to humankind?  

As an interesting aside, I also discovered in this article that the moving sidewalk was introduced in Chicago at the 1893 World's Fair, which took place at an area known as the Midway Plaisance.  And remember, I was first struck by the utter monotony symbolized by the moving walkway while at Midway Airport.  Coincidence?   I think not.

Nothing sounds too far-fetched anymore, not even an urban transportation system that strips us of our long-standing relationship with walking.   Cars did that over 100 years ago, but at least they had the decency to provide insulation, distance from others, and Sirius radio.  

What do you think?  Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Concrete Jungle

Enough said...

Depression can lift with the joy arising from listening to the song of a bird.

Photo Credit: Hubert Blanz, Roadshow 01, 2007, re-printed in AdBusters #90, Vol. 18, No. 4.

Hitting the Stage at Story Club Chicago

I'm back.  During my hiatus I learned just how tricky it is to film a watchable interview, re-learned the kindergarten concept of sharing, became a proud half-owner of a FORD, and moved into an urban oasis with a backyard in which my basil and spearmint plants are now dying a slow, miserable death by my not-so-vigil eye.

Of course I also wrote tons during the last few months, and finally summoned up the courage to get on stage and read some of my musings out loud, to a real audience for the first time.  Last night I debuted a piece called "Bright Blue Something" about skydiving my way through a quarter-life crisis.  Here I am reading it for "Story Club Chicago" at Uncommon Ground.

Photo Credit: Karen Zemanick

And here I am living it....................

This is me, signing out, saying get off the Moving Walkway!

Interview with Michael Nagrant

To my loyal readers: After months of listening to my world view, I thought it would be a nice change of pace to present you with another person’s world view, which incidentally, just happens to coincide with mine – at least when it comes to the pursuit of passion in work. 

I was fortunate enough to sit down this week to talk with renowned Chicago food writer Michael Nagrant. His work has been featured in New City, Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, New York Magazine, Huffington Post, and of course, his own online magazine Hungry Mag, as well as the cookbook for hot Chicago restaurant Alinea.

Michael’s adventures in food are well documented, from his “ojo de chivo” incident, which, if you don’t speak Spanish, translates to “goat’s eye” – I’ll let imagination take you the rest of the way – to his dining in as many of Chicago’s 6,000 + restaurants as possible. What is not so well documented is his efflorescence (vocab word of the day), the story of his development, how he has come to make a living doing what he loves. We talk about work, writing, being a Detroiter in Chicago, and his style, which he describes as “a little punk rock in what’s usually a classical music venue”.

Enjoy the interview.


MA: You studied science at the University of Michigan then worked for an industrial supply company for six years. Why writing? Why food?

MN: When I went to Michigan, I thought I wanted to be a doctor – like everyone else – but I realized I was just sort of following this idea. My mom came over from Poland when she was ten, and when you grow up in that type of family, you can be anything you want as long as it’s a doctor, lawyer, or engineer. They never put pressure on me, but that was assumed – they wanted me to be successful. In high school science and math are pushed so much to the detriment of everything else. People don’t push art class or English in high school. So I sort of, in one respect, had no choice but to go down that path in high school. Luckily, I liked it and was good at it, so just thought that naturally I’d do that. In the first couple years at Michigan, I ended up taking a creative writing class, and I was done. I was like, ‘where has this been all my life?’ I wanted to write for the student newspaper, but I got really involved with the MSA (student government) at Michigan, so I ended up getting all roped up into that. I was actually the student body president at Michigan in ’97-’98. During my last semester, they had a columnist spot open at the Daily, so I wrote for that for my last year there. I was up at 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, writing those columns, just found myself in the dark, and I was the happiest I’d ever been. I had nowhere else I’d rather be, and I knew that this was what I wanted to do forever. I just wanted to be a writer. This is what I was good at. It’s what I was passionate about.

