This is a solar powered garbage can. Go ahead and mock it for a second. I know I did.

When I walked by this thingamadongus on the corner of Clark and Diversey I took a picture with the intention of mocking it for quite a bit longer than a second, but the more I think about it the more I think it’s actually a useful, well-designed device.

With the exception of the lady who shoved a whole pizza box out of her car window while parked in front of my apartment, I think we can all agree that litter is a bad thing. Non-solar-powered garbage cans do a pretty good job of accepting litter and holding it until it can be disposed of, thus keeping it off of our streets and babies, but they aren’t the greatest in high-traffic areas where garbage cans either turn into overflowing piles of refuse or need to be emptied several times a day.

This trash receptacle, known as Big Belly, uses solar power to run a compactor that allows it to store about 5 times as much as a normal trash can. I’ll leave it to city bean counters to decide whether or not its price tag (about 100 times the cost of a normal garbage can) is offset by the reduced labor cost (although I’m not sure how much I trust their decisions.)

I guess what seemed mock-worthy is the “Think Green!” sign on the side. Just because something is solar powered doesn’t mean that it is especially “green.” The Big Belly is no more energy efficient than an average 55 gallon drum that doesn’t doesn’t consume any power at all.

Just as the “reduce, reuse, recycle” credo establishes a hierarchy of environmentally beneficial waste management, energy management should also begins with reduction.  In other words, it makes a lot more sense to get an efficient refrigerator in your house than it does to put solar panels on your roof to power an inefficient one.

That said, I like these electric garbage cans.  Besides, you could make the argument that fewer pickups require fewer garbage trucks and thus less fuel, so maybe they are “thinking green” after all.

In the final episode of Impress These Apes, Amanda Rountree created a conversation between herself and Chicago — starring the audience as Chicago. Brilliant!

I was at the Bartman game. My dad somehow managed to find bleacher tickets for himself, my brothers, and I. There’s a very clear picture in my head of my brother Brian holding five fingers in the air… one for each out the Cubs needed to move on to the World Series.

My brothers at game 6 of the NLCS in 2003 with high expectations.

We all know what happened next.

I wish I took a picture afterwards, but I was too depressed. The four of us trudged down Sheffield to my brother’s apartment, too miserable to get on the train. We joined thousands of others, dazed, silently wandering in the middle of the street. Every once in a while someone would vocalize their frustrations by shouting: “Dammit,” “8 runs,” or a simple Santo-esque “No!!” It was surreal and awful. Many have compared it to a funeral. In my experience, funerals are happier.

Seventh Inning Stretch — 3 to 0, Cubs — 15 minutes to meltdown.

A week later, looking to vent my frustrations, I sold my ticket stub on eBay with “Worst Game Ever” scrawled on the bottom. It was bought for $22 by someone in Indiana. (I refused to ship to Florida.)

As the Cubs embarrassed themselves against the Diamondbacks this weekend, I felt numb. I was disappointed but not depressed. For some reason I didn’t have very high expectations — maybe because this year’s collection of overpaid underachievers didn’t inspire me much — but I think Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS had something to do with it. That night changed me. I’ve lost my naive childish thrill. To quote Steve Goodman (again) “What do you expect when you raise up a young boy’s hopes and then crush them like so many empty beer cups year after year after year after year after year…” As the playoffs began this year, my dad said he wasn’t sure what made him happier: seeing the Cubs make the playoffs or seeing the Mets collapse. He still holds a grudge from 1969. These things stay with you.

“Worst Game Ever”

I hope someday I can feel that way about the Cubs again. They have some likable young players and 100 years is a nice round number. In the meantime, here’s hoping the back page of the Sun Times has some good news after a pretty depressing couple of weeks. Watching Charles Tillman literally wrestle a win from the arms of the Green Bay Packers was a pretty good start. Thanks Peanut, Chicago needed that.

I work in a weird neighborhood. Really weird. Our neighbors include an industrial paint factory, horse stables and a strip club. Walking out of work this evening I noticed there’s a new business in the neighborhood:

If you can’t read the subtitle, it says, “Inflatable Party Zone for Little Ones.” I asked them if I could look around. It’s pretty sweet. There are several rooms filled with stuff like this:

My crappy camera phone picture doesn’t do it justice. It’s big. And the room also had a giant moonwalk and some sort of inflatable gauntlet. And there were two other rooms. As I was leaving, the man at the front desk said, “Pretty cool, huh?” Yes. Pretty cool indeed.

It reminds me of one of the best parties I ever went to in high school. The folks who ran the school newspaper somehow convinced the proprietors of a neighborhood Discovery Zone to let them have a party there from midnight to 8AM.  There weren’t many balls in the ball pit by the end of the evening. I didn’t work on the paper, but I wasn’t about to miss that.

I think my next birthday party is going to be at Pump it Up. Mark your calendars!

