Chicago History Museum

Last Comiskey Book Launch – Chicago History Museum – May 16, 2024

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I’m only going to say this once. Never go to a program where Tom Shaer is the emcee. Wait. I better repeat that. Never go to a program where Tom Shaer is the emcee.

I went to see the panel of former White Sox players, who turned out to be Donn Pall, Ron Kittle and Jack McDowell. By the time they were seated, we were over an hour in and I couldn’t take it any more. Thankfully, it was a nice night for a walk.

To be fair, Nancy Faust was there before the program started, playing the organ with her usual aplomb, to the great delight of everyone.

Faust also was featured in the 20-minute clip from the documentary Last Comiskey, which was a fun watch, particularly the part about Dave Stewart’s jock strap. I need to go to YouTube now and watch the whole film.

According to Shaer (when he wasn’t being a cloying, stand-up comedian wannabe windbag, or telling us a half dozen times that he hates to use notes, while referring to his notes), Faust, creator of the walk-up song, played her first one for Dick Allen in 1972, namely Jesus Christ Superstar.

Shaer spent an eternity introducing practically everyone in the audience, ranging from former sportswriters to former team administrative personnel to random people he knew. He skipped me, even though I co-created, produced and appeared on both episodes of a failed local cable tv sports talk show a million years ago. He must have missed it.

Bears vs. Cardinals: The NFL’s Oldest Rivalry – Chicago History Museum – December 2, 2023

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Had I known a few months ago that I would be attending this program, I wouldn’t have thrown out the autographed Charlie Trippi football I’d been saving for most of my life after having determined that it had no intrinsic value and was taking up valuable space that some equally worthless keepsake might be afforded.

I’m pretty sure I could have found a home for it with the speaker/author Joe Ziemba, who brought along some other memorabilia and made reference to the treasured boxes of related materials he had been gifted prior to writing this, his latest book.

Ziemba’s biography noted that, because of his knowledge of the early days of the professional game, he has been a resource for articles or reports in a number of well-known publications, including Sports Illustrated. In regard to that attribution, I can attest that it was, in fact, a real person standing before me, and not the avatar of a computer in the back room.

Ziemba covered the time frame from slightly before the 1920 founding of the NFL through 1959, after which the Cardinals started their westward trek that ultimately led to Arizona, a retirement exurb of Chicago.

The already obviously well-informed audience was treated to numerous interesting and humorous anecdotes, along with digs at Packer fans, player photographs and pictures of contracts and ledgers from the less-affluent days of the NFL, when players might make $75 a game and no one had ever heard of CTE.

History Happy Hour Trivia – Chicago History Museum – March 22, 2023

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The term happy hour first became popular in the early 1900s, descriptive of weekly Navy shows to entertain sailors at sea. During Prohibition, it became associated with alcohol and speakeasies.

In 1989, Illinois outlawed happy hour in an effort to curb binge drinking and drunken driving.

One part of the law required that drink prices “must be the same for all customers, for all purchases for the whole day.” Liquor-license holders responded by initiating happy days, perhaps inspired by the TV show of the same name, given that the stars of the spinoff, Laverne and Shirley, worked in a brewery, albeit in Wisconsin.

The ban was ended in July 2015 and neither that, nor any of the above, has anything to do with the trivia contest at the museum, at which my ad hoc team tied for second, no thanks to my trivial contribution.

Still, I considered it a victory, as we tied a team made up of history teachers, and, by not winning, didn’t have to take home the tote bag prizes.

During the lulls between rounds, what passed for entertainment was provided by Creative Weirdo (to be fair they were hard to hear), a twosome who also are the authors of the forthcoming new musical Adventure Sandwich: A Sandwich Adventure!, which you will not see reviewed here.

Haunted Dolls & History’s Horrors – Chicago History Museum – September 27, 2022

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This is a disjointed temporary exhibit within the boundaries of the permanent Chicago: Crossroads of America exhibit, framed in terms of a scavenger hunt to find 13 hiding spots of 16 dolls (a trio of carolers and the so-called terror twins accounting for the numerical discrepancy), whose origins range from 1862 to 1933, with a few stops at “no date available.”

Chucky was not among the dolls, but “a beheaded beauty” was, according to the brochure I was given at the check-in counter. I’ll never know, as I ran out of interest before finding it. Maybe I headed in the wrong direction.

I also made the mistake of accepting the pamphlet for the adult version, unaware at the time that there was a kid-friendly version, which might have provided more clues and required less attention span, in addition to scrubbing “mentions of violence, disasters, and the supernatural.” Don’t the curators know what kids watch on TV?

Fortunately, I didn’t compound my mistake by putting any effort into my search. Instead, I created my own, simpler, version of the contest. So, although I accidentally found 10 of the not-so-covert nooks and crannies containing the artifacts before my energy petered out, I also awarded myself points for finding the elevator, a bench to sit on, the bathroom, a security guard to pester with stupid questions, and, most importantly, the exit.