So after I graduated, I knew I wanted to do something creative, probably writing. I started applying to advertising jobs and web jobs because I’d had some web experience. I threw out a confidential reply to an advertising firm, or what looked like an advertising firm, but it turned out to be an industrial supply firm just outside Cleveland. I went there with a total chip on my shoulder – I said I’d use this just as an interview experience. The thing is, they offered me this opportunity to manage, as part of this 6-month management rotation. So after 6 months I’d have this position where I was able to enact some change, to do some really interesting things, do some cool business stuff. The promise was, they had a web department in Chicago and that after a year or two I could go there and work on the web stuff. I enjoyed the web stuff, and I enjoyed the company. I got a lot out of the experience. However, it wasn’t my passion. I worked for a company where the hierarchy was very powerful. Business in America isn’t always about what’s right – it’s more about might. There are some smart people in Corporate America who rise to the top who really believe in managing well, but that’s not always the case. So when you’re faced with a situation where you’re sort of being kowed by an interest that isn’t neecessarily the best thing to do, it’s tough for people to do that, especially if you are the creative type. I had a tough time with that. And because there was a lot on the line – money and benefits – I wanted to preserve that job because it was just a way of life by that point. In some ways you could argue that my character wasn’t as good as I thought it was because I knew what I wanted to do, but I kinda let it be subdued for the money. But at some point, I said, I’d been there six years, and knew I had to take the chance. If I didn’t not take the chance, I was done. I could not look at myself spending 30 years at this place, and I knew I would not feel good about myself.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

If you’re doing something today that you don’t like, the only person you have to blame is yourself. Everyone has that choice. It might be difficult, but you have that choice.

MA: So you quit that job, and you did not have a new one lined up. 

MN: I didn’t know what I was going to do...


MA: Were you ever afraid? Were you worried? Did you think about failure?

MN: I knew I had about sixteen months’ worth of money. I thought I wanted to cook, actually. I was really into food.

I really did think trying to earn a living as a writer was as audacious as trying to be the President of the United States.

People do it all the time, but it just feels that far away. It does not feel like something you can do.We talked about Fitzgerald – the people I looked up to, certainly Fitzgerald, certainly Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, anybody from the ‘20s and ‘30s – those people loom large in your life. When you think of writers you don’t think about the beat reporter at the Tribune, you think about Ernest Hemingway. Then you think I can never be like that. You forget that there are steps to get there. You just have to realize that there are so many ways to make a living as a writer and that there are steps to getting there. You just have to take those steps. You don’t have to write the Great American Novel on the first try, although that’s always the tempation. 

The other thing is, you feel like if you go through one door, you are closing all the other doors. The reality is, you have to understand, that if you go in the one door you can just come back out again.

MA: You reached critical success in 2006 doing something new, which was podcasts online – inteviewing chefs and posting the interviews online. How did you come up with the idea to do the podcast?


MN: In 2006 blogs were already really hot. I did not really believe in short-form, in building your work on the backbone of other people’s work and aggregating content. This is not to say that there aren’t people who blog well, but 90% of what is out there is not good. That is because they are not original. People do not have their own voices. Just because you take really nice pictures of food and you cook dishes, that does not mean you are any different from anyone else. 90,000 people do that too. I really wanted to do something that I believed had value, that I was really interested in and something that didn’t exist in the marketplace. At the time, nobody was doing long-form interviews with chefs. I knew I was going to do profiles and all that, but I wanted to do something where I was not even an intermediary, where I just talked to somebody about what they do, got in their head, and let people hear about it. Let it unfold as opposed to writing a story. It is a completely different form. The long form thing has allowed me to get at stuff that nobody else could. It was not a sound-byte or a comment. You really had to learn about what these people did. Fundamentally, I knew there was a small audience for it, but I knew that it was something that I wanted to do. At the end of the day I just wanted to hang out with these chefs and talk to them about the craft because I was really interested in it, in becoming a better cook, in understanding what they did with food as an art, and in some ways it was just about me doing something that I wanted to do. I did not really care if there was a market for it, in reality. That being said, I wanted to be different. Now it wouldn’t be different. A lot of people do that.

I definitely came up through the internet, not the old fashioned way. I came up in a new way. I came up a lot faster because of it. Everybody always wants to do food stuff so you are competing in this marketplace where there are so many other people. [During a conversation with a part-time food writer] the one thing he said to me is that he did it because it was one of the only things he could control from beginning to end. It was his entire project, 100 percent his. That is what the podcast was for me in some ways. It was something I did and nobody told me how to do it, how to approach it, how to frame it. Having ownership over something like that allowed me to have the confidence to pursue what was my voice, what I was really interested in, and do it at a high quality level. I was doing what I thought was right, not what somebody else put a word-count on or a time-limit on.


MA: During one of your podcasts, fellow Wolverine and famed chef Rick Bayless said, “I never really had any plans as to where I wanted to go with it (his restaurant). I’m always a person that says, I’m gonna take the next right step; that is as far as I really plan things out.” That seems to be a common thread for successful creative types. Why do you think that is?

MN: Ultimately there’s a right way to do everything. It’s not always the same way for everybody, but there’s a right way.

