In Chinatown

It was nice and sunny when I awoke on Sunday morning. The Dulcinea gave me her carnal favors under the watchful eyes of Angus Young. I called my friend Gene but wasn't able to get a hold of him. The friendly folks at the Hard Rock Hotel were kind enough to include a stereo/DVD player in the room. Knowing this ahead of time and not knowing how our schedule would turn out, I brought along a DVD with me. I don't normally do such a thing but it wasn't out of the question that The Dulcinea and I would awaken at 4 in the morning and have some time to blow. And so I brought a copy of the (then) latest episode of Doctor Who - The Impossible Planet. Let me tell you, it is a fantastic episode.

Watching the opening of it, I was immediately reminded of a classic Doctor Who episode featuring Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor - Planet of Evil. In both episodes, The Doctor and his pulchritudinous female companion land on a planet upon which there is a geological expedition of some kind. When Planet of Evil begins, the monster is on the loose and has killed; The Impossible Planet is about the impending arrival of the monster.

The Doctor and Rose land in a storage room of some kind and the TARDIS is on the fritz a bit. They wander into a room and find "Welcome to Hell" written upon one wall. There is also some weird pictograms written beneath it but the TARDIS is unable to translate it so The Doctor concludes that the script is exceptionally old. Continuing, they open a door and are immediately confronted by the Ood, a race that has these vaguely squid-like heads with tentacles at their mouths. They hold illuminated balls in their hands and are saying "We must feed" as they lurch manacingly towards The Doctor and Rose.



Just when they're cornered, they say, "We must feed...you" and offer our heroes refreshment. It's really a neat scene that's scary in and of itself, but it also introduces the characters that are the Ood and communication devices malfunctioning as a motif. A group of humans arrive and The Doctor and Rose are led to a control room to meet the rest of the crew.

We learn that the Ood are willing "slaves" digging a mine for the researchers at the station. We also learn that they are on a planet that is in a geosynchronous position around a black hole.



An immense gravitational field emanating from below the surface of the planet is holding it in place and the mission is to bore down to the location from which the field emanates. A shockwave or quake causes a fissure to open on the surface of the planet and a few sections of the station plunge down into the darkness. It just so happens that one of those sections contained the storage room with the TARDIS inside.

As The Doctor and Rose contemplate their fates, one crew member starts hearing a strange voice. The doors in the complex have been fitted with Genuine People Personalities and they begin to malfunction and start intoning phrases imbued with evil. One crew member is eventually killed.

I want to stop the plot summary here and just say that this episode really creeped me out. It's all the usual creep-out stuff - looks of fear on people's faces, disembodied voices saying how the ultimate evil is rising and there's nothing you puny people can do about it, etc. All standard stuff but it made me curl up foetal as I laid on the bed.



The Ood eventually complete their mining task. The Doctor and the science officer put on space suits and head down the shaft in an elevator to explore the source of the gravitiational field. Meanwhile on the surface, an evil force has taken control of the Ood and they advance upon the human crew.



Beneath the surface, the ruins of an old civilization are found including a giant manhole cover hoolie which opens allowing someone or something out...



I just got part 2, The Satan Pit, yesterday. I am looking forward to watching it.

Afterwards, we showered and got ready to check out. A couple more calls to Gene only got me his voice mails again so I left messages with my cell number and we headed out. The Dulcinea got a laugh out of the valet bringing my car around. Everyone else had nice, shiny ones while mine was old, scraped, and very loud because of an exhaust leak. We got in and then headed to Chinatown.

Since we had to be at Barbara's Bookstore around 2:30, I eschewed the expressway and instead went down Halsted so I could scout out the location of the store. This also gave us the chance to drive through Greektown and past Maxwell Street. If anyone reading this is an expat of Chicago like myself, you won't believe what the area looks like nowadays. Firstly, the south end of the UIC campus has lots of new buildings and more being constructed. The Maxwell Street area now looks like a yuppie haven. I went to the Maxwell Street Market as a kid and had a good time. My friend's dad would take him and me down there. I distinctly recall boxes of butterfly knives in his car. I was absolutely amazed at what the area looks like now. Doing some research on the Net, I found out that the old Maxwell Street Market was stopped by the city in 1994 and relocated about a mile and a half away. Buildings were torn down and the area gentrified by the city and UIC. You may be familiar with the scenes shot on Maxwell Street in The Blues Brothers. You know, the diner scene and the one with John Lee Hooker playing out on the street. The buildings in those scenes have been torn down and the area where the diner was is now a UIC parking lot, apparently. This page gives an account of how it happened:

It wasn't long before UIC began to nibble away at what was left of the old Maxwell Street neighborhood for its campus expansion. The Chicago city government helped by withholding city services and infrastructure improvements, and then calling the neighborhood "blighted." Still, the market and the neighborhood around it hung on through the 70s and 80s. As the final decade of the 20th century began, UIC made it clear it now wanted everything, for itself and for private developers who lusted after prime real estate so close to the Loop.