Chicago Film History: Seeing Selig – Chicago History Museum – March 23, 2022

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I thought I was there to see Zelig, you know the guy who used to show up in photos with Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others, long before photobombing was a thing and Tom Hanks inserted himself into every wedding shot he happened to be in the vicinity of.

Okay, not Zelig, but I also was good with seeing Bud Selig, former Commissioner of Baseball, though I wasn’t sure what he had to do with film. Apparently nothing.

So, instead I learned, from Jeff Spitz, a Columbia College Associate Professor in Cinema and TV Arts, about William Selig and his Selig Polyscope Company, which, as it turns out, was a big deal in the early days of the motion picture industry, building Southern California’s first permanent movie studio, after starting out in Chicago.

If you have one more online experience left in you, watch Selig’s thirteen minute, 1910 version of The Wizard of Oz on YouTube, worth it, if for no other reason, for the humorously rudimentary special effects.

In addition to being the studio to produce the first films of Tom Mix, Harold Lloyd, and Fatty Arbuckle, Selig, in partnership with the Chicago Tribune, is credited with inventing the cliffhanger, in 1913, with the production of The Adventures of Kathlyn, which the paper gave front page coverage to. Where would we be today without cliffhangers? Maybe I’ll tell you next time.

Vivian Maier: In Color – Chicago History Museum – February 26, 2022

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Because I had failed to notice the full name of the exhibit before entering, it took me about 15 minutes before I realized why I wasn’t seeing any of Maier’s thousands of black and white photos. Shoot me.

The display is separated into seven parts – looking through (which could have been divided into looking out and looking in), straight on, from behind, up close, from afar, up, and down. Add strange and charm and you’ve got a raft of quarks.

The first shot that stood out for me was Canoes in the Chicago River (@1965-1974), a time before gentrification resulted in kayaks displacing the canoes.

Two Socks on a Clothesline made me wonder what Maier, rather than some curator, might have named it had she commercialized her work. How about something more profound, like Line Interrupted? And what about the fact that the socks don’t match? I’ll have nightmares about that.

I would have liked to grab Hippies in the Loop (April 1970) and take it home with me, as I’m sure I could find someone in the large crowd who I knew if I had more time and a magnifying glass.

City on Fire: Chicago 1871 – Chicago History Museum – October 13, 2021

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I strolled into the Members’ Opening Commemoration to the strains of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire playing in the background, just as I imagine it does at every meeting of AA (Arsonists Anonymous).

I wasn’t there for the exhibit (which is interesting and well done – though not as well done as the city was following the historical event), as I had already seen it a few days earlier on the actual 150th anniversary of the conflagration, but rather to partake of the refreshments in order to practice chewing with a mask on in public in anticipation of a couple upcoming dinner events on my calendar.

Though the mask wants to slip down off one’s nose, it’s definitely doable with controlled mastication. And perhaps it will even help me slow down my notoriously fast-eating habit, along with my habit of eating when I’m supposed to be fasting.

The other thing that I wanted to research was whether the inside of my mask would act as a garbage disposal of sorts, but, upon inspection after the fact, there were no noticeable remnants of the barbecue chips that the museum offered as gourmet fire-related food. So, bring on the ribs and Sloppy Joes.

Amplified Chicago Blues – Chicago History Museum – April 24, 2018

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In the 1970s I went to hear the blues fairly often, at places like Kingston Mines and The Checkerboard Lounge, where I accompanied a friend who was “dating” blues guitarist Lefty Dizz at the time. Neither Lefty (who wasn’t a big enough name) nor the Checkerboard (which didn’t open until 1972) made it into the Chicago History Museum Exhibit, which is more about earlier years; places like Pepper’s Lounge, Delmark Records, and The Fickle Pickle (you have to love that name); and more well-known musicians like Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf.

The exhibit features a lot more pictures than music but there are three musical parts of the exhibit.

There is a karaoke room, where you can sing Sweet Home Chicago. No one tried it while I was there, including me, for which I’m sure everyone wandering around the museum was grateful. There were school children in the building who could have been scarred for life.

Another part of the exhibit gives you the opportunity to learn how to play blues on an electric guitar. The sounds coming from the guitar when I tried to follow the instructions sounded nothing like blues, or music for that matter. The exhibit will be there until August 10, 2019. I’ll go back and try again.

There also is a sound panel where you can learn how to mix music, I think, because it wasn’t working. I would have been better at that. I made a lot of party tapes in college. I’ll go back when it’s fixed.

From the gallery outside the museum’s theater, it sounded like there was a blues movie playing, but the theater was closed for a private event. One more reason to go back.  Good thing it was a Tuesday afternoon, when the museum is free for Illinois residents, or I might have been miffed.

As a result of these issues, I only spent 45 minutes at the museum. Of course I only spent 45 minutes at the Louvre when I was there. Mostly pictures there too (some sculptures), no music.