There’s a right way in your heart; there’s a right way in your gut; there’s a right way in your mind.

Often we ignore those voices to our detriment. We need to pay more attention to those things. You have to do everything in your power to find the right way to do it.

Take a look at Grant Achatz, the chef at Alinea. From basically 18 to 32-years-old he worked at all these really high end restaurants. He worked 70 to 100-hour work weeks. He kept his head down – he was always the man behind the man – very humble; even today, he still sweeps the floor in his restaurant. But for 13 years he didn’t do anything but work hard and focus on the right opportunities. He didn’t go to the highest paying restaurants. He didn’t go to the highest profile restaurants. (Although The French Laundry turned out to be one of the highest profile restaurants in the country.) He went to what he thought were the best restaurants, the best experiences, the best places he could learn. He didn’t make much money along the way. Line cooks get paid, what, $20,000? No health care benefits in some cases, and they’re working, like I said 70-100 hours, and he did that for 12 – 13 years. But when he was done and opened his restaurant, he knew who he was, where he wanted to be, had laid all the groundwork. He is in his mid-30s and is the most self-actualized person I know. When people want to do anything in the culinary world, they call him. When somebody needs a speaker, they call him. When somebody’s opening a new restaurant, they call him. If somebody’s reporting on something interesting in food, they call him. If he tweets something, four million people re-tweet it. The guy can do no wrong. Part of it is, instead of focusing on the short term goal, he focused on the long-term goal. Part of it is what you said, but part of it is having a long term goal even if it is sort of nebulous.


MA: During a recent talk you said, “My job is what I do for fun. It blurs the distinction between life and work.” How does that compare to what you did before Hungry Mag, before writing?

MN: Well, my wife and I were married for six years, and we knew we wanted kids. But we didn’t have them, in part, because I was not happy with where I was in my career. I wanted to respect myself as a human being before having kids. I wanted to be an example that you could do what you want to do and be happy doing it, so we didn’t have kids because of it.

In some ways then, work was my life too. I would come in at 7:00 a.m. and most days I wasn’t home until 7 or 8. Then you just don’t have a life. The worst part about that is, you do not want that to be your life. It is a lot of stress. I remember towards the end, I was having a lot of trouble sleeping at night and my stomach hurt – to the point that I had to quit, fundamentally from a health standpoint. Though I did put some pressure on myself, so I take some blame from that, but some of it is just the work. Six months after I started doing the food writing thing, my mom called me up and asked how my stomach was doing, and I said, “What are you talking about?” I had completely forgotten about it. It went away when the job went away. Sometimes you just have to pay attention to the signs. People would say, maybe you should look into getting something (prescription medicine), but I always knew it was my circumstances. So I just had to change it.

Now my day is just fluid. From the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep, everything feels natural. Last night I worked on an article until 1:30 in the morning that I had started at 1:30 in the afternoon, with just one break for dinner, and never once was I like ‘this sucks’. I was just into it.

When I was in Corporate America, I saw people working along side me who thrived in that environment, and that was where they wanted to be. They were passionate about it and really good at it. I just recognized that when you’re not really into what you want to be, you can never be the best at it. You can be really good, you can be really successful, but you cannot be the best. I may not be the best food writer that ever lived, but I know that I will be doing my best at it. I will be the best person I can be, and that’s what matters most to me.


MA: Being a fellow Detroiter, what was your take on the recent Chicago Glutton’s blog about hometown icon, Leo’s Coney, coming to Chicago? Do you agree with what they called beer cap guilt for having left?

MN: That’s the thing about Detroit – I didn’t want to leave Detroit. When I was at Michigan I thought I would be one of those kids who stuck around, who moved to the city, who got some loft in an abandoned building, who threw parties with my friends, and figured out what to do with the city. But when I was looking for jobs, leaving school, nothing was being offered in Detroit. I don’t think I had the strength or the self-awareness to know that that did not matter and that I could figure it out so I went with the job that took me to Chicago. Now looking back, I know a few people…who sorta stuck it out. I admire them. I miss my hometown. Here’s the thing about Chicago – I love Chicago. I have been here now for seven years, and I don’t think I’ll ever leave. But there’s also this thing that if you don’t grow up in a place, you don’t feel like you’re ever truly from there. At the end of the day, I can eat as many Italian beefs as I want, I can go to as many White Sox games as I want, but I still feel like I wouldn’t be adopted as a true Chicagoan.