Once I lived across the street from a “tobacco” shop. I can’t say it was a big surprise when a “going out of business” sign with a Grateful Dead sticker on it appeared in the window one day. It was a time of great excitement for my roommates and I. None of us were all that into “tobacco” and we were excited to see what would move in across the street. Would it be a great sandwich shop? A bookstore?? An arcade?! A waterpark?!?!!?

After months of construction, the plywood on the windows finally came down, awnings went up, and we were left with… a Sprint Store. A Sprint Store! I guess there are people who go to such places for their Borg implant bluetooth devices, but I was still rockin’ the land line at the time — rockin’ it hard. Oh how I missed the old bong shop.

Recently signs went up on the pizza place across the street from my house announcing that they are moving and once again I find myself excited by the possibilities. You may be thinking that I’m crazy for not wanting a pizza place right outside my front door. I’m not. Here are 4 reasons:

1. There’s also Chicago’s Pizza and Giordano’s very very nearby, offering much tastier pizza.
2. I’ve never actually seen anyone buying pizza there.
3. It seems they have a nasty habit of dumping grease directly in the sewer.
4. There’s a Donkey Kong Jr. machine in there that drives me crazy because I suck so bad at Donkey Kong Jr.

The thing is, my neighborhood is so dang awesome that I can’t think of anything I really need. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe it will be a branch of my weird bank. Or maybe someone will bring back Photon. A kid can dream…

My old Saturn finally bit it, and it did so in dramatic fashion. I wasn’t there for the accident, but when I went to clean out the car I was impressed by the wallop it took. State Farm decided that the cost of the repairs far exceeded the worth of a 12-year-old economy wagon and gave me a check. Two notes here: 1. everyone involved in the accident is fine. 2. I’m not a big recommender, but if you’re looking for an insurance company, I have had really good experiences with State Farm. It’s like they’re a neighbor who’s really there for you. A good neighbor, even.

So now I’m carless. At some point I’ll probably get another car (any recommendations? I like small station wagons) but in the meantime I’m just gonna hoof it… and take public transportation… and get rides from people.

It’s been going okay for the most part. There haven’t been too many times I’ve wished I had a car, but today is one of them. I already took a bus and a train to get to work. After work I’ll hop on the Halsted bus down to UIC for our Engineers Without Borders Regional Workshop. After that I need to get to Evanston somehow to meet up with a friend who’s in from out of town. Finally, I need to get back home to Lincoln Square. Yabba Dabba Doo!

Last night I attended an informational session for people interested in volunteering at the World Boxing Championships. I don’t know anything about boxing beyond synthesizer-soundtracked montages. Once I tried it with some oversized boxing gloves for about 20 seconds and it was the most tiring thing I’ve ever done.

So I almost didn’t go because… I don’t know… boxing? But as soon as I arrived at the Chicago Cultural Center I was glad I did. I suspect that most of the people who were there aren’t all that into boxing. I suspect most of them, like me, are totally geeked about the possibility of Chicago hosting the Olympics and want to help out any way they can.

You see, if Chicago is going to host the Olympics, we need to prove that we’re capable of hosting world class international sporting events. This boxing tournament is our biggest test to date. It needs to be a tremendous success. Over 1,000 athletes, coaches, trainers and officials are coming to Chicago in October. It’s our job to ensure that when they leave, they can’t stop talking about it. It’s not a hard — the city does most of the work — we just need to open the curtains.

I have a feeling that I will be at least a little into boxing by the time all this is over. Seeing people practice their craft at the highest level is always fascinating. Besides, I’ve already learned a couple things. Did you know that in amateur boxing they’re called “bouts” instead of “fights?”

I’d encourage all of you to come out and help us show off our city. Sign up to volunteer on the World Boxing Championships website. You must attend one of the remaining informational sessions before you can volunteer:

• Thursday, September 27: Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington (Millennium Room, 5th Floor) 6:00pm – 7:30pm
• Tuesday, October 2: U.S. Cellular Field, 333 W. 35th St. (The Conference and Learning Center, enter at Gate 3, free parking in D-lot) 6:00pm – 7:30pm

I thought it was a shame that the IOC’s rules forced Chicago 2016 to change their torch logo. It was a pretty darn good logo. But you know what? The new one is pretty darn good too. The stars on the Chicago flag are quite iconic, and especially appropriate since each one represents a watershed Chicago event (Fort Dearborn, The Chicago Fire, The World’s Columbian Exposition, and The Century of Progress Exposition.) In fact, one alderman has even proposed adding a fifth star to the flag if Chicago is chosen to host the 2016 Summer Games, but that seems to be jumping the gun a bit.

If you need some design work, both the old and new logos were designed (pro bono) by VSA Partners, Inc.

