The Bean

I've been in Chicago for past few days. Ma shanghaied me for garage painting duty while the sun was shining, but we went downtown to the Art Institute on Saturday. Daley has torn down the rail switching yard on the north end of Grant Park and put up some god awful Frank Gehry concert pavillion. Project Mayhem has some serious work to do.
I was impressed with Cloud Gate. Modern statuary often fails its task of enhancing public space, but the design and implementation of this piece works well. Crown Fountain, on the other hand, fails the enhancing public space metric. Its design clashes with the the rest of Millenium Park and 50 foot faces of Chicagoans spitting on the crowds really doesn't float my boat.
Ben and I had some brew friday night at the Bierstube. It seemed as though it was built and owned by old German dudes, but Daley has succesfully purged the city of anything but twentysomething Cornhuskers and Hawkeyes, therefore it was overrun by yuppies. Daley can't be all bad, he did have the sack to unilaterly close down Meigs field, for which he'll always have a spot in my anti-Federalist heart.