When you grew up in Detroit and you knew what Eight Mile is for real, before Eminem, and you know what Woodward Avenue is, and you know what the Dream Cruise is, and you know what Vernors meant, all these things, it is part of who you are. How could you not want to get back to that in some way and be part of that? But then you look at Kwame Kilpatrick…and it is hard to think of the idea of investing in Detroit and bringing value to the city when the people who are supposed to care about it most do not. How do you fight against that current?...There is a big, big mountain standing in the way of anything ever happening there.

But even in its busted-up state, Detroit knows how to get it right. If you look at the train station and the old Packard plant…Detroit is like the Roman ruins, the Greek ruins. Detroit is the first American city in its decay. But even in its decay, it’s one of the most beautiful things.


MA: What advice would you give to would-be career changers?

MN: The biggest mistake you can make if you really think you should be changing careers is not making that change. Have faith that if you really have a reason to leave your job, that if you put everything you are in to the new thing you want to do, whatever it is, you'll be at least as well off and most likely better than before. That is to say if you've created something halfway decent that supports you, pays your bills etc and you hate it so much, imagine what happens when you do something you really love. There's no guarantee you'll be the greatest ever or even a huge success in the new thing, but you'll be able to make it somehow, and most importantly you won't have any regrets. Note, maybe you don't make the same amount of money, but you'll be happy to make the adjustments and sacrifices to your new way of living, because you'll have found happiness, self worth, and hopefully a passion, all things you don't have now, and that counts for a whole heck of a lot more than money does. And who knows, maybe you'll find both.


MA: What is your favorite food?

MN: Korean BBQ – it is the perfect balance of sweet, spicy, and hot.
Also a restaurant in Montreal named Au Pied de Cochon (Leg of the Pig). It was one of the first sort-of beer-pork-oyster places where you could just come as you are.

 MA: What is your favorite book?

MN: You always hate to bring up Hemingway because it is such a cliché these days, but the two most influential books to me when I was younger, especially given what I do today, are A Moveable Feast, his memoir of his time in Paris, eating and all that stuff. Then The Sun Also Rises, there is just something about that book.

In the food world, the ones just getting me here thinking about being a cook were Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen and The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller.

Life Lessons from Oscar

During last night's 82nd annual Academy Awards, Michael Giacchino, winner of Best Original Score for "Up," gave a little shout out to imagination during his acceptance speech. He said that his creative side was always encouraged while growing up, then addressed the children watching: "If you want to be creative, get out there and do it--it's not a waste of time."

Kudos to Michael for cheering on the kiddies, but what about the grown kiddies?  Why not champion the post-grad set in their pursuit of life, liberty, and creativity?  Is creativity only something that should be instilled through age 18?  Don't we need to tend to our dreams past the germation stage of childhood, to grow them through to completion? 

Growing up is like coasting down a highway without a map, to a destination unknown, exciting and liberating, then all of a sudden, BAM, someone slams on the brakes.  The ride is over.  Hope you got where you wanted to be because imagination and creativity are behind you now.  Time to get a "real job" and stop wasting time on all those silly little dreams, right?

Maybe Michael and others like him should dedicate speeches to the adults who are working to turn their dreams into reality.

Leaving the D

Something of a mini diaspora exists today in the Midwest.  Detroiters are moving to Chicago in droves due to a complicated mess of factors that include continued economic woes in the Motor City, a declining youth culture, a poor singles scene, perceived lack of opportunity, and a host of others that I can't or won't delive into right now.  Sometimes I am hit with a pang of guilt for leaving, and even worse, for writing about it.  If Detroit (and by "Detroit" I do mean the entire "Metro Detroit" region because the two are inseparable) and its renaissance really meant that much to me, why am I here in Chicago instead of back home with my sleeves rolled up and my disposable income flowing back into the Mom and Pops that line Woodward Avenue?  Why do I feel like I'm fronting when I order a "soda" back home instead of a "pop"?


Well, when my favorite foodie sent me last week's Chicago Gluttons blog, with the comment, "it's all about your precious Detroit", it proved how much Detroit is still a part of my identity and how I am not alone in this association of Detroiter-in-Chicago guilt: 

Sadly, if the shit talk gets fists up, it also arouses regret. Leaving a hurting hometown for a new one entails a certain amount of guilt. Not Oscar Schindler-level guilt. Not Tiger Woods-level guilt. Not Kramer-level guilt. Not even Mustard Man-level guilt. But a beer cap of remorse that you broke too quickly, that if everyone like you stuck around, maybe things would be better. Couple this with the way hometowns get you like herpes–once they’re in you, they’re staying–and you start longing for the ephemera that you grew up with. I’m a Chicagoan through and through now, but damn if even writing that feels a bit like betrayal.