Right now I’d put Chicago’s chances of hosting the 2016 Summer Olympics at about 50/50. I think Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is the only real competition. Tokyo would be great, but it is too close to Beijing, who is hosting the Olympics next year. It is also the only applicant city that has already hosted the Olympics. Madrid and Prague will have trouble since London is hosting in 2012 and the 2014 Winter Olympics will also be in Europe. Also, the previous European Olympics were in Spain, which further hurts Madrid’s chances. Baku, Azerbaijan is exotic, but they’ve only competed in the Olympics since 1996 so they’re probably not ready yet. Doha, Qatar is in a region that hasn’t hosted the Olympics, but they don’t allow entry to Israelis. I certainly hope that would be a dealbreaker.

Rio, however, has a lot going for it: most importantly, the Olympics have never taken place in South America. They also hosted a very successful Pan American games this summer. Then again, Rio submitted bids for the 2004 and 2012 Olympics and didn’t make the short list, so who knows.

Shama: Who does this guy think he is?

While I’m very excited about the Montrose Brown Line station reopening this winter, I was kind of bummed that they moved it to the other side of the street, increasing my commute by a whole twenty paces.

Then I realized that the Armitage station also moved to the other side of the street, decreasing my commute by twenty paces.

Much has been written about how ineffective Chicago’s blue bag program is. Most people, myself included, have a hard time believing that a thin layer of polyethylene will survive the gnashing claws of a garbage truck long enough to make it to some magical sorting chamber where enchanted elves separate recyclable cardboard from baby Chester’s dirty diapers. And while that process probably worked more effectively than I suggest, it offered us, the recycling public little confidence. So little, in fact, that few bothered to use blue bags.

In lieu of a civic recycling program, I hauled my cans and bottles and papers and what not to the 7-11 parking lot at Wrightwood and Lincoln (and Sheffield — three-way intersections, yo!) where The Resource Center has set up recycling bins. It was a pain. On the up side, I often ran into the founder of The Resource Center, Ken Dunn. Ken Dunn is a strange and wonderful man who has founded many strange and wonderful projects in Chicago including City Farm and Blackstone Bicycle Works. Often I’d be throwing cardboard into the truck-sized bin only to see a slight, soul-patch-ed man pop out of the pile like Scrooge McDuck in his money bin. This is a guy who was featured in a cover story for Chicago Magazine and who Mayor Daley has on his speed dial.

I remember several years ago we were chatting as he gleefully loaded trash bags full of used coffee grounds into his truck (to use as compost at City Farm.) He mentioned that Chicago’s recycling program was going to be drastically improved in the next couple years. “Yeah, right,” I thought.

Never question Ken Dunn. Look what I found behind our building a couple weeks ago:

The whole alley is now lined with brand new City of Chicago blue carts. The 46th and 47th ward, it seems, are part of the trial program, and let me tell you, the 46th and 47th wards are pretty excited about it. The suckers were packed to the gills all up and down the alley.

Here’s me breaking in my blue cart (apparently after a wild night of Squirt drinking.) And by the way, you don’t need to use blue bags — or any bags, for that matter — but I figured I wouldn’t be using them for anything else…

In Chicago, and probably many other cities that reside along lakes or oceans, there are two types of people: beach people and everyone else. Beach people go to the beach every chance they get. They need to live near the lake. They read at the beach, run at the beach, eat at the beach, and if all the e coli swimming warnings are any indication, those probably aren’t the only thing they do at the beach.

I’m not a beach person. I’ve gone whole summers without setting foot on the beach. It’s not that I don’t like it there, it’s just that I don’t need it like others do. But I like beach people. Some of my best friends are beach people.

When Thea asked me if I wanted to go to the beach, my initial thought was, “nah,” but I didn’t have anything better to do and it’s only a couple blocks away, so I figured, “why not.”

The beach is great!

We built two different sand castles, ran out in the water, and, most importantly, dug an awesome hole. I don’t know what it is about beaches that make me want to dig a hole, but dammit if digging a hole at the beach isn’t the most fun in the world.

We dug and we dug and eventually we hit a layer of greyish clay stuff that stank real bad. REAL bad.

THEA: I think I’m gonna fill in the hole. It really smells.

We also talked with one of the metal detector guys. He’s a beach person. He told us about his greatest success (a diamond ring and some sort of gold jewelry from India) and seemed generally happy that someone wanted to talk to him. We put some change in our hole before we filled it in. I hope he finds it and not the other metal detector guy… the evil metal detector guy.

It was a pretty awesome day. We even got poopsicles, although I almost immediately dropped mine. Blip blop.

Midwestern thunderstorms have always been one of my favorite things about living in Chicago. On the night of Chicago’s fireworks, some friends and I sat on the front deck and craned our necks to see the show. Later that night, the lightning put the fireworks to shame.

Thunderstorms are fun and exciting, but sometimes it’s easy to forget how destructive they can be.

On my way home from work last week I stopped to get a sandwich and lightning struck the building across the street. The sandwich shop folks called the fire department, who came and did their thing.

I couldn’t leave since the firetrucks blocked me in, so I took some pictures and tried to stay out of the way. I don’t know how much damage there was, but the roof was smoking something crazy.

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