Back in the late 19th century, Maxwell Street was home to Eastern European Jews who had emigrated to America. After World War I, Maxwell Street became home to an increasing number of blacks who had come up from the South as well as Mexican immigrants. As the above site notes, the Polish sausage sandwich and the Vienna Beef company originated in the Maxwell Street area. And, arguably, so did Chicago blues.



Madison has this thing called Maxwell Street Days. I've always considered it to be a joke despite it having been created as a homage to the original. Perhaps in 1976, when it started, Maxwell Street Days was something interesting but, with all the chain stores on State Street, it's just another sale. State Street is the premiere venue for shopping in Madison – light years away from the cultural milieu of the original in Chicago. The Maxwell Street Market was about a neighborhood, its residents, and its cultural (in addition to commerce) whereas Maxwell Street Days is about stores selling things outside. Maxwell Street Days is all middle class and WASPy with few people of color to be found. And, if there isn't a huge pile of hubcaps and rims for sale, it shouldn't have "Maxwell Street" affixed to it.



Zipping underneath a viaduct and approaching Archer, we noticed that signs had Chinese on them and it wasn't long before we were in Chinatown. We parked and wandered underneath the arch and down Wentworth. I called Gene again to no avail. So we wandered around. The streets were hoppin' and I couldn't understand a goddamn word the people were saying. (Mr. Vento can lick my balls.) At one corner a group of 8 or so men were sitting on the sidewalk reading the paper underneath a small tree. Down the street, a church had let out and parishioners had congregated outside to talk and enjoy the sun. It was great! We saw foo dragons guarding the library, food, funky buildings, and more food.





We stopped first at the Ten Ren Tea and Ginseng Company of Chicago where I bought some Ti-kuan-yin tea and these:





I haven't had the candy yet but I can say that the green tea-wasabi peanuts are awesome. Just the right amount of hotness.







Walking down from the tea shop, we came across a bakery and I just had to go inside. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures. I can tell you, however, that the display cases had me drooling. I bought BBQ pork buns, curry beef buns, sesame-pork cookies, a couple Chinese doughnuts, and some chocolate chip cookies. OK, I know you're asking why I bought the chocolate chip cookies as they can be had anywhere. Here's why: they were made with lard. None of this "healthy" eating crap – just good, old-fashioned goodness. They were about 4 inches in diameter with chunks of chocolate precariously balancing atop the ridges. They were incredibly moist and tasty. The doughnuts were doughnuts. Tasty but nothing particularly Chinese about them. The buns…mmmm…the buns. They're so soft and fluffy and when you bite inside, you get the tasty pork or beef goodness. By the time we walked out of there, The Dulcinea had to use a restroom and we were both very, very hungry. And so we made our way down the street and ducked into the Royal Dragon.

It wasn't as hole-in-the-wallish as I had hoped but we didn't let that stop us from ordering dim sum.



Now, by "ordering dim sum" I mean ordering enough for 10 people.



The above photo does not come close to conveying the clutter of our table. There must have been almost 20 bits of serving ware on the table from plates to glasses and all points between. Starting in the upper left corner, you see: Steamed Lotus Buns, Pan-Fried Shrimp Bean Curd Roll, something we can't remember, Pan-Fried Shrimp and Chive Cakes, and BBQ Pork Buns. However, we started with the Dry Fish & Peanut Congee:



Now these are the Fried Dough Crepes. They're made of, well, fried dough wrapped in a thin crepe. Soft and delicate on the outside, crunch on the inside.



These are the Pork Dumplings with Peanut:



While the congee needed just a touch of salt, in my opinion, it was good, especially when you got a piece of the dried fish in your spoon. We also got a couple small dishes of hot pepper flakes in oil and a spiced plum sauce whose name I cannot recall. The waitstaff were all really friendly and put up with us stupid, non-Chinese speaking gringos superbly. (Sorry, I dunno any derogatory terms for Caucasian folks in Chinese.) Frighteningly, there was precious little left for doggie bags. With our respective centers of gravity having shifted, we left and headed down the street again.

The Dulcinea ducked into a gift shop while I ducked into the alley to finish a square. I rather liked the line of fire escapes so I took a snap.


When I walked in, I saw that The Dulcinea had found the Hello Kitty section and was covetously eyeing a range of Chococat items and she would do so for what seemed like hours. The joint had some neat slippers but, unfortunately, they only had them in 2 colors in my size and neither appealed to me all that much. There was some neat children's clothing and The Dulcinea found an outfit studded with dragonflies which she adored and thought would look good on Neko, my friend Miss Pamela's newborn.

Despite my inability to get a hold of Gene, I had a fantastic time. I hadn't been to Chinatown since I was a boy. One incredibly wonderful thing about Chicago is that it's easy to get lost in a neighborhood so unlike my own and one in which English is not the predominant language nor is white the predominant color. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have grown up in Chicago. My first grade class had kids who would go home and speak Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Spanish, Polish, and English. . I don't like this "You're in America – speak English" thing. It's xenophobic bullshit. America shouldn't be made of cookie-cutter communities; it should be made of communities made by the people who live there, whatever language they speak.

With our hands full, we headed back to car. Next stop was Barbara's Bookstore back up Halsted near the UIC campus for Greg Palast.