For the coney loving Chicago-based Detroiters, enjoy the new joint. For my non hot-dog lovin' pals, well, consider this just some food for thought: http://www.chicagogluttons.com/leos-coney-island-gets-windy/

So what is "creative nonfiction" anyways?

After getting into a creative nonfiction MFA program, I find myself constantly explaining to people what exactly "creative nonfiction" is: "Ya know, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Gilbert, etc." Anything to give folks a quick soundbyte to quickly digest.  But the truth is, the genre is wide open, and well-established writers much more experienced than myself are still trying to figure it out. Is it essay? Memoir? Social criticism? Historical reference? Intensive journalism? Personal journalism?

I don't really need to resolve the burning question, draw the boundaries, and enclose this genre of into an entrapment of definition.  I hate black and white.  I love the gray area because that is what life is.  It's gray.  Especially if you live in the midwest from November - March. 

Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction, summed up the drive to write creative nonfiction better than anyone else I have seen, and in that drive, I think, without device of definition, actually comes closer to defining the limitless genre better than anyone.  It does not hurt that it encapsulates everything that I have ever thought about in terms of writing, dreaming, and purpose.

Before I decided to be a writer, I thought a lot about what I wanted to accomplish in my life. I admit that I didn't know exactly what that was, but I knew two things: First, I wanted to be understood. That is, I wanted people to be interested in my ideas and feelings generally - and what I knew, specifically. Secondly, I wanted my ideas and experiences to make an impact on other people - to change or influence a small part of the world, in one way or another. In order to achieve those goals, I had to more thoroughly understand myself. And I had to learn a great deal about how other people lived. Of course, I had a passion for writing, and I had been significantly affected by the writers I had been reading . . .

That, to me, is creative nonfiction.  Check out his entire article, titled Why I Chose the Creative Nonfiction Way of Life in the online edition of Fourth Genre: http://msupress.msu.edu/journals/fg/gutkind.html.  Thank you Mr. Gutkind for so eloquently answering today's poll for me.

Goodbye BBDO

My first job after graduating college was at a 2,000-person ad agency by the name of BBDO Detroit. This vast ad machine handled every bit of written, spoken or otherwise broadcast publicity about its only client, Chrysler. I handled the trafficking of broadcast materials, in other words, television commercials and radio advertisements, later acquiring print trafficking duties as well. Running all over that agency, back and forth between two six-story buildings, chasing down copywriters’, ad directors’, and vehicle claims experts’ approvals, I felt that this mega advertising institution was infalliable. It was a large churning wheel and I was just a speck clinging to one of its many spokes. Six weeks ago BBDO Detroit announced it would be closing forever.

Emails flew that day between my friends and I, still close even years after our time together at BBDO, expressing our sadness, and even though we had known for months that this was coming, our shock. Unfortunately, layoffs and business closures are common topic for a city whose unemployment rate routinely hovers at 17 percent. The 485 people who still work for BBDO will be dumped out into the already-floundering local marketplace within ninety days. All I could think about was the agency’s annual Halloween party. The production team would put their rich stockpile of old tv spot props to good use, creating a 5,000 square-foot fete in the mode of Little Shop of Horrors meets Coney Island, complete with a working pushcart popcorn maker and sinister laughing clown faces.

I remembered learning more about Nascar racing than I ever would have cared to, rushing to get Kasey Kane’s “race win” ads out the door with the Dodge stamp of approval the morning after a Sunday afternoon victory.

Laughingly I recalled the time I taped my cube-neighbor Melanie’s cell phone to the bottom of her chair to make a point about the ridiculously loud vibrate setting to which the phone rattled every ten minutes when she and her boyfriend were in a fight.

There were Adcraft ski trips, field trips to vendors’ shops to see how an ad concept turned into the four-point CMYK color system that translated as shiny cars on the pages of Time, Glamour, and Sports Illustrated. At one point I could tell you the exact spec offerings for each trim-level of the Dodge Ram, Charger, and Caliber. And how could I forget the slightly absurd discussions with a certain network compliance officer over the propriety of the word “ass” on the American Broadcasting Channel. (She actually agreed to an allowance if said commercial included the use of a donkey.) Suffice to say that the experiences I had at BBDO Detroit left me not only with a well-rounded view of the modern advertising industry, but also left me with some good friends and poignant memories. Another icon of the Detroit motor-city money-making machine in dust.